Remember all the cleverly contrarian articles about how a hypothetical President Romney could overcome gridlock in a way that hypothetical second term Kenyan Usurper couldn’t? Now we’ve got counterfactual articles about how President Romney would currently be overcoming gridlock in a way that the Kenyan Usurper isn’t:
Enter National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar who imagines that in this alternative history, President Romney would have magically resolved the budget gridlock we’re experiencing today under a demagogic President Obama.
“[A] close look at the composition of both the Senate and the House suggest the numbers would be there for Romney to pass some combination of spending cuts and the closing of tax loopholes, as he called for in the 2012 campaign. In the Senate, Romney probably would have courted the 12 red-state Senate Democrats, six of whom are up for reelection in 2014, to support some type of compromise…. The Senate has more red-state Democrats than blue-state Republicans, and most of them are up for reelection. These same Democrats who are giving Obama trouble on gun control would be looking to cut a fiscal deal as they prepare for reelection. Win over just five of them, hold enough House Republicans in line, and voila – there’s the bipartisan compromise.”
I love all this Niall Ferguson-style shit because it’s perfect fit for conservatism. We already had wholesale conservative rejection of reality. Don’t like the idea of climate change? Al Gore is fat. Don’t like the polls? Unskew them. Now we’ve got: Don’t like what happened? Imagine how awesome it would be if something else had happened.
It’s a little more high-brow, which is why we’re seeing it from an editor of even the liberal National Journal instead of in the comments section at Red State.
This couldn’t be a dream for too real it all seemsPost + Comments (66)