Robert Reich seems have come over to my way of thinking. As I wrote back in November, bipartisanship can bite me! The point I was making was that this idea that congressional Republicans should go along with Obama just because he won a national election is madness. They should do what is right for their constituencies.

Reich writes:

I couldn’t have put it any more perfectly than that.

Of course, the devil is in the details. One thing that is not good for any congressional district is a recession brought on by ignoring the Fiscal Cliff or allowing the federal government to default over the debt ceiling. This is totally different from a disagreement over welfare funding. I don’t agree with this idea, but I can see that a conservative might truly believe that depriving the poor of welfare could be good for them. But doing major damage to the whole United States economy is a a different matter altogether. Anyone who allows that is not looking out for their constituency.

This takes us back to what I wrote about earlier today: revolutionary Republicans. We will see if these people are willing to destroy our economy. I don’t expect a politician to be moved by anyone else’s constituency but their own. But to do what is wrong for your own constituency just to harm others’ is totally unacceptable. Sadly, I’m not sure that many Republicans won’t do just that.

I just watched Honeymoon in Vegas for the first time since it was released in 1992. I am a big fan of writer-director Andrew Bergman, who wrote one of my very favorite films, The In-Laws. He has also written other films that I’m not as fond of, but which have very funny scripts: Soapdish, Fletch, and Blazing Saddles. As a director, he has been less successful. Still, he has had some notable successes. In particular, there is The Freshman and the wrongly maligned Striptease.

My biggest complaint with narrative comedy is that the comedy tends to die in the third act. This is as true of novels (e.g. Something Happened) as it is of movies (e.g. Silver Streak). It is not an easy problem to deal with. The writer needs to tie up all of the plot and it is hard to continue to be funny. Bergman does not have this problem. His scripts keep pushing the comedy throughout.

And that is as true of Honeymoon in Vegas as it is any of his others. The third act is by far the funniest part of the film. Unfortunately, there is relatively little comedy in those first two acts. And most of that involves Nicolas Cage’s over-to-top performance. But that would all be fine; I’m okay waiting for a story to set up all its pins to watch them be knocked over at the end. The problem with this film is the narrative itself.

The basic story is that a gangster falls in love with the bride of a couple about to be married in Vegas. The gangster gets the groom involved in a crooked card game and uses the groom’s losses to try to steal the bride for himself. The plot depends far too much on the bride and groom being very easily deceived. But the main thing is that it is hard for the viewer to like the couple very much. There is a critical scene about halfway through the film where the gangster tells the bride that the amount the groom owed was not $65,000 (the truth) but rather only $3000. On the one hand, it is hard to have too much sympathy for the groom who was both greedy and stupid. But the fact that the bride accepted this lie so easily is also annoying.

In the end, we are left with a film about three people who we really don’t care about. And it all seems that this contrived and annoying story has been put together for the sake of what is, admittedly, a great third act. But I know what Bergman is capable of. I feel that if he had written this screenplay at the start of his career, he would have worked on it more—A lot more!—before he showed it to anyone.

I’ve been wondering about the 2011 budget deal: why didn’t the Republicans take it? I’ve argued in the past that they were gambling on an Obama loss. In fact, all the evidence points to a Republican Party that was convinced that Obama would be defeated. It is all part of the echo chamber effect, where they really thought that the American people hated the president, rather than it just being the subset who listen to right wing radio. Regardless, the Republicans thought that it was better to pass on a bill that gave them 98% of what they wanted and instead go with a new Republican president who would give them 100% of what the wanted. Or at least that’s what I’d thought before.

Now I have a new idea. Boehner could have taken the very good deal he was offered in 2011. Then, if Romney had won the election, all the tax increases (really just limits to deductions) would easily have been repealed. Boehner would have had 100% of what he wanted. Or, if Obama had won, he would still have pocketed the 98%. Why didn’t he take this deal? It can’t be that he didn’t think of it. Even if you believe that Republican politicians are idiots, they have smart young aides; this would have been pointed out.

I think there are a few things going on here, but there is one that dominates. A large part of the Republican Party has become a revolutionary group. As a result, they are not at all interested in governing. This in itself is a very dangerous thing. But what is most important is that they do not think that the Democratic Party has legitimacy. Thus, they won’t make any deals. We saw this the week before last when the House Republicans would not vote even to allow incomes over a million dollars to be taxed at a higher rate. They were, however willing to vote to restore all lost military funding, because they are committed to the military, like most revolutionaries in their position.

Boehner isn’t part of this revolutionary group. But he is an enabler. He cares more about maintaining his power than governing as he would normally want to. But he’s made a very bad deal in the long-term. By pandering to this group, he makes the Republican prospects going forward all the worse. But even if the revolutionaries managed to continue to gain power, they would eventually replace Boehner because he is not one of them.

The only question now is whether Boehner, after securing another two years as Speaker of the House, will start acting like a regular politician or continue to side with the revolutionaries. If he sides with the revolutionaries, we may well get no fiscal cliff deal. And when the debt ceiling comes up, the United States government would almost certainly default. And this all really comes down to Boehner. He is in a typical position: he has power, but only so long as he doesn’t use it as he wants. As soon as he does what he wants, he loses his power. So what’s it going to be, Mr. Speaker?