What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?
A proud centrist.
-- Paul Krugman
Monday, February 09, 2009
Line of the Day: 2009-02-09
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3 comments:
It's strange how it plays out - it seems as if the three moderate Republican senators become the most important people in the room, and the President, the rest of the Republican and Democratic parties seem to transmute into relative nonentities - not to mention the general population.
I had read this Krugman article before, and I just can't get with savaging Obama for "wasting his time" trying to get the Republicans behind this. In his position, I would have assumed that the elected officials were basically reasonable people, that they knew that most of the people who voted for them aren't wealthy and that putting people to work who wanted to work making, you know, stuff, is a better investment than giving tax breaks. It would seem the height of cynicism to assume that they would stick their fingers in their ears and say "la-la-la, I can't HEAR you". The fact that Obama gave them the option does not making him incredibly anive and idealistic, it just makes him rational. 20-20 hindsight.
Yet more important thinking from reader: Bush got Democrats behind the Iraq adventure, so his successor might be have been justified in concluding that an actual catastrophe unfolding in real time might bring about some unanimity.
There you go again with that rational thinking, AS.
Actually, I'm of two minds about this. Part of me likes that Obama made the effort to reach out, to practice what he's been preaching since 2004 at least. Another part of me thinks, or would like to, that he's a canny politician, and what he's doing here is forcing the GOP into appearing ever more extreme and out of touch with what most Americans want, whereupon he'll be able to push them around more the next time.
In the meantime, though, I'm with you in banging my head against the wall that a few "centrists" get to hold the trump card. It's an agita-inducing reminder of the "undecided voter" during the campaign, and worse, these "centrists" will come in for endless praise from the bipartisan fetishists that dominate the discourse.
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