Day: December 3, 2012

Reid Report: Why Republicans Can’t Make a Deal

Trish
No date for the prom? Sheldon Adelson compensates.

Required reading from Joy Reid, folks:

…Congressional Republicans, and their ostensible leader, John Boehner, can’t make the deal they know they have to in order to avert across-the-board tax increases.

Why can’t they? It’s not because they care about deficits. More than 40 years of GOP history, from Reagan’s deficit-exploding tax cuts to George W. Bush’s, on top of massive defense spending, wars paid for off the books, the budget-shredding “war on terror” and Medicare Part D — which was also not paid for — proves that Dick Cheney wasn’t kidding back in the day when he said that “deficits don’t matter.” Specifically, they don’t matter to Republicans. What matters to Republicans is rich people.

Joy Reid: For Republicans, it’s not about deficits, it’s about rich donors

Reid adds that while Democrats keep expanding their base with lots of small donors who give lots of small gifts, Republicans keep concentrating very large gifts from fewer donors. And many of those donors are not…well, people you’d want to hang out with.

Big GOP donors are very, very conservative. In fact, some of them are kooky, conspiracy minded, and radical.

Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers, the list of freaky, axe-to-grind for being unpopular in junior high donors goes on. Any way you slice it, Republicans have made a deal with the devil. Read the whole column.

Media Allow GOP to Invent a New Reality Every Day

Buck Banks

I realize that the GOP’s up-is-downism puts news reporters in an awkward position. It would seem tendentious to point out Republican hypocrisy on deficits and Medicare and stimulus every time it comes up, because these days it comes up almost every time a Republican leader opens his mouth. But we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.

— Michael Grunwald, writing in TIME’s “Swampland” blog.

Romney Left Leadership Vacuum in GOP

Buck Banks

Mitt Romney’s shadow looms over a Republican Party in disarray. … The face of the GOP for much of the last year, the failed presidential candidate has been a virtual ghost since his defeat Nov. 6. He has quietly weathered the fallout of the campaign from the seclusion of his Southern California home… His loss and immediate withdrawal from politics, while welcomed by most, has created a leadership vacuum within his party. It’s left the GOP rudderless, lacking an overarching agenda and mired in infighting, with competing visions for the way ahead, during what may be the most important policy debate in a generation.

— The Associated Press.