Posted on 02/04/2009 8:21:13 AM PST by DCBryan1
No need to meet GOP halfway
Gene Lyons
For President Obama to treat individual Republicans with civility is one thing. Etiquette, however, has its limits. Embracing bipartisanship as a political goal can be a snare and a delusion.
It has certainly seemed so of late, as GOP congressmen responded to Obama’s friendly overtures by voting unanimously against his desperately needed economic stimulus, persevering in their party’s cultlike faith in tax cuts and aligning themselves with a bombastic radio talker who brags that he wants the president to fail.
In response, the mannerly official scorers at ABC’s “The Note” awarded the president “a goose egg in the first inning of bipartisanship,” although the stimulus package passed in the House by a vote of 244-188. Never mind that the White House had dropped a couple of spending items—subsidized contraceptives and refurbishing the National Mall—that Republicans disliked. Washington Post editors lamented that “Obama had the controversial provisions removed, but too late to win over Republicans.”
Too late? The new administration was one week old. The changes preceded the vote. Persons more concerned with substance than manners might suspect that hopeful chatter about bipartisanship is a sucker’s game. How often did pundits urge President George W. Bush to be sensitive to Democrats’ delicate feelings? The Post’s idea of centrism appears to be the balance of opinion at a K Street lobbyists’ cocktail party.
The last time we had a new Democratic president, essentially the same thing happened. Republican congressmen voted against Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax and budget proposals, uniformly predicting doom. Raising marginal income tax rates a few points on the wealthy, they charged, would lead to economic ruin. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Over the ensuing eight years, the nation witnessed the creation of 25 million new jobs, a balanced federal budget and steadily rising prosperity.
Today, an act of historical memory is required to recall that when Bush took office in 2001, people actually worried about paying down the national debt too fast. No problem. The new president embraced what it’s tempting to call Limbaughnomics, the absurd belief that tax cuts invariably lead to greater government revenues and more and better jobs.
Instead, Bush presided over a sluggish economy, the worst record of job creation since World War II, growing inequality and the current banking crisis, a direct result of “free market” deregulatory fundamentalism combined with a speculative real estate bubble that sustained the illusion of prosperity until it burst. Oh, and yes, runaway budget deficits, thanks mainly to the combination of Bush’s tax cuts and the war in Iraq.
In a recent interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, the rare Democrat who appears to relish spirited give and take, correctly pointed out that “the largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq. . . . And I don’t understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that’s wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we’re through—yes, I wish we [wouldn’t] have done that. We’d have been in a lot better shape fiscally.”
In short, the past 16 years couldn’t have done more to expose the wrongheadedness of the Republican “war on arithmetic” had it been a laboratory experiment. GOP tax-cut theology is sheer superstition, on the level with sacrificing goats and reading tea leaves. Meet grandstanding GOP congressmen halfway? What for? Democrats swept the 2006 and 2008 congressional elections precisely because the public finally gets it. Pretty much everybody except Rush Limbaugh’s faithful listeners has caught on.
That’s how I understood Obama’s dismissive reference to the AM radio entertainer: Times are serious; Limbaugh’s not. Needless to say, the portly chatterbox made the best of it, remarking that Obama supporters expect everybody to bend over and grab their ankles just because the president had a black father. To which Jay Leno made the perfect rejoinder: Rush grab his own ankles? That’ll be the day.
Future debates with Limbaugh are probably best left to his fellow comedians. Meanwhile, all the bipartisanship Obama needs appears to be coming from Republican governors, who need all the revenue they can get to cope with rising unemployment, Medicaid and education costs, but who don’t have the luxury of temporary deficit spending. With the economy spiraling sickeningly downward, the last thing we need is thousands of laid-off state employees.
Under the circumstances, with capital markets largely frozen, consumers too fearful to spend and swollen inventories making businesses leery of new investment, government spending on infrastructure and new technology is pretty much the only useful tool left to get the economy moving again.
This isn’t a tea party, it’s the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and there’s little to be gained worrying over the hurt feelings of GOP true believers who caused it.
—––––– •–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
Blame the Republicans: “[T]his does read to the public as though the Republicans went after [Tom Daschle], someone that the president very much wanted, and brought him down.” —MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell
Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Notice how he forgets to mention the Republican Revolution of 1994 and how His Slickness was forced to moderate his spending plans because of it.
Prima Facie evidence why one should not believe anything this "journalist" writes.
I think the writer is giving the Republicans too much credit for sticking to their principles. It seems as if many of them were ready to vote with O, until Pelosi and her lefty minions exercised their dictatorial power and shut the Pubs out of the lawmaking process entirely. THAT’S what caused the unanimous vote against, not anything O did or didn’t do. Hopefully, if San Fran Nan continues to ram things down everyone’s throats like she did on this bill, the response will continue to be the same.
Who believes anything a "journalist" writes? Everything they say is for the purpose of capturing attention for their advertisers. If they ever print anything that is true it is only by accident.
I thought Gene Lyins had gone away.
A perfect example of unside down history.
This "essay" doesn't deserve serious rebuttal because the arguments put forward are blatant misrepresentations. Any column that ignores Frank's dirty hands all over the mortgage crisis is a joke.
And, I might add, a suckers game.
If this guy is preaching to the Republicans, he is preaching to the choir. "Bipartisanship", when dealing with the "Rats," is a one way street; as is civility.
We need attack dogs, meet ruthlessness with ruthlessness. Otherwise the openly corrupt and arrogant socialist horde will drive the country farther into oblivion.
A demonstrated unindicted felon (if you and I did it) as Secretary of the Treasury? I don't think so. Try saying "it was an honest mistake" when dealing with the IRS...
Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is supposed to apply to everyone. Or it should apply to no one.
Government administrators are not above the law.
Ever. Period!
"Timothy Geithner, now the Treasury secretary, quite clearly tried to defraud the government of tens of thousands in payroll taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund."
Never heard of him. Who cares what he says? He is an idiot and a tool.
Shall we count the lies? Bush's "sluggish" economy had a 4% unemployment rate and a Dow over 12,000. The banking crisis was not a result of Bushian deregulation; in fact most of the instruments responsible were never regulated in the first place. Clinton's "balanced" budget was so solely by virtue of a social security accounting swindle.
GOP tax-cut theology is sheer superstition, on the level with sacrificing goats and reading tea leaves.
Tell it to Reagan. If anything is superstition it is the contrafactual insistence on the part of partisan Democrats that raising taxes raises revenue. They cling to this with the faith of cargo cultists.
This sort of partisan silliness is precisely what has so shorn the MSM of its credibility. This tiresome and mendacious article is a perfect example of a fellow attempting to construct an alternate reality wherein he was always right and his enemies always wrong. He's welcome to live there. He isn't welcome to drag the rest of us along.
I blame the Newt Gingrich Republican Congress for that, they did all this nasty stuff like welfare reform, tax cuts, and keeping spending under control. Oh, the horrors. Dont worry, the Democrats' War on Prosperity will carry on - deficits, unemployment and maybe even inflation will have a comeback.
“Lyons has managed to stick together all the talking points, sort of like making a necklace by stringing turds together.”
Ah, what a metaphor!
Wear the turd necklace, Mr Lyons.
“Bush’s “sluggish” economy had a 4% unemployment rate and a Dow over 12,000. “ - He did but then the Pelosi COngress started getting in on the act.
And when they say Democrat, they MEAN it.
Gene Lyons was a groveling member of the Clinton kneepad brigade. Seems like he’s found a new idol to worship.
Nine out of ten Main Stream "journalists" agree!
Your stomach lining was in danger while reading a Lyons column on Clinton in the old days.
You are SOOOO right. The dimmocrat congress ruined our economy. The tax cuts were GOOD for America but dimmies don’t like them. I am soo p.o.’d at these people.
Professional Attention Whores. The headlines are always so promising until you read the content.
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