MSNBC’s Reid Likens Boehner to a Pre-School Teacher Letting House Republicans Eat Play-Doh

MSNBC’s Joy Reid Says House Republicans Are Like Preschoolers Eating Play Doh (Mediaite)

Metaphors are the lifeblood of political commentary, and no political issue has spawned more of them than the Republicans’ years-long effort to govern through doomsday deadlines. After “successfully” playing chicken with the debt ceiling in 2011, and blinking on the Fiscal Cliff in 2012, Republicans are taking another run up that hill by threatening a government shutdown, and maybe a US government default, unless Obamacare is de-funded. On Thursday morning’s MSNBC Live, Joy Reid came up with a kinder, gentler simile for House Republicans’ rush toward ideologically pure head trauma.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) now finds himself reluctantly leading the House Republican charge to shut down the government unless the President agrees to de-fund the Affordable Care Act, a charge being egged on by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). After relentlessly whipping up base support for the strategy, however, Cruz recently left the House GOP holding the government shutdown bag by explaining that “Harry Reid will no doubt try to strip the defund language from the continuing resolution, and right now he likely has the votes to do so. At that point, House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground, and continue to listen to the American people.”