Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Pure blame-shifting

It really shouldn't surprise anyone with two brain cells to rub together that the House teabaggers have zero sincere interest in a deal to forestall the sequester. John Boehner (R-no) is on record as having gotten 98% of what he wanted in the original deal, and even allowing for a bit of hyperbole in that number, he knows he's not going to get a better deal, especially now that President Obama has found his spine.

Instead, what Boehner wants to do is shift the blame for the cuts onto Obama and the Democrats. He and his party of mercenary bastards really do believe that perception is reality. Thus the only thing that matters to him in the sequestration fight is to win the battle of perception.

Never mind whether these cuts hurt people. Republicans don't care about anyone who's vulnerable.

Never mind whether these cuts hurt the economy. Republicans have shown for years that the size of the economic pie doesn't matter to them. They in fact support economic inequality as a desirable goal, not merely a side effect of their desire to drown the government in the bathtub. When the economy hurts the middle class (and the forgotten poor), it also hurts the wealthy, but the wealthy recover their losses and attain even greater plutocratic power over the rest of us. And that's what Republicans support.

Never mind whether these cuts hurt the military, even. Since the voters no longer trust Republicans more than Democrats on the military, blame-shifting this is the GOP's way of trying to get that trust back. Obviously, an undeserving way.

Fortunately, Boehner seems to be failing to convince Americans that his lies are true. This must come as a surprise to him, since he and the Republicans have been so often successful at that in the past.

Update (3/1): Yep:

Amid clamoring from his more conservative members, Mr. Boehner eventually reaffirmed his own conservative principles, abandoning even the pretense of reaching a bipartisan solution on the spending cuts. He argued that the president had gotten his desired tax increases in the earlier showdown. And he promised no more one-on-one negotiating sessions meetings with Mr. Obama.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is amazing how you demorats continue to blame Republicans for an economy of your own creation. Just when will you take credit for the damage your socialist policies have done? Six years, 10, 20? You piss and whine about a measly 85 billion in alleged cuts and then are happy to spend $1,600,000,000,000.00 more than you have coming in. It is truly incredible how much the cost of votes has become inflated too. You and your Communist ilk have sank the good ship America but you still aren't happy. You have to fire at her as she goes down.

lovable liberal said...

There is nothing in your comment that's not mind-numbingly stupid.

Republican plutocratic policies crashed the economy and continue to resist fixing it. If you believe in unregulated capitalism, you're an idiot, no matter what all the contrived, unbelievable Ayn Rand blather might claim.

The deficit is almost completely the creation of the Duhbya years. Republicans couldn't give a shit about the deficit anyway. They only care about lower taxes for the very wealthy.

$1.6 trillion was the last Bush deficit (you're a dipshit for trying to claim otherwise). President Obama has had lower deficits, despite the massive overhang of war, recession, and tax cuts for the very wealthy.

If you think this is socialism, you're really a moron. We should be far more attentive to making the rich pay the fair share of their misbegotten gains back to the Treasury, so that the middle class has a chance again in this country.

You really couldn't find your ass with both hands if you were sitting on it.