Eric Cantor - One of Virginia's Biggest Pricks - Part II

I wrote earlier today about Congressman Eric Cantor - one of the numerous blights on Virginia's reputation. Andrew Sullivan subsequently did a column on The Daily Beast that eviscerates Cantor for his extremism. While Cantor (a true weasel in my view) is the main target of Andrew's wrath, he exemplifies the toxicity of today's republican Party which seems driven to destroy the country in order to serve their failed ideology. An ideology that rejects objective fact and which ignores the large role that the GOP's anti-tax ideology has played in creating the nation's budgetary issues in the first place. I continue to be amazed that it's those who claim to want to "save the country" who are actually the biggest threats to stability. Here are highlights from Andrew's piece:

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Increasingly, Americans and the markets have every reason to feel scared shitless. The controlling faction in the Republican House is a faction that is not so much anti-debt as anti-government. If they have to choose between tackling the debt and raising even some revenues (while cutting spending dramtically), they will choose to push the US into default. Such a default would risk destroying the savings of Americans, make the debt far far worse, spark a double-dip recession, and throw countless people out of work and make those in work radically less financially secure. Even those of us who have saved for retirement by buying unglamorous bonds could see our financial future wiped out by these maniacs on a mission.

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Federal tax revenues are at a 50-year low; marginal rates are lower for many than they were when Reagan was president. In a divided government, any achievement requires some sacrifice from both sides. And yet the GOP is insisting that its side offers no sacrifice, even as the other party controls the Senate and the White House. Their own party, moreover, contributed dramatically to the debt we now face. And there is no clear evidence that raising revenues will lead to economic decline.

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The notion that no revenues can be raised in the current crisis is, quite simply, nuts. You can even do it without raising rates, by eliminating tax expenditures/breaks. But even that golden Bowles-Simpson compromise is too much for these fanatics - even if the president coaxes his side into swallowing big spending cuts.

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This is brinksmanship with all of our lives, our money, our core financial stability and future growth. It is an outrageously reckless way to run a government. And Cantor's refusal to take any personal responsibility for the result of these talks is of a piece with the record of this shallow, callow fanatic who has the gall to call himself a conservative, even as he launches a wrecking ball at the very fabric of the American and global economy.

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These current Republicans would rather destroy the US economy than sacrifice one scintilla of ideological purity. They are an imminent threat to the stability of this country's economy and the world's. And they must be stopped before the damage is irreversible.

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What scares me is that we have a president who gives away half the store before he even begins to negotiate. I have zero confidence in Obama to stop the extremists and demagogues in the GOP. That would take guts and a backbone and a dispensing with Obama's insane notion of bi-partisanship.