The annual bleg
If no deal is reached and the US goes off the so-called fiscal cliff, one party better be wearing a bunji cord or a BASE rig. Because a new poll released today by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post, conducted Nov. 28-Dec. 2, confirms Americans will blame conservatives:
Pew — Four-in-ten (40%) expect that the president and congressional Republicans will reach a deal by Jan. 1 to prevent automatic tax increases and spending cuts from taking effect; 49% say they will not. If no deal is reached, far more say congressional Republicans would be more to blame (53%) than President Obama (27%). These opinions are virtually unchanged since early November.
President Obama is a deal-making negotiating center-left guy. For four frustrating years progressives like me watched on as Obama made every kind of concession to conservative preferences. Instead of Medicare for everyone we got nationalized Romney-care. Similar deals were reached on taxes, debt ceilings, you name it. And through the entire term Obama was vilified as the worst murika hatin socialist commie bastard to ever steal the Oval Office – right up to Nov 6. The entire election was fought over domestic policy, and the lion’s share of it was centered on the have-it-alls vs the growing numbers of have-nots. We won, they lost.
Going forward, I don’t think Obama would turn down a decent compromise deal; that’s our biggest risk by far, that the GOP has a moment of clarity and this administration ends up chopping away at social programs and earned benefits simply for the appearance of bipartisanship. But given the high levels of conservative contempt for this president, that’s not as big of a risk as some might think, at least imo. Just being seen with Obama, let alone reaching a deal with him, is high treason in the eye’s of the activist birther right.
Reaching out never paid off, quite the opposite, and Obama is not an idiot, he knows he holds all the cards on this one. The days where he included some conservative ideas in ledge packages to gain support from the crazy party, without a guarantee he would get it, are probably over. Not only is the President not playing that game anymore, he’s hitting the public stump and may well go to full blown Presidential TV Reagan-esque addresses to the nation, telling us exactly who is holding this up and who is to blame for those missing dollars in your paychecks starting Jan 1.
The GOP might panic at that point, it may drive large swaths of the already crazy base stark raving mad. It could get quite ugly, stay frosty my friends.
Mr. Boehner, may I hand you some more rope?
The GOP will not be taking the blame for this one. Oh sure, they are to blame, but they won’t be taking it. Oh no, the spin cycle will kick into high gear and throw it right back at Obama, and Fox News will happily parrot that rhetoric for months. That’s how the dice roll in this game.
My hope? That Obama doesn’t cave. I hope that he doesn’t make concession after concession just to avoid ‘the Cliff’. I hope he forces the Republicans to eat that particular crow. I hope we drive right off ‘the Cliff’ and the Democrats laugh all the way down, with Obama himself leading the chorus.
… and while I’m dreaming, I’d like a one-way trip to Mars…
Part of the Republican proposal is to raise revenue, not through raising taxes, but through “pro-growth tax reform that closes special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates.”
I could be wrong, but isn’t this pretty close to the platform Romney ran on (and lost on- pretty sure I’m not wrong about that)? Are they seriously proposing to the President that he must reject the very position that he (in part) won on, and must accept the one that lost? “Ok, you won, Obozo- big deal, so what- but you gotta do what we want anyway”?
And this is the moderate Republican position. Sen. Jim DeMint is also against Boehner’s proposal, saying it is an “$800 billion tax hike [that] will destroy American jobs and allow politicians in Washington to spend even more, while not reducing our $16 trillion debt by a single penny.”
Is compromise even possible with folks like that? I know DeMint’s is only one senator’s extreme opinion, and Boehner’s is just an opening gambit (though it seems a little late in the game for an opening gambit), but…I dunno, wow, I’m out of words here.
I’d like to see the President go, not just Reagan, but flat-out Truman on these guys; and make it plain to the American people just where the problem is.
“President Obama is a deal-making negotiating center-left guy.”
um, center-right.
I’m kind of hoping we go off the cliff and the (R) are blamed for it. I really don’t see the need for cuts to entitlements. If the tax rate on the wealthiest went up (to say oh noes Clinton era tax rates) and we cut 50% out of the military (and took half of that for stimulus to off set the negative econ consequences from less military spending), we’d be a-ok. Medicaid part D would be my next target for restructuring (wth with the doughnut hole and not allowing the FEDs to get group discounts for example).
Agreed. Obama relentless continuation of the war on drugs despite state laws legalizing them and the constant escalation of the surveillance state makes him pretty firmly center right.
He just seems leftist when compared to the crazies on the far far right he’s constantly arguing with.
Maybe if the horses’ asses in Congress had to face real consequences if they don’t get this done on time, they’d actually, you know, do their jobs. Or maybe they think the unwashed masses also face no real consequences when screwing around at their jobs and not meeting deadlines?
I suspect that there are quite a few on the far right who are going through the K-R stages of grief (anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and are going to get hung up somewhere between anger and denial, ferment for a while, and end up channeling their energies into an assassination attempt.
In some ways the whole birther movement has been a sop for those tendencies. They sought to destroy him as a citizen and candidate through legal means. After the frenetic, rhetorical thrash, complete with Biblical and apocalyptic references, and emotional whipsawing to lock in votes and, come hell or high water, turnout it shouldn’t be any surprise to find out that some turn from legalism to ‘second amendment’ solutions.
The Teaparty rhetoric, guns at rallies (they aren’t loaded … this time), references to watering the tree of liberty with blood, blatant racism, equating Obama with people they consider sub-human, can be seen as a justification for violence.
The muttering I hear from some on the far right is homicidal, but chillingly, also far less emotional. Like the calm from an irrational person who has given up on ranting, bluster and threats and committed to ‘do something’.
I suspect that inauguration day is going to be the height of the center of the storm for people likely to act out. I hope the secret service is up for it because there are some very heavily armed and angry people out there who have been worked into a frenzy and told an Obama second term is the end of days.
You need a poll to tell /confirm that for ya? ;-)
@2. The Lorax :
I’d like one to Pluto myself or maybe even Eta Carinae. Although for the latter superstar I’m gunna need five million sun’s worth of sunglasses and at seven thousand light years distant a really fast ship indeed!
Back on topic, dunno. Yeah, that scenario has its potential satisfactions schedenfreude~wise but the economic and geopolitical consequences not just for the USA but the rest of the globe too? Recession? Depression?
I’m no economist but its a bit of a worry along with teh million and one other worries in the world. So needless. Mind you playing the politico-economic equivalent of “chicken” does seem to be all the rage these days. (Thinks back to last years (?) whole debt ceiling nonsense and even further back to Clinton era when something similar happened didn’t it?)
“President Obama is a deal-making negotiating center-left guy.”
i personally know of no American politician that could be called Leftist by European standards… that includes Obama. If he was running here in the UK we’d call him center right.