THE GOP DOESN'T HAVE THE GUTS TO GO PUBLIC WITH ITS ANTI-UNION JIHAD NATIONWIDE

This is cold-hearted and horrible, but it's also cowardly:

Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes

... a group of House Republicans is launching a new stealth attack against union workers. GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX) have introduced H.R. 1135, which states that it is designed to "provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, to provide additional work requirements, and to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs."

... one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement....

The GOP assault on unions is in the form of a massive direct assault in Wisconsin and more than a dozen other states -- but please note that Republicans aren't making this a full-fledged anti-union war at the federal level; Scott Walker is unabashed; this is sneaky. They want to keep the war on unions at the state level -- they're counting on the public not to pay all that much attention to what's going on in the states (and they're counting on the press not to cover the state battles very much, which has turned out to be a safe bet).

Last summer, as Republicans gained ground in the polls and seemed on the verge of taking over both houses of Congress in D.C., I said that Obama and Biden might as well just resign and give us the all-GOP government now. It's a silly proposal, I know, and it's an easily mocked argument -- Hey, if the wingnuts and teabaggers take over, that'll bring us closer to the progressive revolution, maaaan! -- but if they were in charge of everything right now, I wonder if they'd be launching a full-on assault in D.C. right now. More likely they'd still be keeping it subtle in D.C., I suppose. In any case, they do seem to believe they can make gains in the states without tainting the national brand very much in the eyes of Joe Sixpack. Republicans usually guess the nuances of this kind of thing accurately (because they're much better at winning than governing); I wonder if we lefties are overestimating the damage they're doing to themselves, and if this keep-it-out-of-D.C. strategy is going to work for them.