Everybody knows that the Israelis and Palestinians will reach a peace deal before the Republicans and Democrats reach a debt deal. Indeed, given the way Washington politicians played Russian roulette over raising the national debt limit this summer, it is hardly surprising that the six Republicans and six Democrats on this Super Committee are doing the same now over deficit reductions to reduce this debt (at $15 trillion and rising).
Yet you can be sure that when the deadline for a deal strikes at midnight on Wednesday these blowhards will have a deal to kick their mandate down the road without triggering the automatic cuts they themselves put in place because they knew they were too irresponsible to reach a deal in the first place: got that?!
It’s tempting to say a pox on both parties. But everybody also knows that it is the Republicans who are insisting that raising taxes on the rich would be tantamount to committing treason. This, even though Democrats are only proposing to eliminate the Bush-era tax cuts and return taxes back to the level the rich enjoyed during the halcyon Clinton era. Indeed, so dogmatic and doctrinaire are the Republicans in this respect that they now insist that even uttering the word “compromise” is tantamount to political blasphemy.
By contrast, President Obama and the Democrats have repeatedly signaled their willingness to make significant cuts in the entitlements (like Medicare and Social Security) that are the bread and butter of their political lives.
It’s troubling enough that Tea Partiers think that they can go to Washington and get things done without working with any Democrat, including the president. But to have someone like [purportedly centrist Republican Senator John] McCain actually fueling this fallacy is a recipe for partisan gridlock the likes of which Washington has never seen before….
(Elections becoming freak show contests, The iPINIONS Journal, October 19, 2010)
So it is clear that Republicans, driven by their Tea Party political jihadists, are the ones (mostly) to blame for the partisan gridlock that now defines politics in America. And they do not seem the least bit chastened by the deliberate, do-nothing obstructionism that has caused Congress to suffer its lowest rating in public opinion polls in the history of the United States.
At any rate, the best way to break this gridlock is for people to vote for Democrats in 2012 to at least the same degree they voted for Republicans in 2010; i.e., give a reelected President Obama a filibuster-proof, Democrat-controlled Congress to work with.
Apropos of which, pay no attention to the crocodile lamentations of Republicans over the spectacular failure of this Super Committee. Because, in fact, this failure represents the greatest triumph yet in their declared mission to make Obama a one term-president: a mission they have executed by blocking anything he proposes that might improve the economy and thereby make him look like an effective leader.
Treason? This is a charge that should be hurled at the Republicans who have made it abundantly clear that they would rather see the U.S. sink into a second depression than see this (black) Democrat succeed as president of the United States.
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Elections becoming freak show contest.
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Sunday, at 7:10 am