Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Originally posted January 15, 2013. (Update) Tea-Publican Tyranny: Chaos Theory of Economic Terrorism:
I have posted about the radical extremism of "chaos theory" being pursued by Tea-Publicans from time to time. For example, Tea-Publican Tyranny: Chaos Theory of Economic Terrorism.
David Firestone at the New York Times more recently wrote about this Tea-Publican "chaos theory" in Chaos as Legislative Strategy:
President Obama’s description this morning of an idealized budget
negotiation with Republicans was bizarrely quaint and decorous. “There’s
a pretty straightforward way of doing this, and that is to set the debt
ceiling aside, we pay our bills and then we have a vigorous debate
about how we’re going to do further deficit reduction in a balanced
way,” he said at the final news conference of his first term, devoted
largely to the coming debt-ceiling crisis.
But the debate that
Washington has been having has been anything but straightforward, and
demanding that it be otherwise won’t make it change. The hard-right
Republicans in the House aren’t interested in sitting at a long table
with pencils and budget books; they want to set that table on fire, and
burn to ashes all the compromises that long defined the two-party
system.
Republicans have made it clear they are fully prepared to
shut down the government, block payments to retirees and soldiers,
default on the credit of the United States, and cause a global panic by
the end of next month, all of which will result from failing to raise
the debt ceiling. Politico
quoted several Republican lawmakers and aides today who said that party
members are demanding that Speaker John Boehner consider default and a
shutdown as a serious governing option.
* * *
The use of chaos as a legislative strategy — and to “manage” raucous
members — is a new and explosive element in American politics, one that
Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge. Though he has no reason
to believe this, he expressed hope this morning that common sense would
prevail once the American people realize Congress is balking at paying
its own debts. By refusing to let Republicans use the ceiling as a
negotiating level, he said, he will eventually persuade the party to do
the right thing.
“This is the United States of America,” he said.
“What, we can’t manage our affairs in such a way that we pay our bills
and we provide some certainty in terms of how we pay our bills? Look, I
don’t think anybody would consider my position unreasonable here.”
But
of course an entire political party does. The president’s position as
the rational man in the room may help shift public blame toward the
Republicans, but it’s far from clear that will be a useful tool. Many
House Republicans, from districts as small and rigid as they are, don’t
care about blame and consequences. Even members of the House leadership
are talking openly about the uses of extortion.
Unfortunately Mr.
Obama has refused to halt the crisis with any of the “simpler
solutions,” as he put it today, ruling out the minting of a coin or,
more realistically, the use of a clause in the 14th
Amendment. (That clause prohibits any questioning of the public debt,
and some lawyers have said it could be used to permanently eliminate the
debt ceiling.) So even if he gets through February with the usual
last-minute deal that infuriates the hard right despite excessive
spending cuts, they will be back with the same club, again and again,
until someone with resolve puts a permanent end to it.
The Tea-Publican economic terrorists holding this country hostage to
extortionary ransom demands must be defeated and held accountable for
their actions against the American people.
