Ann is a smart woman and she realizes that Republicans are losing the message war with Obama and that getting blamed for the checks not going out etc would destroy the Republican party. Not everyone understands how this works.
This surrender plan may be better for the them than a worst case (debt related) scenario but it would still be a complete disaster for them if they were forced to do it.
Obama is playing this out perfectly for his 2012 re-election campaign. He was on TV again today talking about how he STILL wants a big deficit reduction deal, even though he knows there is NO chance of it happening. He is talking to voters. Yes, he has created a visual-narrative where he and Pelosi have put $4T of spending cuts (all a made up bluff) on the table for deficit reduction and Republicans are rejecting it to protect a few billion in ‘tax loopholes to the rich ’ that would go away in the Ryan plan anyway. And Republicans plan 'B' is to walk away with no cuts and Obama gets all the money he wants as long as he ‘ proposes ‘ spending cuts, with no enforcement mechanism.
So today he is on TV lecturing against those that put politics and ideology ahead of America as he plays the best political game, And now every single liberal Democrat that would NEVER really support the proposed ‘bluff’ spending cuts, is out there on TV claiming they are for them.
Too many conservatives are looking at this as if it was the budget fight -- and they're properly angry because we got completely hosed in that "battle," receiving nothing but promises, and even the promises were trivial. The sad fact is that the money in this case is already appropriated. Unless laws are repealed we must pay it. We will never have the majorities in either the House or the Senate to do that as long as 0 is President. That means that until almost February of 2013, we are stuck with raising the debt limit, or defaulting.
The date of August 3rd is, of course, completely bogus. The President's claim that he can't guarantee SS checks will be mailed on that date is shameful. But nevertheless the fact remains that as long as 0 is President, eventually we must either raise the limit, or default. And that eventuality will occur before November 2011, not after November 2012.
0bama is essentially playing the PLO/Hamas role right now. He says a lot of nice sounding things in public about wanting to cut the deficit, but in private talks he makes it clear that he has no intention to do that. This is why Republicans are divided: He is so transparently a liar to anyone who actually knows what's going on, they can't believe they will not win the PR battle. They need to remember December 1998. The President of the United States clearly committed obstruction of justice and should have been removed.
But politics is not about what's right, and the very pathetic fact is that the middle 20% of the country -- absolute jackasses who vote on the basis of the last yard sign they see on their way into the Firehouse -- determine the outcome of our elections.
Bill O'Reilly, a genuinely insufferable, self-aggrandizing clod if ever there was one, knows this bunch quite well. Conservatives may not like him (they shouldn't) but his instincts are generally correct about them because as a populist blowhard his livelihood depends on it. He understands that they're not "ideological." All this really means is that they don't have any self-consistent political thought process, but never mind. He says they think the Republicans are losing on this, and to some degree they probably are. But independents still do think "it's the spending, stupid." So do we. So we must not allow our political alliance on this most important common ground to be lost.
McConnell's plan forces 0bama to either prove himself a liar, or actually cut when he says he wants to cut. [He will under no circumstances cut, and his reelection chances will go down in flames if he proves himself a liar.] McConnell's gambit was brilliant. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have knee-jerked this, including Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh of both of whom I am a fan.
Eventually, we will either execute McConnell's plan, we will raise taxes, or we will default. I don't believe it's an exaggeration to say that the last two outcomes may well mean the end of the GOP.