I don’t know what I think about using the 14th amendment to go around Congress on the debt ceiling, my gut instinct is to oppose it, because it seems like one more place for the executive branch to grab power. That said, this is the worst argument I’ve heard against using it:
If he had cited the 14th Amendment and simply ordered Treasury to pay the bills, he would have been impeached by the radical Republicans. This would have guaranteed that the next 16 months would have been overwhelmed by an even worse version of the silliness visited upon our nation by the poisonous Limbaugh-Tea Party nihilists.
As you know, I wish a motherfucker would try to impeach Obama. It would blow up in Republicans’ face, I am confident of that. More generally, we can’t allow Republicans to intimidate us into being a banana republic. Obama can’t raise the ceiling on his own, because crazy Republicans would impeach him. We have to have short-sighted spending cuts, because otherwise Republicans will cause a default. Women can’t exercise their reproductive rights, because wingers will harass them and murder their doctors if they do. We can’t have an honest press, because they’re afraid of complaints from teahadists when they tell the truth. Public Broadcasting has to turn itself over to Paul Gigot and Juan Williams, otherwise they’ll be targeted by James O’Keefe.
Where does it end? You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much til you spend half your life just covering up. There has to come a time to bite back.
On that note, the Wisconsin recall elections start in earnest on August 9.