GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has stated that his principal goal is to cause Obama to lose in 2012. Tangible improvements in the economy are key to Obama’s reelection. If, as the GOP claims, Obama’s policies are bad for the economy, then the GOP should give him everything he proposes and reap the political benefits in the 2012 election. If, on the other hand, the GOP fears that Obama’s policies will revitalize the economy, then those policies must be obstructed in any way possible.
The April raising of the debt ceiling will show if the GOP priority is the economy or their own political ambitions.
Without the raising of the debt ceiling, the government would have to shutdown, a Republican opportunity for blackmailing the president that they won’t be able to resist. How much blood they will be able to extract is still to be determined.
Now, the Republicans, along with China and Germany, are on the warpath against the Federal Reserve System and its chairman Ben Bernanke. The Fed is proposing buying long-term debt as a means of reducing unemployment. A side effect of this purchase will be a somewhat devaluation of the dollar, making US products more competitive overseas. Now I can understand why trading surplus giants like China and Germany don’t want products from the US to be more competitive, but Republicans? Republicans see economic hardship as a path to returning one of their own to the White House. They’re the only alternative in a two-party system.
The new START treaty, and our national security, is being endangered not because of any legitimate objection, but because there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office. Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, ponders the lack of approval of the treaty: “I’ve got to think that it’s the increasingly partisan nature and the desire for the president not to have a foreign policy victory.” The Republicans would endanger the nation rather than approve an Obama administration foreign policy initiative.
If the President doesn’t start playing hardball politics with these clowns, it’s the country that will suffer. This is the time to release the administration’s political attach dog: the Vice-President. But this administration is burdened by Joe “Gaffe Machine” Biden, whose too frequent verbal screw-ups become the story. At times like these, I wish Obama had picked Hillary instead.
H/T: NY Times (Paul Krugman), The Washington Monthly (Steve Benen), Mother Jones (Kevin Drum).
-David Drumm (Nal)
A couple of Democratic talking heads on the Sunday shows isn’t going to get the message about START or anything else. Every Democratic politician ought to be doing radio and television and in-person statements in their own states and generating wide coverage of these issues. They need to be picking fights with their state republican counterparts and telling voters that they need to tell their obstructionist politicians to get off their butt and pass Start or the next time there just may be a mushroom cloud.
The Democrats need to start using the same rhetoric as the Republicans because it works. It has always worked and will continue to do so.
And Ried and Pelosi need to keep Congress in session until New Years day if necessary to get it done in the case of START.
“eniobob 1, November 28, 2010 at 10:49 am
Senator Kyl is on meet the press now giving a lot of non answers to questions,These next (2) years as I said before are going to be eye opening for a lot of people especialy the ones who have voted against their own self interest.”
WASHINGTON — Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the key Republican vote on the new START Treaty, said on Sunday that there was not enough time to pass a strategic arms pact with Russia this year.
The Arizona Republican didn’t pinpoint specific disagreements he had with the language of START. Rather, he said failure of passage would be because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), had already scheduled away the time needed to consider the measure by packing the lame duck docket with legislative gifts to Democratic constituents.
“My issue is that you can’t do everything,” Kyl said on “Meet the Press.” “I was stating it as a matter of reality not a matter of policy. How can Harry Reid do all the things we are talking about, deal with expiring tax provisions and in addition to that deal with the START Treaty which by itself could take two weeks?”
Two weeks would be a historically long window to debate a measure that foreign policy luminaries in both parties have insisted is a must-pass. The last START treaty was passed through Congress in five days
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/28/jon-kyl-start-wont-happen_n_788863.html
what happened to not supporting the president was emboldening the terrorists?
My take on it is based upon what the Wall Street Journal said. Yep I listen to the righties at times.
They said that such a high percentage of wealth is owned, controlled, and manipulated by the 2% elite, that they can control the economy by spending or not.
Mitch is their poster girl/boy/man/dude sorta thingy, with a stiff sorta thrifty upper lip.
The rest of us evidently only know what we read in the newsy papyrus.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/08/graphs-of-wrath.html
I think this was the “gateway”
Mitch McConnell is an enemy of the Constitution and the non-corporate. End of story.
Senator Kyl is on meet the press now giving a lot of non answers to questions,These next (2) years as I said before are going to be eye opening for a lot of people especialy the ones who have voted against their own self interest.
Jack Kirkpatrick: Shanna, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let ’em crash.
Swarthmore mom: I can’t get any videos to post either, even when I post the URL from the address bar… I’ll take a look at the link. (Thanks for posting it.) Has it already been released?
It’s the word press spam filter. It seems to happen when we have guest bloggers the most.
The Rs certainly know they can’t repeal the health care fiasco & they want it that way! Now they will be able to blame the bad parts on the Ds while claiming to be in favor of the good parts.
On the economy all they have to do is continue to stall & they will have the remainder of the ‘blew dogs’ to help them in this effort.
If the Ds had any backbone . . . eh, why even bother finishing the sentence . . . they would use that approach – if you really want us to fail & our ideas are so bad let us implement them & you win.
I think the Teapublicans will eventually vote for the raising of the debt ceiling,but they will claw and scratch and cry about it all the way to the end. McConnell has no intention of giving Obama any victories of any sort so he will continue to stall and pout holds on nominations for judges and other obama nominees. I agree that President Obama has to get down in the dirt and attack the Teapublicans and call them out. He should also forget about this fairy tale of bipartisanship on the part of the Right. They have never been bipartisan and they won’t be for the next two years.
anon nurse It has been on for weeks but in limited release.
Swarthmore mom: I can’t get any videos to post either, even when I post the URL from the address bar… I’ll take a look at the link. (Thanks for posting it.) Has it already been released?
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi751502873/ The embedding did not work again, but I think you would like the movie”Inside Job”, anon nurse.
Ditto to what Swarthmore mom said…
Rich, initially referring to the Stewart and Beck rallies in Washington, says the following:
“But both rallies, for all the commotion they generated, have already faded to the status of quirky historical footnotes. The reason is that neither addressed the elephant in the room — or the donkey. That would be big money — the big money that dominates our political system, regardless of who’s in power. Two years after the economic meltdown, most Americans now recognize that that money has inexorably institutionalized a caste system where everyone remains (at best) mired in economic stasis except the very wealthiest sliver.
The Great Depression ended the last comparable.”
eniobob. That piece by Frank Rich pretty much sums it up. He has been spot on for the last couple weeks. I still think the republicans in congress should give up their government sponsored health insurance.
“For all the McConnell-Boehner rhetorical pandering to Tea Partiers, the health care law will not be repealed by Congress — and certainly not any provisions that benefit the G.O.P. establishment’s friends in the health care industry. Over at FreedomWorks, Dick Armey’s Tea-Party-organizing group, there’s much belligerent talk of retribution against corporations seen as too friendly to Obama policies — most notably General Electric. It’s all hot air: G.E.’s political action committees gave a total of $1.6 million to politicians in both parties in 2010, and one of its former high-powered lobbyists, Dan Coats, is the newly elected Republican senator from Indiana and a probable member of the Senate Finance Committee.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28rich.html?_r=1&hp
You said it, AY…
Makes me feel like the evening of the Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, also known as Reichskristallnacht…..what more can be or need be said…