The Method to Their Madness
By ROSS DOUTHAT
NYT
The Republican Party’s strategy in the debt-ceiling negotiations has baffled centrists and vindicated liberals. For months, the party’s leaders have repeatedly turned down deals that would cut spending significantly because their members won’t compromise on taxes. To moderates, this intransigence is inexplicable: Are they crazy? To the left, it’s all-too-predictable: See, we told you they were crazy!
But there is a method to the Republicans’ madness, and it rests on four things they know (or at least sense) about the deficit debate that the rest of the political class often ignores.
Barack Obama wants a right-leaning deficit deal. For months, liberals have expressed frustration with the president’s deficit strategy. The White House made no effort to tie a debt ceiling vote to the extension of the Bush tax cuts last December. It pre-emptively conceded that any increase in the ceiling should be accompanied by spending cuts. And every time Republicans dug in their heels, the administration gave ground.
The not-so-secret secret is that the White House has given ground on purpose. Just as Republicans want to use the debt ceiling to make the president live with bigger spending cuts than he would otherwise support, Obama’s political team wants to use the leverage provided by those cra-a-a-zy Tea Partiers to make Democrats live with bigger spending cuts than they normally would support.
(More here.)
NYT
The Republican Party’s strategy in the debt-ceiling negotiations has baffled centrists and vindicated liberals. For months, the party’s leaders have repeatedly turned down deals that would cut spending significantly because their members won’t compromise on taxes. To moderates, this intransigence is inexplicable: Are they crazy? To the left, it’s all-too-predictable: See, we told you they were crazy!
But there is a method to the Republicans’ madness, and it rests on four things they know (or at least sense) about the deficit debate that the rest of the political class often ignores.
Barack Obama wants a right-leaning deficit deal. For months, liberals have expressed frustration with the president’s deficit strategy. The White House made no effort to tie a debt ceiling vote to the extension of the Bush tax cuts last December. It pre-emptively conceded that any increase in the ceiling should be accompanied by spending cuts. And every time Republicans dug in their heels, the administration gave ground.
The not-so-secret secret is that the White House has given ground on purpose. Just as Republicans want to use the debt ceiling to make the president live with bigger spending cuts than he would otherwise support, Obama’s political team wants to use the leverage provided by those cra-a-a-zy Tea Partiers to make Democrats live with bigger spending cuts than they normally would support.
(More here.)
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