How to Call Obama's Bluff

[Geee]

American Spectator:

I hate to say this, but as much as I agree with Boehner & Company about the debt limit, I think Republicans are playing a losing hand. The problem is that if they go to the wall and shut the government over raising taxes, it's going to be 1995 and Newt Gingrich all over again. As much as the Democrats may be at fault, the public is going to blame the GOP.

Look at the polls now. More than 70 percent of the public doesn't see any problem with "raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires" and "making the rich pay their share." I don't believe in making decisions by polls, but you have to take this into account in approaching such a big risk. If the Washington Monument closes down or maybe even Social Security checks get delayed, the story is going to be -- as it has been for the last century -- that Republicans are the "party of the rich" while the Democrats are the "party of the common man."

That is certainly not true anymore. The Democrats may have a solid block of votes among people of lower income, but their main strength comes from their support in the elites of the East and West Coasts. If you were looking for a historical analogy, the Age of Andrew Jackson would be the best example, when a frontier populist majority united behind a nationalistic military hero in opposition to the New England elites that had assumed leadership of the young republic in the generation after the American Revolution. After all, what was the National Bank -- which Jackson abolished, to the dismay of East Coast elites -- except an earlier version of the Federal Reserve? John Quincy Adams, who had defeated Jackson in 1824 without winning the popular vote, thought one of the most pressing issues in the election of 1828 was the establishment of a national astronomical observatory -- probably an 1828 equivalent of global warming. Contrary to what you hear at all the Democratic Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners around the country, Old Hickory's core constituency was the growing legions of freeholders and small business people who were sprouting up all over the country and suddenly found themselves confronting a European-style mercantile elite that wanted extensive government control of the economy. With Jackson at the helm, America instead became the Land of Free Enterprise.

Political rhetoric being what it is, however, none of this is going to penetrate. Instead, with Obama harping on corporate jets and "tax breaks for the wealthy," the stereotypes of the last century will remain -- Republicans are the "party of the rich" while Democrats are the "party of the common man." Who is closer to Wall Street, Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty or Timothy Geithner? But no matter. Obama knows his strengths and will only ratchet up the rhetoric as the deadline approaches, with the press trotting along behind.

The only dissenting voice out there comes from Marc Rubio. Listen to what he is saying. As a second-generation Cuban refugee, Rubio knows that every country in Latin America has at one time or another been ruled by some tinhorn demagogue whose entire political platform consisted of "tax the rich." Read how Juan Peron ruined Argentina's economy in less than a generation by doing exactly what Obama is doing -- going around to the wealthiest corporations and saying, "They can afford to buy gold-plated insurance for their employees, why can't every small business do the same?" Hence, Obamacare.

[Evad]

"As much as the Democrats may be at fault, the public is going to blame the GOP."

 

Another prime example of the Rumsfeld adage, "Never Accept The Premise".

These are entirely different times and ever since the "days of Noot", pubbies have been scared to death to do the right thing for fear the voting public would blame them for this or that.

 

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