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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Stupid Party

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  July 24th, 2011 at 09:00 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Having watched this debt ceiling fight play out over the past couple of months, I keep coming back to one inescapable conclusion: we need better generals.

The Washington GOP wants to force another vote on the debt ceiling right before the election. That’s one of the ideas being kicked around in part of this grand deal.

Let’s play this out:

We get to the last week. The Democrats and media say the GOP will destroy the economy and risk our credit rating. Barack Obama gets the debt ceiling increased. He is hailed in the press as able to bring everyone together.

In other words, the chicken GOP too afraid to fight it out in the press will fold like cheap suits and give Barack Obama a victory right before the election. Obama will wind up looking bipartisan.

Yeah, we need better generals. This is stupidity.

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COMMENTS

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  • johnt

    You would get crushed in the stampede.
    Apologies to those innocents in the House who actually believe things.

  • throwback59

    Aren’t they the team that loses every single time to the Harlem Globetrotters?

  • smagar

    They need to leave some bruises on the Dems and O’s credibility as responsible players in this debt ceiling debate. They need to prep the battlespace for Monday morning markets…actually Sunday afternoon markets in Asia.

  • carolina

    Maybe an election battle over this issue is not a mistake. BO & the dems are stopping consideration in Congress. Couldn’t the states take up this battle state by state and FORCE consideration?
    If 2/3 of the states ratify the House Fed BBA……. quick passage might occur in 2013.
    The House is going to pass a BBA bill next week.
    Let’s take the battle back to the states now. Show that BO & senate dems are against the Will of the People.
    just a thought……

  • carolina

    Maybe an election battle over this issue is not a mistake. BO & the dems are stopping consideration in Congress. Couldn’t the states take up this battle state by state and FORCE consideration?
    If 2/3 of the states ratify the House Fed BBA……. quick passage might occur in 2013.
    The House is going to pass a BBA bill next week.
    Let’s take the battle back to the states now. Show that BO & senate dems are against the Will of the People.
    just a thought……

  • izoneguy

    Then that explains why Obama & the dems don’t want anything to do with it.

  • Whacker77

    John Boehner’s actions have been shameful throughout this entire process. Time after time, he has told us negotiating with the White House is like negotiating with jello. If that’s the case, why has he continued to go back to the table with Obama?

    I can only surmise two things. First, Boehner is just like McConnell. He wants a deal. Any deal, Just give him a deal. Second, Boehner isn’t that smart. I hate to question the man’s intelligence, but how else can we describe a man who seems to committ the same mistake over and over.

    After the 2008 elections, John Boehner should have been out as leader. Through luck and a twist of fate, he became Speaker, but not because of anything he did. Regardless, he should be out as Speaker either now or after the next election.

    It seems obvious to me the idea of real cuts is not something he concerns himself with these days. Otherwise, why would he have sold us a bill of goods of the CR he negotiated in April.

    If we’re going to surrender, let’s go ahead and surrender now rather than a week before the 2012 election. We’ve got Obama on the ropes and Boehner seems to want to save the guy.

  • juumanistra

    There were never more than a handful in the House, plus a few more in the Senate, who were opposed to raising debt ceiling. The debate has always been what concessions the GOP would extract in exchange for raising it. So, yes, Obama will get his increase in the debt ceiling, but that was always in the cards. What we will likely end up with is a modest increase in the debt ceiling off-set by a near-equivalent in spending reductions, plus a few revenue enhancements to make it more palatable to the Democrats in the Senate, with hopefully a few procedural safeguards, like statutory payment prioritization, thrown in so that when we next return here we can do things in a calmer, less chaotic environment. A rather anticlimactic end for all the sturm und drang of the past few weeks, but such would constitute a limited but real victory and a large-ish defeat for the Obama administration, as a $200bn increase in the debt-ceiling that’s more or less off-set by spending reductions is a far cry from the $2,300bn he requested at the start of this. And such spares us the vagaries of a grand bargain, as rushing into such half-cocked is bound to produce more harm than even a substantive clean increase in the debt ceiling.

    And make no mistake: The dysfunctional leadership and confusion in the caucus have been the natural byproducts of the fact that the GOP has yet to develop any kind of coherent and comprehensive plan to achieve its base’s desire to restore the nation to fiscal sanity. (It also contributed to the flailing as folks tried to hash out a grand bargain, which has led to a half-dozen plans that can be said to have GOP buy-in, and none of which can be stated to authoritatively represent the GOP’s position.) Because the drivers of the debt explosion are primarily structural, such a unified strategy is necessary: Without a programmatic narrative that ties together why entitlement restructuring, tax code modernization, and the disassembly of the regulatory state are vital and interlinked, each can be defeated in detail via the Left’s traditional arsenal of fearmongering and demagoguery.

    The problem, of course, is that building any such unified program that both makes internal sense and gains the support of the entire caucus is hard. The issues are complex and hugely controversial, making dealing with them inordinately time-consuming and that most dreaded of C-words — compromise! — inevitable with the Scott Browns and Olympia Snowes of the party. But shouldn’t the energies of the base be directed towards getting the GOP to agree to a specific legislative program, then? I suspect it’ll be far easier to find competent advocates within the caucus once what the GOP is for can be stated with particularity and specificity.

  • http://www.AmericanThinker.com Hammer2008

    Having a second vote during the September-October 2012 election season will cut the legs out of whomever the party nominee is, much less steal the show, other than to take the nominees campaign off message… remember the 2008 TARP-I debacle?

    Strategically, the ONLY time another debt limit vote would be a good thing is May-June 2012, when President Obama’s war chest is thumping the perspective GOP nominee over the airwaves. Distract Obama and tie him up in DC minutia over debt once more then to remind the American people.

    So a 9-month debt limit extension of what, $1.5 trillion with equitable cuts over “seven” years (NOT ten years), starting in 2012 with $200 billion. 25% could come from DoD, with adjustments elsewhere.

    AND NO TAX INCREASES!

  • Michael M. Keohane

    as the lesser of two evils. Congressional Republicans are a combination of “Jubliation C. Cornpone” and” Charlie Brown.”

    Like Lil Abner’s Cornpone, they are the first to call “Retreat” even when the odds are in their favor

    Then, they do the “Charlie Brown/Lucy” football bit.

    Every time they have agreed to a current tax increase with spending reductions to follow, the Democrats have removed the football.

    How many more times will the Congressional Republicans channel “Charlie Brown.”

    More important, how many more times will we tolerate their actions?

  • RealQuiet

    Make them vote against any piece of sound legislation.

  • dbkohl

    Is this a plausable route for this to happen? Can the States bring forth a Constitutional Amendment that has to be ratified (or shot down) by the Congress? Or does it have to go through the Congress, get signed by POTUS, and THEN go to the states? Forgive my ignorance on this point, It’s been decades since I studied thisin school and I haven’t seen Constitutional amendments in my adult life so I am a little bit rusty on this.

  • gekster

    Quick and simple answer for you, dbkohl .

    from:
    http://www.lexisnexis.com/constitution/amendments_howitsdone.asp

    (this is real short)
    “Article V of the Constitution prescribes how an amendment can become a part of the Constitution. While there are two ways, only one has ever been used. All 27 Amendments have been ratified after two-thirds of the House and Senate approve of the proposal and send it to the states for a vote. Then, three-fourths of the states must affirm the proposed Amendment. ”

    “The other method of passing an amendment requires a Constitutional Convention to be called by two-thirds of the legislatures of the States. That Convention can propose as many amendments as it deems necessary. Those amendments must be approved by three-fourths of the states.”

    (The only way the states can get the ball rolling is to use the second method, and it bypasses Congress).

  • alreadyexists

    The highest priority for Reid, McConnell, Boehner, and Pelosi is to preserve the power of Washington insiders to cut backroom deals and to go-along-to-get-along. To ascribe higher ideals to this cabal is both foolish and counterproductive. They are not great leaders. They are successful political managers. They cannot stand on principle, and they view compromise as success.

    In most elections, fewer than 5% of incumbents are removed from office. We are all passengers on a runaway train, and hand-wringing won’t solve the big problems that we face. A big fall may well be the best chance we have for a meaningful reigning in of runaway government spending.

  • Menlo

    Not one branch of government follows the Constitution. The very purpose of “law” school is to teach people how to lie and make things up about it. Government officials and special interests “amend” it via judicial opinion, Congressional legislation, and executive orders and regulations.

  • Green_Lantern

    And yet truer words have never been spoken. Without term limits, we will never have anything but this.

  • BigRedConservative

    Returning to the Revolution spirit before the federal government destroyed the idea of states rights. Proposing a Constitutional Convention would be a logistical nightmare but I’d imagine that the prospect of default should be enough to motivate enough states.

  • chbroussard

    We have abdicated many of our liberties to the federal government and have done the same with our state’s rights. It’s time to take those back too. If the enough states would stick together, I believe they could hogtie this runaway administration.

  • mikeevergreen

    The media is big on “compromise,” and the President is big on “balanced approach.” Both of these are losers for the GOP and the country at this point in time if tax increases are part of a deal. I don’t care what Mayor Bloomberg says.

  • Kyle-MI

    He is even on record as saying he would veto a short term increase.
    The man is desperate to take this issue off the table until after the 2012 election.

    I would rather get a GOP favorable deal now, but a short term seems like a decent second option. For all of their faults they do seem to be making a good effort this time. Past GOP leaders would have folded long before now. I hope that they stick to their guns, but I would only be slightly disappointed with a short term increase.

  • fpete13527

    Turbo Tax cheat Timmy Geithner and Boehner on Wallace now

  • concap

    his time between campaigning and being in DC to handle the next crunch date.

    Some time next October would be much better than now.

    The right should stall any attempt to get it done sooner.

  • fpete13527

    Turbo Timmy lying and spinning and lying more….and lying more.

    Wallace asks Tubo Tim “what’s your plan?” Answer…..duh, du, duh, duh, crickets, duh, duh.

    I hope Wallace asks him if he is “dizzy.”

  • concap

    question on who would get checks first.

  • fpete13527

    Where did Geithner get it that the GOP plans require a $6,500 per person increase on Medicare payments?????

    Sounds like total BS to me.

  • concap

    for five minutes and thru up in my mouth and had to change the channel.

    I fear the same will happen when I listen to Boehner.

  • kestrel

    Emphases in bold are mine:

    from the founding of the republic to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the institution of slavery hovered over national policy deliberations…. And each time this demonic force threatened, American leaders staved it off by putting it off with that lovely process so dear to the hearts of democratic politicians: compromise.

    Thus, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was followed by another one in 1850… which led further to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and perhaps the most despicable decision ever made by the Men in Black?Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). By this time, the Civil War had already begun in ?Bleeding Kansas,? and 70 years of procrastination, cowardice, and abdication yielded a decision that Congress had no power to do anything about… all because the vast number of the people?s representatives refused to face an issue with courage and moral clarity.

    Fast forward to the 21st century, and observe the brow-furrowing expressions that accompany proposals to deal with a debt monster that threatens to swallow the republic…. Government luminaries have ideas, all right; just as the framers of pre-Civil War (final settlement) compromises did, and nearly all their proposals involve the moral equivalent of punishing the slaves while leaving the institution of servitude itself intact….

    …who sacrifices? The American people, the slaves, that?s who. Who or what does not sacrifice? Government; that is, a plethora of agencies and departments that should be abolished…

    In 1863, after the country had experienced a number of the most horrific battles in modern times, President Abraham Lincoln came to the realization that… The odious institution itself had to be abolished, which it was with the Emancipation Proclamation.
    The same conclusion applies today. America needs a Lincoln, not another committee of (Millard) Fillmores.

    — Dr. Martin J. Folkertsma, 12/2/2010
    http://www.visionandvalues.org/2010/12/dealing-with-the-debt-monster-a-political-lesson-from-millard-fillmore/

  • virginiahiker

    Erik — Why don’t you run for Congress or the Senate and work your way into leadership. You clearly believe you can do a better job than those who have been “in the arena”. Frankly, you are beginning to sound like the drunks at a ball game who always know more than the coach and players on the field. So if you think you can do a better job; get out of the cheap seats and into the battle.

    I may not always agree with the legislative strategy chosen by our leaders in Congress, sometimes not even their policies. Nevertheless, I have come to recognize they are by and large good men and women. The vast majority of them are sincerely motivated by love of country and passionately committed to conservative principals. Many of them could leave Congress tomorrow and enjoy a better and more prosperous life at home with their families where they would not need to worry about protecting their back from the cheap shots of critics who have no idea what they are talking about.

    Congressional leaders need to have a thick skin and must expect a certain amount of criticism from their own side. Even reasonably heated criticism is often appropriate and constructive. But lately, you have crossed the line from constructive criticism to loudmouthed ranting. So either get in the game yourself or cut some slack to those who are fighting your battles.

  • fpete13527

    In addition to editor, and news commentator, he has been a legislator on city council for over a year.

    Thank God he is taking the stand here that he is.

    Have you read more than one article here?

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    The left has been dividing and conquering the folks in D.C. for ages, they’re more like random Charlie browns all trying to kick the football before Lucy pulls it away… over and over again.

    If the Republicans can stay together on this one issue and force the Congress to block or the O to veto they can bash the left to impotence in the next elections. If they fail they risk bankrupting the country and then the world… nothing good can come of that unless we win over what comes from multiple nation’s economies collapsing and the chaos that will bring…