.
US Sen. Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006. The left uses violent speech because they can't defend their ideas. The mostly
wimpy Beltway Republicans are eager to give Obama whatever he wants.
9/29/13,
"Democratic Leaders' Explosive Words," Real Clear Politics, Carl M. Cannon
""What we're not for is
negotiating with people with a bomb strapped
to their chest—we're not going to do that," White House Communications
Director Dan Pfeiffer recently told CNN's Jake Tapper.
"I believe the
House Republicans are entirely responsible."
“One hundred percent?” Tapper asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Pfeiffer responded. “Absolutely.”
It’s hard to say which is worse: that so many prominent Democrats
believe they aren’t responsible for any of Washington’s gridlock—or that
they’d say these things anyway.
Not all that long ago, a presidential
spokesman using this language would be talking about murderers who
hijacked airplanes or drove explosive-laden trucks into the barracks of
U.S. Marines—
not political opponents with differing notions about
federal spending.
With suicide bombs going off daily around the world and funerals for
the Washington Navy Yard victims still taking place, one might expect a
modicum of rhetorical restraint from inside the White House. No such
luck. For five years now, such metaphors have been the cudgel of choice
for administration officials, along with their fellow Democrats on
Capitol Hill and journalistic fellow travelers.
It all starts with President Obama, who routinely accuses Republicans
trying to thwart his spending plans by putting “party ahead of
country.” Last January, when talking—as Dan Pfeiffer was this week—about
GOP insistence on trading spending cuts for agreeing to raise the
nation’s debt limit—
the president said he wouldn’t negotiate with those
holding “a gun at the head of the American people.”
Joe Biden asserts Republicans are holding the country “hostage” with
their spending stance, and in a 2011 meeting with congressional
Democrats the vice president agreed with the suggestion that Tea Party
groups were “terrorists.”
Among Democrats on Capitol Hill, it starts at the top, too.
Last week, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid compared Republican
conservatives to “Thelma and Louise,” adding, “America will know exactly
who to blame: Republican fanatics in the House and the Senate."
On the House side, such talk has long been a staple for Democratic
Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose default argument on fiscal or economic policy
is to impugn conservatives’ patriotism. In 2008, she said it was “very
unpatriotic” for Republicans to balk at a big bank bailout. Two years
later, she lashed out at those resisting raising the debt ceiling: “Are
these people not patriotic?”
Let’s stipulate that this type of talk obscures, rather than
elucidates, the impasse in Washington. Let’s also stipulate, for the
moment, that the leaders in both major political parties actually care
about the country. So why has the budget process become an ongoing game
of chicken?
Why do Republicans keep insisting on extracting concessions from
Democrats in return for raising the debt limit, which, as Democrats
point out, merely allows the government the legal authority to borrow
money it’s already spent? Why do Democrats act as though refusing to
negotiate on Obamacare is something to brag about?
Let’s start with the Republicans:
Almost universally, they consider the Affordable Care Act, which
passed Congress on a party-line vote in 2010, a bad law. They believe
the administration is prevaricating about its costs, and that its
coercive aspects are anathema to a free people. Accordingly, many
conservatives remain convinced the law is unconstitutional, regardless
of the Supreme Court’s Talmudic finding to the contrary.
Republicans also can’t understand how the president can blithely
announce a delay in the law’s business-related requirements while
leaving the hated individual mandate intact. Republicans also point to
public opinion polls showing the law to be unpopular with a majority of
Americans.
Finally, they say that the GOP re-captured the House in 2010 in large
part by promising to fight Obamacare. Many of these members come from
districts that voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney, and they worry that
if they do acquiesce to funding the thing, it’s likely they’d be
knocked off in a Republican primary.
Some of those reasons are lousy—declining poll numbers is a
particularly weak argument—while some are solid.
None of them puts a
rational person in mind of a suicide bomber, however, which brings us
back to the Democrats. Why are they so adamant that they shouldn’t
negotiate with Republicans?
Part of the problem is that Obama and his White House minions have no
institutional memory. Obama recently told the Business Roundtable, “You
have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or
the threat of not raising the debt being used to extort a president or a
governing party and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with
the budget and nothing to do with the debt.”
This claim is wrong. First of all, the president is asserting that
defunding the Affordable Care Act is unrelated to the budget or the
burgeoning national debt—but this is exactly what Republicans say
motivates them: ACA-mandated spending increases Democrats won’t
acknowledge.
Even if one buys the president’s argument that Obamacare isn’t
strictly a budget issue, the debt ceiling vote has been employed for 40
years—usually by congressional Democrats—to get leverage on policy
issues ranging from campaign finance reform to war in Southeast Asia.
But Democrats do have legitimate reasons for holding fast. One of
them is that setting budget policy under the deadline pressure of the
debt ceiling is bad governance. Why? Because Republican leverage hinges
on risking a defaulting on the nation’s debts, which would scare the
bejesus out of the world’s financial markets, harming—among other
things—the U.S. economy.
Democrats also argue that what Republicans are doing is fundamentally
undemocratic. The ACA was passed into law, and signed by a president.
Since that time, Republicans have recaptured the House, true, but
Democrats have retained their Senate majority in two subsequent
elections. Moreover, a Democratic president was re-elected in a campaign
in which the GOP nominee said he’d do away with Obamacare via executive
order his first day in office.
So it’s not that the Democrats don’t have a valid point of view. To
my mind, they have the stronger arguments, which is why all
their loose
talk comparing Republicans to suicide bombers is so dispiriting. But
then, as Harry Reid said himself, this isn’t really about winning the
argument—it’s about winning the next election cycle." via Instapundit
.
==========================
9/26/13,
"Carney Admits Obama Used Same Logic As Today’s GOP to Oppose Debt Ceiling Increase," Washington Free Beacon
"Senator Obama voted against the debt ceiling increase in 2006 to make a point about “what he believed were wrong fiscal priorities of [the Bush] administration”."...
============================
Obama re-election helped GOP House Speaker Boehner:
12/8/12, "Once Boxed-In, Boehner May Finally Be Master Of The House," NPR, Frank James
"In a paradoxical way, Obama's re-election victory coupled with
congressional Democrats adding to their numbers may have helped Boehner.
Some of those wins came at the expense of the Tea Party, the
conservative movement whose affiliated House members have been very
willing to stand up to Boehner....
Despite complaints from conservative activists and bloggers, however, Boehner remains the most powerful Republican in Washington."
=============================
Comment:
To clarify about landslide Nov. 2010 elections, it's very true most were elected to defund (not repeal, defund) ObamaCare. But they weren't elected by GOP efforts-they were elected by the Tea Party. The GOP didn't even want most of the people we gave them, hated having people who paid attention to voters. The GOP told them to shut up and sit down. The GOP House never once allowed an ObamaCare defunding measure to come to the floor. The gridlock thing mentioned in the article and and everywhere else is a charade by both political parties and the media. The GOP actually loves ObamaCare, has never wanted to repeal it since day one. The GOP has merged with democrats as junior members, loves all the same big government things the left does. They love Obama because he helped them beat the Tea Party in 2012 by allowing the IRS to be used against them. The TP was no threat to democrats, they only threatened the pathetic GOP. On the other side, when democrats spew violent rhetoric against imagined opponents, it gins up their base.
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