by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
There is an old saying in the nation's capital: when a President flaps his lips in Washburningdington, a dissident is jailed in China. Chaos President doesn't understand the elegant mathematics underlying this phenomenon. Chaos President barely understands the concept of mathematics (part of the reason signing a business contract with him can be such an adventure). Chaos President just likes to see high winds topple governments to the ground - especially if he can make a buck out of it..
How does this work? An ordinary President who wanted to build a wall on the border with Canada to help fight the war on doughnuts would meet with Congressional leaders and tell them, "I want us to build a wall on the border with Canada to help fight the war on doughnuts - how can we do that?" Legislation would be cobbled together. Arms would be twisted. Pork would be served. And, voila: opposition crow pie.
Not Chaos President. Chaos President promised to "do politics differenter" when he was Chaos Candidate. After all, anarchy had served him well as Chaos Businessman (weeeeeellll, getting bailed out by Order Businessman friends didn't hurt, either), And, of all the promises he would subsequently break, this is the one promise that he holds sacrosanct because HAVE YOU ALREADY FORGOTTEN WHO WE'RE TALKING ABOUT, HERE?
So, Chaos President calls Reduhblican Congresspeople in the middle of the night and asks, "Is your fridge running in the next election? Because if it is, I'll support its primary challenge if you don't get this Special Prosecutor off my back." Prank calling can be very specific in the Grey House of a Chaos President.
Oddly enough, Reduhblican men and women in Congress, who believe that they are not servants of the president just because they were elected by the people, are often offended by Chaos President on the mere pretext that he is being offensive. The Senate Majority leader, to cite one egregious example (Greg has always been prone to extremes) may not speak to the Chaos President for a month or more after the leader publicly berates, immiserates and brutally aerates him for not working hard enough to get a health care deform and deplace bill passed even though Chaos President himself was too busy holding rallies to help get it done. Not speaking = not good.
An ordinary president might believe that alienating the people he needs to help him pass legislation is a bad idea. As somebody who is not directly involved in politics, you may naively think alienating people you need to help you pass legislation is a bad idea. For Chaos President, it's a SOP to his base.
Of course, this leaves Chaos President with a problem: how to show his base that he is tough on North Korea without starting a nuclear war that might hurt his poll numbers. Oh, no, wait - that's a different problem. And, it isn't even really a problem, inasmuch as Chaos President will be as belligerent as he wants to be (because HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHO WE'RE TALKING ABOUT, HERE, ONCE AGAIN?) and hope that the leader of North Korea is also playing to his base. Or, that Chaos President's base will take living in a radioactive wasteland - possibly having to fend off zombies - as evidence that his tough stance was real, and support him all the more faithfully.
Those who aren't zombies, in any case; he can always count on support from that demographic.
No, the problem Chaos President faces is how to get Congress to pay for a wall when key members of his own party wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire - would, in fact, be happy to supply matches to the arsonally inclined. Fortunately, Chaos President has a cunning plan.
In a public speech that is supposed to be about something else (infrastructure spending, developing a genital check for members of the military, naming the new Grey House pet - something relatively unimportant), Chaos President states that he will veto any government spending bill that is put before him if it doesn't include funding for the border wall. If allowed to continue, this stalemate would result in a temporary shutdown of the government because it couldn't pay its bills.
Check and checkers...mate, Chaos President.
How would this get the funding Chaos President wants? The last time a Reduhblican Congress shut down the government, it was for the very reasonable policy objective: "Nyah, nyah! Nyah, nyah! We don't like you and we have a majority so we can stop you from doing whatever it is you have in your pointy little Dumbopratic head to do so bwahahahaha!" They were rewarded for this principled stand by losing both houses of Congress in the following election. Reduhblicans who are old enough to have lived through it, but not so old that their only memories are of Rudy Valleeglenravine movies and what they ate for breakfast when they were three years old, would like to avoid another such a setback.
That doesn't guarantee that the President will get his wall funding. Divisions within the Reduhblican Party, especially in the Senate, might stall the passage of a reintroduced bill. Imagine it: no welfare checks, no seniors pensions, no medicare or medicaid payments, no NEA grants to traitourous free-thinking performance artists. Okay, it won't be all bad. Still, it will be bad enough. Will Chaos President's base blame him for such a fiasco?
These are people who will defend Chaos President against radioactive zombies - what do you think?