Basically, the Republican theory of compromise is “you have to give in to my demands, but I don’t have to give you anything in return.”
Yesterday the remaining Republicans in Joe Biden’s debt ceiling negotiations walked out. Why? Because they’d reached the “tax increase” portion of the program. Per the Republican theory of compromise, they demanded that all tax increases be taken off the table entirely. And the Dems said, no deal. So Eric Cantor had what some are calling a hissy fit and a temper tantrum and walked out, followed by John Kyl. So no Republicans are left to negotiate.
John Dickerson says, never fear. The tax increase deal will be cut between John Boehner and President Obama. The walkout is just political theater.
Ezra Klein thinks the situation is more serious, since whichever Republican leader cuts the deal will be falling on his sword.
Cantor has the credibility with the Tea Party that Boehner lacks. But that’s why Cantor won’t cut the deal. The Tea Party-types support him because he’s the guy who won’t cut the deal. He can’t sign off on tax increases without losing his power base. But if he’s able to throw it back to Boehner, and Boehner cuts the deal, that’s all good for Cantor: Boehner becomes weaker and he becomes stronger. Which is why Boehner will also have trouble making this deal. It’ll mean he made the concessions that Cantor, the true conservative, didn’t. That’s not how he holds onto the gavel in this Republican Party.
One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner (and, on some of the other budget issues, Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers). One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.
Of course, sniveling weenies that they are, the poor babies Republicans are blaming the President for their predicament. Yesterday Cantor called on the President to make his position clear (clue: he has already done that). And Mitch McConnell is babbling about failures of leadership.
“It’s worth asking: Where in the world has President Obama been for the last month? Where is he? What does he propose? What is he willing to do to reduce the debt? And to avoid this crisis, that’s building on his watch?” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said today.
“He’s the one in charge. I think most Americans think it’s about time he started acting like it. It’s not enough for the President to step in front of a microphone every once in a while and say a few words that somebody hands him to say about the jobs situation and our economy. Americans want to see that he’s actually doing something about it.”
Raising the debt ceiling is Congress’s job, of course. The President cannot do it. But McConnell wants daddy to come and hold his hand, I suppose.
Headlines are saying the “White House” is absent from the negotiations, sort of overlooking the fact that the guy who’s been leading the negotiations, with the title “Vice President,” is part of the Obama Administration.
The truth is, the Republicans had no intention of honestly negotiating, but they lack the moral courage to admit this. Instead, they blame everybody else. Oh, and then they’ll all go out and make speeches about how Republicans stand for personal responsibility.
maha,
A quick correction for you to make – Boehner’s facing reelection again next year since he’s a Congressman. 🙂
c u n d gulag. thank you. I swear, some day my brain doesn’t work at all.
gulag, I almost posted the same thing, but for my poor typing skills so early. Unless there’s something different about the role of Speaker? (Wikipedia: “The Constitution does not require that the Speaker be an elected Member of Congress, but no non-member has ever been elected Speaker.” I did not know that.)
Anyway, tonight I’ll go home and re-watch the “Obama quiets crying baby” video, and sigh heavily.
Obama should have played hard ball when it came time to extend the Bush tax cuts. He extended them, and got what? An extension on unemployment benefits. That’s nice, but there’s no money to pay for the extension, especially since he got no increase in the debt ceiling (required to borrow the money to pay for said benefits).
I expect no compromise from the Republicans. Remember, they are pushing for a tax cut (for the wealthy only, of course), and that’s going to cause the economy to boom so that there will actually be a budget surplus. And anyone who believes that also believes in the tooth fairy.
“Why, a child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five.”
– Groucho Marx
Just for curiosity, is it possible that the intent is for “appointed” members filling out terms to be eligible to be speaker?
joan,
I never knew that!
Anyone remember that it was only a little over 10 years ago that Alan Greenspan, after hectoring Clinton about deficits for 8 years, suddenly did a 180 that would be the envy of an ice-dancer, and told everyone the evils of surplus?
And now, after Little Boots’ 2 wars and occupations, tax cuts for the rich, a bow-tied gift to Big Pharma, and an economic meltdown largely caused by deregulation, apparently the deficit is really all the fault of the seniors, the disabled, women, children, students, the poor, the lower and middle classes, and public union workers, who’ll have to pay for it with their (our) hides, if not their (our) lives.
Don’t negotiate with these Republican Economic Terrorists!
Don’t cave!
Don’t fold first!!!
Let Wall Street do the talking.
Pretty soon, they won’t be talking – they’ll be screaming.
They’ll read Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and DeMint, the Arthur Jensen speech from “Network.”
At which point, the Republicans will fold.
Our Galtian Overlords are doing too well to let a bunch of ambitious backwoods religious crackers throw monkeywrenches into their money machine.
They don’t give a diarrhetic shit about the political futures of their cabana boys – the hired help should keep their mouths shut, and just do as they’re told.
Some of them might not actually mind some additional taxes if it means the gravy train isn’t derailed.
DO.
NOT.
FOLD!!!
(*sigh* – again…)
Barbara,
I didn’t mean to call you out. I know you knew that, and it was just an “Ooops!” moment. I actually tried to e-mail you first, but I got some weird sort of error message – not from your end – it’s the fault of an old e-mail address that my laptop’s somehow linked to.
And hey, if I had a buck for every mental ‘Ooops!’ I ever made, I wouldn’t need to try to get disability. 🙂
Based upon what I hear on local hate radio, Cantor doesn’t have the credibility with teabaggers that Ezra suggests, at least in central Virginia where his district is located. They call him a RINO or even a liberal.
Compared to whom? Atilla the Hun?
Basically, the Republican theory of compromise is “you have to give in to my demands, but I don’t have to give you anything in return.â€
I imagine in the repuglican mind the fact that they will agree to raise the debt ceiling is their compromise? I hope President Obama stares them down to the end, but I suspect the teabaggers will get what they want in the end. Why wouldn’t they? They were able to extend tax cuts when they didn’t even control the house!
God save us if the fate of the debt ceiling depends on one of that lot acting like a statesman.
Not that this was a surprise.
What I don’t understand is how many more of these episodes we have to go through before Obama realizes that, no, this time he really doesn’t need to go through the whole process of trying to compromise with a party that has no interest in compromise and does have an interest in his failure.
I’m just so tired of the repetition of the “Let’s get together and talk about what to do” approach when we all know that what the GOP is going to want is for Obama to eat broken glass and strychnine, and after months of chatter about whether it should be large pieces or glass powder, or solid or liquid rat poison, the GOP ends up saying that, no, on second thought, that’s not enough. No deal.
I wish we had a President who was less of a people-pleaser and wasn’t afraid of being a Democrat. Can we summon the ghost of Harry Truman for a late-night visit to Obama?
biggerbox,
If Obama were smart, he’d get on national TV in prime time and say to people:
“I never realized how lucky Harry Truman was when all he had to complain about was a “Do Nothing” Congress. Because, today, people, we’ve got ‘Do Harm’ Congresssional Republicans in both the House and Senate…”
And then spell out the debt ceiling situation from there, and also make a case for a tax increases, and a new stimulus package.
But, smart as he is, he’s just not good at this politics game. It’s almost hard to believe if you saw him in ’07 and ’08.
He keeps showing up with a rubber band and a paper clips to the gunfights.
And, just think, no matter how this current negotiation goes, the Republicans will do the exact same thing in a few months when it comes to next year’s budget talks.
Why are the Democrats negotiating at all? This should be a straight up or down vote on raising the debt limit. It isn’t a budget bill.
If the debt limit isn’t raised, the U S defaults on its debt and the world goes into another financial crisis and the Republicans get the blame. If they want to commit suicide, I say hand them the loaded gun.
On the other hand if we end up with a substantial cut in the entitlements, it is because there were Democrats who were in favor of that and found their excuse to vote for it and they should be remembered at election time.
Because the Republicans have a majority in the House, and who knows how many of them are crazy/stupid enough to vote no.
I agree that if the Republican leadership won’t budge on taxes, the President should address the American people and say, look, if we don’t do this we’re screwed, but I’m not giving in to hostage demands. So if the Republicans in the House stop the debt ceiling from being raised and the economy goes into the toilet, just remember who caused it.
Also, I think that if the Republicans don’t budge on taxes, whatever deals the Dems struck on spending ought to be withdrawn. Just plop the thing in front of the House and say, take it or leave it.
“And then spell out the debt ceiling situation from there, and also make a case for a tax increases, and a new stimulus package”
I agree, though why complicate the message with talk of another stimulus? Our corporate media has convinced most that the first one didn’t work; I don’t see much support for another. Personally I would be against another one. The first was necessary (though poorly handled) because of the tremendous loss of wealth (thanks to the banksters). But now American Corporations are flush with cash unfortunately they in squirrel mode (hoarding nuts). Much of the apprehension is due to uncertainty; I don’t understand why the democrats can’t get out and lay all this uncertainty at the foot of the repugs. They are the ones holding the world economy hostage with the dept ceiling, they are ones who refuse to compromise, they are the ones who crashed Medicare (part-D) so they could finally kill it, they are the ones who cheered on the multi trillion dollar war dept. Why are the democrats playing defense? WTF!
This is pretty astonishing in its own right. Regardless of how much they despise him, how many people actually believe Obama is a guy who just reads what somebody hands him? Do the people who think he’s the Antichrist believe that? Does McConnell just assume that because he operates that way, that’s the way all politicians operate?
What I was originally intending to comment on, actually, was the way the Senate minority leader doesn’t seem to understand they way our government is supposed to work. The Republicans are the ones who are always thumping the Constitution, but if they ever actually read it (who knows, maybe they’ll get bored enough some time), they’ll discover that Congress and the President belong to two entirely different branches of government. Like you said, raising the debt ceiling isn’t Obama’s job.
The looniness of Replican mouthpieces never fails to amaze me. I was listening to the news this morning and I was somewhat stunned to hear that one of the major Republican figures (I think it was McConnell) was criticizing President Obama for releasing gas from the reserves because it would prop up the failing economy. Can he really be in favor of preventing the economy from failing — I mean publicly stated, not as a private conviction?
The Republicans want Obama to say something so they can spend a couple days savaging it to build up political pressure. I think he’s learned better than to do that.
It’s situations like this that make me feel that the Republicans don’t occasionally lie, or even frequently lie, but that their entire platform is a complete pack of lies, that there’s nothing behind it at all.
COMPROMISE IS PLANNED FAILURE (TM).
Never compromising is having the will to be fearless and relentless, while remaining confident and true to yourself, no matter what the obstacles.
“The rigid and stiff will be broken. / The soft and yielding will overcome.” — Tao Teh Ching, Verse 76, McDonald translation