Stephen Colbert provides the best summary I have seen to date of the absurd discussions involving raising the debt ceiling.
It was always obvious that the debt ceiling would be raised because the oligarchy demanded it and the Republican party leadership, like that of the Democrats, are their faithful servants. The Republican leadership had assured the financial and business world that the ceiling would be raised and everyone, including Obama, knew this. So the Republican idea of holding the ceiling ‘hostage’ to demand other concessions was laughable on its face. How can you use hostages as a negotiating tool if both sides agree that the hostage would be released unharmed? All Obama had to do was insist that the ceiling be raised with no conditions and it would have happened.
The only reason for this spectacle was for both party leaderships to create a made-for-media drama that would allow them to arrive at ‘compromise’ policies that would further benefit the oligarchy while hurting everyone else, all the while claiming that they were forced to take this drastic action to ‘save the hostage’.
It is still possible that there will be such a deal but where things seem to have gone awry is that the Republican party base does not understand how this game is played and took at face value all their leadership’s rhetoric about how raising the debt ceiling was a horrendous evil that should never be agreed to unless a steep price were paid. Now that time is running out, they have to find a way to wriggle out of the situation.
Colbert further discusses the issue with Naftali Bendavid, the congressional correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.