Could it be? Have Republicans started paying attention to facts? Did the realization that they might be responsible next week for breaking the world economy sink in? Let's find out together, shall we?
Charles Krauthammer has an article leading the NRO website today entitled "The Way Out". In it, he gives the usual platitudes of Obama not being willing to "negotiate" by giving in to all the GOP demands, and how Obama is hurting international market by telling economists what they already know (hint: default isn't good).
But then, a rare moment of honesty appears! The realization that, yes, the polls are showing this hasn't been the best of weeks for Republicans. Maybe perhaps (PERHAPS), Republicans will take note of this, and think about what it means, and reverse course?
Of course not, because ultimately they are Republicans, and facts don't exist in their world. Here's two paragraphs that together reveal how inane (insane?) Charlie is.
Nonsense. It’s been so used dozens of times going back at least to 1973, when Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale tried to force campaign-finance reform on President Nixon. Obama himself voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator in 2006.
So much for principle. Moreover, should Obama miscalculate the brinkmanship, he’ll become the first president to ever allow a default. Precisely opposite to the principle he pretends to be espousing — and ruinous to what’s left of his presidency. Breaching the debt ceiling would indeed, as he claims, be an economic disaster, aborting an already historically anemic recovery. As president, he would take the blame. He can’t allow it.
It’s a bluff. He will blink.
Let's unpack this statement. The first says that negotiating over the debt ceiling is no big thing... it happens all the time! Except wait, in the example he gave, it didn't work. He specifically says that Mondale and Kennedy TRIED to force reform on Nixon. So... giving in to these demands isn't really something that's a historical norm.
And wait, now it's a big deal to allow a default? Charlie needs to talk with his conservative friends so they can get the story straight.
The last sentence alone encapsulates the entire mindset of the Republican view in this. Default would be catastrophic, so Obama has to blink. No admittance of their own part in this, just simple "Green Lantern" wish fulfillment policy.
Krauthammer finishes the article with a few "Ways Out", on how Republicans could salvage this disaster. The suggestions he makes are ones which you could guess without even reading, the tired old tropes the GOP trots out whenever a Democrat holds power and the ones they never actually do when they are in power.
There is one way out Krauthammer. Tell your fellow Republicans to sign a clean CR. And then you can get out permanently in 2014.