{"id":3589,"date":"2011-06-04T14:15:30","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T18:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3589"},"modified":"2011-06-04T14:15:30","modified_gmt":"2011-06-04T18:15:30","slug":"the-gop-may-be-running-out-of-feet-to-shoot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/06\/the-gop-may-be-running-out-of-feet-to-shoot.html","title":{"rendered":"The GOP may be running out of feet to shoot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"National<\/a>
Don't make us resort to drowning kittens!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to stand by his claim that Job 1 for Congressional Republicans<\/a> is to defeat Obama in 2012.\u00a0 Yet the question looms, how far are they willing to go to make that happen?\u00a0 Recent history suggests, pretty damn far.<\/p>\n

To understand what’s going on, you have to first recognize that the GOP is beholden to two major groups.\u00a0 On the one hand they are funded by big business and the wealthy businessmen created therein.\u00a0 The interests of this group define the overall agenda and goals for the party.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the foot soldiers at the polls are largely made up of blue-collars, religious fundamentalists, and seniors.\u00a0 This group is necessary because, come November, you have to have lots of bodies show up to vote for you.\u00a0 But they are ultimately fodder as far as the policy agenda goes.\u00a0 They get tossed a rousing speech, a few sound bites, and an occasional red meat issue and it keeps them fired up and loyal. I’m somewhat reminded of Dennis Hooper’s line<\/a> from Waterworld where he launches into a motivational tirade for his crew and they all storm off below decks to row their hearts out.\u00a0 He’s asked, “So which way we rowin’?” And he replies, “I don’t have a goddamn clue. Don’t worry, they’ll row for a month before they figure out I’m fakin’ it.”<\/p>\n

Now consider, the GOP won handily in 2012 on their promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.\u00a0 Then, once in office, immediately focused on Obamacare and abortion.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 For starters, creating jobs is hard. Especially when the economy is in a demand slump<\/a> and the interest rates are bumping the zero-bound. The only solution is federal deficit spending, and they sure as hell weren’t going there.\u00a0 After all, deficits are bad.\u00a0 Not for the reasons often touted, but because ultimately deficits have to get repaid through taxes\u2014something their corporate benefactors are not fond of\u2014especially when corporate profits and CEO salaries are soaring<\/a>.\u00a0 Which brings us to the second point.\u00a0 Among their fodder constituents, abortion and Obamacare are both reviled.\u00a0 So the strategy was essentially to distract one group while appeasing the other.<\/p>\n

Next up is the Paul Ryan budget.\u00a0 No one in the GOP thought the plan had a snowflake’s chances in hell of passing, yet they lined up behind it in droves.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Two reasons.\u00a0 First, the plan was a message to the corporate benefactors.\u00a0 This was a wish list for the privatization of government programs and tax cuts that all serve to line the pockets of the folks who in turn fund the Republicans.\u00a0 By standing behind it, they were assuring the benefactors they had their backs.\u00a0 Secondly, the plan was political.\u00a0 Actually passing a plan means you can be evaluated down the road for its efficacy.\u00a0 Proposing a plan that can’t pass puts you in a position down the road to say that things suck because nobody listened to your ideas.\u00a0 Politically this was a much more powerful position to be in.<\/p>\n

However, the GOP underestimated their fodder constituents.\u00a0 You’d think they’d have learned from Bush’s crash and burn on Social Security privatization<\/a>, but not so much. They tried to couch the language, but the public saw through that.\u00a0 The result being that Ryan’s budget is now enormously unpopular because it is recognized to fundamentally change Medicare.\u00a0 It turns out that when fodder folks talk about support for smaller government and less spending, they don’t mean to include programs from which they benefit directly.\u00a0 The message sent to Republicans<\/a> in NY’s 26th District special election was overwhelmingly, mess with Medicare and we will vote your ass out.\u00a0 This was the GOP’s first shot to its own foot.\u00a0 It’s limping, and looking for a path back to hale and healthy. (Gee, I hope they can afford medical insurance.)<\/p>\n

Still, the scary specter on the horizon is the debt ceiling.\u00a0 If the Ryan budget was a pistol shot to the left foot, the debt ceiling is a hacksaw poised above the right knee.\u00a0 All the sane people (which is not all of the people<\/a>) on both sides of the aisle agree the ceiling must be raised.\u00a0 To not do so would be economically disastrous<\/a> with long-term consequences.\u00a0 Even Wall Street is saying<\/a> this has to happen. Both sides also recognize the Republicans are simply taking an opportunistic hostage to gain political advantage.\u00a0 This is a dog they clearly don’t want to shoot, but if you think they just might be crazyenough, maybe you’ll buy the magazine anyway.<\/p>\n

Again, why are they playing it this way?\u00a0 And again, there are a couple of forces at work here.\u00a0 On the one hand, the debt ceiling is enormously unpopular.\u00a0 In fairness, understanding the nuances of the impact of the debt ceiling on the macroeconomic health of the U.S. economy is hard to capture in a sound bite, and most people lack the interest or the time to delve into the details.\u00a0 Besides, the GOP has already established with the fodder constituents that deficits are bad. So selling a refusal to move on the debt ceiling is duck soup.\u00a0 Besides, if they can get major concessions from Democrats, they will be in the politically favorable position of being able to crow about their accomplishments.\u00a0 But there are more subtle and insidious forces at work here.<\/p>\n

Everyone acknowledges that Obama’s reelection hopes hinge on the economy<\/a>.\u00a0 The last thing the GOP wants is for the economy to make any demonstrable progress, especially in the area of jobs, wages, or anything felt directly by their fodder constituents, prior to 2012.\u00a0 Obama’s demise (Job 1) is directly contingent on the majority of Americans feeling substantive economic pain going in to the election booth.\u00a0 The GOP is talking about needing $2 trillion dollars in cuts<\/a> as ransom to get them to release the debt ceiling.\u00a0 Those cuts cannot be achieved without significant job losses (both government and downstream private sector jobs as well) in addition to major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.\u00a0 This exacerbates the demand slump the economy is in, and pretty much guarantees pain for middle America, and what will border on inhumanity to the poor, disabled, and unemployed.<\/p>\n

The gambit here is that Republicans can successfully hang the 2012 economic conditions on Obama\u2014that their fodder constituents will blame their plight on “Obama’s wild spending spree” rather than on Republicans draconian budget cuts.\u00a0 And you can bet there will be additional tax cuts for corporations and the rich included in any debt ceiling as well, which will seal the love of the GOP benefactors.\u00a0 This is arguably the sweet spot for the GOP going in to the elections.<\/p>\n

However, the downside is they are playing chicken with investors by holding the debt ceiling hostage.\u00a0 Wall Street and foreign investors alike certainly recognize individually that raising the U.S. debt ceiling is a matter of when, not if.\u00a0 But what the investors realize is that the market behaves like a herd of buffalo rather than as a single rational actor.\u00a0 Everyone may realize that long term there’s no danger, but if one animal spooks and heads out, the herd will react and follow, trampling all of us in its wake.\u00a0 This means the benefactor constituents are justifiably nervous about this brinksmanship.\u00a0 They can’t control all the buffalo, so everyone is tip-toeing about hoping to keep everyone else calm.\u00a0 Should someone spook, the results will be disastrous.\u00a0 But the devastation will not be just to our economy.\u00a0 The benefactors will doubtless bail on the GOP, who’s political ploy just cost them billions.\u00a0 If this happens, the Republicans will have effectively lopped off their right leg.<\/p>\n

This is high stakes poker.\u00a0 The GOP may win at the polls.\u00a0 The corporate benefactors may win, lose, or break even.\u00a0 The rest of us will lose.\u00a0 The only path here on which we win would be if Democrats refused to bargain, called the Republicans bluff, and got them to fold.\u00a0 It’s pretty clear that won’t happen.<\/p>\n

Is this view overly cynical?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 Maybe the GOP is not behaving with this much premeditation.\u00a0 Perhaps they are instead just ignorant and reckless or opportunistically sociopathic.\u00a0 But any way you slice it, unless you’re in the GOP’s corporate benefactor class, you voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is this view cynical? Perhaps. But unless you’re in the GOP’s corporate benefactor class, voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[118,50,54,21,53,89,43,40,23,41],"class_list":["post-3589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-2012-elections","tag-boehner","tag-congress","tag-conservatives","tag-corporate-influence","tag-democrats","tag-economic-policy","tag-gop","tag-obama","tag-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3589"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3604,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions\/3604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}