Over two years ago, I happened to hear a fiendishly giggling and exuberant Pat Buchanan on the radio talking with another member of The Club For The Growth of Insanity, Sean Hannity. There was no video, but I am sure he was actually rubbing his hands together gleefully, the way arch villains do in the comics.
What could possibly be making Pat so over-the-moon in Lex Luthorish ecstasy? Find out below.
At the time, Saturday July 9th, 2011, to be exact, I diaried here about the Pat Buchanan Revelation which was a window into the Republican psyche and game plan. And, horrifically, what the Buchanic Oracle predicted has come to pass:
While he and Sean ruminated about Republican tactics and strategies for making the President and the Dems the ones ultimately responsible if the debt ceiling wasn't increased and the economy crashed, Pat Buchanan said (paraphrase) - and he was literally chortling -
"Don't you get it Sean? The Republicans have created an ongoing Budget Doomsday Machine! These talks are going to happen again and again!"
So he told us. And so it has come to pass.
We really have no one but ourselves to blame. They have had earlier successes with their extortion strategy, why would they stop now?
The Republicans will NEVER be satisfied. They can, have, and will use every single opportunity they can to extract new demands and cuts from the Democrats, be it in a continuing resolution or a debt ceiling. And because the Dems and the President have knuckled under in the past, it has only encouraged them to seek newer and bigger targets - like the current effort to defund the ACA in an attempt to all but nullify the recent Presidential election.
It now looks that due to time constraints we are about to merge the CR into the debt ceiling debate, which the Republicans will seize as a terrific opportunity to Go Big with even more ultimatums regarding the ACA, Medicare, Social Security, etc. - the so-called "The Grand Bargain."
The situation is no different; it is still extortionist demands being made while a clock is ticking and if anything the outcome being held to the head of the American people is even bigger than the shut-down - the default of outstanding American debt. No bargain that could possibly be called "grand" can be "negotiated" under such circumstances.
Does anyone remember that we are already in sequester? Those big, bad, broad, devastating, axe cuts to the economy that were supposed to be so hamfisted and painful that no sane Congress could let them go into effect but our Congress did in one of the last "show-downs"?
Aren't we all tired of every single CR and debt ceiling raise turning into a Shoot-out at the OK Corral where the Republicans turn out onto the streets in their armored Budget Doomsday Machine to be met by Democrats with pop-guns?
We have never met them with equal commitment. We have never met them with equal ardor. We have never met them with commensurately outsized demands representing our portion of the electorate. We have always caved.
Painful as it is and will be, WE HAVE TO STOP THE MADNESS. It is inevitable that someday, sometime, the Democrats and the President will simply have to have the gumption to say "No. Not here, not now, not this time."
It is time for the Democrats and the citizens of this country to link arms and face down these economic terrorists and tell them we reject negotiations in which they make demands while dangling the country over a giant vat of molten lava. We need a clean CR and a clean raise of the debt ceiling. Then, and only then can we have rational, adult, non-demagogic budget talks that are removed from a crisis framework.
(As a side note, debt ceilings were raised74 times before 2010 and the creation of the Republican Budget Doomsday Machine.)
The Budget Doomsday Machine was the evil, cynical creation of people who were once involved in actual governance who have turned themselves into comic book villains. Only in comic books would supposed legislators threaten to blow up the economy of the nation and possibly the world if we don't cede to their demands.
This is no way to run a country. Turn on the bat signal
