You’ve probably heard this one: A mother tells her small son, “Stop pulling the dog’s tail.” He replies, “I’m just holding it. It’s the dog that’s pulling.”  His mother knew, of course, that the boy, not the dog, was in the wrong.

The little boy knew it too, but he somehow thought everybody else in the world, including his mother, wasn’t as smart as he was and would be fooled by his assertion.

Sound familiar?  It should.  That little boy grew up to be a Republican in the US House of Representatives.

Most kids learn not to expect others to be fooled by specious claims such as this, but a few don’t.  The Tea Party Republicans seem to have a disproportionate number of followers who somehow didn’t get that gene.

They don’t even seem to get it that they lost the last election.  That is, when the whole country voted, the Republicans lost.  Now they are threatening the whole country for that perceived insult.  Perhaps they forget that they live here too.  Like one House member said, “It’s like putting a gun to your own head and saying, do what I want or I’ll shoot.”  That was even a Republican House member, so not all of them have swallowed the Cool-Aid.

As we all know, those that do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  The TP Republicans aren’t too fond of learning in general, especially anything that is counter to their preconceived dogmas.  However, it seems we all are condemned to repeat this bit of history – a government shutdown followed by the R’s getting their knuckles rapped and finally letting go of the dog’s tail.

You might think they would learn this time, but no.  The lesson they learn will be more like what some of them are saying now: “we lost last time because we weren’t radical enough and didn’t do enough damage to the country to make the other side give up.”

Oh, and what happened to that little boy?  He was sent to his room for a long “time out”. Know what I’m sayin’?