THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN NOVEMBER 23, 2011
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Rebutting the main argument in Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell’s latest travesty of an op-ed column (“The Hillary Moment,” in Monday’s Wall Street Journal) would be a pretty egregious example of shooting fish in a barrel. Their idea that Barack Obama should abruptly shut down his re-election campaign so that Democrats can run the Secretary of State is both ludicrous and pointless, aside from the fact that neither of these two Fox Democrats comes to the topic in good faith.
On the other hand, Schoen and Caddell build their dumb and disingenuous argument on a premise that is accepted in better company than their own: that if Obama wins with a “negative campaign” focusing on the extremism of the Republican Party, he will make his second term a shambles, marked only by increased partisanship as insulted conservatives refuse to cooperate with his agenda. But this premise is as equally flawed as the other arguments the duo put forward. Win or lose, the kind of Obama campaign that Schoen and Caddell bemoan may, in fact, be the only way to end the polarization and gridlock and make governing in Washington possible again.
To begin, it’s far from clear why conservatives would be offended by the claim that they represent a very different governing philosophy than the one put forward by President Obama. Indeed, it’s exactly what they say. Aside from their fatuous claims that the cautious centrist Obama represents something new and dangerously leftist in the Democratic Party, the prevailing conservative belief is that their own party had “abandoned conservative principles” up until 2009, and made big gains in 2010 precisely because a previously hidden majority of Americans were mobilized to vote for a Tea Party-influenced GOP that was finally loud, proud, and consistent about its ideology.
If conservatives are right about the likely outcome of an election representing a “choice, not an echo” (to adopt the title of Phyllis Schlafly’s famous book from the Goldwater campaign, which became an abiding slogan of the conservative movement), nothing should please them more than a “negative” Obama campaign that calls attention to their party’s hard-earned ideological rigor.
Besides, we already have an excellent example of a president who ran on a message of bipartisanship—Obama in 2008—and we all saw how well that worked out for him. There’s no reason on earth to believe an Obama campaign based on constant appeals to bipartisanship, if successful, would work any better to produce actual bipartisanship than the constant appeals to bipartisanship the president made during his first electoral campaign.
In fact, it’s reasonably clear in retrospect that one significant source of the current partisan gridlock in Washington is that Obama’s 2008 campaign was insufficiently negative to yield the kind of mandate to govern that Republicans (and for that matter, dissident Democrats) could not ignore. Yes, Obama campaigned on a platform that included precisely the kind of major policy initiatives he has tried to implement in office, most notably universal health coverage and a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. But in the post-election period, Republicans and many “neutral” pundits insisted on dismissing everything Obama had said during the campaign other than his promise to overcome partisan gridlock, interpreted as meeting the GOP at least half-way on every subject regardless of how rapidly they moved to the right. Had Obama spent much of 2008 attacking conservative ideology as inherently misguided and out of line with the views and values of the country, his resounding victory would have discredited the popular conservative idea that a “center-right nation” had decided Obama might be a better vehicle for reining in big government than the feckless big-spender Bush or the RINO McCain.
That’s why, if a second Obama term is to amount to much of anything, it’s important that he make the policy choices facing the country as clear as is humanly possible. And yes, that means comparative—which is by necessity partially negative—campaigning, rather than some placid demand that voters judge his record in an up-or-down vote that does not take into account the kind of politicians and policies they would thereby elevate to power. And even if he is doomed to lose, he owes it to the country to keep constant pressure on the GOP to make its positive policy agenda as explicit as possible. Under such pressure, it’s possible a nominee like Mitt Romney would disappoint the Republican Tea Party base by foreswearing highly destructive courses of action and embracing positions that involve something more than a demand that Democrats unconditionally surrender.
Moreover, Obama has a moral obligation to remind voters that the presidential election is not, as a simple matter of fact, a referendum, but a decision for and against two candidates, two parties, two philosophies, two agendas, two prospective Supreme Courts, two prospective foreign policies, two views of economic inequality, two attitudes towards the very wealthy and the very poor, and two concepts of the very purpose of government. Americans unhappy with life in the United States who vote against Obama next November will not simply be registering their unhappiness with the status quo, but will be voting for policies ranging from the abandonment of reproductive rights and progressive taxation to the proposition that anyone rich enough to be regarded as a “job creator” should be exempt from accountability to the public for much of anything.
Of course, thanks to the obstructive power of minority parties in Washington, a comparative election will not necessarily empower the winners of either the presidential or the congressional elections to govern effectively. But it’s far more likely to produce accountability for winners and losers alike, hastening the day when the country is not lurching from one status quo referendum to another with each cycle’s losers choosing to deny the winner any sort of mandate. So let’s hear it for “negative campaigning,” if it offers Americans an opportunity to give Washington some clear direction.
Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
33 comments
More and more I fear we are splitting into two countries. How can this be done practically and peacefully? It will be worse than India going into India plus Pakistan.
- skahn
November 23, 2011 at 12:36am
Thank you, Ed, for a fine piece. It's time for Obama to call the GOP agenda exactly what it is: negative, radical and a renunciation of the many benefits, services, policies and values that Americans prize. He dug himself quite a hole by trying to split the difference with an opposition party that very explicitly made clear that it's priority was his defeat. Time to start climbing out of that. The only respect in which I differ with the piece is that Obama can legitimately be quite positive in painting his agenda in a positive light. Yes, he has to forthrightly take on the Republicans. But there's much to be positive about in illuminating their negative agenda.
- Thunderroad
November 23, 2011 at 1:35am
If Obama returns to his roots and raises high the star and crescent and the hammer and sickle he is bound to win.
- bulbman1066
November 23, 2011 at 3:23am
The only behavior that would satisfy right wing Tea Party Republicans is the total and utter capitulation of Democrats to the right wing agenda. The GOP today is a cultural movement, not a political one capable of acting politically. It is not interested in getting along. It wants to be left alone. It wants to build walls to protect a particular way of life in a diverse world and so it cannot be negotiated with. It must be defeated, politicially, as a significant political force. And the only way to do that is to fully expose it to the public as the primary source of our dysfunctional politics and thus undermine the support it gets from cynical and opportunistic financial oligarchs who see it as an ally in the oligarchy's effort to neutralize federal government as a taxing and regulating impediment to their profits. Republican leaders themseleves are learning the hard way what Robespierre learned a long time ago: That eventually all revolutions eat their children. Live by the mob, die by the mob. How a party thinks is more important than what it thinks. That is why David Brooks has already called the GOP "not a normal party" for its inability to engage in real politics instead of treating politics as war by other means. Kathleen Parker at the Post seemed to agree with Paul Begala that Republicans are the "The Stupid Party." "They just can't seem to stop themselves," she said. Parker revisited the familiar Republican glory days where an erudite William F. Buckley once tossed the John Birch Society out of the Republican's Big Tent, but whose learning and wit has been "supplanted by talk radio hosts who love to quote Buckley but who do not share the man's pedigree or nimble mind." Worse yet, she says "the big tent fashioned by Ronald Reagan has become bilious with the hot air of religious fervor," where fundamentalist views have increasingly "forced the party into a corner where science and religion can't coexist." Instead of embracing science as "the engine that propels intellectual inquiry" the Republican worldview has "morphed into skepticism of science fueled by religious certitude" and where Republican candidates must now "tack away from science" and toward the theistic position that "only God controls climate." It takes courage to swim against the tide of Republican know-nothingness that Parker describes as "the Palinization of the GOP," where the least informed earn the loudest applause. And these are the people President Obama is supposed to hold his fire to negotiate with? Yet, it's one thing for Republicans to criticize other Republicans and another for Democrats to do it within the context of a campaign. So, conservatives like Parker (echoed by the Fox Democrats) find themselves trapped in a No-Man's-Land between their head-scratching lamentations about the sorry state of their Republican Party and the angry -- almost anguished -- rants they hurl against Democrats for not doing more to work with these people.
- TedFrier
November 23, 2011 at 6:37am
It's no coincidence that Ross Douthat in his column in the NYT today criticizes the Republican presidential candidates for failure to state what policy choices they would implement if elected, as opposed to repeating the platitudes that have become the norm for the candidates. In typical Douthat fashion he says Republican policy wonks have lots of great ideas, the problem is the candidates or, more accurately, the non-candidates (Jeb et al.) who would bring more substance to the campaign if they had chosen to run. Whether it's the candidates, as Douthat claims, or the lack of any great ideas on the Republican side, my view, is debatable, but Douthat's larger point, that the Republican candidates must offer real policy choices during the campaign if they wish to govern effectively once elected, is absolutely true, and is the same point being made by Kilgore.
- rayward
November 23, 2011 at 7:03am
Will TNR ban bulbman? His comments are always stupid and dumb. I don't want to spend one second reading stupid crap. K2K sounds like a sincere genius beside that Freeper fool.
- gwhitaker
November 23, 2011 at 9:25am
Onion Network Headline: "President Obama finally made a deal with Republicans, allowing them to kick him in the balls in return for nothing." Good posts, TedFrier and rayward. Bad post, bulbman. You distribute empty attack phrases like Lenin did. Good work, Comrade. Obama could run the most reasonable and informative presidential campaign in history, and still the Republicans would attack him like a congress of panicked baboons. They don't want governing--they want war--so Obama may as well go to war. The Republicans themselves have said you can't negotiate with terrorists. They're right. Prepare to do battle, Mister President.
- magboy47.
November 23, 2011 at 9:37am
Actually, gwhitaker, bulbman once claimed that he was a young socialist back in the 1960s or thereabouts before finding the light on the right -- which means that his comments about Obama are simply projection.
- wildboy
November 23, 2011 at 9:53am
bulbman is useful in that he illustrates perfectly a problem discussed by Chait in his New York Magazine on liberals: the fantasy projection. Liberal critics and conservative wingnuts alike harbor a leftwing fantasy Obama; the former criticize him for not living up to what they imagined, the latter scream hysterically at him for being what they fear.
- timteeter
November 23, 2011 at 10:26am
Sorry but bulbman doesn't interest me. There is wishful thinking throughout the post. Politicians all engage in negative campaigning when the outcome of the election is in doubt. Candidates can rationalize the other consequences associated with negative political campaigning as either insignificant or positive. However, those thoughts are always rationalizations.
- Doug12
November 23, 2011 at 10:42am
It would be hard for the Republicans to become MORE partisan without taking up arms and skulking through the forests. Kilgore is certainly right to the extent that there is no downside to a negative campaign. I think the Republicans will not stop their all obstruction all the time policy until they have been dealt a crushing electoral defeat as a result. If the economy was strong that might be possible, but I think there is no chance of that in 2012. But 4 more years of gridlock is better than letting the GOP run the country into the ditch again, so that will have to count as victory.
- JEFF FREY
November 23, 2011 at 11:40am
Excellent article Ed. Jeff has it right -- Republicans say they want bi-partisanship, then discount any Democratic move to the right. There's no downside to calling a spade a spade, Fox-News will spin negative whatever is said by Obama and the Democrats. A Republican "negative campaign" elevates propaganda and half-truthes and character assassination onto the airwaves. A Democratic "negative campaign" just has to repeat what Republicans have already said -- they oppose Obama no matter what, they oppose raising taxes no matter what, they oppose Social Security and the ACA no matter what. If it's considered negative to point out the true choice between the two parties, for the good of America go for it. Obama has the policies that will lift America into prosperity. Republicans want to repeat the policies that led to the crash of 2008. Which would you rather vote for?
- AllanL5
November 23, 2011 at 12:14pm
gwhitaker: I AM a sincere genius. I put a lot of thought and study of history in trying to be a fair and an independent thinker. I am a disillusioned registered democrat, but, as a fiscal conservative, I am trending towards the tiny Mitch Daniels wing of the GOP. No nation can sustain a debt to GDP ratio this high without an even higher personal savings rate (Japan's way of surviving the debt to GDP ratio). As to the genius part? It was made official when I was six years old. Quite a story. The genius gene runs in my paternal grandfather's lineage. There is no market for genius in America - my experience was that corporate America manages to mediocrity. I should have persisted in my idea for my 1964 8th grade science fair project to induce a known genetic-flaw into baby chicks, but my biology teacher thought that too ambitious. oh well. As to Kilgore's premise? well, Obama may appear to be a closet centrist to TNRliberals, but he is definitely a failure of leadership, especially of leadership of the Democratic Party. Zero coattails in 2012. Deal with it.
- K2K
November 23, 2011 at 12:24pm
K2K, you only like Mitch Daniels because you have never had to live in a state governed by him. Deal with it.
- wildboy
November 23, 2011 at 12:38pm
Great article Ed and a ton of great comments (bulbman excluded).
- Lundell
November 23, 2011 at 12:40pm
I think the mistake in getting elected is assuming that winning means that everyone embraces everything you embrace. In many cases it merely means you were the better choice in general. For instance, if Universal Health Care was the primary motivating factor in the 2008 election, why the push-back following its passage, even to the point that Massachusetts voted for a Republican senator to repeal it. Hence I disagree with the author that Obama needs to remind us that we all wanted these things just because we elected him. I think the key to governance is compromise, which neither party seems too willing to do. Obama (and the republicans) both put out proposals which are poison pills, which by their very intent are designed to be rejected. It is this type of extremism (on both sides), that limits our forward progress.
- Duktig1
November 23, 2011 at 1:05pm
The ACA was demagogued by the Republicans. Everyone was for each of the items in it, but the Republicans were against "Obamacare" no matter what was in it. Remember "Death Panels", "Losing your Doctor", "Killing Grandma"? None of that was in there, except in the twisted mind of Republican operatives. And the ACA certainly was not the "primary motivating factor" in the 2008 elections -- that was the economic melt-down. And to "compromise" takes two parties. It does Obama (and America) no good if the only "compromise" the Republicans will accept is "Their way or the highway". Especially as "Their way" will further damage the economy.
- AllanL5
November 23, 2011 at 1:17pm
What are the odds that Romney, once he is nominated (if he has been nominated), will at one and the same time tack right for the wingnuts, and centrist for the centrists—I call them independents (which is probably a misnomer; "wearied–worried–angry–sorry" voters more like it)?
- Tgossard
November 23, 2011 at 2:03pm
Kilgore nails it. Obama has to go on the offensive if he wants to win. Even if he only goes so far to highlight the negatives of the GOP candidate's policy positions in a positive way, it'll be branded as negative campaigning by the conservative propaganda machinne. Hell, they quoted him quoting McCain and tried to claim that was his policy position in '08; I can't imagine there is any lie too bold to be embraced, or at least tossed out in hopes of something sticking.
Every time bulbman starts making me wonder if he might actually be a sentient being, he goes off and spouts something with no bearing on reality, except that he really wrote it.
- GSpinks
November 23, 2011 at 2:47pm
I don't usually take to Kilgore's analyses, but in this case he's spot-on. The thing I particularly appreciate is how EK couches his recommendation not in terms of what will win Obama the election but rather in terms of what will be good for the nation. Without clear choices, choices as to how and why we are to be governed, not just between individuals, democracy breaks down and elections devolve into a farcical sham. As for the dim bulb, gwhitaker, TNR doesn't "ban" any paying subscriber, nor should it. The best policy is simply to skip over any post with the "bulbman" header. Let him be a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear.
- AaronW
November 23, 2011 at 6:10pm
Personally, I am still burned by the vicious campaign the Republicans ran in 2004 against Kerry. The fact that Perry and Romney have already came out with ads that are blatant lies, should be a sign to the president that the Republicans will be every bit as vicious this year. I pray the president will follow this great advice and push back hard.
- ahlesa4
November 23, 2011 at 6:59pm
I agree with Ross Douthat's criticism that most of the Republican candidates have offered slogans and platitudes instead of discussing the interesting, and in a real sense progressive, policy policies coming from the Right and the Center. I also agree with the CNN post-debate commentators, most of them Democrats, that last night's debate among the GOP candidates was substantive and worthy of close attention. Is there any politician on the scene today with Newt Gingrich's knowledge of policy, domestic and foreign? Newt showed character and courage when he said that an illegal immigrant has lived in this country for many years, paid his taxes, taken care of his family, and been an asset to the community should be given legal status (I need to look up whether he meant citizenship.) I agree with that. But agree or disagree, a fair-minded observer should admit that it took courage for Newt to refuse to pander to the base's anger over illegal immigration. Gingrich and Romney are clearly the only candidates qualified for the job. To their credit, GOP members seem to recognize this. I wouldn't be unhappy to see the following scenario. Obama tacks to the right and wins the majority of centrist votes. The Republicans refuse to compromise on the budget crisis they get blamed, and Obama wins a second term. The House and Senate stay the same except that the Republicans pick up two or three more Senate seats. The Tea Party and the hardcore base of the Democrats are both pushed to the side. Obama does a Clinton and has a successful second term centered around free trade, education reform, reform of the finance industry based on ending “too big to fail, and bringing the federal deficit under control. The Center-Right pragmatism that is the defacto political ideology of the majority of Americans triumphs over the more extreme tendencies and saves the day.
- bulbman1066
November 23, 2011 at 8:27pm
My post above about Obama's roots was meant as satire. I was making fun of the ideological left's inability to see the need for a politician to appeal to more than a small number of true believers. I was also demonstrating that the left has a double standard when it comes to insulting political leaders. It was OK for liberals to talk about "Bush-Chimp-Hitler" but it not OK to allude to Obama's radical past (the Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers).
- bulbman1066
November 23, 2011 at 8:47pm
AaronW, I'm taking your advice. I only read comments from TNR and Wonkette anyway, for different reasons. Have a great Thanksgiving.
- gwhitaker
November 23, 2011 at 10:58pm
Bulbman Mr. Gingrich has nothing but a superficial grasp of anything. (His success, according to Fred Barnes, was his ability to convince the right wing, like the Christian Right, that they could have more power if their demands subsided until the time was right, which never happened and, in my opinion, rendered his success only temporary.) For instance, Gingrich disputes military action in Iran without an accompanying regime change. That sounds like it makes sense; but exactly how will regime change be achieved; and if it can't be achieved without military action, do we do nothing? Or do we seek military action targeting regime change like Afghanistan or Iraq?
- Nusholtz
November 24, 2011 at 6:55am
"I was also demonstrating that the left has a double standard when it comes to insulting political leaders. It was OK for liberals to talk about "Bush-Chimp-Hitler" but it not OK to allude to Obama's radical past (the Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers)." Except instead your demonstrate intellectual laziness on an astounding scale, much like our friend Seattle. That is, you treat the "left" as some monolithic block, and thus statments/placards/actions of any extreme element can lazily be applied to all of 'em. I'm quite sure on this board you can find - Bush's economic prescription for the country is disastrous because... - Bush seems pretty stupid, a fact that can be determined by a stubborn insistence on a point of view which successive events have revealed to be unsupported by facts Even - Bush is liar! But Bush is a chimp? I'd be interested to see that found on these pages. And if it were made, to pass without most reliably anti bush commentators bringing the maker of such a stat end to task. Projection of ones own flaws is all well and good, as long as you realize that you're doing it.
- Nari224
November 24, 2011 at 10:00am
bulbman, This is satire: Onion Network Headline: "President Obama finally made a deal with Republicans, allowing them to kick him in the balls in return for nothing." This is not: bulbman: "If Obama returns to his roots and raises high the star and crescent and the hammer and sickle he is bound to win." Satire has to have at least a touch of humor in it. The Right makes a few good points (I'm a conservative on several issues--e.g., I got rounded on by the Left on this site for criticizing illegal immigrants), but the Right's attempt at satire always fall flat, because of its bitterness. You have to go beyond the party line to write good satire, and the Republican party line is based on bitterness and resentment. Of course, you may respond that I'm bitter and resentful because I'm not rich. Not. The rich can take their loot and shove it up their you-know-whats. I find fulfillment in other areas than gross materialism. I believe Jesus said something similar, although with greater grace, something about a rich man getting stuck in the eye of a needle.
- magboy47.
November 24, 2011 at 10:02am
That should be "you demonstrate..." oops.
- Nari224
November 24, 2011 at 10:03am
Or was it a camel getting stuck? The lessons of my Catholic upbringing fade with time. I've been an agnostic since I joined the Air Force in 1959. My dog tags read: Religion: No Preference But I'm not an atheist. Atheists are just as determined to prove that there isn't a God, as believers are to prove that there is one. If you're a non-believer, that's a waste of time.
- magboy47.
November 24, 2011 at 10:10am
Should read: "but the Right's attempt at satire always FALLS flat" Oops.
- magboy47.
November 24, 2011 at 10:18am
wildboy: I still regret declining the terrific job offer in Indianapolis in 1997. You don't like Mitch Daniels? Please send him to New York, where the real estate taxes on a home outside of NYC have doubled 2000-2009, to support the one in four residents on Medicaid. NY is unique in insisting Medicaid burden-sharing by each county. NYC lays their share onto business taxes. NYS + NYC annual budgets > $200BIL (NOT counting other-than-NYC county real estate taxes) for nineteen million residents. Taxachusetts is about half that per capita. As I noted is a different thread, the house I sold in 2000 for $350,000 (rock bottom of the Westchester County market) had RE taxes of $8,000/per year (that town was still paying for the multi-million dollar clean-up of illegal dumping by the Mafia on the grounds of the high school - a true story from my next door neighbor - the Italian mother-in-law of the School Board's attorney. By 2009, same house was paying $17,000 per year in RE taxes. Latest estimate is only 10% of NYS Medicaid is fraud. ROFL. the real tragedy is in de-populated upstate New York (Buffalo) where they are demolishing vacant homes. At one point, I considered Schenectady because you could buy a perfectly ok home for $20,000, in 2002 versus $350,000 in Westchester County, which, for some reason, many consider "upstate" even though it is the countty north of The Bronx, where a home still costs $400,000, in neighborhoods that still have lousy schools.
- K2K
November 24, 2011 at 10:22am
K2K, Are you saying that the dramatic RE tax increases in some NYS communities are due solely to Medicaid costs? There are many others beside welfare recipients who are sticking their fingers in the tax pie--like the people in the health industry who are gouging the taxpayers with the outrageous Medicaid bills they submit, even when there may be a ceiling imposed by the states. And, of course, there are armies of government contractors in other industries padding their bills obscenely before they submit them to the taxpayers. I know from my long experience in reading history and living among the poor that most people are poor because they have children they can't afford. That's a sad and often distasteful fact. But it ain't goin' away. Republicans in power do nothing in the long run to even make a dent in the problem. They know instinctively that the masses can cause mayhem in the streets, if they aren't mollified, at least to some extent. And Democrats know instinctively that corporate America is not going to stop sticking the taxpayers, especially since they've bribed a lot of (not all) politicians beforehand. Taxpayers take it on the chin from both the poor and the rich. It's just life. It's unfair. And don't think the takers from the taxpayers, either rich or poor, are happy. They're driven to slide through any and all openings in the system. They're satisfied like an alcoholic is after he has a stiff drink. The Republicans I know vote for the GOP because they resent people on welfare. But when they vote the Republicans back into power, nothing will be done about the poor (there will be no jobs, even for those who want to work), and Wall Street will crash again, this time catastrophically. The GOP is obsessed with deregulating Wall Street completely again. The economic crash that comes with that will double or triple the number of poor people in the U.S., almost overnight. Heck, middle-class Americans are going on Medicaid now, because of the last crash. Too many conservatives resent only the poor. I wish they would talk about the high-end takers, too. It could be that, as a group, they take more money from the taxpayers than the poor do. I don't know. I do know that the figure of 51% of Americans who don't pay taxes includes 50% of corporations who don't pay any federal income tax. Senator Carl Levin did a study on that several years ago.
- magboy47.
November 24, 2011 at 6:51pm
Duktig1: "I think the mistake in getting elected is assuming that winning means that everyone embraces everything you embrace." That's true. Poll show that people didn't vote to change Medicare into a voucher program in 2010, and it cost Republicans a seat in Republican upstate NY this year. "I think the key to governance is compromise, which neither party seems too willing to do. Obama (and the republicans) both put out proposals which are poison pills, which by their very intent are designed to be rejected." Not true at all, in my view. Democrats have been willing to compromise. Heck, they start from a position of compromise. Over a year was spent on health care which had no single payer to start with. The public option was dropped. The whole bill was based on principles that Republicans used to support, and was more conservative than what Nixon proposed. And Republicans gave...what, exactly? On fiscal issues, Democrats ask that Republicans look seriously at revenues. But for a majority of the Republican caucus, any serious revenue increase seems off the table, even though just about all mainstream economists think there is no way to get the fiscal situation under control without it. I just can't see why it should be even remotely controversial to have those who make the most and have the most pay the equivalent in taxes that they did under Clinton, yet Republican leaders decry the proposal as class warfare. (I think asking everyone except those who are most well off to sacrifice constitutes class warfare, but maybe that's my crazy talk again...) How can one compromise when even such sensible proposals are rejected out of hand? Remember the Republican presidential debate when the candidates were asked if they would reject a debt reduction deal that had a spending cuts to new revenues ratio of 10:1 and all of them raised their hands? Compromise isn't possible when one side adheres to an ideological view that makes real problem solving difficult, if not impossible. To say that both sides are to blame I think engages in a false equivalency that's not backed up by the evidence. I don't see how anything gets done in this Congress, which is why voters will hopefully make a clearer choice in 2012.
- dsimon
November 27, 2011 at 9:53am