Grover Norquist, the high priest of Republican taxation ideology, famously stated that his goal was to ensure that a Democrat elected president can not govern as a Democrat.
Norquist, and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, have bullied and cornered Republican politicians for decades into signing an insidious pledge, and today he's led the vanguard to ensure that no revenues--okay, let's call it by its real name, tax increases--are part of any deal to cut our $14 Trillion debt.
For the first-time ever, Republican politicians have attached spending cuts to raising our debt ceiling. The debt ceiling vote had always been taken for granted, and treated as a matter of congressional housekeeping and good governance.
But then the American people--or rather the 41.3% of eligible voters who turned out--in the 2010 midterm election did an unsavory thing. Which brings us to where we are today.
The Republican Party, emboldened by their die-hard, know-nothing Tea Party-infused freshmen, who like to call themselves the "young guns," are holding hostage the full faith and credit of the Republic. To illustrate the point, this week, they showed a clip from Ben Affleck's film, "The Town." In it, Affleck's character tells his cohort that they're going to hurt some people. His cohort only asks whose car they're taking. After viewing the clip, Rep. Allen West jumped and said that he'll drive the car. Among the people being hurt: seniors on Medicare and Social Security, the poor on Medicaid, and students on Pell Grants and government-backed loans. In short, the middle class and the working poor. Once again, the powerless take the brunt of the cuts and suffer the consequences, while the powerful, keep their corporate-jet loopholes, subsidies to Big Oil and Big Agriculture, and continue to enjoy the lowest tax rates since the Truman Administration.
Where is the justice in that? Right, in this case, did not make might.
The president was elected on a wave of voter discontent with Washington, and on the promise of change. The president has been unfairly attacked for the legislation he championed to try to get--to use his favorite metaphor--the economy out of a ditch. The president was side-lined first by the Supreme Court which changed a century of jurisprudence concerning campaign-finance, and by a determined minority who has been uncompromising in its governance. The president has been painted as a socialist, and a foreigner--not one of us. He's been decried as some sort of a Manchurian candidate, planted to destroy America as we know it, and that only the Tea-Party backed candidates, the "real" Americans, can take America back.
When in reality the president is a moderate Republican, in all but name.
The president has governed slightly right-of-center. His health-care reform was born in the offices out of the conservative-Heritage Foundation in the 1990's, and is first-cousin to Romney's Massachusetts' health-care program. The president has out-Republican'd the Republicans on foreign policy, escalating the war in Afghanistan, continuing to operate Gitmo, and finally killing Bin Laden. If there's one place where I still lean right-of-center is in foreign policy, and am thankful that the president has continued to operate as a more competent and efficient third-Bush Administration. The president caved to the Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts, one of the real culprits as to why the debt is at the level it is, and has taken no meaningful steps to order the Justice Department to prosecute those who, through their criminal activity, almost brought down the American economy in the Fall of 2008. Today, the president has once again been defeated by the Republicans, where they got cuts equal to any increase in the debt ceiling, no revenues being part of the compromise, triggers that need to be implemented before the debt ceiling is increased past the 2012 elections, and absolutely no meaningful concessions from the Republicans on pretty much anything. Normally, negotiations in DC are a give-and-take, something-for-something. Now it's something-for-nothing. The negotiations were not what to give up in order to achieve a reasonable compromise, but rather how to get the extreme-wing of the GOP to raise the debt ceiling at all. It's like negotiating with the mob: nice economy you have here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it.
We dreamt that Barack Obama would come to the White House and change politics as usual. That this incredibly intelligent and competent man whose sense of social justice, ethics, and morality, would allow a more civilized government, one that cares for the prosperity and well-being of all its citizens, to take hold. But the president has been too much of the aloof professor, too much of the adult in the room. Jon Stewart continuously says that the president acts as if he's disappointed in us, that we're the ones who have let him down. The president needs to be more of a fighter and confront the Republicans. He needs to get down into the trenches. Republicans are instinctively great at politics and lousy at governing. The president's ground game ain't working. He'll take the deal because it's too late and we're running against the clock--now he'll have to get the left to sign-off on the deal; luckily they're reasonable and responsible and they'll whine and sermonize but do what's right at the end. And he needs to start preparing for the FY '12 budget. And that's it. The president's legislative agenda for this term is over. A do-nothing Congress, in this case, is going to be a good thing.
He needs to start campaigning. Next year's election will be a classic economy election. The Republicans have made sure that the economy will still be on life support, as their cuts will do nothing to enable growth and joblessness will remain around 9-10%. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has said in the past that his political goal is to ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term president. And they won't care if the economy is down in the dumps if it would assure that result. So he's going to need to fight back and push hard. He needs to call them out on their votes and on who their supporters are. He needs to profile every district and take the message down block-to-block as to how GOP policy would hurt the poor and the middle class. It's going to have to be more than a 50-state strategy, but a strategy centered in every congressional district. Only then can we hope that enough Democrats get elected on the president's coat-tails to take back the House and create a filibuster-proof, super-majority in the Senate.
Every four years, they always say that this presidential election is an important one. 2012's really will be.
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