In the days before GPS, a ship approaching a rocky coast had to be careful.  Navigating toward safe harbor, especially on a dark foggy night, brought with it a very real chance of destruction.  No matter how powerful, graceful, or well-designed the vessel, it could be in a moment rendered into little more than flotsam strewn across the beach.

If the ordinary problems were not enough, ships had to also face a more devious opponent: wreckers.  For centuries, maritime salvage laws gave complete ownership of a wreck to those who discovered it.  The incentive generated by these rules brought the unscrupulous out on foggy nights to try and fool wayward ships.  They would start lights, sometimes several, or order to deceive ships into thinking they were spotting lighthouses, movements of carriages along a seaside road, or other ships in a harbor.  By this means, wreakers lured hundreds of vessels onto the rocks, killed any surviving crew, and made off with the contents of the wrecks.

Forgive me the extended metaphor, and I'm sure many of you can already guess where I'm going with us.  If the ships are legislation, the Republicans are determined to provide the fog in which they can lose their way.  And they're building up the rocks on which legislation can founder.   And they're setting the false lights.