REPUBLICANS ARE ALREADY BLAMING DEMOCRATS FOR THINGS WE HAVEN'T DONE YET

Here's Philly talk radio guy Chris Stigall:

Pardon me, media. When the R-controlled Congress passes #KeystonePipeline with bi-partisan support and Obama vetoes, who's "uncompromising?"

— Chris Stigall (@ChrisStigall) November 18, 2014

I'm not sure exactly what Stigall's saying here. Does he think Obama vetoed the Keystone bill today? (That's not what happened -- the bill had to pass by a 60-vote threshold to break a Democratic filibuster, like, um, the many, many bills filibustered by Republicans during Obama's presidency, and it failed.) Or is Stigall saying that in the future, when (inevitablu) the Republicans pass a Keystone bill, an Obama veto will demonstrate that the president is a horrible, uncompromising guy? (Obama, of course, has vetoed only two bills in six years as president.) If it's the latter, can right-wingers at least wait for Obama to actually do this horrible thing before hating him for it?

*****

Similarly, there's Noah Rothman's post at Hot Air about a possible Republican response to executive action on immigration by the president. Rothman thinks the GOP will choose to hold up only the expenditures relevant to enforcement of the executive order, rather than shutting down the entire government. He quotes Byron York's description of this approach:

... a shutdown battle could occur -- but it would be a battle over shutting down the small part of the federal government tasked with enforcing the immigration order. Everything else would remain up and running.

But Rothman thinks mean old Democrats will lie to the public about that:

If this were to occur, Barack Obama, liberal Democrats, and their allies in the press would apply all their power and influence to propagate the notion that Republicans had again shut down the government. They would, however, be deprived of the images of shuttered post offices, or war memorials and public zoos manned by joyless sentinels preventing citizens from making use of them.

That's right -- we'd just lie to everyone and say the government was shut down, even though it would be glaringly obvious that the vast majority of the government was open. Because we're horrible that way.

Fortunately for the forces of Right and Truth, some brave apostates would refuse to cooperate with Democrats' sinister efforts at mass mind control:

... some honest Democrats appear disinterested in helping their fellows craft the dubious narrative that the GOP had forced a suspension of governmental activity in a tantrum over the legalization of much of America's illegal immigrant population.

"It happens all the time," outgoing Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told National Review's Joel Gehrke. "That's not uncommon that there’s amendments saying 'none of the funds in this appropriation bill may be spent for' -- fill in the blank."

Um, Mr. Rothman? Levin said what the average Democrat thinks -- if Republicans don't shut down the government, we won't say they shut down the government. If Republicans block the executive order, we'll say they're blocking the executive order. If the rest of the government continues to function, we'll acknowledge that. We're like that, you see. We acknowledge reality.

We don't know if Republicans really can restrain themselves this way. But if they can, swell -- we'll admit it. So don't convict us for a crime we haven't committed, and won't commit.