Michael Tomasky runs some GOPspeak through a debullshitter gizmo:
When Republicans say Obama needs to show "leadership," what they mean is that he ought to just embrace the Ryan budget. They really won't accept anything else.... There is nothing Obama can do to please them except drop entirely his demand for revenue, which would be indefensible on political and policy grounds.
The truth of this nugget is incontrovertible. By "leadership" Republicans mean total agreement, and by "revenue" they mean deal-breaker. Theirs is an exquisitely simple negotiating position that even their base can understand, and most of all, appreciate and adore: Praise Jesus, there shall be no negotiating.
It would be wrong to suggest, however--and I'm not suggesting that Tomasky does, but others do--that Republicans are merely being their usual dense selves. For in their prodigious simple-mindedness of "No, a thousand times no" there lies the diabolical brilliance of election nullification. It's as though November never transpired, a national debate never took place, a people's choice was never made; those 18-or-so months of presidential campaigning never really occurred--they, as well as Obama's reelection, have been wiped from the books as functionally superfluous.
Obama is boxed in, trapped in a kind of phantom second-term presidency, and he knows this better than anyone: "I actually just want to govern, at least for a couple of years." Which is about all Republicans know they must neutralize, which they can do by demanding more "leadership" and then rejecting every overture, which renders the presidency as potent as a beached whale and as invisible as Claude Rains.
Obama's keenest supporters as well as garden-variety liberals, progressives, Democrats and centrists can fume and deny this reality all they want. But fuming denial can't change it. It's perfectly legal, impeccably constitutional and, for the short run (which is all Republicans care about), shrewdly political. Republicans sort of lost the last election, but that's OK, they're simply erasing its results.
Still, like the pseudoconservative high Court of 2000, they will I'm sure ask that their electoral nullification not be seen as a precedent; you know, just in case they ever regain the White House.
Well I, for one, am not a denialist. There is a clue to how the president hopes to deal with this situation. He says he hopes to govern for a couple of years and he evidently means not 2013 and 2014. From which I conclude that his plan to convert his awesomely effective grassroots campaign apparatus into a tool to effect changes in the makeup of congress. I will be the first to admit that this is a longish shot yet even if they succeed only in preventing the Republicans from gaining seats in the coming midterm elections that will have ominous implications for the right. Despite their abhorrence of governance the right has minimal obligations they too must deliver to the electorate and so deals will have to be made and the Hastert rule will be honored more in the breach than in the observance. At some point something in the right will have to give and the internal tensions of the Republicans will explode. May I live to see it.
Posted by: Peter G | March 16, 2013 at 09:47 AM
GOP calls for presidential "leadership" are also a classic form of Rovian projection-jiujitsu: Obama is supposed to prove his manhood by confronting and corralling his legislative base, the very thing the GOP leadership is afraid to do. Never mind that Obama has done it time and time again....
Posted by: Steve Lichtman | March 16, 2013 at 10:19 AM
Some further thoughts. Having made raising the debt ceiling a regularly recurring crisis how will the Republicans ever be able to restore that obligation to the simple house keeping duty it has almost always been. Taking hostages you dare not shoot has a severe downside. I recommend some reading on the subject. In particular, The Ransom of Red Chief.
Posted by: Peter G | March 16, 2013 at 10:23 AM
Thanks, Peter for mentioning a great story by a somewhat sadly forgotten author, the great O. Henry.
Also, since I don't comment here all that much, thanks P. M. for such wonderful writing and commentary. I'll be donatin this week. You are awesome!
Posted by: McJeff | March 18, 2013 at 02:59 PM