Leading memeorandum this morning is this apocalyptic WSJ editorial:
GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.
The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.
Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.
I think there is still time for the media to rescue the Republicans and blame this on Obama.
WereBear
I hopefully disagree.
The media excels in their propaganda when most people don’t know what it’s about, and cannot pick out their weasely words and outright lies. This thing has been thrashed out in full view of the public, who grasps the concept of “less in the paycheck” without any help.
Add in the holiday money squeeze and they might as well put a spotlight on it.
Ian
The media always reminds me of Moe from this Simpson’s bit
http://youtu.be/1S8ixUzeSl8?t=4m29s
Now, remember Democrats, the Republicans get one free lie.
PeakVT
although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases
Liars.
Comrade Javamanphil
If Solomon hadn’t split the baby in two, our current media would report it as a failure of leadership.
batgirl
It’s okay for the WSJ to point this out:
When Democrats do it they are just being mean and unfair.
RSA
In a perfect world (or even one not quite so screwed up), the WSJ would be forced to say that Obama has positioned himself as an election-year tax cutter because he has actually cut taxes.
dmsilev
When you’re too far-right-extreme for the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page…
deep cap
Yeah, except the “biggest lie of 2011” was blamed on the libruls and the main stream media is eating it up.
losgatosca
Ron Paul! His Iowa win will make everyone forget these troubles.
Shinobi
This was the part that pissed me off:
As if the goal of governing is to wring the most of what you want out of your opponent, and not I don’t know, actually help the people you serve.
I forgot to leave my youthful idealist at home today apparently.
The Republic of Stupidity
Heaven forbid that Mtich’s main task should have been, ya know, ‘doing what’s right for the country’…
Party uber alles, ya’all…
MattF
And yet, apparently, House Republicans really believe they’re holding the winning hand. I think it’s Obama Derangement Syndrome finally cutting off the blood supply to the collective Republican brain. I’ll refrain from extending the metaphor.
Zach
It’s amazing how frequently the GOP fumbles the rhetorical football given that the playing field’s tilted way in the favor (because they can say anything they want and be treated seriously because the media won’t call a spade a spade, but Obama can only support practical measures). Their game plan here appeared to be repeating “we won’t accept half measures! no two month compromise!” and thinking that this would gin up enough support to pressure Dems into taking every debt-reduction bargaining chip we have off of the table and committing to them without any GOP concessions.
No one cares if it only lasts two months. DC myopia has been proven over and over and over again when every government-shutdown brinksmanship episode is greeted with a sigh of relief. No one in the media has either understood or cared that there’s never been a deal to prevent the exact same thing two or three months in the future.
The biggest failure of the last Congress and probably Obama’s Presidency was failing to pass a budget when there was a Congressional supermajority to do so… the budgeting process even gives you an avenue for economic stimulus because you’ve got a lot more leverage to get votes. We would’ve had a year of more robust economic growth and a year without routine government shutdowns (they would have only started recently). That time could’ve been spent debating real national priorities instead of wasting time with Kabuki deficit-reduction nonsense. Dems were apparently afraid that passing a budget would hurt them in the 2010 elections… that panned out well.
Dave
The takeaway from this is that the GOP has lost their single most reliable political attack vector over the past 30 years: that they are the party that never raises your taxes. Once you lose that, you can’t get it back. And even better, they handed it to the Democrats to use against them.
Forget the rest of the usual biased bullshit in the editorial. The fact that the WSJ had to acknowledge this is immense. The GOP just willingly shot themselves in the face.
johnsmith1882
@WereBear: where does this ‘public’ that you speak of hang out? cuz i want to meet them. the ‘public’ i know pays no attention whatsoever and the little information that trickles down to them consists of ‘both sides are to blame’.
rikyrah
I think the best clip I saw when watching this was some GOPer yapping about how it was the President’s responsibility to bring the Senate back, and the reporter was like, ‘ Are you kidding me?’
They even repeated the question several times at the Congressman, shutting him up.
Orange Julius is a drunken incompetent. That is now for everyone to see. Nobody is backing him up; not even Turtle Lips…who has been awfully quiet.
They overplayed their hand, and I’m glad.
I would suggest that you look at Rachel Maddow from last night. She had on an excellent segment on the utter ridiculousness of what the GOP House has passed, and how there is a method to their madness, and the ridiculousness of means testing unemployment insurance and medicare is to build a foundation of taking them away from being entitlements, so that they can slam them as programs for ‘ undeserving people’ , so that they can gut them. It was a good piece – maybe you ought to post it.
JenJen
GOP own goal!!
losgatosca
@Dave
But in shooting themselves in the face they have shown the level of sacrifice they are willing to make in order to piss off libruls. So the base will be happy, they have turned it up to eleven. “Cut your nose to spite your face? Hell no. We blew the whole freaking thing right off to spite them godless libruls. No politically correct wimpy liberal shit. Should have seen it. Blood everywhere, those wimps had blood all over them. What a mess. Sure showed them.”
JGabriel
Redstate Contributors Aaron Gardner, Ben Howe, Brad Jackson, Moe Lane, Steve Maley, Dan McLaughlin, Neil Stevens, streiff, Russ Vought, and Lori Ziganto have endorsed for GOP Presdential nominee … [drum roll] … RICK PERRY!
Roy Edroso (via Thers @ Powder Blue Satan) is on the case.
.
Mnemosyne
@Zach:
Apparently it was primarily the Blue Dogs who panicked at the thought of being confronted with an actual budget during their re-election campaigns and begged off passing one, but even Democrats with relatively safe seats (like my senator Barbara Boxer) supported the idea. Of course, then the Blue Dog Caucus was absolutely friggin’ decimated by the Republicans, so they did pay a price. It just sucks that the rest of us have to pay for their cowardice, too.
Judas Escargot
@Zach:
Dems seem to suffer when they’re too timid. The GOP seems to suffer when it overreaches.
What that little truism says about the relative character of the two parties, I’m not sure.
Schlemizel
They were doing a decent enough job this morning on Even the Librul NPR.
“Nobody was at fault really, they just need to compromise”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Is it to early to say “This is good news for Rommeny”?
Zach
@Mnemosyne:
I’m routinely amazed that so many Democrats in Congress haven’t figured out how the playing field has changed. They’ll be painted as tax-and-spend liberals even if they vote with the most conservative Republican on every vote so long as they vote for Democratic leadership. It really doesn’t matter, for instance, that Manchin opposed cap-and-trade. All that matters is (1) your party and (2) whether you’re an interesting person and run a good campaign. Facts used to matter. Bush’s tax plan in the 2000 election was very conservative but actually not too wacky. Now you’ve got GOP candidates promising 5 and 10% annual GDP growth and pre-WWII levels of spending, which let’s them cut income taxes to 19th-century levels and still pay down the debt. Until folks start demanding competent representation and force the media to report on it, this will continue.
SteveM
Read the end of Weigel’s piece on the showdown. He makes a very strong case for why Democrats are going to cave and Republicans are going to get away with this.
Ian
@Ian:
grr. thats my name! only I can have been born with it!
The Moar You Know
Yeah, I don’t know if this is going to happen this time. Even the Full Metal Teatard on the local news this morning was pressing the local Republican Congresscritter to admit that Boehner had lost control of his caucus. The guy artfully dodged, but the meme is out there in full force: House Republicans are out of control.
Ian
Though that answers the interesting question of how I post things I have no memory of
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
Well, with a constellation of superstars like that endorsing you, how can you not eventually win?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fixed for accuracy.
amk
I toldja.
Steve
The funny thing is how when Democrats propose a tax cut, Republicans will suddenly wake up and realize that the usual arguments for why tax cuts don’t work are actually valid, and they will happily deploy those arguments only to forget them entirely once the next GOP tax cut proposal rolls around.
The WSJ argues that the tax cut is entirely political because “no employer is going to hire a worker based on such a small and temporary decrease in employment costs.” First of all, that’s not entirely true, although the effect is likely small. When you’re hiring a worker, you don’t sit there and project out your marginal costs into Year 2 and Year 3 and beyond. Most people expect their company to grow. If the hiring decision is close enough that a small tax break might lean you towards saying yes, then you’re expecting your growth to support the new hire in the future.
But more importantly, the main argument for the stimulative effect of this tax cut is the one the WSJ doesn’t even mention, the fact that it simply puts more money in the pockets of working people – money that will be spent. I think the reason they fail to mention this argument is that the Republican mind simply can’t process the fact that the economy is driven by demand and that the middle class makes it happen. In their world it’s entirely about benevolent job creators at the very top sprinkling magic pixie dust on the economy and making it grow.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SteveM:
I believe the cave already happened, it’s just the Tea Tards wanted more and more. As the WJL editorial pointed out the GOP passed the Senate compromise they could have dumped the Ketstone pipeline on Obama while taking credit for a tax cut.
The just got to greedy.
johnsmith1882
you guys seriously think that this will harm republicans in any way? eric cantor could shoot a baby seal in the face on national television, and the talking head would explain how it was really obama’s fault, because he didn’t stop him, followed up with a blanket statement about how ‘washington’ is out of control. the ‘public’ doesnt watch rachel maddow. the little information the public gets is from newspapers and television, both owned by multi-bazillion dollar corporations whose media aim is preserving the status quo through obfuscation. stop thinking that facts or the truth have any impact whatsoever in american politics.
/debbie downer
Comrade Dread
Option A: “The Demoncrat Senate and President could have just accepted the House bill and passed it.”
Option B: “We didn’t vote against a tax cut for the Middle Class. We wanted to send our bills to reconciliation. It was the Demoncrats in the Senate who insisted on skipping town for the holidays and not doing the hard work required.”
Media response: “Democratic leaders accused the Republicans of being against tax cuts for the middle class, while Republicans accused Democrats of being obstructive and failing in their duties to the American people.”
ericblair
@Steve:
Yes, apparently rich people just give us plebes jobs because they’re such warm-hearted, generous people, and we should rejoice and be glad about it. Otherwise, you’d have to admit that companies hire people because they actually need them to do something and are not just petitioners who live at the mercy of the great ones. Might give some people ideas.
attica
Yeah, CBS this morning was tut-tutting “there’s plenty of blame to go around” by saying Dems were ‘refusing to negotiate’ and using clips of Boehner demanding Obama’s intercession.
Gah.
MattF
Note this, though:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_12/literally_walking_away_from_a034239.php#
Does Etrade have popcorn futures?
mcmullje
Just heard on NPR that both sides are indulging in brinksmanship blah blah blah. Makes me so mad I could spit!
FormerSwingVoter
@ericblair:
From what I’ve seen, business owners seem to actually believe this. Which is weird, since they wouldn’t be hiring if they didn’t see a need for it. You’d think that they’d be aware of why they make the decisions they do.
Comrade Mary
@mcmullje: The CBC pretty much framed it the same way this morning, although the clips they used of the various “players” (ugh!) were pretty revealing of the dickitude of republicans.
Tractarian
The best case scenario for the GOP is the payroll tax goes back up and slows growth into next year. Obama can then go around blaming the GOP for obstructionism, but it might not be enough for him to secure re-election.
The worst case scenario for the GOP? This.
It’s a risky, dangerous game they’re playing.
Judas Escargot
@FormerSwingVoter:
If I had a nickel for every small business owner I’ve met who seemed to think that the sun shined out their ass for owning a little business…
…I’d have enough money to start my own company!
Bulworth
What about the debt? Oh, I’m sorry I forgot, that’s the WSJ’s apocalyptic op-ed whenever the government threatens to spend money on behalf of poor people…
Dr. Squid
When I saw the title, I thought it would be about Monday Night Football. (ba dump tiss)
Comrade Mary
Heh. “Dems to GOP: Say Uncle”.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/dems-dont-relent-in-push-to-break-house-gop-will-on-payroll-tax-cut.php?m=1