Friday opinion.
NY Times:
President Obama’s bipartisan debt-reduction commission has exposed fissures in both parties, underscoring the volatile nature of addressing the nation’s budget problems.
Among Democrats, liberals are in near revolt against the White House over the issue, even as substantive and political forces push Mr. Obama to attack chronic deficits in a serious way. At the same time, Republicans face intense pressure from their conservative base and the Tea Party movement to reject any deal that includes tax increases, leaving their leaders with little room to maneuver in any negotiation and at risk of being blamed by voters for not doing their part.
No one could have anticipated that from the catfood commission.
With Republicans taking charge of the House, they face pressure to go beyond campaign claims and produce a budget with cuts that live up to their promises.
"There is a ton of postelection survey evidence that the American people are fed up with rejectionism, and want the parties to work harder to find common ground," said William A. Galston, a former adviser to Mr. Clinton. "But there’s a caveat, and this is critical: While a majority of independents, Democrats and swing voters are for compromise over standing on principle, a majority of Republican voters are against compromise and for standing on principle."
Oops. Those independents voted for the GOP. Well, you get what you pay for.
Paul Krugman:
Count me among those who always believed that President Obama made a big mistake when he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — a supposedly bipartisan panel charged with coming up with solutions to the nation’s long-run fiscal problems. It seemed obvious, as soon as the commission’s membership was announced, that "bipartisanship" would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right.
William D. Cohan:
David Stockman has never been one to shy away from a roaring economic-policy debate. The former boy-wonder budget director in the first Reagan administration and the architect of Reagan’s supply-side economic policies, Stockman has been very busy lately rejecting the tax-cutting recommendations of Republicans in Washington and arguing that we must get our fiscal house in order or watch our way of life continue its decline. As an "imperialist power," he says, America is in danger of being at "sundown." Stockman, who turned 64 on Wednesday, has always been ahead of the curve on tax and fiscal issues, and it appears that he is ahead of it again this time, too.
WaPo:
On the heels of the Democratic Party's huge losses in last week's midterm elections, liberal activists have begun planning to push President Obama on a series of issues, demanding that he not cede any ground to Republicans.
Might help to explain your position, whatever it is. We'll do what makes sense, but the assumption that we will support anything on good faith is long gone.
Dana Milbank:
Democrats in the House are set to keep the same three leaders - Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn - who led them to their historic wipeout. This is the preschool-soccer theory of accountability: Nobody keeps score and everybody gets a trophy. The fallen House speaker seems to speak for a number of her colleagues when she says she has "no regrets" about the past two years.
As usual, the Villagers want accountability only for Democrats.
Eugene Robinson:
"Why don't they fight back?"
That's the question I've been hearing from the Democratic Party's stunned and dispirited base. For the past month, I've been on a book tour that has taken me to Asheville, N.C., Terre Haute, Ind., Austin and elsewhere. Everywhere I go, supporters of President Obama and his agenda ask me why so many Democrats in Washington don't stand up for what they say they believe.
Good question.
Michael Gerson:
Following the midterm elections, attention understandably focused on those parts of the South and Midwest where the Obama coalition collapsed. But a second wave of trouble is coming for the president and his party, precisely in those states where the first wave barely reached. Having experienced the revolt of red America, Democrats must now deal with the fiscal crisis of blue America.
The one that Republicans caused? We haven't forgotten it was on your watch when you were in the WH, Michael. That's why those states are still blue.