There has been a lot of commentary lately explaining how the Tea Party house will shut down the government, or drive us into default, in an effort to defund Obamacare. Most of those commentaries go into some pretty good detail explaining how impossible it will be to get a CR with defunding of Obamacare through the Senate, much less past Obama's veto pen. They then go on to explain how the Conservatives will get beat up by public opinion if they go through with their threats. Is this so obvious to everyone except those Conservatives in congress? I think we're missing the real goal.
More below the fold.
We have a perfect example of this situation from 2011. While the conservatives came out with an historic bargaining position of sending the government into default unless there were big cuts in government spending, the Obama administration countered with... wait, let me think about it... with absolutely nothing. Instead of starting with demands of a huge jobs program, or a buy in option for Medicare, or even a national voters rights law, they started where they should have finished.
And how did it end up in 2011? Boehner said they got 98% of what they wanted, and they did! Not in their wildest dreams would the Libertarians that manipulate the Tea Party believe they could get a budget package through a Democratic controlled senate and a Democratic president, that would take a butcher knife to hundreds of government programs. From Science to Education, to research, to services... discretionary spending has been so devastated that it is now a major drag on the economy, not to mention the millions of families who have experienced or are on the edge of financial ruin.
Many here thought the conservatives wouldn't allow big cuts in the military. That was your fathers conservatives, not the Libertarians that run the Republican party today. They are perfectly happy with a much smaller military that can't be the policeman of the world.
So how does this kabuki theater play out? I think it's pretty close to the 2011 show, with a new scene of Republican good cop bad cop. Karl Rove has a piece in the WSJ filled with warnings of dire consequences if the house R's go over the edge. He is joined by many other Republican commentators. Boehner makes sure the press knows that he is very reluctantly giving into the mean Tea Partiers in the house caucus. The good.
The congressional Tea Partiers have heard the screams of the sky will fall from their fellow Republicans, but they push ahead. Why wouldn't they after what they got in 2011? As long as they don't stay over the government shutdown line for too long, and as long as they don't go over the default line, they have nothing to lose from an uninformed public (see 1996 election) and come across as brave fighters to their delusional supporters at home. In the mean time, the only thing the Obama administration has on the table, is for the Tea Partiers to take Obamacare off the table. Again, instead of starting the negotiations with big demands, they start where they should finish. The Bad.
So the Libertarians in the house push the budget battle up to the limit before a shutdown, then pass a continuing resolution without defunding Obamacare, all the while screaming that Obama has refused to negotiate with them. They come back with the same defunding of Obamacare next month during the debt ceiling battle, only at the last minute, they swap defunding of Obamacare for Sequester II. Now they've given the Dems exactly what the Dems have been demanding for 2 months, in exchange for some deficit reduction. Remember, the public hasn't seen any damage from Sequester I (that's for another diary about the stupidity of Department heads), so what's the big deal about more deficit reduction, something the public supports? Any default because the Dems refuse deficit reduction, and the public will blame the Democrats. The ugly.
Now this isn't 11 dimensional chess, it's not even a good game of checkers. It's more or less an instant replay of the 2011 fiasco. And you know what they say about the definition of insanity...? So if the Dems don't come up with more than " give us back Obamacare", don't be surprised to see another round of devastating budget cuts and another step for the Oligarchs toward the new Gilded age.