Logic and Reason ain't what they used to be.....

Recently I have come to some disturbing realizations. First, we are reaching a point of complete political paralysis. This article by Ezra Klein shows how screwed we are:

The president sold himself as the great post-partisan hope, the leader who could bring comity and peacefulness to a town riven by partisanship and rancor. When McConnell refuses to come to bipartisan agreements with Obama, he damages Obama’s brand. More than anyone else, McConnell has been responsible for his failure, and key in demonstrating how little any one leader can do to change the tone in Washington.

There’s supposed to be a curb on this sort of behavior: If you don’t participate in the legislative process, you don’t get anything out of the process. Here’s McConnell’s most important insight: That’s wrong. Withholding minority-party votes forces the majority party to hand its most moderate members — and the most moderate members of the other party — an effective veto, which drags the legislation substantively to the center, and in the current situation, to the right.

Health-care reform was more conservative than it would have been if more Republicans had been willing to support it. The stimulus was smaller than it would have been if conservative senators had been willing to back the whole in return for concessions on the parts. It turns out that a partisan political strategy results in more bipartisan policy. The opposition can have its cake and eat it, too. That doesn’t leave much reason for it to be bipartisan, of course. But for a minority party that wants to defeat a president who sold himself as a unifier, that’s a plus.

What you are left with is an opposition that has no incentive to ever compromise. Think about that. Possessing a majority in 2/3rds of the government means you can not govern. The public has so little interest/knowledge in policy that this is an effective strategy.

The majority is so desperate to accomplish anything, they will accede to the demands of the minority, just to look as if they are moving forward. So you get bad policy. I do not want to mince words here. The main republican goal is to defeat Obama. If they must blow up the economy to accomplish that. The so be it. They have told us so themselves. Crying hypocrisy is useless, call them out for what they are doing.

Secondly, bad economic argument is all the rage. Bad ideas get traction because the media is compliment and people are stupid. No one likes taxes, so Republicans have the ability to just lie about basic economics. Two graphs that illustrate our problems:





Revenues are simply a part of the equation. With out them, you have no equation. You can not have deficits and you can not have surpluses. It is just juvenile to assert otherwise. The President absolutely needs to hold Republicans to the fire on the debt-limit. It needs to be draped around their neck like a gigantic scarlet letter of mendaciousness and stupidity. But the President is so wrapped up in his brand that we will all suffer on the alter of false comity. And when the policies he capitulates on don't work or out right make things worse, he will be blamed. As well he should, because it is his own hubris which made it happen. One person does not change Washington. You have to have willing partners. He does not. It is time to accept that.

That he won't is what keeps me up at night.

-Cheers