Month: December 2012

Republicans Have No Plan and No Road Map to Avoid Fiscal Cliff

Buck Banks

The reality should be seeping in to viewers of the Sunday shows that the Republicans don’t have a game plan. They don’t have a single, specific proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff. And even if they had one, they don’t have a roadmap to get there. They keep expecting Obama to come back with something more to their liking, which they’d also reject. Many Republicans literally don’t understand what is happening. Sen. Charles Grassley tweeted over the weekend that he was frustrated that President Obama hadn’t embraced the recommendation of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. Apparently, he is one of the many people in Washington who doesn’t understand that Bowles-Simpson recommended letting the Bush tax rates on the wealthy expire, while also proposing to cap or eliminate deductions primarily enjoyed by the wealthy.

— Daniel Gross, writing in The Daily Beast.

Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Expect a Fiscal Deal Between GOP and White House

Buck Banks

49%

Of Americans think President Obama and House Republicans will not reach a deal on the fiscal cliff by January 1 to prevent automatic tax increases and spending cuts from taking effect, while just 40% say they will, according to a new Pew Research/Washington Post poll. If no deal is reached, 53% say congressional Republicans will be to blame while just 27% think Obama would be at fault.

As Norquist Tries to Kickstart Tea Baggery 2.0, Dick Armey Jumps Ship, Resigns As Head of Freedomworks

Jon Ponder

Armey
Grover Norquist, the Republicans’ austerity czar, has issued a call to arms. It is time, he suggests, for tea baggers to get their tired old fat asses back up off their couches, dust off their poorly spelled, crypto-racist signs and hit the bricks again. The issue that will drive tea baggers into their patented spittle-spewing rage fits this time, Norquist claims, is Pres. Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy:

“Tea party two is going to dwarf tea party one if Obama pushes us off the cliff,” Norquist said on one of the Sunday shows last weekend. “Let’s not pretend who’s pushing us over the cliff.”

Meanwhile, in back in Realityville, there is no better evidence that the Koch brothers and other billionaire advocates of American oligarchy are done astroturfing tea baggery than the announcement that Dick Armey abruptly resigned as head of Freedomworks, the billionaires’ lobbying group:

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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.