Is it a coincidence that when I read the title of this piece, my junk began inching toward my abdomen? Washington Examiner:

President Obama on Thursday told congressional leaders in a closed-door meeting that he wants to reduce the federal deficit by $4 trillion as the two sides inched closer to a deal that could allow the government to avoid defaulting on its debt.

Congressional aides said Obama laid out the three deficit reduction proposals during the meeting, but favored the most sweeping plan, which would require budget-saving changes to Social Security and Medicare and include tax increases.

Congressional leaders will return to the White House on Sunday to hammer out a deal that slashes federal spending in exchange for an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit by the Aug. 2 deadline. If the limit isn’t raised by then, the government would default on its loans.

No it would not. It would not default on its loans. It would be forced to pay its loans out of revenue coming in to the government each and every day. It would be forced, therefore, to cut spending elsewhere.

Which is why these “negotiations” — essentially a private face-saving exercise for politicians committed to keeping the big government status quo — is not only unnecessary, it is yet another signal of GOP establishment weakness: the President wants Congress to raise the debt ceiling so that the programs he’s ordered can be funded; Congress, for their part, simply needs say “no, we’re not going to raise the debt ceiling. So make other arrangements” — which the President would then be made to do under an actual reading of the 14th Amendment.

Instead, the GOP has allowed Obama to position himself as a kind of referee, wisely and with directness and candor directing the two warring party factions into working together to make “historic” cuts — cuts that, as I predicted yesterday, amount to less than half the money already added into the baseline budget over the next 12 years, and that future Congresses can’t be held to.

[…]

Democrats, trying to portray Republicans as defenders of the rich, advanced a resolution Thursday calling for higher taxes on those earning $1 million or more a year. Republican senators helped move the measure forward, saying it would provide a chance to discuss the debt issue and allow them to add amendments when it comes up again next week.

Of course. Because they’re caught up in the class warfare paradigm, on the defensive, trying once again to prove that they, too, believe in “shared sacrifice.”

Frankly, it’s been repulsive to watch.

The bottom line: Obama has positioned himself to pressure the GOP into raising taxes — or else risk a public backlash — by then telling a compliant media that he’s proposing the largest spending cuts in US history — including entitlement reforms — but that the GOP is blocking it because they refuse to allow “revenue increases,” raised by way of “closing tax expenditure loopholes” on “millionaires and billionaires” and those who fly “corporate jets” or have yachts, that could be used to “create jobs.”

This is, of course, a Marxist gambit (hiya, Rick Moran!) — and one that the establishment GOP keeps walking into every time they sidle up to the table with Obama, or meet for golf, or hold secret meetings to hammer out budget deals when the issue at hand is simple: the Dems want to raise the debt ceiling, and the GOP holds the House, and so can simply tell the President and his party to get stuffed.

And while some of the “nuttier” wingnut politicians seem to get this (and by nuttier, I of course me fiscally sane, constitutional conservatives and classical liberals), our country’s establishment politics has, as a whole, moved so steadily leftward that the current center is to the left of JFK and just slightly to the right of LBJ.

That’s no place for a constitutional republic to be. Because as long as we’re playing on the progressive’s field and using their rules, we’re destined to get screwed. The rest is just haggling over the price.