Excerpt
For 31 years now, the economic strategy of conservative Republican politics has been a two pronged attack on taxes and spending: that if the former were reduced, the latter would be, also. This is the old Reaganesque “starve the beast” strategy. In 2010, this strategy seemed to reach its zenith as the House of Representatives Republicans swung 63 seats to its side and it changed from Democratic to Republican control, the largest party changeover since 1938. In the Senate the Democrats lost 6 seats and barely preserved their majority (by just one seat). As in 1938, it was anger and fear among voters that allowed the GOP to capitalize on the opportunity.
As we approach the 2012 presidential race, and we have the benefit of more than a year of Republican rule in the House. With their new majority, the GOP has become about as conservatively radicalized and more brazen in its aims than anyone (especially among a huge chunk of those that voted for them) would have thought. A series of bills and outspoken political positions stated by Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell has led to the country reexamining the GOP’s goals. There are strong signals that the GOP coalition of independents and radical/libertarian conservatives is unraveling and it’s entirely foreseeable that a reemergence of a Democratic majority in the House and gains in the Senate as well will occur in 2012.
“We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem”
The GOP message machine has repeated this since Paul Ryan, the widow's-peaked boy wonder of GOP House Budget Committee, submitted his budget plan which was immediately passed without discussion by a near unanimous Republican House vote. (All but 6 GOP members passed this bill, and no Democrats voted for it.). As Americans are now looking into the details of it - the proposed conversion of Medicare and Medicaid into a food stamp programs, changes in Social Security, further reductions in the corporate income tax marginal rates – they are pushing back like no one could have imagined just a few months ago.
During the Easter break, GOP House members were verbally assaulted in town hall meetings in their districts. Even Paul Ryan, in one instance, needed police security as he exited from a raucous town hall he conducted in which the participants accused him of directly lying to them. In nearly every Republican district, the constituency was adamant in their desire to keep Medicare/Medicaid unchanged.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should, if not actually will, make the Senate vote up or down on the Ryan bill as it was sent to the Senate, thereby shining a strong light on the GOP as the destroyer of health programs for the aged, the indigent and the disabled, education, veterans, environmental protection and dozens of other programs which the general public has come to accept and approve of.
What has emerged is that the electorate is coming to the conclusion that the main problem is not spending (although it is a problem indeed) but rather that the revenue side of the equation, something the GOP had successfully avoided discussing in the 2010 races, is the main problem. In essence, the Bush tax cuts have gutted federal revenues with which to pay for these popular programs and particularly the record low percentage of tax liability for the very rich.
The GOP circular firing squad
The GOP leadership, in their zeal to win back the House, made an unholy alliance with the Tea Party types, and its 2010 strategic success is self-evident. The bad news is that all the new seats are occupied by, well, Tea Party types, which have taken any semblance of bipartisanship out of the equation on the hill. The extremists among them are bent on playing “chicken” on issues which will have enormous repercussions for Americans and the entire planet. Yet, the grisly truth that they must act is dawning on a GOP which, so far, has refused to consider anything having to do with raising revenue. Thus far, standing on principle alone, the GOP refuses to look at the revenue side of the economic problem.
The crazies leading the blind.
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