Are "Conservatives" Their Just Comeuppance?

I put the word conservative in the title to this post in quotations because what today's media describes as conservatives are anything but what that term encompassed in the past.  Nowadays, the term conservative is used for Christofascists, white supremacists and avowed racists, and Neo-Nazis.  I suspect that a majority of old time conservatives now see themselves either as moderates or at times liberals simply because so-called conservatism has become so ugly and misogynistic.   Nonetheless, it is delicious to see Der Trumpenführer causing conniption fits among what the media now calls conservatives.   That said, it doesn't mean I have changed my opinion that Trump - and by extension, Mike Pence - is unfit for office  and nothing less than dangerous.  I am merely enjoying watching the angst of those who threw away what little decency and few principles they had to support such a foul and toxic individual.  A column in the New York Times sums up my thoughts on matters at the moment.  Here are highlights:

Uh-oh. I’m starting to enjoy Donald Trump’s presidency.

I enjoy the rage it inspires in Laura Ingraham. On news that the president had struck a tentative deal with Democrats to help the beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in exchange for zero funding for his border wall, the radio host and Trump groupie fumed, “On what planet are you living on?”

I enjoy the whiplash it inflicts on Ann Coulter. Within the space of a year, the right-wing literary giant has gone from writing “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!” to tweeting, as she did Thursday, “At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached?”

I enjoy the paroxysm of Representative Steve King, the Iowa Dixiecrat who warns that if Trump strikes his immigration deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi it will leave the president’s base “blown up, destroyed, irreparable and disillusioned beyond repair.”

I enjoy the self-abasement of Jeff Sessions, who endured private harangues and public humiliation from his boss because the attorney general saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use his office to get tough on illegal immigration.

And then there’s the joy of watching Sean Hannity trying desperately to pin the blame for the president’s border wall betrayal on congressional Republicans.

Who are the “cuckservatives” now?

I use the epithet — “cuck” is short for cuckold — since it’s the one Trump’s most vociferous supporters hurled at mainstream Republicans they accused of caving in to the moral bullying of liberals, especially on the subjects of race and immigration.

But now it’s the president who is doing exactly that, making the case for DACA beneficiaries in terms his base most condemns: as “good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military” and who don’t deserve to be thrown out of the country simply because their parents brought them to the United States as children. It’s the kind of thing Nancy Pelosi — or, worse, John McCain — might say.

Trump’s move toward the Democrats on DACA — just as his earlier move toward them on the debt ceiling — isn’t about pragmatism. It’s not even about the plasticity of his convictions.

It’s about his addiction to betrayal, his contempt for those who bend their knee to him, his disdain for “losers” (especially when they’re on his side) and his desperate need to be admired by those who despise him most simply because they have the wit to see through him. This is a presidency whose defining feature isn’t ideology, much less policy. It’s neurosis.

In other words, there is no “pivot” at work in the presidency, in the mold of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s leftward turn during his governorship of California. There’s a mood swing.

That might comfort the Trump true believers who fear their president is abandoning them. It shouldn’t: He feels about as much loyalty toward them and their convictions as he’s felt toward his several wives.

All of this is fun, since it’s always delightful to see blowhards and bigots get their comeuppance at the hands of their idol. The ideologues of the right are left to make do with their jester and his antics. I hope they have a sense of humor about it.

But there’s also a lesson for conservatives who mistook Trump’s bluster for seriousness. Not least among the conservative “Never Trump” objections to the candidate is that he would be a disaster to the Republican Party — not just because his beliefs, such as they were, were anathema to the party’s best traditions, but because at heart he was a destructive opportunist with no core convictions beyond his own immediate advantage.

The president’s newfound good sense on DACA is good news for the country, provided it lasts. Nobody should count on it whipping any sense into those conservatives who fell for him, also known as cucks. 

The Myth of Trump's "Independence"

In the wake of Der Trumpenführer's recent - and likely short lived - rapprochement with Democrats Chuck Shumer and Nancy Pelosi, some in the media are breathlessly claiming that Trump is independent of party ties and ideology.  Many of these media mavens are the same ones that painted a picture of false equivalency between Trump and Clinton  throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, so the real take away should be that they still have their heads up their ass. If Trump has any "independence," it is because as a malignant narcissist he is impulsive and does whatever he thinks will enhance his perception and often punish those who displease him at the same time.  Hence any relationship with the man is more like living with someone with bi-polar disorder than any independence from ideology.  Frank Rich has a piece in New York Magazine that looks at the ridiculousness of thinking Trump has any kind of bipartisan agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Trump’s decision last week to accept the debt-ceiling deal pushed by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, shocked conservatives [who] floated rumors that they’d target Paul Ryan’s Speakership to help their agenda, . . . . Before this one brief shining moment of “bipartisanship” goes up in smoke, we must relish the sheer delight of watching Trump stiff Ryan and Mitch McConnell in favor of his new besties, “Chuck and Nancy.” It didn’t turn out well for the Vichy collaborators in World War II, and the same fate in one way or another will befall those Republican leaders who abandoned whatever principles they had once Trump occupied their party. History will be merciless to them, but how much fun to watch them reduced to thunderstruck supernumeraries in real time.

Still, this instance of victory for congressional Democrats was a one-off. The new coinage that Trump is somehow an “independent,” with its implicit invocation of the Teddy Roosevelts of American history, is a way of dignifying and normalizing erratic behavior that hasn’t changed from the start. It’s the latest iteration of those previous moments when wishful centrist pundits started saying things like “Today Trump became president” simply because he stuck to a teleprompter script when addressing Congress or bombed Syria.

Trump is an “independent” in the same way a toddler is. He jumped at the Democrats’ deal solely on impulse.  He remains a drama queen who likes to grab attention any way he can, especially when he thinks he can please a crowd, whether the mobs at his rallies or the press Establishment he claims to loathe but whose approval he has always desperately craved. The most telling aspect of this whole incident was his morning-after phone call to Schumer to express his excitement that he was getting rave reviews not only from Fox but CNN and MSNBC as well.

None of this amounts to a broader opening for congressional Democrats. The deal’s sole accomplishments were to (temporarily) prevent the government from defaulting or shutting down and make a first installment on Hurricane Harvey relief. That this can be greeted by anyone as any kind of breakthrough in governance shows just how low the bar has become for achievement by this Congress and this White House. Yet a Vichy Republican in the House, Peter King of Long Island, declared, “I think this could be a new day for the Republican Party” and a “gateway” to “bipartisan progress.” You have to ask, what gateway drug is he on to spew such nonsense? The Republican majority of which he is a card-carrying member shows no signs of delivering on health care, tax reform, infrastructure, or anything else. All it’s done is kept the lights on in the Capitol for another three months.

But let us cherish the high farce of this moment while we can.  Gail Collins at the Times has written some quite amusing columns in which she tries to determine who is the worst member of the Trump cabinet. God knows the competition is stiff, from Ben Carson to Betsy DeVos to Tom Price and Ryan Zinke. (What does it say that Rick Perry can’t even make the short list?)

Of course Bannon talks to Trump regularly — the proof is that the dissembling White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, so pointedly denied it after the 60 Minutes broadcast. And he will certainly be as much of a political bomb thrower as he’s always been.

It’s somewhat astonishing, as others have pointed out, that in a long interview Charlie Rose never asked Bannon about his collaboration with Mercer. Their plan to spend Mercer’s money in 2018 to challenge sitting Republican senators whom they see as disloyal to Trump, like Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona, may create serious political havoc for the GOP. And when Bannon promises a “civil war” within the Republican Party over the fate of the Dreamers next year, he has both the media means (in Breitbart) and Mercer’s cash to fan the flames of anti-immigrant xenophobia and make that war as bloody as possible. However much power Bannon does or does not have in the White House, we can be certain that his sway over this president vastly exceeds that of Ryan and McConnell — and maybe even Chuck and Nancy.

 Get out the popcorn.

John McCain Lets Loose on Trump and Do Nothing Congress

Perhaps his cancer diagnosis has prompted to think about his own mortality and the need to get things accomplished.  Or perhaps he has belated reverted back to the John McCain of old - prior to his sellout to the far right and his selection of the idiot of Wasilla as his running mate.  Whatever the cause, in a Washington Post op-ed John McCain has vented his frustration with what the GOP has become and Congress' failure to fulfill its constitutional duties and to put the well being of the nation and all citizens ahead of partisan posturing and small mindedness.  It reminds me of why I once supported McCain in his 2000 presidential primary bid.  Here are op-ed highlights:

Americans recoiled from the repugnant spectacle of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville to promote their un-American “blood and soil” ideology. There is nothing in their hate-driven racism that can match the strength of a nation conceived in liberty and comprising 323 million souls of different origins and opinions who are equal under the law.

Most of us share Heather Heyer’s values, not the depravity of the man who took her life. We are the country that led the free world to victory over fascism and dispatched communism to the ash heap of history. We are the superpower that organized not an empire, but an international order of free, independent nations that has liberated more people from poverty and tyranny than anyone thought possible in the age of colonies and autocracies.

Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.

Congress will return from recess next week facing continued gridlock as we lurch from one self-created crisis to another. We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important.

That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise.

That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.

We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.

I argued during the health-care debate for a return to regular order, letting committees of jurisdiction do the principal work of crafting legislation and letting the full Senate debate and amend their efforts. . . .  We might not like the compromises regular order requires, but we can and must live with them if we are to find real and lasting solutions. And all of us in Congress have the duty, in this sharply polarized atmosphere, to defend the necessity of compromise before the American public.

Let’s try that approach on a budget that realistically meets the nation’s critical needs.  . . . A compromise that raises spending caps for both sides’ priorities is better than the abject failure that has been our achievement to date.

Let’s also try that approach on immigration. The president has promised greater border security. We can agree to that. A literal wall might not be the most effective means to that end, but we can provide the resources necessary to secure the border with smart and affordable measures. Let’s make it part of a comprehensive bill that members of both parties can get behind — one that values our security as well as the humanity of immigrants and their contributions to our economy and culture.

Let’s try it on tax reform and infrastructure improvement and all the other urgent priorities confronting us. These are all opportunities to show that ordinary, decent, free people can govern competently, respectfully and humbly, and to prove the value of the United States Congress to the great nation we serve.

Now if only other members of Congress would do what McCain asks.

What Happens if the Debt Limit Isn't Increased? Nothing Good

The reality deniers in the Republican Party- i.e., the same people who get their news from Fox News and think Michele Bachmann is brilliant -  are now trying to argue that there will be no serious consequences if America's debt limit is not increased and the nation defaults on its debts.  Yes, it is lunacy, but that is what passes as intelligent thought in today's GOP where mental illness or a lobotomy are increasingly prerequisites for party membership.  Nobel Prize winning columnist Paul Krugman has a piece in the New York Times that looks at what the REAL consequences would be as opposed to the opinions issuing from the GOP fantasy world.  Here are column highlights:

So what are the choices if we do hit the ceiling? As you might guess, they’re all bad, so the question is which bad choice would do the least harm. . . . . What would a general default look like?

A report last year from the Treasury Department suggested that hitting the debt ceiling would lead to a “delayed payment regime”: bills, including bills for interest due on federal debt, would be paid in the order received, as cash became available. Since the bills coming in each day would exceed cash receipts, this would mean falling further and further behind. And this could create an immediate financial crisis, because U.S. debt — heretofore considered the ultimate safe asset — would be reclassified as an asset in default, possibly forcing financial institutions to sell off their U.S. bonds and seek other forms of collateral. 

[M]any people — especially, but not only, Republican-leaning economists — have suggested that the Treasury Department could instead “prioritize”: It could pay off bonds in full, so that the whole burden of the cash shortage fell on other things. And by “other things,” we largely mean Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which account for the majority of federal spending other than defense and interest. 

Some advocates of prioritization seem to believe that everything will be O.K. as long as we keep making our interest payments. Let me give four reasons they’re wrong. 

First, the U.S. government would still be going into default, failing to meet its legal obligations to pay.

Second, prioritizing interest payments would reinforce the terrible precedent we set after the 2008 crisis, when Wall Street was bailed out but distressed workers and homeowners got little or nothing. We would, once again, be signaling that the financial industry gets special treatment because it can threaten to shut down the economy if it doesn’t. 

Third, the spending cuts would create great hardship if they go on for any length of time. Think Medicare recipients turned away from hospitals because the government isn’t paying claims. 

Finally, while prioritizing might avoid an immediate financial crisis, it would still have devastating economic effects. We’d be looking at an immediate spending cut roughly comparable to the plunge in housing investment after the bubble burst, a plunge that was the most important cause of the Great Recession of 2007-9. That by itself would surely be enough to push us into recession.

And it wouldn’t end there. As the U.S. economy went into recession, tax receipts would fall sharply, and the government, unable to borrow, would be forced into a second round of spending cuts, . . . . we could still be looking at a slump worse than the Great Recession. 

Many legal experts think there is another option: One way or another, the president could simply choose to defy Congress and ignore the debt ceiling. 

Wouldn’t this be breaking the law? Maybe, maybe not — opinions differ. But not making good on federal obligations is also breaking the law. And if House Republicans are pushing the president into a situation where he must break the law no matter what he does, why not choose the version that hurts America least? 

There would, of course, be an uproar, and probably many legal challenges — although if I were a Republican, I’d worry about, in effect, filing suit to stop the government from paying seniors’ hospital bills. Still, as I said, there are no good choices here.

How did the GOP become so insane?  The Christofascists.  These people live truly in a mythical fantasy world and deny objective reality, reject knowledge and science, etc. And now they control the base of the GOP.  Barry Goldwater was right:

When Will the GOP Kick Out Ted Cruz and Similar Crazies?

I find it somewhat scary when conservative/GOP columnist Jennifer Rubin starts to sound like me.  But she is onto something when it comes to the need for the Republican Party at both the national level and certainly here in Virginia to kick the crazy elements – principally Christofascists and racist,  Until this happens, I believe that the GOP is in a long term death spiral.  The irrationality and refusal to accept objective reality of these folks makes it impossible to reason with them or to appeal to a majority of voters when GOP nomination contests have become a contest as to who can be the most certifiably insane in order to win the nomination.  Here are excerpts from Rubin’s column in the Washington Post:

ignorance embracing Tea Party lunatics – from the Party.

When the John Birchers had to be kicked out of the Republican Party, William F. Buckley Jr. effectively excommunicated them from the GOP. When the “smoking gun” Watergate tape came out, it was the late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) who urged Richard Nixon to resign. And when Pat Buchannan’s views could no longer be called anything but anti-Semitic, it was Buckley who called him out.

If the GOP has one big problem now it is that there is no Goldwater, no Buckley to tell Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and his ilk that enough is enough. The Republicans interested in governance are now participants in the political scrum. The biggest of the conservative magazines, whose editors should know better, are too timid. They poke and prod here and there, but really stand up to the destructive right wing? No. They fear a full throttle debunking would put at risk their place in the conservative cosmos. They mistakenly believe that their role is to rebuke only liberals.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page or a conservative eminence like George Will or Charles Krauthammer can call the tune of charlatans, but the Cruz crowd dismisses even them as pawns in the Great GOP Sell-out.

There is no single governor, no party senior statesman to say, “It is intolerable to impugn the motives of those who fought long and hard against the liberal welfare state. Mr. Cruz, you are not helping; you are hurting. Please sit down and learn for a few years.”

The politics of the right becomes akin to university politics — bitter and small-minded with small spoils at stake. And the architecture that encompasses Cruz, talk radio, Heritage Action and the rest can sustain itself –in fact does better — when the party loses. It is not obvious how or even if the GOP gets back on track.

The saying goes that we get the government we deserve. The same is true of political parties. Republicans collectively have to decide what they want to be and what role they want to play in the next few decades. They can be participants in a majority party — eager and capable of governing, optimistic and inclusive – or they can be the party run by Heritage Action/Ted Cruz. But they can’t be both.

The GOP Is Threatening Murder-Suicide

Ideological extremism is always dangerous for mainstream society.  Especially when the ideological extremism deems it perfectly acceptable to harm others in the quest to achieve toxic goals.  In Kenya we have seen is murder and mayhem.  In Washington, D.C., we see Republicans poised to wreak economic and financial havoc on millions of citizens in an ideological battle that panders to Christofascist and Tea Party extremists that wants a government shut down and/or debt default.   Ironically, I saw an ad this morning against Obamacare in which a paid actress claims that she wants top quality medicine available for all and doesn't want her family members to be mere numbers to a government bureaucracy.  Her statements demonstrate the height of ignorance that motivates the GOP.  ALL of us - unless we are very wealthy are already mere numbers - to insurance companies that don't give a damn about us as people.  As for the statement of wanting quality care for all, the elimination of Obamacare would throw millions of Americans back into an uninsured status.  One can only hope the majority of Americans see the GOP extremist for the danger that they are.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the impending show down:

The Republican Party is destroying America.

Harsh words, yes. But inescapably true. It’s a bit of a murder-suicide. House Republicans’ willingness to lay waste to the country to satisfy their fringiest faction will ultimately guarantee the GOP irrelevancy as a national party, unless they change their ways. In the meantime, they seem determined to take us all down with them.

There isn’t even a feint toward decency. In what has become a recurring nightmare, House Republicans are using budget negotiations to play chicken with the stability of the American economy. This time, they want President Obama to agree to defund his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act. If he refuses to strangle his own baby in the crib, Republicans are happy to retaliate. They’ll shut down the government. These are not people with whom one can work.

Last year, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of Brookings wrote a book about this dysfunction known as the new Republican Party. It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism makes a compelling case that the problems in Washington are not the result of “both sides”—the oft-preferred media frame—but of a GOP that has become all but unrecognizable to most Americans.

Just how damaging have the congressional Republicans been to the country? “If you look at what could have happened in a reasonable political system, with give and take … we would have been on a more robust path to growth,” said Ornstein. “We’ve gone from one credit agency downgrading us to a far greater likelihood that we will default. If sequester continues … it is a cancer eating away at national parks, food safety, basic research … it’s a terrible situation. No matter how much [Republicans] talk about how it was Obama’s idea … the whole idea was to create such awful consequences that no sane person would accept it. But these aren’t sane people.”

GOP stalwarts have framed criticisms of the party as attempts to make it more liberal. That is self-serving denial. The legitimate complaint about the new Republican Party, one you will hear frequently even from Republicans speaking privately, is that it is intransigent and beholden to its most radical elements. Having principles is fine. Imposing them on everyone else through destructive maneuvering that keeps the country constantly on edge is not.

“We want a Republican Party that returns to problem-solving mode,” he said. “We are suggesting that what works in American politics and our system is when parties focus on how you can solve the big problems and how you can have some give and take. There is one party that has lost its way and is being dominated by people who by historical standards are on the fringe.”

Both men agree that the GOP will likely get worse before it gets better. How is that possible, you ask? Looks like we are about to find out.

The GOP Swamp Fever Worsens

As a former Republican from a family that once was almost unanimously Republican, watching the GOP become something that would make the inmates of an insane asylum look rational is disturbing.  Greed, intense hatred of those who are "other," an utter contempt for the less fortunate, and far right religious extremism are the hallmarks of today's GOP.  And driving this sickness is the party base dominated by Christofascists, white supremacists and Tea Party extremists.  Even worse, as the party lurches to the insane right, more and more moderates are fleeing leaving the inmates in the asylum as the king makers in terms of nominating candidates.  Andrew Sullivan looks at the phenomenon and summarizes the increasingly frightening aspects of the GOP as it exists today.  Here are highlights:

We have watched the possibility of Republican support for immigration reform rise and then dramatically fall, as Tom Edsall explains here in charting the decline in the fortunes of Marco Rubio as soon as he stood up for a path to citizenship. Christianists are seeking to end the ban on tax-exempt churches’ endorsing candidates. The recent Pew report found the following among regular Republican primary voters (in Edsall’s words):

Republicans who say that they always vote in primaries (and whose views consequently carry more weight) are much more in favor of their party’s turning in a more conservative direction. Data provided to the Times by Pew shows that 58 percent of Republicans who always vote in primaries advocate more conservative stands, while 37 percent call for moderation, a 21-point split. 

Insofar as support or opposition to immigration reform is a proxy for more or less positive attitudes toward Hispanics, the Pew study shows a decided tilt among Republicans. Thirty-six percent of Republican voters say that the party’s stance toward immigration is not conservative enough, compared with 17 percent who say it is too conservative. Crucially, among Republicans who always vote in primaries, the division shifts further to the right, 41-14.

In North Carolina, the state GOP has launched a brazen attempt to disenfranchise minority voters, acting more like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood when they came to power rather than a moderate Western political party. And in Washington, Robert Costa is reporting that the House GOP won’t force a government shutdown this fall but that they will “instead use the debt limit and sequester fights as areas for potential legislative trades.” They are going to hold America’s credit-worthiness hostage again – even though such a debt limit crisis would be far more damaging to the economy than even a shutdown, as Chait notes here. But perhaps damaging the economy is the point. The GOP has to minimize any economic growth that might redound to Obama’s benefit - in order to discredit the policies that have obviously worked for the past five years in favor of policies that have been proven failures elsewhere.
 
We now have pretty solid evidence that the GOP will respond to Obama’s second term exactly as they did his first: total opposition to everything and anything the president supports, sabotage of the economy, and brutal gerry-mandering and voter suppression to give their white base one last chance at a majority. Actual policies? It’s hard to disagree with Newt Gingrich – and not just on healthcare.

I predicted it would get worse before it got better; what we now learn is that it will get worse before it gets worse before it gets better. And the real beneficiaries of this will likely not be the GOP – but Roger Ailes and Hillary Clinton.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the GOP base lives in some bizarre alternate reality.    The base only hears to bubble echo chamber of Fox News and demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and would not recognize objective reality if it smacked them in the face.  I personally question the sanity of more and more of the GOP base.

The GOP Threat to Shut Down the Government: Why Wall Street Should Worry

 

This blog often looks at the GOP/Tea Party's desire to slash and burn government - and most importantly the social safety net - with little regard for the lives damaged.  With another fiscal confrontation in the offing, some are saying that Wall Street may be fooling itself if it doesn't take the insanity of the GOP House seriously and prepare for potential calamity.  A piece in Politico looks at the damage the GOP might weak on America.  Here are highlights:

Talk to anyone on Wall Street and they will tell you they really don’t care about the brewing fiscal storm in Washington. Possible government shutdown? Whatever. Debt ceiling crisis? Meh.

The prevailing view: When Congress returns in September, sabers will be rattled and threats will be hurled. But then, as usual, Washington will grind out a crummy deal that keeps the federal lights on and avoids a disastrous default.

But this time — wait for it — could be different. Really, seriously different.

Here is just a sampling of why Wall Street may be wrong: The House GOP is hopelessly fractured on spending strategy. Senate Republicans who might otherwise broker a deal face primary challenges that make compromise potentially deadly. Other Senate Republicans are jockeying for 2016. And congressional Democrats have no appetite for any bargain — grand or otherwise — that cuts entitlement spending.

And it is not just a government shutdown or debt-ceiling crisis that could cause a Beltway shakeup of markets this fall.

There is also the possibility of a nasty confirmation fight for the next chairman of the Federal Reserve just as the central bank starts to wind down its program of buying hundreds of billions in bonds to support the economy.

Wrap all this potential dysfunction together and there is a real chance that the fall of 2013 will be more like the summer of 2011, when a near-miss on the debt ceiling led to a ratings agency downgrade, a huge sell-off in the stock market and yet another hit to an economy that might otherwise be heating up nicely.

Leadership in both parties seem to want a continuing resolution in September that would fund the government through the end of the year. They may get it. But it’s not obvious how.

GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, perhaps with an eye on the 2016 presidential race, are demanding that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell block any spending bill that funds Obama’s health care law as enrollment begins Oct. 1. There is no chance Obama would sign a spending bill that takes money away from implementation of his biggest achievement.

Meanwhile, McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who might otherwise help push a fiscal compromise, face 2014 primary challenges that may make them less likely to cut deals with Obama. McConnell has been pivotal in recent battles, including the fiscal cliff deal his office hammered out at the last second with Vice President Joe Biden at New Years. Don’t expect a replay this fall.

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney grew so concerned over rhetoric from Rubio, Cruz and others that he used his first significant post-2012 speech to urge Republicans to back down from the government shutdown rhetoric.   “We need to exercise great care about any talk of shutting down government,” Romney said at a fundraiser in New Hampshire on Aug. 6. “What would come next when soldiers aren’t paid, when seniors fear for their Medicare and Social Security, and when the FBI is off-duty?”

Republicans have not backed off their mantra of a dollar in spending cuts for every dollar of debt-ceiling increase. But if they were to pass such a bill out of the House, it would go nowhere in the Senate. Democrats have no appetite for more cuts, given that annual deficits have been sliced in half and the sequester spending cuts are already taking a bite out of economic growth with no compromise on the horizon.

Housing prices and equity markets have been rising, small businesses are showing more inclination to hire and spend, and threats from Europe are receding, leaving D.C. dysfunction as among the top remaining risks.

“There’d be a host of severe economic consequences associated with debt default. We’d have negative impact for growth, job creation, interest rates would spike, it would make our deficit problems even harder to tackle,” said Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the lobbying group Financial Services Forum. “Raising the debt ceiling is a critical and urgent task.”

All this means that the sequel Wall Street expects this fall could turn into a much scarier movie with unpredictable plot lines.

GOP Anarchists of the House of Representatives

The 45 House Republicans most willing to grind government to a halt, based on an analysis of six votes this year by the Washington Post blog The Fix.   (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom (Collins, Rothfus, Amash, Gohmert, Massie, Mulvaney, Schweikert); Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom (Sensenbrenner, Wenstrup, Desantis, Franks); Pete Marovich/ZumaPress/Newscom (Goodlatte); Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call/Newscom (Salmon, Desjarlais, Labrador); Action Press/ZumaPress/Newscom (Bachmann); Newscom (Chabot); Richard Ellis/ZumaPress/Newscom (Sanford); The Augusta Chronicle/ZumaPress/Newscom (Broun); Michael Allen Jones/Sacramento Bee/ZumaPress/Newscom (McClintock); William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire/Getty Images (Cotton); The Washington Times/ZumaPress/Newscom (Price); Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Lamborn); Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images (Posey, Huelskamp))

I often lament what has become of the Republican Party which now is best defined by the open embrace of ignorance, extremism in general and religious based fanaticism.  And in the House of Representatives, the swamp fever is still intensifying as many GOP House members are saboteurs that can little about governing the nation and instead focus on destroying government completely.  I personally tie this development to the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP since objective reality - not to mention the rights of others - simply doesn't matter.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the sabotage now taking place in the GOP controlled House.  It's not a pretty picture.  Here are some excerpts:

The party leadership draws up a bill that’s far too right-wing to ever become law, but it fails in the House because it isn’t right-wing enough. Sometimes, as with the attempts to repeal Obamacare, the failures don’t matter much, but in other instances the inability to pass legislation poses horrifying dangers. The chaos and dysfunction have set in so deeply that Washington now lurches from crisis to crisis, and once-dull, keep-the-lights-on rituals of government procedure are transformed into white-knuckle dramas that threaten national or even global catastrophe.

The Republican Party has spent 30 years careering ever more deeply into ideological extremism, but one of the novel developments of the Obama years is its embrace of procedural extremism. The Republican fringe has evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all. In this sense, their historical precedents are not so much the Gingrich revolutionaries, or even their tea-party selves of a few years ago; the movement is more like the radical left of the sixties, had it occupied a position of power in Congress. And so the terms we traditionally use to scold bad Congresses—partisanship, obstruction, gridlock—don’t come close to describing this situation. The hard right’s extremism has bent back upon itself, leaving an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage and twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.

And the worst is not behind us.

The rational way to view these events is that Republicans have marginalized themselves. But the hard-liners see it differently. In their minds, every bill that passes is a betrayal by their leaders. They know that letting Democrats carry bills through the House has been the leadership’s desperate recourse to avoid total chaos, and since chaos is their leverage, they are now working feverishly to seal off that escape route. This year, an increasing proportion of conservative media is given over to conservative activists’ extracting pledges from Republican leaders not to negotiate with Democrats.  . . . . this means no negotiation at all.

It’s not clear whether Republicans actually expect the president to succumb to their Bond-villain hostage scheme. But it is significant that Republicans are demanding even more from Obama than they demanded during previous debt-ceiling ransoms and will decry the inevitable failure to achieve it as yet another betrayal. 

In the actual world, the economy is recovering and the deficit, currently projected at half the level Obama inherited, is falling like a rock. Yet messianic Republican suicide threats in the face of an imagined debt crisis have not subsided at all. The swelling grievance within the party base may actually be giving the threats more fervor. The reign of the Republican House has not yet inflicted any deep or permanent disaster on the country, but it looks like it is just a matter of time. 

Will The GOP Threaten a Partial Government Shutdown?

The GOP establishment, as noted in a prior post today, seems to have realized that it needs to retake control of the party primary process to lessen the odds of lunatics and anarchists being elected to Congress.  However, that does nothing to rein in those lunatics, rabid dogs and near anarchists Republicans already in Congress, particularly in the House of Representatives who seem hell bent to destroy the nation's economy - along with the finances of countless American families - in their quest to cut government programs and federal spending on programs the Christofascists and Tea Party loons dislike.  The country has made it past the "fiscal cliff" crisis, but now there is the upcoming debt ceiling crisis where some wonder how much damage the Congressional Republicans will do in their quest to pander to extremists.   A piece in Huffington Post looks at this question and speculates on what may be upcoming.  Here are excerpts:

The just-completed deal to resolve the so-called fiscal cliff has created an even greater cliff down the road. By the end of February, lawmakers will have to grapple with $1 trillion in sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect and the need for a debt limit increase. Shortly thereafter, they will have to deal with the end of a continuing resolution to keep the government funded

Any one of these issues on its own would be difficult to resolve. Taken together, they could produce complete gridlock, which itself would have deep economic consequences.

President Barack Obama has pledged that he won't negotiate over the debt ceiling as a matter of principle. But Republicans are still insisting that they will extract as many concessions from the talks as they can.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this week, "we Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown" in order to achieve spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

On Friday morning, meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told members that he was prepared to use the debt ceiling fight as leverage to get spending cuts.

A Republican Senate aide added on: "We all know this deadline is coming. In regards to the CR [U. S. government credit rating] vs the debt ceiling, a downgrade will likely occur if spending is not cut, not if Congress were to refuse to debt ceiling temporarily."

But there would, indeed, be different consequences depending on which event is used to extract spending cuts. If, for example, Congress passes a debt limit increase but fails to pass a continuing resolution, the government can continue to borrow funds to pay its existing bills. But it would cease to operate as normal. As the Congressional Budget Office noted in a 1995 report:

Failing to raise the debt ceiling would not bring the government to a screeching halt the way that not passing appropriations bills would. Employees would not be sent home, and checks would continue to be issued. If the Treasury was low on cash, however, there could be delays in honoring checks and disruptions in the normal flow of government services.

On the other hand, if Congress were to pass a continuing resolution but not raise the debt ceiling, the government would be operating on dwindling funds. Over time, the Treasury would fail to meet its obligations on salaries and wages, retirement funds and social security benefits.

And then there would be the macro and global impact. As a 1979 Government Accountability Office report noted:

At a minimum, however, the government could be subject to additional claims for interest on unredeemed matured debt and to claims for damages resulting from failure to make payments. But even beyond that, the full faith and credit of the U.S. government would be threatened. Domestic money markets, in which government securities play a major role, could be affected substantially.

More recently, JP Morgan's managing director outlined the consequences in a letter to the Treasury Department. Among the impacts projected were the following:

• A rise in Treasury's long-term funding costs;
• A contraction of credit;
• A reduction in the purchase of Treasuries by foreign investors on a permanent basis or even sell off exiting holdings;
• A downgrading of the U.S. sovereign credit rating;
• A possible run on money market funds;
• The destruction of market confidence.

Every American needs to be concerned about what the GOP extremists may do - and needs to understand that we are no longer dealing with rational individuals when it comes to the Tea Party members of Congress.  These individuals live in some alternate universe.

Majority of Voters Blame GOP for "Fiscal Cliff"

Despite last week's bitch lap from voters to the GOP, the Republican House continues to play to the delusional GOP base and seems to be seriously considering more obstructionism and refusal to make a deal with the Democrats and White House to solve the nation's budget deficit problem.  Thankfully, a new Pew poll indicates that a majority of voters outside the GOP bubble know precisely who is to blame for the impasse and it's not Obama and/or the Democrats.  CNN looks at the survey results and one would think that if there were any rational adults left in the Republican Party they'd pull their heads out of their asses.  But again, that would assume there are any rational adults left in the GOP, a very dangerous assumption.  Here are story highlights:

While Republicans and Democrats have expressed confidence in their ability to negotiate a deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," a new poll released Tuesday indicates the public is wary about lawmakers' ability to reach a common ground on the nation's budget.

If the two sides fail to find common ground on reducing the deficit, 53% said congressional Republicans will be to blame while 29% said the responsibility falls on President Barack Obama.

If a budget deal is not met and the U.S. economy is left to roll off the impending fiscal cliff, 85% of Democrats and 52% of independents said Republicans will be to blame while 68% of Republicans said the responsibility falls on the president.

I find it increasingly difficult to imagine what it must be like living in the alternate universe of the GOP base where white is black, up is down, and lies are truth.