Richard Nixon espoused what he called "the madman theory." It's a negotiating approach that induces the other side to believe you are capable of dangerously irrational actions and leads it to back down to avoid the wreckage your rage might let loose.the Tea Party allows Mr Boehner to play the Good Cop, while "struggling" to hold the Bad Cop at bay.
Mr Dionne is absolutely correct, the cuts are terrible and fall disproportionally on the less well off. No sane and compassionate person would countenance them, if one assumes we can continue on this spending binge.
However, if cuts have to be made, and to be meaningful they have to be in the tens of billions of dollars, then something has to be offered up. What does Mr Dionne offer up? Nothing. And, in today' political climate it may be no favor to Democrats in Washington to suggest that they don't recognize a fiscal crisis when it falls on top of them.
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
It is beginning to smell like the House will have to shut down the Government for the members to be reelected and the President will let it happen so that he gets reelected (unless the Republicans have a candidate in hiding that looks like a statesman/statesperson).
Sure, eventually there will be some compromise, but not enough for either to be declared a winner, but the shut down is the key to next year's campaigning.
I continue to be amazed at the philosophy that condemns the "rich" (whatever THAT means)and cries over the plight of the "poor." The rich got that way, in general terms, because they worked harder...and smarter. The poor made choices too...and some were obviously not very good. To hold that "cuts" need to be "proportionate" is, IMHO, only another way of saying "income redistribution" and "elimination of economic class." Welcome to socialism and its social twin...communism.
Cuts to need to be made, not only in terms of disposable income, but to the myriad of programs that cost us an arm and a leg to begin with.....many of them existing only to administer the largess ladled out by our NannyFed. The current 2010 budget that is the focus of all the current rhetoric contains nearly $500B for welfare payments in various forms. The Defense budget is only about $375 B more.
And then there is the Dept of State sending over $500M to Egypt and other Middle East locales to restore mosques...and repair things like the water distribution system in Cairo. Hell.....we can't even fix the potholes in the US...and we are rebuilding Cairo's water system??
Yes...the cuts need to be made....and the current levels proposed are pathetic in their paucity. When you don't have any money....stop spending. THAT is the tea party message....and if it takes shutting down the bloated Federal bureaucracy to get that message through thick skulls.....then lets to it now.
This is not the time for political preening or posturing.....its time for decisive and dramatic action.
We are FREAKIN' BANKRUPT!!!
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