I have already had several people email me this article, and one person in the comments pointed to it and called it the Democratic circular firing squad, so let’s discuss it:
President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed tax cuts ran into opposition Thursday from senators in his own party who said they wouldn’t do much to stimulate the economy or create jobs. Senators from both parties agreed that Congress should do something to stimulate the economy. But Democratic senators emerging from a private meeting of the Senate Finance Committee criticized business and individual tax cuts in Obama’s stimulus plan.
They were especially critical of a proposed $3,000 tax credit for companies that hire or retrain workers.
“If I’m a business person, it’s unlikely if you give me a several-thousand-dollar credit that I’m going to hire people if I can’t sell the products they’re producing,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., a member of the committee.
“That to me is just misdirected,” Conrad said.
Sen John Kerry, D-Mass., said, “I’d rather spend the money on the infrastructure, on direct investment, on energy conversion, on other kinds of things that much more directly, much more rapidly and much more certainly create a real job.”
Let me be clear. I think this is a good thing. This is healthy. They are debating actual ideas, and there are disagreements, and hopefully they will work them out and come to a healthy endpoint. Maybe the Republicans will pull their heads out of their collective asses and decide that in the wake of the DOW dropping 80,000 points and massive unemployment and five quarters of negative growth there is something more important than capital gains tax cuts, Elian Gonzalez, Terri Schiavo, and the fairness doctrine, and join in the debate and act for once in good faith and with the best interests of the country in mind. A man can hope.
At any rate, I don’t think of this as the Democratic circular firing squad. When I think of that, I think of the kind of idiocy we have experienced the last few weeks, when DiFi gets butthurt about Panetta because her ring was not kissed enough and says things that she will have to walk back from in the future. Or when a bunch of people get upset at the number of vaginas in the cabinet and we are told we might as well have elected Rush Limbaugh. Or Rick Warren speaks for 3 minutes at the inauguration and Democrats everywhere shriek that Obama hates gays and some idiots go so far as to cancel their inauguration parties. Or anything Harry Reid has done since November 4th or whenever any jackass anywhere states “That is not the change I voted for” when the man isn’t even in office yet. That sort of nonsense, is to me, at least, the true Democratic circular firing squad.
Not actual debates about policy.
And yes, I do believe there is a bit of theatre to it all.