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Posted on 07/10/2011 8:47:48 AM PDT by Son House
RUSH: I asked the question last hour: "Where in the world are the Republicans feeling this pressure to do a deal with Obama? Where is the pressure to cave to Obama on raising the debt ceiling? Where's the pressure coming from?" P
at Buchanan has the answer in a recent post at the Drudge Report. "By refusing to accept..." By the way, the title of his piece is: "An Establishment in Panic -- By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like 'fanatics,' writes David Brooks of The New York Times," the conservative columnist, by the way. "'anti-tax Republicans 'have no sense of moral decency,' he adds. They are 'willing to stain their nation's honor' to 'worship their idol.'" That would be Reagan.
"If this 'deal of the century' goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, 'Republican fanaticism' will be the cause." That's David Brooks, an establishment guy, a Ruling Class guy. "'The GOP has become a cult' that has replaced reason with 'feverish' and 'cockamamie beliefs,' writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post.
The Republican 'presidential field (is) a virtual political Jonestown,' the Guyana site where more than 900 followers of the Peoples Temple drank the Kool-Aid that Rev. Jim Jones mixed for them" and died. "Does anyone think this an appropriate description of such mild-mannered men as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman?" They are presidential political Jonestown?
"'The GOP's Hezbollah Wing Is Now Fully in Control,' screams The New Republic over a recent lead editorial. Other columnists charge the GOP with holding America 'hostage'" and a gun to the American peoples' heads "by refusing to accept tax hikes to avert a default on the debt. What to make of this hysteria?
The Establishment is in a panic. It has been jolted awake to the realization that the GOP House, if it can summon the courage to use it, is holding a weapon that could enable it to bridle forever the federal monster that consumes 25 percent of gross domestic product." So, there's our answer: The pressure that Boehner and the Republicans feel is establishment Washington who want their precious government and their god to grow.
By the way, this puts in perspective this stuff I mentioned yesterday: Matthews, Joan Walsh, Tina Brown calling all these people the "Wahhabis" of the Republican Party. It's all calculated to put pressure on them, all because they won't go along with a tax increase, all because they won't give in to Obama, all because they're willing to have the government default, which will not happen!
In fact, Social Security checks will continue to go out. In all of this, we're being lied to by the Ruling Class left and right about the debt ceiling and what happens if it's not raised. "To bully and blackmail the GOP into surrendering the weapon and betraying its principles and signing on to new taxes, that establishment has unleashed rhetoric more befitting a war on terror than a political dispute.
"For how, exactly, are Republicans threatening the republic? The House has not said it will not raise the debt ceiling. It must and will. It has not said it will not accept budget cuts. It has indicated a willingness to accept the budget cuts agreed to in the Biden negotiations. Where the GOP has stood its ground is on tax increases. Is fanaticism behind this stance? Does this manifest insanity? How does this imperil the nation's honor and future [not raising taxes]?
Behind the GOP opposition to tax hikes is the party's word given to the country that elected it in 2010, its political principles, its traditional view of what not to do when the nation is in a slump, and party history." You don’t raise taxes in a recession. You just don't.
"Fully 235 Republican House members signed a 2010 pledge not to raise taxes. And by giving their word they were rewarded with victory. Should they now dishonor that pledge, what would differentiate them from George H.W. Bush, who famously promised in 1988: 'Read my lips! No new taxes!' then went back on his word and took the party down to defeat with him?
Second, the GOP is the party of small government and low taxes. Why would it agree to raise taxes on the private productive sector when federal spending, now at a peacetime record of 25 percent of GDP, is the problem?
"Third, America is in a slump, with 9 percent of the workforce unemployed," actually more than that as we know, "another 7 percent underemployed and the economy growing at a tepid 1.8 percent. "What school of economic thought ... says raising taxes in a slumping economy is the recipe for a return to prosperity? There is no such school.
Why, when the whole country is talking about the need to create jobs, would Congress raise taxes on a private productive sector that employs six in seven Americans and is the creator of real jobs?" Why? "In 1982, President Reagan agreed to the same deal being offered the party today: three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases to which he assented.
"As he ruefully told [Pat Buchanan] more than once, he was lied to. He got one dollar in spending cuts for every three in tax increases. "What of the charge that the Republican House is holding America hostage, blackmailing the nation with a suicidal threat to throw us all into national default if it does not get its way?
This smear is the precise opposite of the truth," as we've been saying over and over. "The Republican Party has not said it will refuse to raise the debt ceiling. ... The House has simply said it will not accept new taxes on a nation whose fiscal crisis comes from overspending.
"If the GOP keeps its word, raises the debt ceiling and accepts budget cuts agreed to in the Biden negotiations, the only people who can prevent the debt ceiling's being raised are Senate Democrats or Obama," and that is why they will cave, "in which case, they, not the GOP, will have thrown the nation into default." This is the position! The Republicans own this opportunity.
All they've gotta do is stop talking about tax increases and revenue. "It is the establishment that is resorting to extortion, saying, in effect, to the House GOP: Give us the new taxes we demand, or Obama will veto the debt ceiling and we will all blame you for the default." Pat Buchanan says, "They're bluffing. The GOP should stand its ground -- and fix bayonets." Lock and load, in other words.
He's right.
The Democrats are bluffing. The Ruling Class is bluffing. They are in a panicked hysteria, which itself is the indication of the weakness of their position. Boehner ought to be feeling no pressure from the people that count.
The Democrats are really saying:
“Read our lisp: No new private-sector jobs.”
We need a Sarah Palin presidency. Anyone who doesn't see that is as blind as the Ruling Class.
You’re as worse as the libtard Dems in how you view shit in absolutes. “Anyone who doesn’t see that is a blind as the Ruling class”....so say we all, huh? =.=
Social Security Disability is paid EVERY MONTH for every YEAR of a person's life. They get on with a bad temper for a drug problem and they can collect every month for 30 years - 40 years or even 80 years if they live to be a hundred. It never stops. No pesky social workers. And most of them work under the table... so they're not paying taxes on what they do earn.
It's a system with such perverse incentives it would make welfare blush... and it's bankrupting Social Security. And those folks who really are disabled will be dumped on the streets when everything goes broke.
Then again, you know dems will let grandma die before they'll let some criminal drug addict do without his Social Security.
From a comment I posted on RedState:
“If you aske me, the critters in congress aren’t going to be able to solve this problem. If there is ever to be a solution to this, the States will have to step in and settle it that way...”
The States do not need permission from congress to amend the constitution. I am not a proponent of the BBA, because I think it will have side effects likened to the regulatory conditions that pumped the housing and govt debt (all levels) bubble, but if that’s what we really want to do, then it is likely the ONLY way to get there.
I would rather see the Federal government stripped of power it was never intended to have instead of, or in addition to, a BBA. I do not count on congress willingly giving that stuff up or being able to control it, in fact I am quite certain that it will not do it on its own just because we demand it.
The Federal gov’t is in a percarious position with the Fed exiting QE2, interest rates on borrowing will rise, and it will eventually run out of enough customers willing to buy its debt. And the amount of borrowing it will have to do is a problem because it already overwhelms America’s savings pool. For it to keep borrowing at the rate required to keep up with unfunded mandates, it will soak up nearly all potentially productive domestic capital and convert it to consumption making it nearly impossible to climb out of the economic hole we’re in; and it really does not matter if taxes are raised because they are grabbing the money on the front end in addition of the back.
It really is just a matter of when, not if, the piper comes calling, and if we’re not careful, the government will just collapse right along with whatever is left of the economy. Any state that just might be so inclined to stand up to Fedzilla, but does not because of the Federal stipends, should consider the very real possibility that the money will run dry and if they have any interest at all in saving themselves and us from the all but certain financial calamity, they need to step in now and rein that beast in.
He excerpted the entire Buchanan article. How often does that happen?
He excerpted the entire Buchanan article. How often does that happen?
VERY interesting! Thanks for the post/ping/link/question.
“Speaker Boehner has just pulled off a major coup in his negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling. Boehner has successfully gotten an incumbent Democratic President to propose cuts to the Social Security program. Whoever becomes the GOP nominee for president has to be overjoyed with this development because it will mean that the 0bama campaign won’t be able to attack the GOP nominee about SS. If 0bama’s campaign tries demogoguing the GOP nominee, then all that nominee will have to do is remind everyone that during the debt ceiling talks President 0bama, himself proposed cutting SS. “
You are right that this is an accomlishment, but OTOH the media will paper this over and still allow the demagoguery to continue unhindered.
Worse as all that? LOL
First of all, Sarah Palin is the epitome of anti-Ruling Class. I don’t know who you are supporting but I’ll bet he considers himself or strives to impress or operates by the rules of the “inside the beltway” elites. Many FReepers fall into that category as well. That’s why they aren’t able to understand the appeal of Palin to the rest of us.
Secondly, Libtard Dems don’t view “shit in absolutes”. Quite the contrary, they live in a gray world.
What I don’t do is operate within the framework of “that’s the way it’s always been done”. Learn to think outside the box. It’s the only way we are going to get control of our government, our country. Palin knows this and so does her supporters. If it comes off as us sounding superior, it’s because we are. :p
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