Pray, what next?

While this morning Dionne snaps a psychological Polaroid--"the past two years have been ... utterly abnormal, driven by tea party extremism and an irrational hostility to Obama"--Krugman goes for the prosecutorial panorama: "Republican posturing on the deficit has always been a con game."

There's variation here, yet both are vividly true. Dionne suggests that the Republican Party has grown acutely nuts, while Krugman--always the fiercer polemicist--charges a kind of unremitting political criminality. Progression from the latter to former shouldn't surprise; years and years of insidious scheming may well catch up to even the most cold-blooded, Machiavellian brain. The result is not merely the dreadful tedium of modern American politics--GOP obtuseness followed by GOP obstructionism, followed by GOP obtuseness ... --but the inexorable question: Pray, what next?

After sweeping away all this crazy Republican posturing about hating the deficits they actually love, what will be left of the GOP platform? Except in the Pentecostal swamps of Dixie and televangelists' profit-ravaged minds, social conservatism is terminal. It's essentially gone and shall never return. Which leaves Republicans' fiscal conservatism, which is anything but. Ever-higher, ever-accelerating deficits and debt have been the party's only hope of shredding the social safety net--in reality the GOP's singular raison d'etre, for social conservatism was but another con game of fundamentalist conscription. And now that hope teeters at the abyss. Republicans face years of Democratic domination and thus protection of entitlements in tandem with a responsible reduction of deficits.

And there's not a damn thing Republicans can do about it--well, excepting a few more psychotic breaks and, while possible, more grifter obstructionism. But that's not a political program. And it is, in politics, rather axiomatic that political parties, ahem, require a political program. 

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

Last week reminded me of the famous scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark". The assassin confronts Indy by waving a huge sword while Indy is holding a whip. When all seems lost, Indy pulls out a pistol and shoots the assassin.

Swap Boehner for the assassin and Obama for Indy.

The Gop came to this round of deficit reductions thinking they held some kind of upper hand. obama simply mocked them by blowing them off. Things are so bad that the ultimate back-room pol, Grover Norquist, is making the rounds on talk shows just like some unknown congressman from some unknown district in Tennessee - or some tire hack senator like McCain.

All this after they have thrown the culture warriors under the bus, and Rove publicly mocking his benefactors.

And remember folks, one moth ago, they knew, they all just KNEW, that Romney was about to kick Obama's ass.

As we say in the South, never bring a knife to a gun fight.

[Peter G]

Without deficits, what excuse could they find to defund popular social programs? Ideology is a pretty light line to use to reel in voters who are expecting a check in the mail.

[BobH]

Huuumm.... I'd go with Krugman's unremitting political criminality. Norquist has influenced Congress people to abjure their Oaths of Office. Have Holder indict Grover for Conspiracy to commit Sedition! Lock him up until he names his co-conspirators. Would make for an interesting time on Capitol Hill! And the talking heads of cable news would have a field day!

[Chris Andersen]

Bruce Bartlett made an interesting comment on Chris Hayes' show the other day. He said that, without the threat of needing to raise taxes, government will never cut spending. Spending without commensurate tax hikes is a way for politicians to win favor without having to pay any price. Sure, they'll have to borrow against the grand-children. But who cares about them?

So, by successfully institution a "tax hikes are always bad" mentality in the public discussion, the GOP has managed to guarantee country-busting deficits forever. It's only when this mentality is destroyed that we can actually start having a reasonable discussion about how we should spend the public money. I am feeling increasingly optimistic that we are about to see its end.