Judd Gregg: And the band played on

There is a very entertaining scene in the cult movie “Animal House” where the school band that is marching in the final scene’s parade takes a wrong turn, marches down a blind alley, runs into a brick wall and keeps on playing.

The band members continue with trumpets blaring and tubas tooting while they bang up against the brick wall on a dead-end street. The sergeant major remains oblivious to their state of affairs and just keeps trying to march on…into the wall.

It reminds one of the way the Republicans in Congress have been approaching the immigration issue. They really are the band from “Animal House.”

If you are President Obama and his allies in Congress, it is not only amusing, though. It is a gift, politically.

{mosads}We are just a few weeks from the horrific attack in France by Islamic terrorists. Daily, we see the atrocities committed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), coupled with that organization‘s very believable claim that it intends to pursue acts of terror against us here in America.

In the midst of all these threats from very obviously determined zealots, what does the Republican right wing in Congress want to do?

It takes a path that could shut down one of the primary agencies of government that is dedicated to stopping attacks by terrorists upon us, the Department of Homeland Security.

If you were to try to think of the most counter-productive things the new Republican Congress could do, in terms of its own popularity with the American people, you would be hard-pressed to find a more dramatic example.

Yes, we can all agree there is a legitimate and significant constitutional dispute between the GOP and the president on immigration — and specifically his executive order effectively legalizing up to five million people who are here illegally.

But there has to be some level of common sense in how the Republicans in Congress pursue the issues of whether the president has acted beyond his authority and, in so doing, has adulterated the concept of separation of powers.

Instead of using common sense, the Republicans in Congress have turned the leadership of the band over to the “shouters,” folks who have time and again managed to snatch defeat from victory by insisting on inane tactics that undermine not only the message but the outcome.

Instead of having the American people looking at the Congress and saying that it is justifiably concerned with the excessive use and possible abuse of power by the president, the American people are looking at the Congress and saying “Why are you risking our personal security over a turf fight?”  

Are there no adults in the halls of the Capitol?

This is the question that is beginning to haunt the American electorate when it reflects on whom it voted for and sent to Washington last November. 

This was suppose to be a Congress that moved forward on issues that affect Americans in their everyday lives. Instead, it is now threatening to shut down agencies that are dedicated to protecting them.

Fairly soon, if the Republican Congress continues to follow these majordomos, the American people are going to conclude that they really did end up with a Congress that cannot find its way out of dead-end alleys.  

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.