From The Left: GOP’s heartbreakingly stupid politics

From The Left: GOP’s heartbreakingly stupid politics

from E.J. Dionne with editors comments

Seeing our government and our creditworthiness held hostage to the demands of a rightwing minority is infuriating. It’s also heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking because the only thing keeping our country from being its growing, innovative and successful self is genuinely and unnecessarily stupid politics. [True, five years of Obama and we are at the bottom]

The United States emerged from a horrific global recession in better shape than most other countries. Our recovery was slower than it had to be because of too much budget-cutting, too soon. Nonetheless, we avoided the more extreme forms of austerity and our economy has been coming back – at least until this made-in-the-House-Republican-Caucus crisis started. [ Deficit doubled the GDP during Obama's reign]

It’s heartbreaking because a nation whose triumphs have always provided inspiration to proponents of democracy around the world is instead giving the champions of authoritarian rule a chance to use our dysfunction as an argument against democracy. [No, they see the current President as a naive neophyte in way over his head]

It’s heartbreaking because the reward to President Barack Obama for pursuing broadly middle-of-the road policies is to be accused of being an ultra-liberal or, even more preposterously, a socialist. Are our rightwing multimillionaires and billionaires so unhinged that they can cast a modest tax hike as a large step toward a Soviet-style economy? [ No other President has imposed more government regulations and constraints on the people in the history of the U.S.]

The most revealing example of the lunacy that now rules is the very health care plan that has Republicans so up in arms that they’re willing to wreck the economy to get it repealed. The Affordable Care Act is actually based on market principles that conservatives once endorsed. Its centerpiece promotes competition among insurers and subsidizes the purchase of private insurance. [An outright lie. Even the Democrats are moving away as they learn more. Democratic support has dropped substantially since last year’s presidential election, from 72 percent in November to 57 percent in the February month's poll. That’s the second weakest level of support Kaiser has found amongst Democrats since it began the monthly tracking poll in April 2010.]

It has little in common with the British National Health Service or the Canadian single-payer model – systems that work, by the way [Lie, they don't] – except for sharing with them the goal of eventually covering everyone. Yet we have a shutdown driven by the idea, as Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., put it, that Obamacare constitutes the “greatest threat” to our economy. It should not surprise us when errant nonsense creates a nonsensical crisis. [Right now, all across America, employees are receiving notices that their insurance coverage is being dropped because it isn't "compliant" with Obamacare. Simultaneously, employers everywhere are slashing jobs, cutting hours and downsizing their operations just to stay afloat by avoiding the most punishing requirements of Obamacare. Across the economy, Obamacare is devastating American workers and casting tens of millions of people into a state of despair.]

And what’s going on is heartbreaking because this contrived emergency is distracting us from the problems we do need to solve, including rising inequality, declining mobility, underinvestment in our infrastructure, a broken immigration system and inadequate approaches to educating and training our people. [No, it is jobs and the economy with a viable middle class]

Obama has finally decided he’s had enough of a politics based on “extortion” and “threats.” He has signaled that he is happy to negotiate, just not under a gun held by the most irresponsible elements of the GOP. He is exhausted, and rightly so, by the fecklessness of House Speaker John Boehner, who told Democrats early on that he would not shut the government down and then crumpled before a revolt by a corporal’s guard of 40 to 80 members of a 435-member House. [Most Americans oppose a clean raise in the debt limit without budget cuts attached to a new spending bill, but they are also opposed to using a government shutdown to force those cuts, a new poll shows. It is not a fringe element E.J.]

Now it is said by people who see themselves as realists that because he is dealing with irrational foes, Obama has to be the “adult in the room.” The definition of “adult” in this case is that he must cave a little because the other side is so bonkers that it just might upend the economy.[Obama has been absent and relegated the issue to Harry and Co.  How many times to we have to hear O say No?]

Giving in is exactly what Obama cannot do. The president offered Boehner a face-saving way out on Tuesday by suggesting he’d be happy to engage in broad budget talks if the government reopened and there was at least a short-term increase in the debt limit. To go any further would be to prove to the far right that its extra-constitutional extremism will pay dividends every time. [E.J. does not understand the Constitution and who really expects Obama to negotiate AFTER he gets what he wants!?]

What’s required from the outside forces who want this mess to go away is unrelenting pressure on Boehner and the supposedly more reasonable Republicans who say they want to open the government and pay our debts. Up to now these Republicans have been the enablers of the tea party faction. [E.J. like many on the left is willing to trample on 1/2 the voting public to get his way]

The tea party folks at least know what they believe and fight for it. The rest of the Republican Party cowers before them, lacking both conviction and courage. It would be truly heartbreaking if a once great political party brought the country down because its leaders were so afraid of confronting unreason in their ranks. [E.J. cannot remember from one president to the next.  These people were elected to congress to do exactly what they are doing.  They are brace, courageous and resolute.  The left want good soldiers, not leaders.]

Lastly, what the overuse of the word "Heartbreaking" is the lefts smarmy way of tugging at peoples emotions.  It is not heartbreaking,  maybe a lot of things, but not heartbreaking.