September 27, 2013 08:09 AM UTC

Doug Lamborn Muddles Through Obamacare Shutdown Debate

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Springs Gazette's Tom Roeder reports, Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs is sort of worried about the consequences of a shutdown of the federal government in his party's increasingly desperate battle to kill the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. After all:

A government shutdown should be avoided, Lamborn said. In his military-heavy 5th Congressional District, as much as 40 percent of the economy is based on Pentagon spending.

The Defense Department has warned that a shutdown would delay paychecks for troops and payment on contracts. It would be the first time since the Revolutionary War that the military has delayed pay during wartime.

"No one wants a government shutdown," Lamborn said.

With that said, gentle reader,

[H]e might embrace a shutdown if it puts a wooden stake in Obamacare.

"As bad as a delay of pay would be, we have to remember that Obamacare is causing tremendous turmoil in the economy," Lamborn said. [Pols emphasis]

We seriously doubt the soldiers and defense contractors in his district would agree with that tradeoff. But the fact is, Lamborn's boilerplate rhetoric, and his party's endless fiscal brinkmanship, has always conflicted with the massive economic dependency of the 5th District on government funding and spending. It's a conflict that has been thrown in sharp relief over and over, from Lamborn's hypocritical disaster relief requests–after accusing the administration of using disaster relief to curry political favor, and voting against Hurricane Sandy relief–to the local business Mitt Romney toured last year that received a pile of stimulus money.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." If Rep. Lamborn is any guide, Fitzgerald was mistaken–we don't know anybody who'd call him a "first-rate intelligence." At the very least, Lamborn is not living up to the "ability to function" part.

Which is, of course, the part that matters.