GOP leaders moonwalk away from debt-ceiling Armageddon
Slowly, painfully, political reality has begun to dawn on Washington Republicans and their supporters: If they force a major battle over the debt ceiling — a battle that they have acted oh-so-eager to fight — they are guaranteed to lose, and to lose badly.
Such a battle would be fought against superior forces, and on ill-chosen ground. The president’s approval rating are consistently above 50 percent; Congress has an approval rating of 14 percent. While Republicans still hold the House majority, they lost seats in the 2012 election and acknowledge that they held onto the majority only because of gerrymandering. Majorities of Republican voters reject key proponents of the GOP agenda, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare. In fact, 63 percent of GOP voters say the congressional GOP is out of touch. (That’s a Rasmussen number, by the way.)
And according to a new AP poll, 80 percent of Americans say that refusing to raise the debt ceiling, as House and Senate Republicans have promised to do, would touch off a major economic crisis.
Under those circumstances, threatening to force that major economic crisis unless the president implements politically unpopular policies would be the act of a fool. And fools there no doubt be.
However, a handful of Republican senators have now publicly acknowledged that the party would lose and lose badly by threatening to shut down the government. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, warned his fellow GOP congressmen at a retreat yesterday that their strategy has to match their capability.
As Politico described his remarks:
“Ryan said Republicans need to come to grips with the fact that they are the only Republicans in power in Washington. In the closed legislative strategy session, he said the GOP should avoid over-promising and under-delivering, according to five sources present. Instead, House Republicans should work to control expectations about what they can extract from Obama, and then people will be pleased by the result.”
The usually bellicose Charles Krauthammer is also a bit of a bellwether. He has been egging the Republicans on for weeks now, pushing them to do battle. (”If we all cliff-dive, Obama gets to preside over yet another recession. It will wreck his second term… You think he wants a second term with a double-dip recession, 9 percent unemployment and a totally gridlocked Congress? Republicans have to stop playing as if they have no cards.”)
Now, even Krauthammer wants to back down from a fight that he suddenly sees can only end badly. “The party establishment,” he writes, “is coming around to the view that if you try to govern from one house — e.g., force spending cuts with cliffhanging brinkmanship — you lose. You not only don’t get the cuts. You get the blame for rattled markets and economic uncertainty. You get humiliated by having to cave in the end. And you get opinion polls ranking you below head lice and colonoscopies in popularity.”
What’s going on here? Why this sudden outburst of strategic sanity? I think the great Samuel Johnson put it best:
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
– Jay Bookman
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637 comments Add your comment
Adam
January 18th, 2013
2:25 pm
Sucks to be Tea Party conservatives right now.
Keep drinking the TEA, guys!
Joe Hussein Mama
January 18th, 2013
2:26 pm
td — “I will not do that work for you”
No, td, the work is your own. If you’re going to make an assertion like that, then it’s incumbent upon you to aim correctly.
“but I have seen the sentiment if not the actual quotes before.”
And I’ve “seen the sentiment” that anyone who votes for a Democrat should be shot on sight. Shall I use your own standard and apply that sentiment to you? Should I speak for you, using that sentiment and dishonestly claim that YOU want to see ME shot on sight?
Of course not. It would be a lie. Just as it is a lie for you to say that “all you libs keep saying these greedy “evil rich” when we quite simply don’t say it. Have you seen it *elsewhere?* Then go where you’ve seen it and complain to *those* libs.
And if you’ve seen it *here,* then complain to the people SAYING it.
But don’t lie and say “all you libs keep saying these greedy “evil rich” when you and I both know it’s not true.
“The funny thing is you my friend want to comment on one observation intended as a come back to another progressive blogger that was full of total BS in his remarks and you ignore the original remarks and you also ignore most of the other remarks I have made about the content of this blog posting.”
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not my job to point out EVERY such instance, and it’s cowardly of you to use such a dodge. Be a man — if you can — and own up to what you said, instead of pointing at someone else.
Act right yourself instead of using the poor behavior of others as a childish excuse.
jm
January 18th, 2013
2:27 pm
Adam
you’re delusional
I think the republicans made a smart move
they get to play the sequester card
if that doesn’t work out for some reason, they’re just accumulating other good cards to play later
DannyX
January 18th, 2013
2:29 pm
“The funny thing is you my friend want to comment on one observation intended as a come back to another progressive blogger that was full of total BS in his remarks and you ignore the original remarks and you also ignore most of the other remarks I have made about the content of this blog posting.”
You are the one full of bs, td. You continually play the latest conservative talking point game. Your ridiculous moocher/leeches/47% bs is your latest absurdity. Now when challenged you backtrack and try to include conservatives into liberal success stories. For the past 6 months liberals have been nothing but leeches to you, now suddenly according to you, “There is not a company in this nation that has been run by 100% liberals or 100% conservatives.”
Which is it td? Are liberals nothing but moochers. or are the part of our success?
dbm
January 18th, 2013
2:29 pm
Welcome to the Occupation
January 18th, 2013
12:41 pm
No doubt there are some who have inherited wealth and have just ridden on that without spending time contributing to productivity. But what has put us so far above the 1600’s is that there are more who earn wealth by using their time very effectively to improve productivity.
MAC
January 18th, 2013
2:30 pm
Keep feeling smug Jay
You talk a good game on what’s right but you’re really just keeping score on your zero sum game
Erwin's cat
January 18th, 2013
2:30 pm
LOL..
I gotta go produce for a while..
we can critique my education later this evening…in the mean time Taxpayer and indigo, get your links together on how y’all understand data analysis more than Burt Rutan
Welcome to the Occupation
January 18th, 2013
2:31 pm
makers vs takers:
I assume you’re saying that the states that vote for Democrats are moocher or taker states?
It’s the other way around. The red states are typically supported and maintained through transfers from the bigger, higher income, and more educated states, which are almost all “blue” states. Sorry.
Jackie
January 18th, 2013
2:31 pm
@Adam
The House Repubs have no cards left to play; either they own up to the spending the voted on and are trying to avoid paying the bill, or, they get pounded at the election booth.
Trying to change the election laws will not help them.
Joe Hussein Mama
January 18th, 2013
2:32 pm
td — “Allow younger workers to put 10% of their own SS into a 401 K type account. Libs go crazy and say we can not change the way things are.”
Lie. Libs say ‘go open an investment account of your own and do whatever you want with it.’
“Open Medicare to private industry to compete. Libs go crazy and say we must keep things the way they are.”
Do you even *have* any experience with Medicare? Because if you did, I don’t think you’d be saying something so ludicrous.
“Block grant Medicaid back to the states. Libs go crazy and say we must keep things the way they are.”
Lie. Many Governors REFUSED Obama’s offer of block grants.
“Privatize non essential government functions to say money. Libs go crazy and say we must keep things the way they are.”
Lie. It’s been tried in many places, but it’s not the money-saving machine conservatives paint it as.
“Now remind me again about who is resistant to change?”
Conservatives. They also lie a lot.
stands for decibels
January 18th, 2013
2:33 pm
jm, thanks for that link, great stuff. quoting here:
He worries that, if Louisiana (and Tennessee, which also has a similar law) insists on teaching students creationism, students will not be the ones discover the cure to AIDS or cancer. “We won’t be the ones to repair our own damaged wetlands and protect ourselves from more hurricanes like Katrina,” he says.
Moreover, he’s also concerned that teaching creationism will harm economic development.
“Just search creationism on Monster Jobs or Career Builder and tell me how many creationist jobs you find,” he asks. Kopplin tells us about how this past Spring, Kevin Carman, the former Dean of LSU’s College School of Science (now the Executive Vice President and Provost for the University of Nevada, Reno) testified in the Louisiana Senate Education Committee about how he had lost researchers and scientists to other states because of the Louisiana Science Education Act.
“But it also violates the separation of church and state,” he says. “Teaching Biblical creationism is promoting one very specific fundamentalist version of Christianity, and violating the rights of every other American citizen who doesn’t subscribe to those beliefs. So it would be stomping on the rights of Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Buddhists, Humanists, Muslims, Hindus, and every other religious group in the country.
These creationists, he argues, would be horrified to see the Vedas being taught in science class. “And they would have every right to be,” he says, “That’s how the separation of church and state works and it’s the foundation of our country.”
Like you said–good job, kid. That’s inspirational stuff; it’s also somewhat shameful that it took flippin’ 14-year-old to kick those ignoramuses in the butt.
JamVet
January 18th, 2013
2:34 pm
makers vs takers.
Now there is the name of a Democratic plant if ever there was one.
Thanks for your help in getting the cons crushed last November 6th, meat.
Keep up the good work, maker!
Adam
January 18th, 2013
2:34 pm
td: Allow younger workers to put 10% of their own SS into a 401 K type account. Libs go crazy and say we can not change the way things are.
Wrong way to look at it. Elected Republicans (hi Fred!) want to remove SS because they didn’t want it to be created in the first place. Turning it private is the beginning of that process. Same with Medicare.
Block grant Medicaid back to the states. Libs go crazy and say we must keep things the way they are.
Block grants are just a way to make it so that the governors can do things they want to do with the money instead of actually using the money the way the program intends. State Republican elected officials have already used block grants on other programs to deny people and to then point to the system and say “see! it doesn’t work!” after they made it work worse than intended. Medicaid would be the same, and the entire goal of a block grant.
Privatize non essential government functions to say money
Like what?
All you’ve done is show that liberals are more conservative than conservatives, and conservatives are really regressive.
Adam
January 18th, 2013
2:36 pm
jm: they get to play the sequester card
if that doesn’t work out for some reason, they’re just accumulating other good cards to play later
1) They aren’t good cards
2) They don’t have the leverage they think they have, especially on the sequester. They want to continue to act as though they want to cut spending, but howl and howl about how the defense part of the sequester can’t be allowed to happen.
Looks like you’ll just have to give it up. The Tea Party wing is dying, and the Christie wing is rising up.
TBS
January 18th, 2013
2:37 pm
side issue
Did anyone notice that the Repubs have all but voted for all of the 60B Sandy relief funds as well as the pork that was in it.
The Speaker needed a win after caving on the tax cuts and narrowly keeping his position so he split the bill and the votes, however he knew along that there was enough Republican votes in the House to get the Red State Senators the pork they wanted and knew they were going to get.
stands for decibels
January 18th, 2013
2:37 pm
Someone mentioned the tea party. I remember those guys.
Can’t believe missed this, from, yep, Rassmussen:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/january_2013/just_8_now_say_they_are_tea_party_members
Views of the Tea Party movement are at their lowest point ever, with voters for the first time evenly divided when asked to match the views of the average Tea Party member against those of the average member of Congress. Only eight percent (8%) now say they are members of the Tea Party, down from a high of 24% in April 2010 just after passage of the national health care law.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 30% of Likely U.S. Voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. Half (49%) of voters have an unfavorable view of the movement. Twenty-one percent (21%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Look out below…
Adam
January 18th, 2013
2:39 pm
TBS: Did anyone notice that the Repubs have all but voted for all of the 60B Sandy relief funds as well as the pork that was in it.
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNN!
They’re playing defense now. They are hoping they can grab the rhetoric machine by the horns in a year and everyone will forget that they CAVED on several issues in January 2013.
btull27
January 18th, 2013
2:40 pm
The fact ANYONE has a positive view regarding either party shows why we are politcal idiots. BOTH sides are an embarrassment. We have a 2 party system where incompetence reigns supreme. Soon, the tide will shift and Democrats will be blamed for everything and Republicans will be voted back into power. They too, will take the results as a vote for them instead of what it always is which is a vote against the other. Every time I hear or read where either side claims to have support from the people, it makes me sick. The party crowned as the crowd favorite today will be the pathetic loser tomorrow. Our system is a perpetual wheel of blame. Neither party accepts it, but both are quick to assign it to the other. So continue with your daily cheerleading for anything BLUE or anything RED like the fight is for right vs wrong as we continue to sink into this economic cesspool.
Unsustainable Debt
January 18th, 2013
2:41 pm
You can blame the Republicans if you want to or you can blame Obama if you want to, but there’s this word called “UNSUSTAINABLE” that everyone seems to ignore. Look, it’s the DEBT stupid! I’m near retirement so all you younger people out there should be pissed at my generation. Any young person today should be screaming at both Obama and Congress. My generation is racking up all this debt and we won’t have to pay for it down the road, YOU WILL! Sooner or later this debt WILL cause the bond market to fall out.How do you think the government borrows money? They sell Bonds! Investors don’t like to buy Savings bonds when they know a country can’t manage its debt. That’s because they know they’ll be paid back in inflated dollars. When the Treasury has a failed bond auction the Federal Reserve steps in and buys the bonds (with newly printed money). That causes inflation, and eventually hyperinflation. Then the other countries decide to drop the dollar as the World Reserve Currency since it’s no longer holding value. (Some of the idiots posting on this forum don’t know what these words mean so, Google is your friend. Look up World Reserve Currency and Hyperinflation and go to usdebtclock.org . Think it won’t happen here? Think again, it happened 56 times in various countries during the last century alone and even happened in the early days of America. in every case of hyperinflation the government debt was at least 80% of the GDP, and the yearly borrowing was 40% of spending. The US is over those numbers now. Our debt is 105% of the GDP, and we borrow 40% of every dollar spent. This is not ‘doomsday prepper’ talk, this is called MATH! (Something else that they don’t teach anymore). The US is not immune to the laws of economics, but several of us are immune to learning from the past apparently. But like I say, it’ll be YOUR hide, younger generation, NOT MINE! Good luck with that and good luck with your false delusion that all is well.
stands for decibels
January 18th, 2013
2:44 pm
Adam, speaking of caving, I’m suspicious that there’s been so little talk of late about filibuster reform. Are we seeing a return of “Give ‘em head, Harry”?
Genuinely worried about this. Then again, it is Reid’s style to jab when it’s least expected, so…
stands for decibels
January 18th, 2013
2:44 pm
Brave Sir Robin SHEETZ
alittlecommonsense
January 18th, 2013
2:45 pm
“The red states are typically supported and maintained through transfers from the bigger, higher income, and more educated states, which are almost all “blue” states. Sorry.”
I’ve heard this argument ad-nauseum. It is a rather silly oversimplification and I suspect you might see it reversed if you looked at a county by county breakdown instead of state by state.
Also, most urban areas are deep blue. This is largely due to the high minority population in those areas. Also, there are a lot of businesses in urban areas which make them net tax donor areas. Two entirely unrelated issues. Most of the business owner (tax donors) are voting red. Most of the urban minorities ( net tax recipients) are voting blue.
M.C.
January 18th, 2013
2:46 pm
Governor Moonbeam has balanced his budget on a wing and a prayer. In other words, projected income. It won’t be the first time a California governor has missed the mark.
Just last November, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office indicated California was facing a $1.9 billion deficit in the coming fiscal year. On Thursday, the governor disputed that figure, saying that revenue from the newly enacted cap-and-trade system, as well as last year’s dissolution of redevelopment agencies, will bring in more money than the LAO projects. But the governor’s been wrong about redevelopment before, so the state would do well to hold off spending that revenue until it actually comes in.
That’s why they call it LaLa Land.
Brosephus™
January 18th, 2013
2:50 pm
They think they are being cute and funny. But they are only exposing themselves for as the ignorant fu*ks they are. Now, I call them ignorant fu*ks and not products of their environment because there comes a time in everyone’s life when we get to choose how to travel down life’s path. We can choose to travel with an open mind to nurture a life of change and growth though new information, or we can choose to travel with our heads up our ass in fear. Sometimes, an enlightened path is chosen after people spend years inside their own anuses. Something happens, they emerge, and they choose to be decent human beings. And some learn nothing from life experience and maintain an existence of ignorant fu*kery that would insult a caveman.
Sometimes it takes a woman to call things as the truth they are. Those words could be used to accurately describe a few posters here. We all know who the caveman insulters are too. Hat tip to the Rude Pundit for allowing a guest poster who spoke the truth.
Adam
January 18th, 2013
2:52 pm
stands: Adam, speaking of caving, I’m suspicious that there’s been so little talk of late about filibuster reform.
Yeah… hopefully that whole thing wasn’t swept under the rug. Theoretically Jan 22 is the deadline.
td
January 18th, 2013
2:53 pm
DannyX
January 18th, 2013
2:29 pm
“The funny thing is you my friend want to comment on one observation intended as a come back to another progressive blogger that was full of total BS in his remarks and you ignore the original remarks and you also ignore most of the other remarks I have made about the content of this blog posting.”
You are the one full of bs, td. You continually play the latest conservative talking point game. Your ridiculous moocher/leeches/47% bs is your latest absurdity. Now when challenged you backtrack and try to include conservatives into liberal success stories. For the past 6 months liberals have been nothing but leeches to you, now suddenly according to you, “There is not a company in this nation that has been run by 100% liberals or 100% conservatives.”
Which is it td? Are liberals nothing but moochers. or are the part of our success?
I have been using the terms moocher and takers since 2009 on these blogs to refer to the long term welfare people that do not want to take responsibility for the choices they have made in their lives. Now since 65% of voters under $30,000 voted for Obama then there are a great deal of Democratic voters are moochers.
Now go back and find where I said ALL libs were moochers or takers?
Adam
January 18th, 2013
2:54 pm
I’ve heard this argument ad-nauseum. It is a rather silly oversimplification and I suspect you might see it reversed if you looked at a county by county breakdown instead of state by state.
Present the data.
Most of the business owner (tax donors) are voting red. Most of the urban minorities ( net tax recipients) are voting blue.
You do not know this for a fact. In fact, most of the people I know who are net tax payers vote blue whereas most of the people I know of who are poor enough to be recipients vote red.
jm
January 18th, 2013
2:59 pm
sfd 2:33 agreed
Erwin's cat
January 18th, 2013
3:15 pm
…blog about the imprecision–not inaccuracy–inherent in any model…
having precision w/o accuracy is literally being consistently wrong…
Williebkind
January 18th, 2013
3:19 pm
“We can choose to travel with an open mind to nurture a life of change and growth though new information,”
What new information? Because one discovers that the world is round and not flat does not annul moral authority. Of course, one may then have an exuse to doubt what is natural and justifying consorting to the unnatural. People of earlier times were not ignorant just because technology was in its beginning stages. Liberals use this as if it is their bible, their constitution, their reprobate minds. One blogger posted that teaching creationism would hinder growth in cancer research or protect the environment. These are lies that never got challenged in the beginning when liberals spewed that creationist was against progress. We all have learned if you want to teach something whether it is scientific or not just use incantations as liberals illustrated using the lame stream media.
Welcome to the Occupation
January 18th, 2013
3:23 pm
dbm: “But what has put us so far above the 1600’s is that there are more who earn wealth by using their time very effectively to improve productivity.”
Of course. This is true. But the question is not so much that as it is WHO benefits from the productivity. In a system such as ours which is increasingly dominated by high finance over industrial productive (which is not to say that the latter disappears, but that it comes under the former, has to pass muster on the former’s terms, rather than vice versa) it becomes extremely hard to maintain any system of income distribution that can support the kind of widespread prosperity we have taken for granted in this country the last several generations. When Goldman Sachs literally has its hands on everything — every aspect of the economy from grain production to higher education and firearm sales — then a very different logic takes over, one in which ever greater wealth is funneled upwards to the already very wealthy, and with it, ever greater political power to seize control of the levers of policy and government patronage. It’s a doomsday trap, and we’re moving swiftly along that path.
Williebkind
January 18th, 2013
3:26 pm
Welcome to the Occupation
January 18th, 2013
3:23 pm
A true socialist.
Welcome to the Occupation
January 18th, 2013
3:32 pm
Williebkind
So you’re fine with bankers seizing the levers of our political system to advance their own power and wealth?
If’s not okay with me.
Independent voice
January 18th, 2013
4:52 pm
If Republicans can’t hold steady on spending, there’s no point voting for them — they’re just Democrats.
Joe Hussein Mama
January 18th, 2013
5:07 pm
williebkind — “Because one discovers that the world is round and not flat does not annul moral authority.”
“Moral authority” is neither moral nor authoritative.
smart mass
January 18th, 2013
10:33 pm
Cosby – Welcome to my club! I read through the comments to try to advance my thinking, but I stumbled when I encountered your crude language. I suspect that you intended to make an intelligent point, but your delivery could be improved. In terms of understanding your points, I clearly fall in to your special cleverly-named category. People fall into category not only in terms of what they call others, but also in terms of their own behavior. In terms of communication behavior, you are obviously one of those “dumb masses.” Welcome! Please continue to post in a manner worthy of your category.
Down With Tyranny: Gerrymandering–Another Anti-Democracy Tool In The Right-wing Arsenal « Sunset Daily
January 19th, 2013
1:00 pm
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