James Egan asks some fair questions about the folks who seemingly want a debt default rather than accept the more than generous proposals on the table from President Obama, and they are:
Who would put at risk, at a time when most people are hurting from a gasping economy, the monthly issuance of life-supporting funds for wounded veterans, disabled children, countless elderly couples living on barely $2,000 a month — all told, over 70 million checks that go out each month?
Who would risk pushing the livelihoods of businesses small and big off a cliff by an interest rate spike, possibly igniting a second recession as the credit-rating agencies have just suggested — essentially saying “blow your brains out, America,” as Warren Buffett phrased it?
Who would risk this anarchists’ storm, rather than a pass a formality: extending the borrowing authority of the United States so the country can pay bills from the past?
The answer is the anarchist wing of the Republican Party, or as I will name them later in this diary, The Beast. What? You’ve never heard of them? Well they go by another name in the media, having something to do with tea parties. What is more, they feel little if any loyalty to the incumbent republicans who hold all the leadership posts in the House and Senate.
Egan, in his NYT online op-ed from yesterday, divides the Republican party into two groups. One he calls the anarchist wing: these are the people who coalesced around the “Tea Party” banner. It’s a disparate group but at its heart is one simple core principle: Destroy the Federal Government. And by destroy I mean destroy. They want the Federal government to die, except perhaps for the military.
These people include libertarian extremists and social conservatives, because both have their reasons for an alliance that brings down our current system of national governance. The libertarians want the federal government to go away based upon the ideological principles first conceived by Ayn Rand who never met a large business corporation she didn’t love. Rand believed the elimination of government “tyranny” (i.e., regulation and oversight and taxation) would release the power of the business elites to create a perfect society. And it would, if by perfect you mean a return to feudalism. These are the true believers, and their devotion to their cult of greed and selfishness is absolute.
Their allies, the social conservatives have their own reasons for wanting to see the Federal government weakened. After all, in their eyes, it was the the federal government that desegregated the South, took God out of the classroom, elevated the rights of women (voting, abortion, divorce) above the rights of men to control them, advanced the causes of racial and ethnic minorities (if intermittently and ineffectually) and (horror of horrors) the rights of homosexuals. It was the federal government that made Darwin’s theory of evolution and science in general a subject that (in their twisted logic) brainwashed the minds of young people to turn away from the one true religion. And the federal government is the only thing that stands in the way of officially designating America as a “Christian Nation” with a mission to dominate the world and impose “Biblical Law.” Besides, what if anything have the social conservatives ever gotten from traditional Republicans on these issues?
That is not to say that social conservatives oppose a Federal government in principle as do the libertarians, but they do oppose the current version of the federal government, which they view as infested with atheistic secular humanists. They would prefer a federal authority that promoted their agenda, but for the moment they see that an alliance with the libertarians is in their best interests because before they can create their perverted vision of a “Christian Nation” the current federal government must be wiped away.
I should add eliminating the social safety net is a goal for both of these groups, though their reasons are different. For the libertarians it eliminates a “drain” on the elites by taxing them to pay for people who are “losers” in their view: the disabled and the elderly who couldn’t succeed well enough during their working careers to pay for their own retirements. The social conservatives see the elimination of the federal government’s social safety net as a means to recruit people back to God and the Church, or their version of God and Church. You want a safety net? Join the church and let God’s people take care of you. Or so the theory goes. Of course you will have to accept everything that goes with that “choice” but since when have extremist Christians ever been opposed to coercion to win converts?
Then we have those Republicans Egan identifies as the “Tasseled Loafer” faction. They love the federal government so long as they control it and can use it to benefit themselves and their friends, large mega-corporations who want government contracts or favors. Sure they want to grind the middle class into dust, but the last thing they want is a federal government drowned in a bathtub. They would much prefer to see federal dollars lavished on private corporations, whether handing your FICA taxes to Wall Street and the Health Insurance companies or your income taxes to defense contractors.
They had a great gig when Dubya was in office. They have no principled objection to a large federal government so long as they can control it for their financial benefit and the benefit of their incorporeal “friends” the large corporations upon which the Supreme Court has bestowed personhood. Egan identifies Mitch McConnell as a symbolic representative of this faction of the Republican party, but I’m sure you could name a dozen or more Republicans in the Senate and House who fit that definition off the top of your head.
The problem is that the tasseled loafers buddies created the Tea Party to bring back the heady days of the Bush Ownership Society. The tasseled loafers thought that, as in the past, they could throw the libertarians and social conservatives a few rhetorical crumbs now and then and that would keep them in line, voting the way Boehner and McConnell wanted them to do until they (the tasseled loafers) could regain the Presidency and the good times of massive graft and corruption would roll again just as they had under Bush and Cheney. Unfortunately, they made a grievous error in judgment. 9/11 didn’t change everything half as much as 2008 did.
All that hateful and fact-free rhetoric the tasseled loafers spouted since Obama was elected wasn’t good enough for their base anymore. All those filibusters and obstruction of the Democratic agenda, and the incessant demonization of Obama and Pelosi only made them angrier. Indeed, it radicalized them far beyond what the tasseled loafer crowd really expected or wanted.
And now, without the rally round the flag effect of “The War on Terror,” the GOP base no longer is willing to vote for whomever the RNC and its tasseled loafer leader selected for them. The Republicans’ radicalized base primaried the hell out of traditional GOP incumbents and candidates, and managed to elect (with the help of anonymous corporate cash) self-identified Tea Party candidates.
Yet, still the tasseled loafers in the GOP House and Senate Leadership thought they could pull the strings just as they had in the old days. And it did appear that way — for a while. Boehner and McConnell thought they could play the crazy Nixon card in their dealings with the Demiocrts and Obama and gain concessions from the White House. And the White House was willing to play ball with them.
But the Tea Party crowd didn’t come to play ball. Not with Obama and not even with their own leadership. They want the whole pie, not 3/4’s of it. And whether out of deep ideological fervor or fear that if they don’t stand firm someone even more outrageous will primary them next year, they are standing firm. They see Michelle Bachman’s rise in the polls as a sign. Hell, even some of the tasseled loafers have seen the signs. That’s why Eric Cantor has become the de facto leader of the Tea Party “Burn it down! Burn it all Down!” faction in the House. He’s looking for the main chance and he believes that aligning himself with the crazies is his best bet to take the Speakership away from Boehner.
So, that is why the GOP isn’t negotiating and hasn’t been negotiating, in good or bad faith, over the debt ceiling. That’s why the US Chamber of Commerce, The Federal Reserve, and anyone on Wall Street (who isn’t shorting US Treasuries and/or the dollar) are going ballistic. That’s why Standard & Poor is sputtering about downgrading our nation’s credit rating. That’s why McConnell broke ranks and Boehner more or less ceded authority over the Republican caucus to Cantor. That’s probably why Obama has gone so far to alienate his own base to cut a deal, any deal, with the Republicans. They all thought the tasseled loafer wing if the GOP was in control.
They were all wrong. The Beast is in control. Call them anarchists as James Egan does, or the Tea Party caucus as they named themselves, but they are collectively the Beast. And to date, no one has tamed that Beast. Frankly, I doubt it can be tamed, which means that whatever you hear about any deal on the debt ceiling, whatever you think is likely to happen, is mere speculation. The Beast is on the loose, there is no lion tamer available, and so all bets are off.
Asked whether he continues to have hope for a broader deal that could raise the debt ceiling and deal meaningfully with the nation’s burdgeoning debt, Mr. Obama smiled broadly.
“I always have hope. Don’t you remember my campaign?” he said. “Even after two-and-a-half years, I continue to have hope.” […]
But Mr. Obama did not appear to view the news conference as a fresh opportunity to convince Republican lawmakers on a specific deal.
Rather, the president appeared to be preparing for an ongoing debate on the issues of debt, spending and taxes during next year’s presidential election.
“What the American people are paying attention to is who seems to be trying to get something done,” he told reporters.
Hope won’t raise the debt ceiling, Mr. President. But you know that, don’t you?
