If one listens to the far right noise machine of Fox News, a/k/a/ Faux News, and Rush Limbaugh, et al, it seems impossible that the Republicans is Congress are finally beginning to grasp the fact that if they refuse to find a deal to avoid the so-called Fiscal cliff, it will be they, not Obama and the Democrats who go over the political water fall. The image above shows the results of a new poll by Pew Research Center and it is clear where bale will fall. Thus, the political whores of the far right in the GOP must decide whether they prefer facing the wrath of the Kool-Aid drinkers or perhaps poisoning the GOP brand even further. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the prospects before Republicans. Here are excerpts:
Right now, he[John Boehner] is hoping to lead his fractious GOP to an orderly surrender. The question is no longer whether Republicans will give on taxes; they already have. All that remains to be negotiated is how they will increase taxes, and whether they will do it before or after the government reaches the “fiscal cliff.”
“I believe that it’s appropriate to put revenues on the table,” Boehner told reporters. “Now, the revenues we’re putting on the table are going to come from — guess who? — the rich.”
One of Boehner’s lieutenants, Pete Roskam of Illinois, stepped to the microphones, essentially pleading for the president to show mercy. “President Obama has an unbelievable opportunity to be a transformational president — that is, to bring the country together,” he said. “Or he can devolve into zero-sum-game politics, where he wins and other people lose.”
Those “other people” would be the House Republicans, because it is Obama who seems to be holding all the cards right now. A poll by the Pew Research Center found that 53 percent of Americans would blame Republicans for sending the nation off the cliff and only 27 percent would blame Obama. And Republicans didn’t help their cause by ending their workweek on Wednesday and going home.
The speaker is trying to hold out for making those hikes come from fewer deductions rather than higher rates, but the White House is feeling so confident that it dismissed Boehner’s offer out of hand. Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer told Peter Baker of the New York Times that Obama “won’t sign a deal that doesn’t have higher rates for the wealthy. Until they cross that bridge, nothing else is relevant.”
Republicans are looking for face-saving ways to retreat, such as allowing a tax increase to pass the House by voting “present” instead of “no.” Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), the outgoing chairman of the House GOP conference, acknowledged Wednesday on CNN that “the president is going to get his revenue one way or the other.”
As they prepare to accommodate Obama, Republican leaders have begun to crack down on hard-liners in their ranks who routinely defy compromise. On Monday, two dissidents were removed from the House Financial Services Committee and two from the Budget Committee.
Outside their meeting in the Capitol basement Wednesday morning, House Republicans were coming to grips with the inevitability of the tax increase.
But the bromides couldn’t conceal the fact that House GOP leaders, with little dissent from the rank and file, had already acquiesced on some form of a tax increase. “House Republicans are prepared to get to yes,” Roskam said. “House Republicans are not prepared to get too foolish, and it is foolish to reject President Obama’s own self-described architecture of $3 in spending cuts for every dollar in new revenue.”
Coming from a bunch that liked to say they wouldn’t allow a dollar of new revenue even if it came with $10 in spending cuts, this white flag is as big as a bedsheet.
Of course, even if the Congressional GOP comes to grips with reality on the budget, the party as a whole will continue to be suffering from a form of deadly swamp fever until it wrenches control of the party from the Christofascists and their Tea Party cousins.
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