One Doesn't Need to Hunt Very Hard...

I wonder, quite often, what other countries make of our system of government.  For Americans it seems normal - for others, not so much.  In most/many countries if the leader of a party in power cannot get something passed, the government is actually disolved and there are new elections.
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In the US, our elections are set on a certain schedule, so "not getting laws passed" has no effect on the party in power or the leaders of the party.  And that, any foreign readers, is why John Boehner, Leader of the Republicans in the Lower House, can be treated with such distain by his own party.
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Yesterday he decided to vote on "Plan B" which was to perserve Bush Tax Cuts for the first $1,000,000 dollars of income.  As written it would actually be a tax increase on millionaires, and so it was his way to get leverage against the President by saying that his party would in fact vote for some tax increase.
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It would be hallow, since the Upper House (the Senate) already voted for the same type of bill, perserving the tax rates for the first $250,000 of income, but he had to start somewhere.
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Well, he couldn't get that bill passed.  Even though it had no shot of becoming law, he could get enough of his own party to support a tax increase on people who made more than $1Million dollars to pass the bill through the lower house.
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One feels bad for him - in a bizarre way.  It was very easy to find headlines like the one below.
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