"We're going to Need a Bigger Government."

President Obama at the chum line, feeding the Republican Party.

And what is he feeding them? More scraps from the hale and healthy body that used to be Social Security (Soon under new management as the "Lose it All But Possibly Win Big! sweepstakes on Wall Street). What used to be Medicare and Medicaid (Soon also under new management as the "Macrosized, Masshealth Connector Clusterfuck aka RomneyCare").

And still they want more because somehow this chum, however ill-gotten and flayed from our social safety net given to us by better and more compassionate governments, this chum just ain't cutting it. No, the jaws of the GOP and the 50 or 60 dead-enders of the dying Tea Party who still inexplicably find themselves on TV day after day as if they were the Swiftboaters for Truthiness or Balloon Boy dads and other frauds, they want more than chum.

They want those sweet, sweeeeeeet, blubbery otters and seals and walruses, they want those dolphins and sea lions and manatees, whatever they can stuff into those gaping maws because, well, they have lobbyists and tycoons to feed.

So Obama keeps chucking chum in the chum line, thinking those precious nuggets will somehow attract and placate those 25 foot eating machines and thinking he's some Great Communicator or Compromiser or whatever he chooses to call himself when he's standing in front of his full-length mirror in his skivvies at night.

And the Great Feeder of Insatiable Republican Sharks will not listen to the likes of Quint, who tells him horror stories of other Republican sharks of the Nixon era, not even when he ominously begins his stories with, "Argh, the Congress was angry that night, me heartie. There I was, feeding them chum, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by fins a meter high, argh..."

No, Obama will not listen to old salts with vaster experience than him, he will not listen to those who tell him the bloody chunks he offers the Republican sharks will merely arouse their bloodlust and prime their appetites for something more substantial. As with sharks and blood, Republicans can smell the smallest surplus from two miles away. How could they not sniff out and be driven into a frenzy by a $2.6 trillion Social Security surplus which even their world-eating benefactors on Wall Street cannot laugh off as a morsel?

And Republicans will do what Republicans do, which is bang the boat when they don't get what they want, even if the engine room gets filled with bilge water and the whole ship of state stalls, drifts and eventually sinks. If they can shut the government down that quickly simply by saying no, then we need a bigger government, one that cannot be sunk so easily.

But if that happens, if the ship sinks, all that remains to be seen is if Captain Obama goes down with the ship or adroitly escapes, leaving the rest of us to cling to water-logged life preservers that the Republicans will also want to eat.