Posted on 07/19/2011 8:38:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Though President Obama has run rings about the Republican Party in the debt-ceiling debate, that party can yet emerge victorious, if it will stick to its guns.
Clearly, the Republican strategy was not thought through, when the party chose the debt ceiling as the legislative terrain on which to fight its fiscal war.
The president had wanted a clean debt-ceiling increase, but he seized the GOP challenge with alacrity. He invited House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor down to the White House and reportedly offered $3 trillion in spending cuts for $1 trillion in fresh revenue, in a historic "big deal" to cut the deficit.
However, the cuts the president offered were, while attractive, gauzy. But the revenues -- closing "loopholes" and ending "tax breaks for the rich" -- were hard and specific. Had Boehner accepted the deal, he would not have survived as speaker. Fully 235 GOP House members signed a pledge in 2010 not to vote for any tax increase.
Thus, every day Boehner and Cantor departed the White House, having refused to accept "the deal of the century," the message that went out to the nation was that Republican intransigence, a refusal to compromise, was blocking historic deficit reduction.
Using the White House bully pulpit, Obama portrayed himself as bending over backward to do a fair deal and being forced, if the GOP continued to balk, to stop mailing out Social Security checks.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned of a U.S. default on its debts if there were no deal. Moody's and Standard & Poor's warned that the United States was imperiling its AAA credit rating. The big media painted the GOP as a party led by reasonable men who were hostage to fanatics being pandered to by Cantor.
Why did Boehner refuse the Obama temptation?
Had he accepted the deal, his party in the House would have split asunder. Half would have voted "no." To force its passage, Boehner would have had to collude with Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, against scores in his own caucus, to get Democratic votes.
Though House Republicans have been mussed up in the last two weeks, the White House "negotiations" now appear at an end, and a liberated Republican House is about to pass its own deficit-reduction plan.
"Cut, cap and balance" calls for cuts in federal spending to 20 percent of gross domestic product, a cap on federal programs and the enactment of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which would crush federal spending to 18 percent of the economy from today's 25.
While this may clear the House, it stands little chance in the Senate. But it puts the party on the offensive. It will eat up the clock. It will put the GOP on record as to where it stands and provide the Tea Party Caucus a chance to vote its convictions.
But if the GOP House plan dies in the Senate, how does the GOP win? Again, by simply standing its ground on taxes, and waiting.
This weekend, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the White House agreed the debt ceiling will be raised, and Obama accepted the reality that he will not be getting any new revenue.
This means that, at the end of this process, Obama will sign a debt-ceiling increase that involves $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion or $1 trillion in spending cuts, with no new taxes and no new revenues.
And that is a victory for whom, and a defeat for whom?
Republicans may have been beaten up for most of July, but come August, Democrats will be asking Barack Obama what exactly he and they got for agreeing to serious cuts in social spending, while the Republican right compromised on nothing and gave up nothing.
Obama won the public relations battle, but the Republicans, if they hold firm on no revenue enhancement and no new taxes, are fated to win the war. And not just this one.
For, from Greece to Ireland to Portugal to Italy, from California to Wisconsin to New Jersey to New York, the crisis of the West is a crisis of liberalism.
Deficits and debts that threaten to wipe out bondholders and banks, destroy currencies, bring down governments and bankrupt nations are everywhere forcing reductions in government payrolls and rollbacks in government programs.
Across the West, the public sector is under siege.
And parties of the left, be they liberal, socialist or Marxist, depend on the public sector increasing its employees, increasing its beneficiaries, increasing its share of the national wealth.
That is what they do. That is how they grow. And that is how they reach and retain power.
Bottom line. Parties of the left are on this earth to grow the government. But the West has entered a period where its economic survival and the prevention of financial collapse mandate constant and deep cuts in the size and sweep of government.
For the left, this is going to be a long decade.
Obama hasn’t “run rings” around anyone. The entire premise is false.
Obama hasn’t “run rings” around anyone. What a false premise.
Stupid crazy posting system. Sorry for the extra post, wasn’t sure the first one had gone through.
“...liberal, socialist or Marxist,...”
This is redundant.
Buchanan is dreaming.
The liberals are in almost complete control - government, the media, entertainment.
It is the liberal agenda that is under discussion. We are arguing about how much more debt and spending and tax increase Obama can do, not what the conservative agenda is.
RINOs like McConnell are trying to see how much they have to yield to Obama so that they can keep their cushy jobs. More than half the people are now on the goverment rolls in one way or another (tax exmpt, welfare or pension recipients, cushy government jobs) and that guarantees that liberal politicians who reward them will get reelected.
Liberalism is still on an ascending wave, aided by compliant Republican establishment types who are happy as long as they get theirs, and damn the rest of America.
Yes it would be a win to get dollar for dollar cuts or an increase in the debt max. At least it won't mean massacre at the polls for Rs.
The posting system needs a way for the author to edit or delete.
‘Obama won the public relations battle’
This is the DC meme of the week. Utterly false.
bush 43 spent $7 trillion in eight years and obama $4 trillion in 2 years...
it’s a crisis of socialists + pubies.
Never underestimate the ability of the GOP to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It’s never too late for them to roll over...
I hope that liberlism does retreat. But it will be too late.
America, as it was, is gone forever. This is not a completely bad thing, as long as conservatives can reverse some of the worse damage. But it was a completely ill-thought out thing. At least for everybody who wasn’t a radical Leftist thug.
ONe reason I never vote Democratic. No matter how decent and humane and reasonable a Democrat may sound, or even be, his position in power just adds to that of the core of the Democratic Party, the hard, hard Left. Those that, no matter their lies, desire the total destruction of America, Christianity, and the West.
ditto.
The problem is that most of the media are Leftists, steeped in the folly of a Fabian & Marxist influenced media. It is thus difficult to even get the message out, no matter how well framed that message may be.
The technique must be to emphasize key points repeatedly. To respond to hand-wringing questions with the fact that the Constitution gives the House the right & duty to originate all revenue bills (Article I, Sec. 7, Constitution Of The United States). Thus, what they propose with respect to raising the debt ceiling is what the Senate & President must deal with.
If the President refuses to sign, the onus will be on him, if the House leadership sticks to the right script.
William Flax
There is no such thing as a decent, humane and reasonable democrat. Democrats, lie, steal are just plain evil. I have never voted for any rat, and will never vote for any rat.
We can start by slashing the EPA budget by 90% and zeroing out any effort to regulate CO2 emissions. Then we can start fast-tracking the permitting process for all forms of energy development, not just the unicorn farts, uh, 'renewables' that the 'Rats are in love with. Once this regulatory stranglehold is lifted, then the economy really will begin to improve, tax revenues will rise, and unemployed people will get back to work.
Of course, this interferes with the grand socialist plan ...
I have yet to see the Repubs in the House agreeing to raise the debt ceiling. Sounds like a DB piece to me w/ the author insinuating that the repubs have lost the PR battle, which I believe the author is just throwing stuff to see what sticks, b/c the repubs have NOT lost the PR battle!! If anything the dems stripes are coming out and the American people are awakening.
Also, the repubs stand doesn't lie with not raising taxes per se, their stand lies with not increasing the debt ceiling....period! The dems need the debt ceiling raised so that they can continue to pay off their cronies and steal the next round of elections. The repubs have the dems by the throat just by simply saying, no soup for you! The sky is not going to fall on 8/2/11...checks will still go out....they just won't be going out to the dems cronies!!!!!
The dems have operated like this since the turn of the 20th century...they have been buying off votes for over 100 years *thinks that may be a good campaign slogan for the next go around*...anywho I digress. The GOP must stand firm on saying "NO" to raising the debt ceiling....PERIOD!
Obama is the icing on the Commie Cake being baked for the past 60 years or so. He didn’t mix the ingredients or put them into the oven, but he has been trained all his life to present it, The New World Order! (Secret ingredients are a combination of Socialism, Communism,Fascism, Mormonism and Islam.)
However we have yet to see if that cake will fall to a gooey mess as the American People refuse to eat what is being so blatantly served us!
pat buchanan is a moron...but he hit this one right out of the park...nice job pat
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