The old appropriation two-step

The choreography we get from Congress at the yearly appropriation deadline is getting as familiar as the Christmas Rockettes show. Plenty of R's claim that only the Dems are talking about shutdowns, and a few mentally feeble ones (R's) might actually believe the Dems would be the cause of a shutdown.

The R leaders are giving their caucus lots of chances to vote for their issue du jour. (Not that the issue matters. Two years ago it was defunding Obamacare, and it didn't happen. This year it's defunding Planned Parenthood, and we can watch while it doesn't happen either.)

After the ritual yet useless votes, the R leaders will trot out a clean, status quo bill, and we'll all yawn and go to bed. Well, a few people will scream about betrayal and cowardice and turn strange shades of red (such as Erick Erickson), but the rest of us will be watching reruns and drifting off to dreamland.

The only question is how many times the Republicans will repeat this ineffective strategy. At least once after 2016, that's my prediction.

 Image: dailymail.co,uk