And since I’ve been busy on Twitter answering such questions, I figured I put together here a coherent figuration that isn’t forced to fit into 140 character bites.
First, let me say this: it is curious to me that establishment GOP mouthpieces would accuse people like me of living in an “echo chamber” when it is they, who spend their every waking moment sifting through the DC minutia as if it were a game of RISK, whose positions are being so roundly rejected by the base. I know this, because otherwise the Cruz, Lee strategy wouldn’t have stood a chance in the House — and even now, John Boehner is seeking to surrender leverage at a time when he — and we, the American people — have so much of it.
Second, let me answer the to me disingenuous claim that a short term debt limit increase is a “smart political move” rather than a capitulation: for rejecting what amounts, yet again, to agreeing to give Obama more room to deficit spend, I was told that I need to stop the drama and take a breath. It’s only 6-weeks, I’m told. The country will last. Extremist.
And yet when you have a continuing series of always “temporary” delays, what you truly have in effect is a long-term delay. The Senate hasn’t passed a budget. As a result, they’ve been able to use CRs to fund the government — with GOP blessings — that include as part of their baseline the “one-time stimulus” spending revenue. They no longer even care about passing omnibus budgets, having learned that no budget at all freezes time at their preferred spending rate, right up until the time when they reach the debt limit.
Which is why the Cruz / Lee strategy that has the House passing single appropriations — and letting the Dems block them — is such a smart move: the people will be able to see that the Democrats are willing to punish them in ways large and small should 68% of the country who doesn’t want to be compelled to purchase government-written insurance under penalty of a “tax” not shut up and accept ObamaCare as “settled law.” They’ll be able to see how appropriations are supposed to work, all while learning why precisely the Framers, in their wisdom, chose to separate powers, and to leave the power of determining spending and taxation in the people’s House.
This ploy by our petulant Boy King and his Democrat henchmen to make people’s lives miserable or inconvenient until they beg the government for relief has been backfiring: a government that can close the oceans, or will spend money to make sure open air monuments are shut down — while claiming it is out of money — is a government that is out to harass and subjugate you, to coerce you, to turn you into its bitches. It is too fucking big. And people are seeing this thanks in large part to the good folks at the National Park Service, many of whom seem to relish having the power to push people around, temporarily incarcerate them, or boot them from their homes or businesses.
Adding control over our health care — and the data collection that goes with that — suddenly seems like an unwise expansion of federal reach.
But back to strategy: if, as I noted on Twitter, you don’t buy the claim that a failure to raise the debt limit will lead to a “default” — and there’s no reason to buy it, because it’s a lie: we have money to service the debt, and SS is automatically paid — then there’s no reason to grant Obama a 6-week debt-limit increase. And that’s because not only will such a delay lead to that much more deficit spending, but — more importantly — it gives Obama time to demagogue the issue from the bully pulpit, to scare people into believing his lies about an “economic” shutdown.
Should we hit the debt limit, the President has 3 choices: 1) prioritize spending, beginning, per the 14th amendment, with servicing the debt. The revenue available to him after that will be about 75% of what it has been, or at 2001 spending levels. What Obama will have to do is choose what to cut and what to fund: should he once again try to hurt the people — all while making sure, say, Planned Parenthood, NPR, and Obamacare implementation is funded, while foodstamps, Medicare, and Medicaid are not — there will be obvious blowback, provided the GOP point it out and hold him to account. And not just nationally: as I wrote yesterday, they should be on their local news back in their states and districts explaining what is happening and why. Doing so would ensure that a petty, vindictive, peevish Obama is shown for what he is; 2) the second choice, and the one that would be most rational, is that the President is then forced to the negotiating table, where he will have to make concessions or else risk having revenue cut to 2001 levels. This is what we want, because at this point we can push the delay of individual mandate for more than just Obama’s chosen constituencies, and tether Congress to its own law by forcing it to live under it. It is an argument about fairness — an Obama buzzword — that is easy to win. Refusal at that point would show starkly that Obama’s talk about “the rich” and “social justice” was a lot of smoke and mirrors — that in fact, Obama is a Marxist who is planning to use the techniques of liberal fascism to “fundamentally transform” the US; 3) and finally, Obama could, as many Democrats and leftist academics and law professors have urged him to do, “reinterpret” the 14th amendment, try to get away with conflating authorization and appropriation, and declare that he has the unilateral power to raise the debt limit in order to protect the “full faith and credit” of the US and “pay our bills.”
This would essentially remove the power of the purse from the People’s House, end the separation of powers, and turn the Constitution into a dead letter. And if that’s the case, the movement to bring articles against Obama for rejecting his Constitutional role — and presuming to propose and then approve spending himself — will grow loud and strong, and the media will find it difficult to protect him.
The way I see it, in every one of those scenarios, the people win: either spending is forcibly slashed to 2001 levels; Obama agrees to compromises that halt the implementation of ObamaCare; or he overreaches in such a way that he causes a real Constitutional Crisis, one that will compel us to return to the document itself — and it’s intent — to show just how far from stable law we’ve strayed.
There’s the “end game.” But beyond that, getting people invested again in the Constitutional system — allowing them to peak behind the DC curtain at the status quo Old Boy’s network of ruling class deals and “grand bargains” that are meant to protect each party politically at the expense of our wishes as the represented — is a good thing.
Which is why I find arguments that we must capitulate — that it’s “smart” constantly to punt — to be nothing more than the timorous pleadings of either those who like the statist system, or else those who are useful idiots blinded by their allegiance to a Party, not to what it claims to stand for.
I read a great quote regarding the “It’s the law!”
Yes, it a law. It isn’t scripture.
And that’s because not only will such a delay lead to that much more deficit spending, but — more importantly — it gives Obama time to demagogue the issue from the bully pulpit, to scare people into believing his lies about an “economic” shutdown.
The Obamunist doesn’t *need* time for that. He and his media apparatchiks can scare and demogogue–snap–just like that.
On the other hand, we need time to overcome the lamestream media filter and explain the Constitution, economic reality, etc. to the dolts out there.
And it takes time for enough people to experience the kind of petty tyranny the Park Service is just starting to implement, and Obamunistcare has not done just yet. Too many people still think this really *is* an “Affordable Care Act”. Yes, they are dolts, but there are oh so many of them.
I read a great quote regarding the “It’s the law!”
Yes, it a law. It isn’t scripture.
And in Nov. 2010, people were elected to *overturn* it.
The dolts saw that the sky only fell during a government “shutdown” when Obama made it fall. When we reach the debt limit and the country doesn’t default –unless Obama disregards the Constitution and creates a default — they’ll know the truth about that particular canard, as well.
We don’t need 6 weeks to tell them. We can show them, then take 6 weeks watching the Dems try to make people believe that the sky has fallen when in fact, all that’s happened is we’ve been forced to curb spending — something most Americans support.
The explanation and education won’t arrive faster with more than half the opposition party refusing to make the argument, or refusing to acknowledge the source of true power in America, the people, and with that power the purpose for which government was instituted in the first place: to serve the interests of the people of America.
Better, one would think, for the opposition party in Congress to rally and encourage the people to come to their aid directly, as Sens. Cruz, Lee and Paul have been doing all along, than to spurn the people as though they are an insignificant afterthought, as the many likes of Sens. McConnell, Cornyn, McCain, Graham, Johnson, et al, and Reps. Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy, King et al., do today.
It’s still a question of sovereignty: Ours? Or his?
Theirs, sdferr. Theirs.
And in this question the stance of the Democrats is to say “We will take it!”, and the stance of the GOP is to say “We will give it!”.
And yet when you have a continuing series of always “temporary” delays, what you truly have in effect is a long-term delay.
Could we apply this reasoning to Obamunistcare?
The dolts saw that the sky only fell during a government “shutdown” when Obama made it fall. When we reach the debt limit and the country doesn’t default –unless Obama disregards the Constitution and creates a default — they’ll know the truth about that particular canard, as well.
Then why, praytell, do RINO weasels like McLame/Gramnesty/weenie pundits seem to hate this move?
We don’t need 6 weeks to tell them. We can show them, then take 6 weeks watching the Dems try to make people believe that the sky has fallen when in fact, all that’s happened is we’ve been forced to curb spending — something most Americans support.
Do they? The Obamunist gambit of shutting down services people want while funding the ones people don’t is disgusting, but it makes a dreadful sense. The dolts won’t follow, I fear.
On a related note, I’d really like to see the party “leadership” spend a lot less time and effort studying the low-information voters and watering down our principles to appeal to them, and a lot more time and effort creating new median-information voters, explaining why our principles are important.
Ignorance is our enemy. Stop encouraging it!
As opposed to beating the message into the LIVs thick skulls, without going overboard and insulting them and causing them to tune out? Or is that hopeless?
Do they? The Obamunist gambit of shutting down services people want while funding the ones people don’t is disgusting, but it makes a dreadful sense. The dolts won’t follow, I fear.
They won’t. At least the dolts of my acquaintance, who oddly seem to be heavily comprised of attorneys, wave their hands and say “Pah! But, you are so stupid!”
. . . declare that he has the unilateral power to raise the debt limit in order to protect the “full faith and credit” of the US and “pay our bills.”
There remains as well the extremely peculiar flip-side intimation of threat by TheClownDisaster Administration that it may “have the power” to not protect the full faith and credit of the United States and pay the nation’s debt. Now sure, such threats are always couched round with weasel hedging words of many a lie, but the appearance is there nonetheless — otherwise, without at least the appearance, any such threat must be utterly absurd from the jump, and therefore couldn’t be used to any effect.
Then surrender now. It’s the only move. Especially because politics is static, and circumstances can’t change positions, which are forever fixed.
As opposed to beating the message into the LIVs thick skulls, without going overboard and insulting them and causing them to tune out?
I’ll bet Emily Miller could do it. Even if they just spent the whole time staring at the pretty lady, some truth might sink in after a while. At the very least they might start agreeing with her just because they want her to like them.
I’d really like to see the party “leadership” spend … a lot more time and effort creating new median-information voters, explaining why our principles are important.
Our leaders? Boehner? McConnell?
Why would they explain our principles? They don’t share them in the least.
Have you been listening to Beck the last few days? The civil war in the GOP betwixt some genuinely malicious Establicans and Cruz/Lee/Paul is coming to a head. Beck finally spills it about the coup that nearly ruined FreedomWorks — one that Beck and the FW board were able to avert, but only barely.
Beck says the same dynamic is at play in the Senate, and that it appears that we’re on the verge of pushing the Establicans over the edge. It’s one of those things where it looks like you’re losing right up until you win, just that the microfissures that you’ve been inflicting on the structure aren’t visible until they reach critical mass and the whole thing crashes down.
Also, I gave Ron Johnson a huge piece of my mind yesterday while listening to the Levin rerun of the interview. It was truly painful to hear, because it was obvious Johnson knew he was wrong and wasn’t prepared to refute Levin’s
accusationssuggestions and questions.Johnson is not a very good dissembler. You could use the interview as a teaching tool for “how not to lie to the public.”
Then surrender now. It’s the only move. Especially because politics is static, and circumstances can’t change positions, which are forever fixed.
Define “surrender”? Letting Obamunistcare go through is to me surrender. Raising the debt limit a bit is not.
Why? Because the debt limit was always going to get raised. It was a given just like liberals are fucking liars and sadly they control the Senate.
It is a nice thing to pretend we can hold the line on the debt ceiling and lots of people, you included, seem to think we can negotiate it but we can’t without doing incredible and probably irreparable damage to the economy and the country, which will be blamed on the good guys like Cruz and Lee.
So once you accept that it never really was a negotiating piece you can see that what Boehner has offered is exactly squat in reality but something that has huge optical value. If Obama refuses to come to the negotiating table on the CR, a completely different issue, then he is the bad guy.
Look, this was never my preferred strategy for precisely this reason. The reality is we never had much leverage. The only reason we have some now is because Obama and Reid acted like petulant children and have taken some of the heat for the shutdown.
So now its up to them. They needs to start negotiating, emphasis on start, or they takes the blame, at last. And the government does not get reopened until an agreement is reached. Until then, the government is still down.
So what has Boehner really given up?
And again, why do the RINOs seem to loathe this move so? I suppose they wanted to cave in on everything….
That’s what happens when Senators and Congressmen are low information voters, dicentra. It’s a pity that the majority in office is made up of such people these days, and hence constitute the primary population at which to aim an education — an education of which they refuse to acknowledge themselves to be in need, since they already know it all.
Can somebody explain to me how it’s a foregone conclusion that a balanced budget will wreck the whole world’s economy and send us all back to the Bronze Age, while spending a couple trillion more dollars that we don’t have and our grandkids can’t afford is the responsible thing to do? ‘Cuz I must have been absent on the day that lesson was presented.
Also, can somebody explain how it’s preferable to push the economic collapse until after these assclowns are all dead, as opposed to letting it collapse now while we can still enjoy the pleasure of putting them up against the wall?
kthxbai
Can somebody explain to me how it’s a foregone conclusion that a balanced budget will wreck the whole world’s economy and send us all back to the Bronze Age, while spending a couple trillion more dollars that we don’t have and our grandkids can’t afford is the responsible thing to do? ‘Cuz I must have been absent on the day that lesson was presented.
Because there *won’t be* a balanced budget.
There will simply be defaults on bond payments and bounced government checks and the petulant Marxist Man-Child and his minions in the government will just have a cow and blame Messrs Cruz and Lee.
And the media sheeple will bleat.
Also, can somebody explain how it’s preferable to push the economic collapse until after these assclowns are all dead, as opposed to letting it collapse now while we can still enjoy the pleasure of putting them up against the wall?
kthxbai
You have more faith in the mob than do I. I have begun to think that in 2012 we reached the point of Chile 1970, with our own Preznit Obamallende.
There will simply be defaults on bond payments and bounced government checks and the petulant Marxist Man-Child and his minions in the government will just have a cow and blame Messrs Cruz and Lee.
That’s not going to happen, either. Presbo does that and there will be mob violence.
It seems the GOP has taken a hint and will continue the fight on Obamacare by punting the debt ceiling discussion six weeks to Thanksgiving.
I think this is wise, though I think the GOP should not do a clean increase. They should tie it to a full faith and credit act or something to stop future market jitters over this stuff. The GOP should not establish a precedent of debt ceiling increases without offsets of some kind. Nor should they allow the Democrats to act as if the House of Representatives should just be Barack Obama’s rubber stamp.
But we must keep the fight on Obamacare. If the CR and debt ceiling were combined, we could not hold the line.
This now lets us hold the line and get the conversation back to Obamacare.
Those who say conservatives have no strategy have none of their own. Our strategy is simple — hold the line. Those who say that is no strategy have none of their own. Do I think we will get Obamacare defunded? That’s our ask. We negotiate from there.
link
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Thursday that he supported the House GOP’s plan for a temporary debt-limit increase, hoping it would help refocus the government shutdown debate on stopping Obamacare.
“My understanding is that this is being driven by House conservatives who are quite reasonably saying listen, let’s focus on Obamacare, on winning the fight on Obamacare, on helping remedy the enormous harms Obamacare is inflicting on millions of Americans, and let’s push the debt ceiling a little further down the road so that it doesn’t distract us from the fight we’re right in the middle of now,” the senator said on KYFO.
link
Lonegan to GOP: Wait Seven Days. When I Win, Obama Will Fold
So, Is Default A Paper Tiger?
No Deal, Again
It’s a law because some of you GOP mush bags crossed the aisle and let it out of committee and then said that the SC would fix it. It’s a law because you losers are stupid and lazy and you suck.
The Soviet Union hoped that Berliners would turn to the Communists. Instead they turned against them. Obama’s own approval ratings have fallen sharply. The speeches and putdowns roaring at record pace out of the White House have not changed the basic fact that Obama’s position, like that of the USSR, is that he will not negotiate over an economic power that he considers to be absolutely his in every way.
The tactics of the Communists shook Americans of their complacency. Even those who had thought that Stalin was a reasonable man willing to be our partner understood that there could be no middle ground.
The Soviet Union was not looking for a compromise. It wanted everything and if it didn’t get it, it would make life as miserable as it could for everyone. That has been Obama’s message. Either Congress completely capitulates and recognizes his power to do whatever he likes or memorials will be shut down, senior citizens will be thrown out of their homes and the families of the soldiers killed in the line of duty will have to struggle to cover funeral expenses.
The Berlin Blockade woke up Americans to what the Soviet Union really was. The Obama Blockade is waking up Americans affected by it to what Obama really is.
link
It’s a law because the House didn’t kill it in the crib when they had the chance. Instead, they passed it over to the Senate for a looksee and they liked it.
So, on to Plan B.
“power”line squishes
What Now For House Republicans?
Stick to their guns.
how about a :”what’s now for the communists?”. lawyers shouldn’t lead us. especially pansy lawyers.
all they have to do is hang tight individually and tell Food Stamp and Boehnerfag to suck it
it’s not really a thought puzzle
if we had a staunch orangeman he’d do a 6 week vote to increase the debt limit 1st thing tomorrow and then go back to passing bills to keep the fed gov’t open. throw the sh&t in the commies court and walk away.
Terrific post.
The pragmatists keep saying that if the GOP doesn’t capitulate, the party will be dead.
I think the party will be dead if they do capitulate. A lot of people agree with me, and they don’t exist in the beltway.
It’s not the people in the beltway that elect these jokers, it’s us.
Sheep do that.
Then impeach his ass.
Because the only way we default is if the government chooses not to service the existing debt.
Which I’m pretty sure is illegal.
That’s why they’re so anxious to import a better, more complaceant class of voter from south of the Rio
GrandeBravoThe sheer ugliness & pettiness I see in Ø-Merica just astounds me. How did we get so low & vile & common?
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
— Bertolt Brecht
You fucked up, Bertolt. You trusted them.
Jeff, good post. It’s what I had been trying to think.
How did we get so low & vile & common?
I’d been wondering that until recently. But now I’m inclined to think that it has always been the case that the lion’s share of the country was vicious. It’s just that in the last 100 years the tyrants have figured out how to use that share to consolidate their own power, appealing to our envy, sloth, resentment and self-pity and injecting viruses into our language so that it became harder and harder to raise counter-arguments based on the virtues (justice, honesty, self-reliance, non-covetousness, and the rest.) Our leaders represent our vices now. In the past, they appealed more to our virtues. This is why Reagan seems not to fit in with the rest of the politicians of our day and why no one listened to Moynihan in the ’60’s when he warned that we were about to destroy the black family. There’s a Reagan, Cruz or Palin here and there nowadays, and there were more than a few assholes in the federal government 150 years ago, but the proportions have shifted. They’ve figured out that there’s money and power in a platform of vice. In yesteryear, it was Washington telling the truth about the cherry tree and renouncing power after winning the war. Nowadays, it’s Julia living as a member of the hive reliant upon its succor. It’s a matter of which ideals are upheld now.
We stopped going to church. The public schools got out of the moral education business. We embraced cultural relatvisim and situational ethics. The social imagination displaced the moral imagination. We traded virtue for value. We allowed the personal to be politicized, opened Pandora’s closet and emptied its contents into the public sphere, so now what used to belong to the public sphere has been forced to take refuge in the closet.
Things like that.
What were once vices are now habits…
Shame is dead.
Pishing the hidden house wren, he steps forward to chatter and to churrr.
It’s a law because some of you GOP mush bags crossed the aisle and let it out of committee and then said that the SC would fix it. It’s a law because you losers are stupid and lazy and you suck.
As much as we all loathe RINOs, have we forgotten what a numerical House and Senate majority the Demunists had in 2009-2010? Back then, as I recall, we were hoping enough “Blue Dogs” and Boll Weevils still existed to stop Obamunistcare.
And to their credit, every single Republican voted no on the craptastic mess.
Unsurprisingly, Obama and Reid rejected the proposal. Because they want the stalemate. And that’s b/c they know the GOP will blink.
This is why I didn’t like the proposal. It showed a weakness. Boehner and the House need to keep bringing to vote individual appropriations bills and then letting the Dems either kill them, or let the Senate Dems kill them, or — in the case of funding death benefits for military — letting Obama kill what was passed in a bipartisan manner.
Then they have to get the word out — nationally, sure, but more important, by appearing on their local stations and speaking directly to their constituencies.
Instead, we have Senators like Corker, Cornyn, Ayotte, Flake, McCain, Collins, etc., running around talking about how we must “open the government” — as if the most pressing concern of the American people is that the EPA start pushing out new regulations, or that the FDA cleans up our vending machines of harmful transfats.
The government shutdown — from my perspective — has shown a petty and vindictive federal government looking to hurt those it was elected to serve.
And I believe that will make it through the media filter if it’s pressed at the state and local level using local news affiliates.
Unfortunately, the GOP Senate majority is a group of Quislings — or worse (I believe) they are themselves not only perfectly happy with an expanded federal govt, but they prefer it.
if we had a staunch orangeman he’d do a 6 week vote to increase the debt limit 1st thing tomorrow and then go back to passing bills to keep the fed gov’t open. throw the sh&t in the commies court and walk away.
Isn’t that what is he is doing, so far? (Disclaimer: “So far”)
“power”line squishes
What Now For House Republicans?
Reading that “article”, it seems the Powerline squishes think the GOP should have fought on the dry, dusty, academic world of the debt ceiling, rather than the real world impacts Obamunistcare has already had on many people trying to renew their health insurance? Really? Or did PL just want total capitulation? I suspect the latter.
While our “leaders” dither about process, it would be nice if there were a way to counter the disinformation campaign that is being pounded like a gong. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent correcting people who merely parrot the news, in particular that SS, Vet’s benefits, et al aren’t going to be paid. It’s exhausting and it comes from people who should know better and are fear-mongering.
I’m with Jeff. I think the republicans, in particular the TEA Party republicans, need to stick to their principles. We don’t need concern trolls from the Dems or our own party trying to “help” reopen the government. 800,000 people out of work? What do they do? My mail is still being delivered and taxes still being collected. Maybe it’s just time to trim the fat. In fact, it’s past time.
The ME press is mocking the Wan as a weak sister and I fear that will cause him to do something reactive that may harm our soldiers in the field. He’s no Lao Tzu or Machiavelli, after all. He’s also relieved all of his senior command structure in the ME and Africacom so I am leery of Who’s on First over there.
Keep fighting the good fight Jeff.
Well, if the last couple of weeks show anything, they show that the Republican Party is over. It’s not going to be revitalized from inside. Whether a third party has the time to right the ship is an unknown, but I’m not counting on it.
What to do, what to do?
We’ll have to try Levin’s amendments next time around.
The way to counter it is to calmly perform the Jane, you ignorant slut routine on the Sunday Talk shows. Reject the premise (we’re not starving puppies and puppies aren’t going to starve, regardless of what the Democrats tell you, unless the President decides to starve them. Harry Reid could feed all the homeless puppies in the world today he could have fed them 6months ago if he’d acted on our budget etc.)
Then go home and explain it all over again on local media and in town halls.
Emphasize that ObamaCare needs a one year delay anyways, just to get the shit sorted out of the system.
And then dig in for the long haul, because of the reasons Jeff gave.
Whenever I hear a politico talking about the “smart political move” I want to roll up a newspaper and whap him on the snout.