rjmacs wrote:
Do you suppose he's going to have more luck getting compromise now, after the debt ceiling failure? I'm discouraged that it will happen. Politically, i think it makes more sense for Republicans to continue clubbing him while he's down and ascribe continued failure to his administration, and hope that voters come along on the Blame-A-Thon 'til next November.
I think the two most notable factors that have kept Republicans (who think severe cuts to entitlements is a necessary thing) from reaching a compromise with Democrats (who don't want to have severe cuts in entitlements):
- the Norquist pledge that there be no tax increases and the inclination of a most Republican office holders to take the pledge and feel constrained by it.
- Republicans rely extremely heavily on their tactic of "every Republican in Congress must vote the same (or you will face a Tea Party primary challenge).
But they have a HUGE problem: almost all Republicans in the House voted for the Ryan inspired budget plan that had really drastic reductions in the help seniors would get in their medical expenses - which was a politically unpopular move on their part - and now they are desperate to get Democrats to bail them out by agreeing to entitlement reform. The only way to get what they want is for the Democrats to completely capitulate and give them cover for their politically dumb move on Medicare - but without any tax increases. That would be political suicide for Democrats and I just don't think they'll ever agree to it. Tom Coburn (Republican Senator, Oklahoma) cleverly gave Republicans a way to thread the needle by looking for revenue that didn't come in the form of tax increases. It probably would have been the basis for some sort of compromise, but the Tea Partiers - ironically, mostly in the House - put the kabosh on it.
Because of that, and that the Bush tax cuts are set to expire next year, I think there is some reasonable hope for a compromise, but it will have to involve some revenue increases along with some unpopular cuts in entitlements. I think there is at least a fifty-fifty chance of that happening in spite of the Norquist pledge and the Tea Party fanaticism.
I actually think that if Obama can survive to have a second term, that he may well be able to eventually, actually get the trend in national politics that we've had for the last several years of partisanship over compromise (weighted much more on the Republican side) to slide more toward compromise. That has been one of his primary goals - he sees it as essential to the health of the country to tamp down hyperpartisanship (I think he is right) - and a lot of the things that many Democrats dislike about what he is doing are because of that effort. But our form of government does become more and more dysfunctional the more one or both parties pursue a pure ideological agenda that allows no compromise - the latest debt increase crap being a superlative example of that. If we don't change that dynamic, the damage to could be tremendous.
