redneckgaijin

So, apparently we finally have a debt ceiling deal.

"This process has been messy," Obama said in announcing the deal shortly before 9 p.m. Sunday night. "It's taken far too long. I've been concerned about the impact that it has had on business confidence and consumer confidence and the economy as a whole over the last month."

"Nevertheless, ultimately, the leaders of both parties have found their way toward compromise," he said. "And I want to thank them for that."

Compromise? WHAT compromise? Is Obama nuts?

For purposes of comparison, here are the Republican and Democratic demands during the course of the negotiations.

REPUBLICAN:

Greater than 1:1 ratio between debt ceiling increase and deficit reduction

Short-term, multi-stage debt ceiling raise process

No increased revenue of any kind

A vote on a government-crippling Balanced Budget Amendment

Automatic cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid if Congress fails to find sufficient other cuts

DEMOCRAT:

A clean, unconditional debt limit increase

$1 in tax increases or tax subsidy cuts on the wealthy/corporations for every $3 or $4 in spending cuts

A single debt limit increase to carry the government past the 2012 elections

No cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid

Automatic tax hikes on the rich if Congress fails to reform tax code

As you see from the color, every time the Republicans drew a line in the sand, they got what they wanted. Every line the Democrats drew in the sand got erased.

This is not compromise. Taegan Goddard's Political Wire got it right: OBAMA SURRENDERS.

Indeed, Obama led the retreat- he was the one who put the country's safety net for the poor on the table in the first place. The Republicans didn't- couldn't, after getting burned on Paul Ryan's proposal to effectively abolish Medicare- until Obama made cutting Social Security bipartisan.

Here are some important points to take away from this:

Steve Benen:

Josh Marshall made an interesting point in passing yesterday, asking whether conservative Republicans could achieve massive spending cuts through “old-fashioned majority votes.” Josh answered his own question: “Of course not.” The cuts on the table were only made possible by Republicans “threatening the health” of the United States.

I think this arguably one of the more important realizations to take away from the current political landscape. Republicans aren’t just radicalized, aren’t just pursuing an extreme agenda, and aren’t just allergic to compromise. The congressional GOP is also changing the very nature of governing in ways with no modern precedent.

Welcome to the normalization of extortion politics.

Jonathan Chait, who is a little to the right of me:

The problem, though, is that we can’t be sure Obama really intends to draw that line. There’s a limit to how much faith one can place in a man who has so badly misjudged his political opponents time and time again. The debt ceiling ransom may be a shrewd strategic retreat, or it may be the largest in a series of historic capitulations. We won’t know until the fight over the Bush tax cuts has been settled.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich:

More than a year ago, the President could have conditioned his agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond 2010 on Republicans’ agreement not to link a vote on the debt ceiling to the budget deficit. But he did not.

Many months ago, when Republicans first demanded spending cuts and no tax increases as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, the President could have blown their cover. He could have shown the American people why this demand had nothing to do with deficit reduction but everything to do with the GOP’s ideological fixation on shrinking the size of the government — thereby imperiling Medicare, Social Security, education, infrastructure, and everything else Americans depend on. But he did not.

And through it all the President could have explained to Americans that the biggest economic challenge we face is restoring jobs and wages and economic growth, that spending cuts in the next few years will slow the economy even further, and therefore that the Republicans’ demands threaten us all. Again, he did not.

The radical right has now won a huge tactical and strategic victory. Democrats and the White House have proven they have little by way of tactics or strategy.

Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast/Newsweek:

Back when George W. Bush and Karl Rove were wrecking the country, my liberal friends and I had many a hearty laugh about Rove’s boast that he was realigning American politics. Yep, we thought, but toward the left! Those hopes seemed vindicated when Barack Obama won the presidency. But just as Bush and Rove helped revive liberalism, it now seems plausible that Obama is ushering in a conservative era. The former did it through rank incompetence, while the latter is simply handing the Republicans the keys to the house and saying “take what you want.”

. . .

Fourth, and this might be the worst thing of all, is the horrible precedent set by the way this whole episode has played out. If he’s reelected, Obama is going to have to go back to Congress to increase the debt limit again three, maybe four more times. Now that he let the Republicans establish the precedent—never pursued by either party in our history, until now—what will they want next time? And the time after that? And after that? Would Democrats do something similar to a Republican president—demand that she or he support dramatic tax increases? That wouldn’t be any more right than the other way around. Of course Democrats, given their different DNA, might well be afraid to do something that...mean—which suggests that this precedent will have extremely conservative impacts on our politics for years to come. As Republicans love to remind us in other contexts, once you give in to hostage-takers’ demands, you embolden them to try for more next time.

Paul Krugman, who is usually farther to the left than I care to go but here I think is spot on:

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

. . .

Republicans will supposedly have an incentive to make concessions the next time around, because defense spending will be among the areas cut. But the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?

In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.

. . .

It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.

(Emphasis mine.)

And what does Obama have to say to all this?

President Obama admitted in a video message the debt deal is "far from satisfying," but he comforted supporters by suggesting they won't get rolled as badly the next time around.

Yeah. Right.

If anyone from the Democratic Party is reading this: unless Obama gets a primary opponent, I'm done with you. I will not cast a vote for a party that cuts aid to the poor, among many other sins committed by Obama's Democrats. Either repudiate your conservative President, or lose my vote to a third party- how about a New Deal Party, people?