Perhaps the tax deal President Obama cut with Senate Republicans just had to happen.
The American public has not seemed to care particularly that the GOP has blocked everything that President Obama has tried to do - purely for political gain. The public does not seem to care that the GOP has deliberately tied the political system in knots - thereby worsening the damage their policies inflicted upon the nation.
But if the public doesn't seem to care much what kinds of policies the GOP blocks, maybe it will notice the kind of policies it enacts, when it has the power to do so.
What will the Republican Party actually do when given the chance? How will they seize the political opportunity the midterm election results afforded them?
Now we know: Extend tax breaks for the wealthy and increase tax breaks for the really, really wealthy.
That's it. That's all they've wanted all along, apparently.
Maybe if President Obama had cut this deal at the beginning of his presidency, the subsequent two years would have gone much more smoothly for the everyone.
"Okay," the GOP might have said, "as long you are willing to maintain huge tax breaks to the very wealthy people who fund our campaigns, we'll do things to help the economy and the middle class - and we won't even call everything you do "radical."
How's that for a deal?
Now maybe the public will also notice that while the GOP is extending tax breaks for the wealthy they are simultaneously blocking federal health benefits for 9/11 first responders and a one-time payment of $250 to senior citizens "facing a second year without a cost-of-living increase."
Maybe the "blocking" thing will finally begin to register in the public mind, once the public gets an actual glimpse of the GOP agenda. They passed this, but they blocked that. Hmmm...
As Gene Lyons wrote in Salon:
The Party of No was forced to say yes. From a Tea Party perspective, GOP leaders agreed to increase the budget deficit purely for the sake of multimillionaire tax cuts. How much clearer can things get?
Former Bush aide Dan Bartlett pointed out that the tax drama now playing out in Washington is precisely what the GOP intended:
“We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it,” says Dan Bartlett, Bush’s former communications director. “That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.”
It doesn't get any more cynical than that, even in Washington.
Is anyone noticing?
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