The Republicans are single minded in the pursuit of power and the pursuit of policies favorable to the rich. To these objectives one can add the goal of impoverishing the rest of us, though why they feel that need is unclear.
Democrats, on the other hand, are single minded in their insistence that they must surrender every political advantage and every electoral victory that fate or the Republicans may place in their path.
At least Republicans know what they want and have a reasonably good idea of how to get it. As Dean Baker pointed out recently, Ross Douthat is quite clearly and fairly openly advocating means testing of Social Security as a path forward toward the Republican Holy Grail of destroying the program. Again, it is not clear why they want to impoverish older Americans when doing so would give very little real comfort to the rich, but reason not the need.
Instead, reason me this. Why do Democrats such as James Clyburn line up to give bi-partisan cover to this sort of thing? Is the approval of the Beltway punditocracy so important to these people that they are willing to completely demoralize their base while gaining nothing even from a purely political standpoint, putting aside the right and wrong of the thing? Do they really think that aiding the Republicans will get them votes? Haven’t they learned that you’re not going to wean the crazies away from the Republicans no matter what you do, but you can certainly dampen your own turnout by trying. The gun nuts, the fundamentalists and the racists are lost to them. If they concentrate on the small rational majority they can win, as the last election proved. The ironic thing (at least I think it’s ironic; but maybe it’s something else) is that if the Democrats do assist the Republicans, those same Republicans will turn right around and try to make political points out of “Democrat” cuts to Social Security or Medicare that the Democrats will have enacted because of Republican demands. These delusions aren’t merely the province of a few Congressman. Apparently the Obama people still believe that the problem is partisanship and they can induce the Republicans to rise above it, and to do so they are fully prepared to betray their supporters in order to get illusory concessions from the Republicans.
The Republicans keep teeing up the football and the Democrats, like poor Charlie Brown, keep coming back for more.
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