Month: August 2011
Public Thinks Lawmakers Acted Like Spoiled Children
77%
Of respondents to a new CNN poll said lawmakers who dealt with the debt ceiling acted like spoiled children. Just 17% believe the politicians acted like responsible adults. The poll also found that 52% of Americans say they are opposed to the Raw Deal while 44% are in favor of it.
Of respondents to a new CNN poll said lawmakers who dealt with the debt ceiling acted like spoiled children. Just 17% believe the politicians acted like responsible adults. The poll also found that 52% of Americans say they are opposed to the Raw Deal while 44% are in favor of it.
Raw Deal: 28 Tea Party Caucus Members Voted Against Debt Ceiling Bill
As has been noted here before, one of the tea partyists’ sacred campaign pledges — along with not raising taxes or voting for debt ceiling increases — was that they would “fight efforts to use a national crisis for political gain.”
But that was 2010. In 2011, they broke that pledge — big time — when they created a bogus national crisis over raising the debt ceiling, despite the fact that the ceiling had to be raised in order to borrow the funds to cover the billions in new spending in the budget they voted for.
By choosing to negotiate with them, and then by giving into their demands over and over, Pres. Obama enabled the tea baggers’ extortion politics. In doing so, he handed them a big political win, in the short term at least.
That did not stop them from turning the weeks of negotiations into one long temper tantrum. And even after all that, even after they cowed the president of the United States into giving into their demands and agreeing to their Raw Deal, 28 tea partyists voted “no” against the final bill in the House yesterday:
Here’s a list of the economic terrorists who held the U.S. economy hostage and then voted against taking the ransom they had extorted from the American people because it wasn’t enough:
Giffords’ Surprise Appearance on House Floor Was a Moment of Grand Political Theatre
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I was watching the House vote on the debt-ceiling “Raw Deal” live on C-SPAN yesterday when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona Democrat, made a surprise appearance to cast her vote. Giffords was shot in the head by a crazed gunman last January, as everyone knows, and few people expected her to return to work, ever.
It is telling that she returned to vote for the deficit-ceiling deal that Pres. Obama struck with the tea bagger faction in the House — even though many, if not most of 28 of the baggers, did not vote for it themselves. Giffords is one of the few remaining Blue Dogs in the Democratic caucus. Her appearance yesterday is likely a sign that, while she probably won’t run for the Senate next year, as had been widely speculated before she was shot, she will seek reelection to the House. If so, she will need the votes of right-leaning independents in her district.
Giffords’ unexpected appearance on the House floor at a moment of high political drama was no accident. It was carefully stage-managed political theatre for which Giffords’ friends, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, among others, are likely responsible.
Without Giffords’ appearance, the Raw Deal’s passage would have been a moment of unmitigated triumph for the tea party GOP and for Speaker Boehner. Instead, Pelosi et al stepped all over Boehner’s victory and rewrote the headlines about the vote that you are reading today.
Debt Deal Confirms Democrats’ Worst Fears about Obama
Overall, the deal served to confirm the worst suspicions held by some Democrats: first, that the White House is unwilling to drive a hard bargain or is poor at negotiation. And second, that it is loathe to stand up for liberal values or has inherently conservative policy preferences. These critiques are more common among those Democrats who criticize the White House frequently. But I have also heard them in recent days from Democrats who tend toward the center-left and who tend to defend the White House, some of whom cite the poor precedent that the deal has established.
– Democratic-leaning pollster Nate Silver
New Low for Obama Approval
40%
A new low for President Obama’s job approval rating, according to a new Gallup poll. His prior low rating of 41% occurred several times, the last of which was in April. As recently as June 7, Obama had 50% job approval.
In Over His Head
When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?
— President Obama, at a news conference last December, not seeming to grasp a reporter’s question about the Republican Party’s ability to use the debt ceiling vote as leverage.
Negotiating with Kidnappers
In the end, it was the president who blinked,
In a debt deal reached right on the brink.
It’s bad when lawmakers
Turn into hostage-takers
And force us to take a deal that just stinks.
