So I was over at a good buddy’s house yesterday, and he’s a fairly typical conservative, maybe a little moderate in some ways but traditional in others. Naturally, the debt deal came up:
In the end, it wasn’t even close. If you were watching on C-SPAN, you saw that barely a couple dozen Democrats voted for the “compromise” debt ceiling bill at first, but once passage became inevitable, the rest flooded in. That meant a final roll call of 269 in favor to 161 against. On the GOP side, it was 174 aye to 66 nay, with the “no” votes coming from the party’s dystopian teabagger wing, full of dead-enders ready to shoot hostages.
Looks to me like progressives aren’t happy, and that we didn’t get much. But my friend was livid. The top complaint seem to be it didn’t cut anything. We both agreed it was too complicated, and what little we could understand of how it worked was far below the $ 4 trillion or so that was reportedly under discussion between Obama and Boehner at one point.
There’s a lot of stuff progressives don’t have in common with the self described Teaparty wing of the Republican party. But one thing I can relate to: progressives sent a lot of politicians to DC in 2006 and 208, and we had in mind specific ideas would be written into law. For two years progressives had majority control of the Senate, the House, and the Oval Office, we could have and should have run the table. We sent those guys and gals to DC to enact an agenda baby!
But we didn’t get close to everything we wanted. In part because the GOP was able to use various mechanisms to stop bills from even getting the good old ‘up or down’ vote. But also some of those same people ostensibly on our side, the side we worked our ass off to hand a majority, to failed to take full advantage of that gift. Enough of them caved or were bought off by special interest on issues we care deeply about to stop things like universal healthcare or the end of Bush tax cuts at specified income caps.
It was a crash course leading to a Ph. D. in cynicism.
The Teaparty has several dozen members in the party that controls the House. The fact that they got anything at all in this latest round of DC sausage making, especially considering the power of influential institutional interests like Wall Street, is almost a miracle. And they better get used to this pattern of not getting everything they want. Because, as someone who played a small role in two wave elections, I predict the disappointment with the cowardice of those they worked to elected will get worse. Maybe a lot worse.
At least one cool thing happened in the final stages of this bitterly fought slugfest. As the vote on the debt deal proceeded, congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head a few months earlier in a parking lot in Tucson, made a surprise visit to the House of Representatives and cast her vote. It brought much needed perspective not to just political junkies, but to members of Congress from every branch and subset of US politics.
Success and sadness, ups and downs. Everyone can take a ride on the democracy roller-coaster. And sometimes it can make you sick. Welcome to the wonderful world of national politics my Teaparty friends.
That’s actually another bitter pill to swallow in connection with how this deal played out – the Tea Party darlings like Michele Bachmann got to cast No votes without having to worry about bringing the whole thing down. So they got more concessions than they should have gotten and got to cover their asses from their insatiable followers.
Yes, Tea Party conservatives are not happy about the deal, but there’s just no way to make them happy. Ultimately, even their biggest champions are bound to run afoul of the unbridgeable gap between the Tea Party worldview and plain old reality. You can’t make a complex reality simple just by firmly believing in simple principles.
I didn’t like the debt deal, not even a little. I wish Obama and the rest of the Dems had shown a little more spine in the negotiations. But I don’t really see how things could have turned out a whole lot better. When you’re playing chicken, you assume that the other person is rationale. If you’re playing against a crazy person with a death wish, you’re bound to lose.
Maybe a more appropriate analogy is the scene from Footloose (which is, incidentally, where I first heard of “chicken”). Boehner isn’t crazy. He’s just stuck in the driver’s seat of a vehicle he can’t control, unable to bail out.
I just haven’t been able to watch/listen/read more than a few seconds of the stupidity to understand if anything was agreed to besides no taxes for those who make 2mil or more a year, blank check for Pentagon, no money for education, healthcare or social security. I was hoping they would miss the deadline. Remember all the Republicans who “switched” to run as Democrats over the past years? They are the first to vote for em, compromise. Cynical, yes I joined the Cynics party years ago. I’m waiting for the Wonkette update of what’s going on.
I agree. I personally find the Teaparty’s ideas unworkable, and that’s saying it nicely. And this process as ugly to watch unfold. I’ve worked on a few piece of ledge from the activist side, and it’s just exhausting. The NASA reauth act that passed last Fall almost broke my will to live.