Why? Because it hurts, that's why.

Jared Bernstein on GDP contraction:

[T]he role of diminished government spending--austerity at time when we need a fiscal push--is a useful reminder that it’s not nature that has us stuck in this slog, it’s policy. One would hope this report would remind Congress what a terrible idea it would to allow the sequester--$85 billion in spending cuts in 2013--to take effect in March.

Yet Chait notes that "The GOP’s stated plan is to ... implement the sequestration cuts":

What’s more, Republicans remain publicly committed to the notion that this will help and not harm the economy.

Why of course. Because it's a "terrible idea."

To me it is simply inconceivable that anyone, even any Republican, could honestly believe that "applying medieval techniques [of] bleeding the patient," as Bernstein frames it, could be anything but a terrible idea. Others have argued that modern Republican pols really are that dumb, but I stand firm in my conviction that their imbecility is mostly an act. Had President McCain been caught in such a fourth-quarter fix, this Republican-controlled Congress would be doing what Republicans have done for other Republican presidents since Eisenhower: furiously shoveling government money out of each chamber's door.

That the contemporary GOP is so willing to inflict economic pain on innocent millions only to hurt Obama politically is merely one more measure of just how unAmerican this wretched party has become.

Comments

[japa21]

I don't think it an attempt to hirt Ibama politically anymore. After all, he isn't going to stand for reelection, his overall favorability is zooming and it will, if anything, help him in 2014.

What they want now is to destroy his legacy. They are willing to sink the ship beneath their feet if it will serve to keep Obama from having a positive legacy.

It is bad enough he is a Denocrat. It is worse that he is black. The thought of having him be remembered and recognized as one of the top 5-10 Presidents (which is what I think will be how the future looks at him) is just too much for them to handle and must be prevented at all costs.

[AnneJ]

Is there ANYTHING he can do to sidestep the wretched reactionary congress? The sad thing is that the answers to fixing our economy are so ridiculously obvious. Just look around and see all of the work that needs to be done that can be matched up with unemployed and underemployed workers. Bridges and roads falling apart, schools crumbling, the very real effects of global climate change that we are seeing now and the very real economic and environmental benefits that would materialize if only congress would acknowledge the problem. Instead they prefer spook stories of Kenyan communists, gay married couples, and women who aren't eager to become brood mares for the state. Oh how I wish our president could just snatch the purse strings from congress' greedy little hands, but much of this is the fault of the American people. Too many voted for unnecessary fear mongering and bigotry over effective governance and unfortunately the rest of us have to reap what they have sown.

[Chris Andersen]

There's something called Poe's law which says, in effect, that extremism is so hard to parody because the parody is often indistinguishable from the thing being parodied.

I think a similar rule applies here. Whether the Republicans are really this dumb or just playing dumb in order to hurt Obama no longer matters. It's just dumb.

Besides, the GOP has spent so many decades pushing the dumb as a political tactic that it has evolved to the point where they no longer have to act dumb. They really are that dumb.