Spinning in his grave
Dummies who consume – and believe – the remarkable idiocy found on a daily basis on the Glenn Beck Paranoia sideshow, the Rush Limbaugh program, or (WorldNetDaily.com and their ilk), have convinced themselves that Socialist Communist Fascist Nazi Barack Hussein born-in-Kenya-Indonesian-citizen Obama is part of an international cadre or cabal that exists to destroy America.
The problem is that it’s the Republican party and establishment that has done more to destroy America than any supposed foreign conspiracy. By making the country ungovernable, by following a policy of obstruction and distraction, by choosing short-term political gain over the good of the country and her people, the Republican establishment has done incredible harm. Krugman’s column today dives into this problem and how it’s going to sink the economy next year.
The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.
Elite opinion has been slow to recognize this reality. Thus on the same day that Mr. Simpson rejoiced in the prospect of chaos, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, appealed for help in confronting mass unemployment. He asked for “a fiscal program that combines near-term measures to enhance growth with strong, confidence-inducing steps to reduce longer-term structural deficits.”
My immediate thought was, why not ask for a pony, too? After all, the G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment.
And on matters fiscal, the G.O.P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for. On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy — even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.
Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits — an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.
America doesn’t work that way anymore thanks to the singular and short-minded political calculus of the Republican Party. They don’t think of America as a shining city on a hill anymore. I frankly don’t know what they see it as.
The Buffalo Record 
Perhaps American politics is depressing to some people because their lefty heroes like Krugman eventually prove to be all wrong all of the time. Such as in their analysis of the 2008 election results.
The 2008 election “brings to its close another conservative era” — George Packer, New Yorker.
“The public has turned against conservatism at home and neoconservatism abroad”, and these ideas are “dead for a generation or more” — Hendrick Hertzberg.
Liberals will “hold sway in Washington until Sasha and Malia have kids” — Peter Beinart.
How well does all that seem to be working for you folks today? Yeah, I’d be depressed too. But, buck up–2012 will surely bring another beginning of a thousand year progressive reich–just you wait.
They’re doing it on purpose, it says here http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026737.php and it’s hard to dispute the crystal clear evidence in front of our own eyes and ears.
Putting party over country has precedent and hasn’t worked out too well in the past.
ROFL
Yeah, the Dems never put themselves first. I mean, look at how awesometastic they are at the NYS level! Nothing but unicorn farts and free stew for everyone around here!
And yeah, that Obamacare thing – that was totally about helping the American people and not about giving out all kinds of goodies to insurance companies and health care companies (see how they don’t want it repealed? Why would that be, exactly?).
Come on, Alan, I know you’re all ‘Republicans are teh evil!!’ but you can’t run around with that big a blind spot, can you?
Your cognitive dissonance when looking at the right wing has to be real frustrating for you – you say you don’t know what “they” stand for any more. Sure you do: there’s a fight between the Rove-driven “must be liberals at all costs and that’s it” wing, which you rightly label as evil, and the Tea Party wing, which you label as stupid. And evil.
So take your pick. Me, I hope the Tea-Party side wins because in nearly every (policy) way they’re more respectable than the neo-conservative dead-enders who like Rove. You should, too, if you can get past the end of your own snark.
This post isn’t about the failings of the Democratic party, it’s about the un-American behavior of the Republican Party. The tea party, embodied as it is by Palins, Pauls, and Bachmans, is not an attractive alternative.
When Bush was President, Dems blamed him for everything. I, and many others, wondered who the Dems would blame their failures once he wasn’t there to kick around. Turns out they just transfered the whining to the whole party. At some point the Democrats will have to take responsibility for being in charge. Veto proof majority in the Senate and both houses of Congress and the Presidency, and its the REPUBLICANS who are the problem? Please.
Its like my four year old complaining when my seven year old scores on him in hockey: “But I wasn’t ready! Whine and cry! That doesn’t count! I want a do over! He’s not letting me win!” Time for the Dems to put on their big boy pants. Its the Republicans stated goal to not get Obama elected next time around. And it is (gasp!) Obama stated goal to get elected in 2012. Now that the news flash is out, can we move on?
The GOP’s sinister calculations doesn’t end with economic or domestic policy. It’s recently entered the realm of foreign policy, typically an area of non-partisan cooperation. The wrapper’s off on that and it is now fair game, given Senate Republicans opposition to ratifying the START Treaty, which had its origins in the Reagan Administration. They don’t want to support anything remotely associated with the objectives of Mr. Obama. This is a setback for the country and will likely be the norm for the next 2 years.
If Obama spent less time listening to people like Krugman, and more time thinking like this, we’d here less about those pesky Republicans.
“hear” of course . . . (but at least I got the HTML right)
As discussed in an all-nighter, I see the Democrat party as being the true enemy of America. While in control of the House for 50 consectutive years between 1944 and 1994, they established what we see as an accusation in every short-sighted political campaign: A culture of political corruption, the Military-Industrial complex and Wall Street in control of every aspect of legislation, including the funding of campaigns. At the same time, I remember and listen to my elders. For decades, as Bethlehem Steel decayed into obsolescence, old timers talked about Johnson’s decision to allow our “allies”, Germany and South Korea, to dump steel on the American market at less than production cost, funded by government subsidies that our industry could not and cannot compete with. So, Buffalo was destroyed, becoming a cesspool of left-leaning voters who consider government the answer to the problems that bad government trade policy created.
Then I saw Jimmy Carter’s attempt to bring China into the modern liberal world by using trade as a carrot and a stick turn into Bill Clinton’s decision to detach human rights considerations from China’s trading status BEFORE Chinese citizens got two rights that we consider sacrosanct in the west: the right to organize labnor and the right for organized labor to use the strike as a negotiating tool. Essentially, this did to the entire industrial sector what Johnson’s trade decision did to America’s steel industry: made it impossible for us to compete. So, the entire industrial sector has moved offshore, leaving behind only industries with high educational requirements and little investment in capital infrastructure.
This may sound trivial to the highly educated, but where does it leave the poor and uneducated? When there was a strong industrial sector, the poor would get a factory job that paid well enough for people to buy homes and educate their families out of poverty forever. What do they do today? As a lifetime Buffalonian who still works here after moving to a more friendly congressional district, who actually admires unions for the poor folks that have been elevated over the decades, who still identifies himself as a “NY Liberal”, I’m convinced that I’ll continue to vote against Democrats for the rest of my life. Why anyone still votes for them I attribute to ignorance and refusal to acknowledge the evidence of their own eyes. Like the gay community that supported Bill Clinton even after he signed DoMA into law, I see anyone that’s not a millionaire and still voting for Democrats as the submissive in a sub-dom relationship. I see it pleases you, but I have no idea why.
The Republicans have always had but one mantra: screw the workers. They are geniuses at getting the ignorant to vote for them. And as Mencken said, “No one every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, not lost public office thereby.”
In EVERY election, since Mrkn elections are not rigged to any real extent, the people get precisely the leadership they damned well deserve. If you disdain education, calling those who are educated “elites,” well the stupid and ignorant deserve stupid and ingnorant leadership.
I’ll likely be dead before this current crop finishes the damage it’ll do, but I’m going to snicker, snerk, mock, and laugh all the way to the grave. What a bunch of dodos!!
What idealogs can’t seem to understand is that a liberal-art education teaches critical thinking. You evaluate each argument for what it is. You don’t measure it against an ideological ruler. It never cease to amaze me how idealogs seem to abhor rational thought and objective analysis.
Obama didn’t listen to Krugman -who had been advising a much bigger stimulus package.
You might want to forget about the Bush administration, but like it or not, he brought this county to the brink of a great depression and we’re not out to the woods yet. A severe recession often takes a decade for jobs to recover. A depression takes much longer. Or maybe the history of the business cycle is just more Keysian propaganda by those evil libs.
This lib vs con thing is such a crush bore.
The lib vs. con thing is always a bore, like debating religion as an advocate of one side or the other. Unacceptable topics for conversation in most places… I don’t consider myself an idealogue, just paying attention over time. Repubs always wanted to screw the workers? that left them still being workers, while Democrat trade policy has put them out of work or made them accept jobs that don’t pay. Fortunately, the impoverished are totally sold on leftist safety nets and will always vote leftist, whether the greatly-admired leftists leaders sell them an alternative to earnign an honest living. Keeping the poor poor keeps them in power.
Both parties are ruining this country. Period!
Except that there is one party (the GOP) that has made “ruining this country” a blatant electoral strategy for 2012. Which is an odd thing for the party that supposedly “loves” “America” more than the radical, fascist, socialist, Marxist, job killing, abortion loving, gay tolerating bogeyman known as the left wing.
The Republican party is loaded with cowards. They are incapable of standing up to the mob of radio hosts who hold court everyday across this naiton, spewing hate & lies for the sake of keeping the lunatic fringe entertained. I have also never seen a party (Repubs) elevate sore-losership to such an art-form. It is quite remarkable. If it’s any consolation, I heard a host on WBEN yestreday refer to Palin as a moron. It’s a little progress, but I’ll take it!
The comments obviously continue the total the plar positions the country has chosen to take.
I link the rise of the Republican rage to racism pure and simple. Even if the scam artists manipulating public opinion are not racist they know how to play that tune and have their audiences dance to it.
This entire matter has taken a clownish air with the country lurching forward to exponentially increasing and someday crushing debt and stand in their caucuses tsk, tsk’ing about the other sides inability to see their point. I have a vision for you how about 2020 when China and Arabia refuse to extend any more credit to this well armed wretched wreck and the President of the US has to travel to Brussels to beg the world monetary fund for a bail out.
But Alan’s “By making the country ungovernable, by following a policy of obstruction and distraction, by choosing short-term political gain over the good of the country and her people, the Republican establishment has done incredible harm.” is truly a salient and well deserved observation.
The Party of No truly has earned that very dubious title.
Just look at the reaction to the truly bi-partisan report by Bowles and Simpson. Becasue it dares to challenge the City on the Hill the Party of NO declares it DOA.
We will wreck ourselves.
Awesome.
Alan pulls out the shitty “unAmerican” label for those doing stuff he doesn’t like, and Leo (hi Leo!) responds by calling the Dems the “true enemy of America”.
Doesn’t anyone see the dissonance here?
Hapklein: STFU and see the average democrat demagoguery concerning the Bowles/Simpson plans for Social Security.
Jesus you people are blinded by your own team.
After reading some of the post and posting mine, I thought of Tip O’Neill’s observation that “all politics is local” which may just be our redemption and sanctuary from the spectacle of what takes place on the national stage.