But this Elizabeth Drew article is worth a look, as is the Krugman post linking to it. PK:
As I recall, two things happened last year: voters were angry about the weak economy, and older voters believed that Obama was going to take away their Medicare and send them to the death panels. And so the way to win those voters back is to cut Medicare and weaken the economy?Yep. As Kevin Drum notes, the point isn't for the GOP to accomplish anything; the point is for them to revive the debt ceiling deadline in 2012 so as to flog their one "issue" then too.
A further point: even if Obama really does cut spending, will anyone notice? Even people who are supposedly well informed believe that there was a vast expansion of government under Obama, when in fact there wasn’t. So we’re supposed to believe that independent voters will actually be able to cut through the fog — the deliberate fog of Fox, the he-said-she-said of most other media organizations — and give him credit for spending cuts? Remember, whatever he does Republicans will claim that the government is getting bigger — and news organization will report only that “Democrats say” that this isn’t true.
I believe the Republicans in the House are about to do something I would have thought impossible only months ago - turn me into a
ReplyDeleteDemocrat.
Not only you, I suspect. I mean, sure, they won the House, and they've used or abused that to win some meaningful concessions. They could declare victory right now and say, "We did it, we forced spending cuts, we kept the Dems in line."
ReplyDeleteI may not like their cuts; I may think they're counterproductive in a recession; but fine, that's what the GOP likes (+ low taxes), and they got it.
But they don't want the substance; they want the politics. Their dwindling base is loving this debt-ceiling stuff so much, they want to do it AGAIN in 2012.
Erick Erickson, chief nut job at the RedState blog, is bragging that House members are calling him for permission to compromise (and he's saying no). How sad can this country get?