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Pyrrhic-view

Shannen Coffin, NRO:

[The AP is reporting on the budget deal] that the cuts consist of cancellation of one-time expenditures on milk price supports, cuts to unspent census money, and highway expenditures already zeroed out by other legislation. Undoubtedly, there are some real savings in the package, like $10 billion in earmark reductions. But even there, the policy of earmark elimination was already enacted shortly after the new Congress was sworn in.

Obama was able to preserve many, if not most, of his pet projects, like Pell Grants, Planned Parenthood funding, and Americorps. It’s not clear who should be licking their wounds today.

The GOP spin today appears to be that the President wanted to spend much more than he’ll end of up getting in his budget proposal — and that a tough but sensible GOP leadership is responsible for reining him in.

But of course, what no one (openly) considers is that Obama quite predictably tossed out a big budget number in his proposal, knowing full well from the midterm elections that the GOP would being compelled to go after cuts.

In the end, I suspect the President got all that he really expected to get — and probably a bit more (hence his jubilant jaunt up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial) — even as we now have the GOP running around in full self-congratulatory mode trying to sell us on the enormity of the cuts, a play that the Democrats are prepared to seize on when they start talking up the need to “raise revenues” in light of what the GOP itself is calling “historic” spending cuts.

The result is twofold: first, the GOP, having described the cuts as historic, have overhyped and under-delivered, and the revisionist triumphalism we’re now hearing works against securing broader cuts going forward; and second, the Administration and Dems now have the cover of agreeing to Historic Spending Cuts to push for tax increases and other measures to raise revenues they’ll claim were lost when the GOP demanded its draconian paring down of essential government monies.

From the beginning, Boehner — by stating that he won’t shut down the government — tipped his hand and gave up his only real point of political leverage. And politics is all he cares about — and all the establishment Republicans seem to care about. Otherwise, as Mark Levin and others have pointed out repeatedly, Boehner has a real power over the purse, and can stop whatever spending he’s committed to stopping.

But he won’t. Because the calculus here is all about political positioning. And the GOP establishment is content with the status quo.

Their problem is, the progressives are not — and neither is the Tea Party. At some point, Boehner is going to have to choose a side.

15 Replies to “Pyrrhic-view”

  1. LBascom says:

    I’m pretty sure the Republican establishment already picked a side. And it ain’t the “limited government” side…

  2. ProfShade says:

    Shut. It. Down. A shut down hurts the Dems and Obama. Americorps…all that’s missing are the brown shirts and swastika kerchiefs!

  3. McGehee says:

    Well, they had to pass the thing so we could find out what’s in it — and what isn’t. At this point I don’t think it matters which party gets hurt politically by a shutdown — it’s a target-rich environment.

  4. Bob Reed says:

    Leave the Establicans alooooooooooooone!!11!1!

    No really, leave them alone; during the next election…

    The Tea-Party folks need to demonstratively announce who they’ll be primarying next time-right now! Because nothing gets the attention of a politician like waving a pink slip at ’em.

    We all need to be voicing our dissatisfaction with the Republicans just as much as we all did with the Democrats during the Obamacare cram-down. Call those suckers offices and complain regularly. Better yet, tell them in no uncertain terms that neither they nor the RNC will be getting one cent of your money, or an iota of your support, unless they deliver on the promises they made during last fall’s election campaign. Make it clear that they’ll be the next bums thrown out.

    This is about more than Boehner’s apparent lack of negoriating skill; this is about holding their feet to the fire and making them live up promises made. And about hard-charging after an opposition that has no qualms about engaging in the same “irresponsible acts” that they’ll simultaneously decry…

    I want to hear early, and often, in every answer to a question about raising the debt ceiling, references to now President Obama’s willingness to send the US government into default to serve his cynical political ends. And, to paraphrase what Senator Rubio so eruditely states, that capriciously voting to raise it merely to avoid that possibility is ensuring that it will happen at some point in the future.

  5. Ernst Schreiber says:

    All that’s left is to raise the debt ceiling, get rolled on the 2012 budget, and the Republican Party’s journey to the Whig side will be complete.

  6. Bob Reed says:

    …the Republican Party’s journey to the Whig side will be complete.

    Another great characterization.

  7. mojo says:

    I said that Boner was a lost cause. But nooooooo

  8. ProfShade says:

    Mojo – Boner forgot to take his Medicaid-subsidized Viagra.

  9. […] #3,729 I left the GOP – “Boehner has a real power over the purse, and can stop whatever spending he’s committed to stopping…” But he won’t do it. We have the party of big government, and the party of massive […]

  10. Squid says:

    …the Republican Party’s journey to the Whig side will be complete.

    Vote Whig!

  11. cranky-d says:

    … the Republican Party’s journey to the Whig side will be complete.

    From the Whigs they came, and to the Whigs they return.

  12. McGehee says:

    Ernst, the proper way to say that is,

    Something something something Whig side, something something something complete.

    At least, that’s according to the Emperor in Star Wars.

  13. mojo says:

    BULL MOOSE!!

  14. McGehee says:

    Just not the one that bit my sister.

  15. Danger says:

    The GOP problem is that they seem perfectly content to grind it out on the ground. Which makes perfect sense if you are the 72 dolphins (the no-name defense hardly ever let’s the other team score and your fullback is Larry Csonka who once received a personal foul penalty for throwing a forearm shiver and running over a hapless defensive back while he was carying the ball in his other arm, but I digress;).

    Unfortunately, they (the GOP) are more like the 76 Bucs and they are behind by 20 points half way through the fourth qtr. I’ts well past time to scrapp the game plan (although I’d be happy to reassess if Boehner ever throws Harry Reid a forearm shiv;).

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