All this crap between the president and Boehner went down while I was trying to cook dinner. Do you know what it’s like to grill chicken in 104 degree heat? In any case, this is the end-game I’ve been predicting for quite some time. The president knew that Boehner couldn’t deliver the votes for any plan with tax increases and so he insisted on tax increases until the very end. He’s still insisting on them. At this point, some polls show as many as 80% of the people agreeing with the president’s approach. The establishment media is firmly on the president’s side. Pretty much any semi-casual observer is on the president’s side. Politically, he has crushed the Republicans. The Senate capitulated last week. Even Boehner capitulated last week, except that he’s powerless so his capitulation meant nothing. This is also what I said worried me all the way back to when I wrote about my call with the White House. What if Boehner can’t deliver even a capitulation? What if he can deliver nothing?
Now we’re at that point.
Grover Norquist just went on CNN and told the Republicans to cut a deal because defaulting will be a disaster. It’s pretty amazing that Grover Norquist might be able to salvage the country’s economy and reputation but the Speaker of the House could not.
Hopefully, Grover’s act of patriotism will be enough. We’ll get the McConnell deal, everyone will be unhappy, but we won’t default and the debt ceiling will be off the table until after the next election. The president will have immunized himself against taking blame for the deficit; the Republicans will have scared the crap out of everyone, including their top patrons.
This outcome would be about the best we could hope for, but it does come with a price. A grand bargain would have possibly included spending cuts in the future for more stimulus now. Instead, we’re stuck with this struggling economy and a bunch of attacks on next year’s budget that will make the economy worse.
Choose your poison. This is what happens when the Republicans win big in an election. Horrible things happen.
