Are republicans willing to let the economy fail to win an election?

Commodore · Jul 7, 2011

Deckard said: ↑

This has to be one of the more absurd posts I've read in a while, which is saying something. With all due respect, have you been living under a rock? Are you 14 years old? You have seriously called the President's words "unprecedented demagoguery from that office" and meant it? You have lived an exceedingly sheltered life.
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quote me worse

Deckard · Jul 7, 2011

Commodore said: ↑

quote me worse
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Last Wednesday the American people were given a remarkable lesson in political demagoguery. Whatever one may think of Senator Nixon's morals or wisdom, one must admit that in thirty minutes he made a historic contribution to the science of rabble-rousing. Lest his technique be obscured by the political controversy surrounding the whole incident, I will indicate its principles:

1. Pretend to be a poor ordinary man fighting the possessors of inherited wealth. Refer to the fact that the standard-bearer of the opposing party inherited money. Mention your own humble origin and your wife's "cloth coat." Tell the people that poor men like your-self should represent them in Congress.

2. Appeal to people's national origins regardless of how irrelevant it may be. Disclose that your wife's maiden name was Ryan and that the Irish never quit.

3. Attack your opponents as Pro-Communist but don't make the mistake that Joe McCarthy made -- be subtle about it. Remind your audience that the same people who opposed you in the Hiss case are against you now.

4. If you are a veteran, mention it but try to be casual. Discuss the battle stars in an off-hand way but make it clear that you were under enemy fire.

5 Cast doubt on the honesty of the opposing candidates; mention that your opponent's wife is on the federal pay roll. There is nothing dishonest about that, but it sounds bad, especially if the man isn't there to answer it. Keep harping on the fund controlled by the other party's chief candidate, even though it is completely different from your own fund. Twist the facts just enough to arouse suspicion.

6. Appeal to people's sympathy. Pretend to be the honest man who is viciously perse-cuted by smear artists. Plead with the people not to let your enemies take your pet dog away. Tell them that it hurts to bare your soul and your finances in public. Repeat this over and over again so they won't notice the important things you have left unsaid. End by promising you will never stop fighting the crooks and Communists attacking you.

7. Above all, never, never discuss the actual thing for which you were called to task by the American people. Never compare your voting record with the economic interests of those who contributed to your fund. Never raise the question whether it was right to take money from people who have a stake in the way you vote. Create your own ethical standards and then point out how rigidly you adhere to them.

If you do all these things, a great general will laud your courage and you will be flooded with telegrams of sympathy and support. And if the people are really as dumb as you think they are, you may some day be President of the United States.

http://www.thenation.com/article/checkers-speech-handbook-demagogues

Oh, and from the same President:

When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.
Richard M. Nixon

mc mark · Jul 7, 2011

Commodore said: ↑

http://www.nationalreview.com/campa...ses-some-political-rhetoric-left-outside-door
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Nice to see a president speak the unvarnished truth

sorry you can't hang with it

rhadamanthus · Jul 7, 2011

Obama caving a la Clinton?

Obama puts Medicare, Social Security cuts on the table

This is insane. Where are the cuts to DoD?

Kojirou · Jul 7, 2011

Commodore said: ↑

http://www.nationalreview.com/campa...ses-some-political-rhetoric-left-outside-door

These are the words of the President of the United States, unprecedented demagoguery from that office.

When Mark Halperin calls Obama a dick, this is what he means.
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.........saying that corporate people and oil companies should pay more taxes is unprecedented demagoguery?

That's it, Brooks is freaking right. The GOP today and its supporters have gone completely off the rails on taxes, and ONLY taxes, which is merely one part of economic policy.. Even your ******* sacred Laffer curve has a point where if you cut taxes too much the government loses revenue, you know.

rocketsjudoka · Jul 7, 2011

As I've been following the debate about raising the debt ceiling I'm starting to feel that this isn't so much about the Republicans willing to let the economy fail to win an election but that they are more bound to ideology than any practical consideration.

The election is important but seeing their ideology implemented at any cost is more.

mc mark · Jul 7, 2011

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

As I've been following the debate about raising the debt ceiling I'm starting to feel that this isn't so much about the Republicans willing to let the economy fail to win an election but that they are more bound to ideology than any practical consideration.
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please

they raised the debt ceiling 7 times under Bush

Where were these deficit hawks the 8 years before the current administration?

Scarface281 · Jul 7, 2011

mc mark said: ↑

please

they raised the debt ceiling 7 times under Bush

Where were these deficit hawks the 8 years before the current administration?
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Exactly. I don't know what the hell is going on with these Republicans. Hopefully the Obama bribe for more infrastructure projects in districts held by Republicans works. We all know we need it.

rocketsjudoka · Jul 7, 2011

mc mark said: ↑

please

they raised the debt ceiling 7 times under Bush

Where were these deficit hawks the 8 years before the current administration?
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Given the recent rhetoric out of the Republicans and also following the MN situation I am getting the feeling that the current crop of Republicans have changed.

As Brooks noted in the piece earlier. They have gotten almost everything they asked for yet instead of declaring victory and moving on they are demanding more. That tells me that ideology might be a greater factor than other issues.

[rquoter]The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the GOP is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt-ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don't take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.[/rquoter]

Following Brooks' reasoning there is a possibility that the Republicans could pay a heavy price for this but at the moment they don't seem to care that much about that possibility.

mc mark · Jul 7, 2011

Once again, you are giving republicans the benefit of the doubt when they don’t deserve it.

CrazyDave · Jul 7, 2011

Unbelievable what they are willing to do in the name of We the Party.

subtomic · Jul 7, 2011

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

Given the recent rhetoric out of the Republicans and also following the MN situation I am getting the feeling that the current crop of Republicans have changed.

As Brooks noted in the piece earlier. They have gotten almost everything they asked for yet instead of declaring victory and moving on they are demanding more. That tells me that ideology might be a greater factor than other issues.

[rquoter]The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the GOP is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt-ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don't take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.[/rquoter]

Following Brooks' reasoning there is a possibility that the Republicans could pay a heavy price for this but at the moment they don't seem to care that much about that possibility.
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I agree that much of the battle is due to the influx of Tea Party Republicans - these are not the same Republicans that were around during GWB's presidency.

I think the real problem is that these Tea Party Republicans are so invested in the "we have a spending problem - not a revenue problem" mythology that they've talked themselves into a corner. Their whole purpose as a politician (and representative) is to cut taxes, and anything that conflicts with that purpose is simply unacceptable - both to the politicians themselves and the constituents who voted for them. Thus, to compromise on this overriding purpose would be to accept defeat.

The Republican party has been like this for awhile on many issues (especially social) but this is the first time we've seen this kind of inflexibility on issues of this magnitude. I think it's partly a result of an increasingly fragmented media - my guess is that the bulk of the Tea Party Republicans only read/watch/listen to "conservative" media, which only reinforces (rather than challenges and expands) their worldview (much of which is centered on demonizing liberals). I also think it reflects their inexperience - more seasoned (and nuanced) politicians understand that politics is all about compromise.

pgabriel · Jul 7, 2011

Commodore said: ↑

http://www.nationalreview.com/campa...ses-some-political-rhetoric-left-outside-door

These are the words of the President of the United States, unprecedented demagoguery from that office.

When Mark Halperin calls Obama a dick, this is what he means.
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diversion

pgabriel · Jul 7, 2011

subtomic said: ↑

I agree that much of the battle is due to the influx of Tea Party Republicans - these are not the same Republicans that were around during GWB's presidency.

I think the real problem is that these Tea Party Republicans are so invested in the "we have a spending problem - not a revenue problem" mythology that they've talked themselves into a corner. Their whole purpose as a politician (and representative) is to cut taxes, and anything that conflicts with that purpose is simply unacceptable - both to the politicians themselves and the constituents who voted for them. Thus, to compromise on this overriding purpose would be to accept defeat.

The Republican party has been like this for awhile on many issues (especially social) but this is the first time we've seen this kind of inflexibility on issues of this magnitude. I think it's partly a result of an increasingly fragmented media - my guess is that the bulk of the Tea Party Republicans only read/watch/listen to "conservative" media, which only reinforces (rather than challenges and expands) their worldview (much of which is centered on demonizing liberals). I also think it reflects their inexperience - more seasoned (and nuanced) politicians understand that politics is all about compromise.
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this is a great post. you're right, they need to back out of fox news's arse and start reading the polls. the public aren't being fooled on where to put blame on nothing getting done.

rhadamanthus · Jul 7, 2011

Glenn Greenwald states the real point needing to be made.

For months, the standard narrative among progressive commentators was that Republicans were outrageously exploiting the debt ceiling deadline to impose drastic entitlement cuts on a resisting and victimized Democratic President (he's weak in negotiations!), but The Post article makes clear that the driving force behind these cuts is the President himself, who is pushing for even larger spending cuts than the GOP was ready to accept:

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue. . . . As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.
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This morning's New York Times article similarly makes clear that it is the President who is demanding an even larger "deficit reduction" package than has previously been discussed. Headlined "Obama to Push for Wider Deal With G.O.P. on Deficit Cuts," the article reports that "President Obama has raised his sights and wants to strike a far-reaching agreement on cutting the federal deficit" and that he "wants to move well beyond the $2 trillion in savings sought in earlier negotiations and seek perhaps twice as much over the next decade." This is all in pursuit of "an agreement that ma[kes] substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security -- programs that had been off the table." The President, as part of the package, is reportedly seeking some elimination of modest tax "loopholes" that benefit wealthy Americans to claim, absurdly, that there is "balanced" sacrifice.

It's true that these articles rely upon anonymous sources, though multiple such sources close to the negotiations -- from both parties -- are cited in consensus about what is taking place, and there are numerous other reports entirely consistent with these. It's been bleedingly obvious for some time that the bipartisan D.C. political class and the economic factions that own it have been intent on massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare -- see George Carlin's 2007 video explanation below -- but the combination of deficit hysteria (repeatedly bolstered by Obama) and the manufactured debt ceiling deadline has, by design, created the perfect pretext to enable this now. As one "Democratic official" told the Post: "These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by." Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is not a GOP-exclusive dynamic.

How many people who voted for Obama in 2008 would have expected a headline like this a short two-and-a-half years later? Many more than should have. As Matt Taibbi explains in trumpeting Frank Rich's superb new New York article detailing Obama's subservience to Wall Street:

Throughout 2008, it was hard to shake the feeling that this was a politician whose legacy could still go either way. There were an awful lot of troubling signs on the horizon in Obama’s campaign, not the least of which being the enthusiastic support he was receiving from Wall Street.

Obama in part ran a very slightly economically populist campaign, but the tens of millions pouring into his campaign coffers from the very rich (and specifically from hedge funds) told all of us that we probably shouldn’t expect those promises to come off. For a piece I wrote that summer, I asked people in Washington why Wall Street would be throwing money at a guy who was out there on the stump pledging to reach into their pockets:

"Sadly, the answer to that question increasingly appears to be that Obama is, well, full of ****. . . . These populist pledges sound good, but many business moguls appear to be betting that the tax policies, like Obama himself, are only that: something that sounds good. 'I think we don't want to make too much of his promises on taxes,' says Robert Pollin, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts. 'Not all of these things will happen.' Noting the overwhelming amount of Wall Street money pouring into Obama's campaign, even elitist ****wad David Brooks was recently moved to write, "Once the Republicans are vanquished, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that capital-gains tax hike."

Disgustingly, Brooks turned out to be right, and the narrative of the Obama presidency did end up turning sour, on that front anyway.
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When I first began writing about politics in late 2005, the standard liberal blogosphere critique -- one I naively believed back then -- was that Democrats were capitulating so continuously to the Bush agenda because they "lacked spine" and were inept political strategists: i.e., they found those policies so very offensive but were simply unwilling or unable to resist them. It became apparent to me that this was little more than a self-soothing conceit: Democrats continuously voted for Bush policies because they were either indifferent to their enactment or actively supported them, and were owned and controlled by the same factions as the GOP.

Now, Democratic commentators -- mostly the President's most hardened loyalists -- continue to invoke this "he's-weak-and-inept" excuse for Obama, but the evidence is far too abundant to sustain it any longer. As Paul Krugman -- long more clear-eyed than most progressives about Obama -- explained this week:

Since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying. . . . , here’s an unprofessional speculation: maybe it's personal. Maybe the president just doesn’t like the kind of people who tell him counterintuitive things, who say that the government is not like a family, that it’s not right for the government to tighten its belt when Americans are tightening theirs, that unemployment is not caused by lack of the right skills. Certainly just about all the people who might have tried to make that argument have left the administration or are leaving soon.

And what's left, I’m afraid, are the Very Serious People. It looks as if those are the people the president feels comfortable with. And that, of course, is a tragedy.
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I think Krugman's "personal" explanation -- that Obama is far more comfortable with "neo-liberal centrists" (i.e., corporatists) than with actual liberals -- is basically true (Frank Rich put it this way: "For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys"). But it's also about ideology, conviction, and self-interest: Obama both believes in the corporatist agenda he embraces and assesses it to be in his political interest to be associated with it. If it means "painful" entitlement cuts for ordinary Americans at a time of massive unemployment, economic anxiety and exploding wealth inequality, so be it.

Krugman understandably describes this dynamic in the context of the debt battle because that's the area on which he focuses most, but this is the same exact dynamic that drives the Obama presidency in almost every realm. In the context of foreign policy and civil liberties, the public-private National Security State (the "Fourth Branch" of Government) is his Wall Street; military and intelligence officials and defense contractors are his Geithner/Summers/Dimon; and endless embrace of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism template of militarism and civil liberties assaults is his cutting of Social Security and Medicare. This is who Barack Obama is; it's what drives his presidency in every realm, not just in economic policy.

What's particularly revealing in the Social Security/Medicare assault is the political calculation. The President obviously believes that being able to run by having made his own party angry -- I cut entitlement programs long cherished by liberals -- will increase his appeal to independents and restore his image of trans-partisan conciliator that he so covets. But how could it possibly be politically advantageous for a Democratic President to lead the way in slashing programs that have long been the crown jewels of his party, defense of which is the central litmus test for whether someone is even a Democrat? The answer lies in how lacking in credibility is this statement, from The New York Times:

"Depending on what they decide to recommend, they may not have Democrats," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said in an interview. "I think it is a risky thing for the White House to basically take the bet that we can be presented with something at the last minute and we will go for it."
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There's nothing "risky" about that. Of course enough Democrats will get in line behind Obama's proposal to pass it once they're told they must. Similarly, those progressive commentators who are first and foremost Democratic loyalists -- who rose up in angry and effective unison (along with actual progressives) to prevent George Bush from privatizing Social Security in 2005 -- will mount no meaningful opposition out of fear of weakening the President's political prospects. White House aides will just utter Michele Bachmann enough times like some magical spell and snap more than enough people into fear-induced compliance. The last thing the White House is worried about -- the last thing -- is its "base."

This was the primary lesson from the health care fight. Obama loyalists who maligned anyone who resisted that bill always misunderstood the point. It was never about the substantive belief in what became the very weak "public option" provision: at least not primarily. Instead, it was about political power.

Congressional Democrats began the health care debate by categorically vowing -- in writing, by the dozens -- never to support any health care bill that did not contain a public option (on the ground that it would be little more than a boon to -- an entrenchment of -- the private health insurance industry). But once they all abandoned that pledge when told that doing so was necessary to be good, loyal Democrats, it was clear from that point forward that they could be ignored. They had no willingness to exercise political power; their partisan loyalty trumped any alleged convictions; their negotiation positions were silly bluffs; and they could always be counted on to snap dutifully into line at the end no matter how much their values were stomped on (and that debate followed the same template as the deficit battle: the White House publicly pretending to advocate for a public option while leading the way in private to ensure it never happened).

Obama knows full well that he can slash Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security -- just like he could sign an extension of Bush tax cuts, escalate multiple wars, and embrace the Bush/Cheney Terrorism template recently known in Democratic circles as "shredding the Constitution" -- and have most Democrats and progressives continue to support him anyway. Unconditional support ensures political impotence, and rightly so. He's attending to the constituencies that matter: mostly, Wall Street tycoons who funded his 2008 campaign and whom he hopes will fund his re-election bid, and independents whose support is in question. And he's doing that both because it's in his perceived interest and because, to the extent he believes in anything, those are the constituencies with which he feels most comfortable.
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There is so much truth here.

pgabriel · Jul 7, 2011

greenwald is an idiot. obama and the whitehouse put this out there to put this impasse squarely on the republicans.

obama's in a no win situation, if nothing gets done he gets blamed, if he caves to no revenue increases he gets blamed. so he has agreed to spending cuts to put the ball in their court. if nothing happens its on them. but of course its easy to ignore the political ramifications when you are just the journalist.

pgabriel · Jul 7, 2011

oh yeah, and obama never claimed to be a liberal, that's what's most absurb about criticism from the left

Rockets Pride · Jul 7, 2011

always an excuse for the socialist donkey

Northside Storm · Jul 7, 2011

Rockets Pride said: ↑

always an excuse for the socialist donkey
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No excuses for the bats**t crazy Republicans!

(I kid. kinda. no, I guess I don't.)

Rockets Pride · Jul 7, 2011

Bush sucked, no crap he did.

does not mean Obama gets a free suck pass

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