(Update) The coming GOPocalypse

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week, President Obama told reporters the public is already “sold” on the need for a balanced approach to debt reduction, a combination of spending cuts and additional revenue by closing "tax expenditure" loopholes (i.e., corporate welfare subsidies).

Speaker John Boehner and Republicans insisted that Americans agree with their spending-cuts-only approach. Yet another example of the "big lie" propaganda technique in action. Political Animal – The public wants and expects new revenue:

It was a bizarre line for Republicans to complain about, since their position isn’t popular at all.

Referencing a collection of polls Greg Sargent pulled together last week, we now have five recent national polls asking the public for their preference: do they want a debt-reduction plan that only relies on cuts or do they want a combination of cuts and increased revenue (the only-revenue approach tends to poll under 5%). The results are entirely one-sided as my new chart helps show:

The blue columns show public support for a balanced debt-reduction plan including cuts and revenue; the red columns show support for reducing the debt exclusively through spending cuts. Republican lawmakers genuinely seem to believe that their approach, the red columns, is the popular way to go. In fact, they’re so invested in this, they just might crash the economy on purpose unless the GOP gets exactly what it wants.

In fact, they are so dishonest that the Weeper of the House told reporters this morning that the right-wing “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan is, in fact, “balanced,” just as President Obama requested! Political Animal – Will the House come around or not?:

And how is it balanced? It’s simple: Republicans would gut public investments, slash Social Security and Medicare, and impose structural reforms that would make it impossible for the United States to compete for at least a generation. In exchange, GOP officials would raise the debt ceiling.

See? Boehner said. It’s “a balanced plan.”

Note to Mark Halperin: this is the definition of what it means to be a "dick."

“Cut, Cap, and Balance” is the latest gimmick from the GOP's Gimmicks-R-Us shop, and it is what the House is wasting its valuable time on today to placate the Tea Party insurrectionists holding America hostage rather than doing the nation's business.

Steve Benen has a good analysis of this latest GOP gimmick. Political Animal – Getting to know the ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance Act’:

To call this plan “extreme” is almost a comical understatement. Remember the radicalism of Paul Ryan’s budget plan? “Cut, Cap, and Balance” makes Ryan’s plan look centrist by comparison.

This approach would cap all federal spending at 18% of GDP, and would slash more than $110 billion from the budget this year, a priority that appears designed to make unemployment much worse almost immediately. “Cut, Cap, and Balance” also, of course, includes a constitutional amendment to prohibit deficits, and would make it almost impossible for any Congress to ever raise taxes on anyone ever again.

The Pentagon budget would be untouched, and the budget wouldn’t bring in so much as a penny in new revenue

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Bob Greenstein explained:

The “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act” that the House of Representatives will vote on [this] week stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades. It would go a long way toward enshrining Grover Norquist’s version of America into law. It is so extreme that even the budget plan of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would not fully satisfy its requirements — the Ryan plan’s budget cuts wouldn’t be severe enough.

The bill also would threaten the U.S. government with default and would likely cause the loss of roughly 700,000 jobs in the year ahead. In addition, the bill would target programs for the poor for cuts, while protecting tax breaks for the wealthy and powerful.

[Bob Greenstein on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell expanded upon his analysis:]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The plan is a caricature of Republican priorities — it’s something liberals might come up with as an exaggeration to make the GOP look ridiculous — and yet, it’s all too real. In a practical sense, its passage would guarantee the dismantling of the federal government.

Fortunately this gimmick has no chance of passage. The Democratic Senate and Democratic White House oppose the entire package, and there’s no way to get a two-thirds majority for this preposterous constitutional amendment in both chambers. The president issued a rare veto threat on Monday, just in case.

And yet, the truly ridiculous plan will dominate Capitol Hill this week. The House will take it up [today], and the Senate will go through the motions of bringing it to the floor for a vote this week, too.

If you’re wondering why Congress would waste valuable time on an insane “Cut, Cap, and Balance” proposal when there’s only two weeks until the nation exhausts its ability to pay America’s bills, the answer isn’t entirely satisfying: Republicans insist upon it. They demand that they get this out of their system — right now — before actual solutions can be considered.

To be sure, GOP officials know “Cut, Cap, and Balance” will fail. They’re demanding votes in both chambers anyway, basically because the votes will make them feel better about themselves.

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Oddly enough, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was surprisingly candid about this point late last week, explaining that his chamber will take up “Cut, Cap, and Balance,” it will fail, and then lawmakers could move on to more viable alternatives. “Let’s get through that vote and then we’ll make decisions about what will come after,” he said.

It’s tempting to think adults who serve in Congress wouldn’t feel the need to vote on radical symbolism with the economy on the line. The importance of Republicans’ emotional sensibilities just doesn’t seem worth all this nonsense.

The clock is ticking down to the GOPocalypse and Tea-Publicans are wasting valuable time posturing on meaningless gimmicks to appease their crazy-base rather than doing the nation's business.

In the meantime Wall Street, which has long assumed that this entire charade was pointless posturing, is beginning to wonder if Republicans really are this crazy. (Hint: yes, they are). The longer this plays out, the greater the risk of the markets panicking.