Visual source: Newseum
Joe Nocera on the Tea Party's war on America:
You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.
These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took. [...]
Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved. What is astonishing is that both the president and House speaker are claiming that the deal will help the economy. Do they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, tried to rein in federal spending. Cutting spending spiraled the country right back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the stimulus package known as World War II. That’s the path we’re now on. Our enemies could not have designed a better plan to weaken the American economy than this debt-ceiling deal. [...]
For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.
Meanwhile, Republicans and celebrity Sarah Palin are in a huff over the Vice President allegedly saying that Tea Party Republicans acted like terrorists.
Richard Cohen on the passion deficit:
I suffer from Tea Party envy. There is little about the actual party I like and there are some members I abhor, but I am jealous of its sense of purpose, its determination and its bracing conviction that it is absolutely right. In its own way, it waves a crimson battle flag while President Obama’s is a sickly taupe — the limp banner of an ideological muddle.
Obama would be a good White House chief of staff, but as a president he lacks political savvy. He never knew how to get ahead of the Tea Party wave. He never knew how to marshal — or create — his own constituency. Republican invective notwithstanding, he lacks demagogic tools. He tries to solve problems instead of, for the Republicans, creating them. Barack Obama does not do pain.
Eugene Robinson runs down the capitulation timeline:
Obama’s starting point was a demand for a “clean,” unencumbered bill to raise the ceiling; House Speaker John Boehner said no. What would have happened if Obama refused to budge? We don’t know because that’s not his style. It would be nice, someday, to find out.
Once this became a debate about debt reduction and national priorities, it was obvious that budget cuts needed to be matched by new revenue. After all, if you look at historical norms, spending is too high and tax receipts are too low by about the same amount. Obama commandeered the bully pulpit and demanded a “balanced approach” that included revenue. He inveighed against undertaxed “millionaires and billionaires” who fly around in corporate jets. Polls showed that by a considerable margin, the public agreed.
Republicans insisted on budget cuts only, with not a cent of new revenue — and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what they got. There’s no way to spin it: Boehner and the GOP won. Obama and the Democrats lost.
This isn’t a rout, however. It’s a retreat, in relatively good order, that leaves Democrats provisioned for the battles to come.
Bryan Walsh provides an overview of the GOP's war on the EPA and our environment:
It was lost in the endless drama of the debt-ceiling negotiations, but last week the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives launched an unprecedented attack on the country's environmental protections. GOP representatives added rider after rider to the 2012 spending bill for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, tacking on amendments that would essentially prevent those agencies — charged with protecting America's air, water and wildlife — from doing their jobs.
Jean Chemnick at the New York Times also looks at the GOP's anti-environment agenda:
The Republican-led House has voted to "stop," "block" or "undermine" efforts to protect the environment 110 times since taking over the majority in January, two senior Democrats said last week.
Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who sponsored a bill that passed the House in 2009 that would have established a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gas emissions, said the current House has done more to scuttle environmental protections than any in history.
"The new Republican majority seems intent on restoring the robber-baron era where there were no controls on pollution from power plants, oil refineries and factories," said Waxman, who serves as top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Natural Resources ranking member Markey, meanwhile, said the Republican agenda was a rifle "pointed right at the heart of America's clean energy future."
Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords returned to the House for the debt ceiling vote:
An emotional and unexpected moment Monday evening as Arizona's Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to the House floor for the first time since her near-fatal shooting at a Tucson shopping center in January.
Her arrival prompted a bipartisan standing ovation and cheers from the gallery to acknowledge the almost seven-month rehabilitation of the three-term Democrat.
