2011-August-10
So if the real problem is jobs and the real solution is more government stimulus and all you really want to do is cut taxes for those who are already extremely well-off, what do you do? You scream about the deficit. A reasonable solution to the deficit problem probably includes a tax increase on the rich. But your real mission is to get the poor and middle-income people to pay for government services, while you grab a bigger and bigger share of the pie. How do you get that past the rational people?
In other circumstances, the voters could have had choice between the screaming, hysterical mad hatters of the tea party and the rational, measured Reid and Obama. If.... if Obama had immediately counter-attacked the Republican hysterics with a strong, determined insistence that, at a time of 9% unemployment and recession, the government needs to step up.
The minute Obama agreed to make the deficit a priority, Reason went out the window. I think it was a huge mistake. Republicans demanding tax cuts is nothing new. But by endorsing the basic principle, Obama seemed to validate the idea that the deficit is the big problem facing America right now. It's not. It's unemployment.
Even so, it's surprising how many people out there kept their heads. And a little baffling in terms of Obama's strategy: the majority of Americans still seemed to support the idea that unemployment was the number one issue and that the Republicans were acting like a bunch of spoiled children. And that the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, at least as they apply to the rich. Why, oh why, did he cave?
The biggest irony of all this, of course, is that the Republicans don't actually give a damn about the deficit. When Bush borrowed billions to finance his tax cuts, throwing the budget into a deficit a scant one year after Clinton (who left a surplus) left office, there was nary a whimper from the mad hatters. (Yes, since his tax cuts put the budget into a deficit, Bush took out a loan, made the taxpayers liable for repayment, and handed the money all over to his rich benefactors.
The Republicans only ever seem to care about decreasing taxes on the rich. That's it. That's all. The military, Wall Street, Copyright, Patent Law, Homeland Security--- everything is to protect the wealthy from the claims of the poor and lower classes. Everything must maximize the burden on working families to pay for the minimal necessary government services so that the rich can send you to die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and he, how about Iran?
Iran is there waiting. It is waiting for the vacuum that develops when America is not at war with anyone else.
Obama's only hope for the next election-- and it is NOT a dismal one-- is that the Tea Party will apply their effluent enthusiasms to the primaries next year and they will nominate a Gingrich or Bachmann or Palin or Perry to run against him.