No Country for Obstructionist Men

Image from Andrew Sullivan (Marry me!). His coloring, the Washpo's graph.

The GOP can suck it.

As surprising as it is, I think a good number of Americans are catching on to the Republican strategy of 2001 to current:

• If Obama wants to avoid the (fiscal-cliff / expiration of Bush tax-cuts / debt ceiling), he has to compromise.  
• If Obama wants to compromise, he has to offer his suggestions in public, so we can savage him for the inevitable hard decisions.  
• If Obama wants more revenues, he has to cut everything we want.
• If Obama wants more revenues, they have to be balanced by tax-cuts in other areas we want.
• If we don't get these things, we will not compromise, except in a way that is barely compromising.  We will only call this "bi-partisanship", and not compromise, because that way we can dupe independents while being able to claim victory on Fox news.
• We will not compromise in any way that exposes us to attacks from our batshit-insane radical base.
• If anything breaks, it's Obama's fault.
• If it's not Obama's fault, it's mostly Obama's fault.
• If it's definitely not Obama's fault, it's Obama's fault because he's made politics too partisan.

This strategy, though nihilistic and somewhat evil (malicious, Machiavellian, mommy-he-hit-me whatever you want to call it), has been working pretty well up through the election.  During a severe recession, throwing a stick in any of the fixes the administration proposed worked pretty well; the economy probably didn't recover as fast, and all that low-information, undecided voters see is partisan hair-pulling.  Rinse and repeat, and you can portray the President as a dead-beat, clueless guy who is Out Of Ideas (no, I don't think they know what that phrase actually means either).

Eventually though, the GOP was bound to run up against a situation like the present, where the ball is in their court and if something isn't done, it will Republican asse(t)s on the line.

But they have a problem: over the last four (or more) years they've steadily built up a base that won't accept compromise.  Fox news has drilled its viewers for years that America(tm) is a land of moral infallibility unless the liberals take charge.  It is also a country of True Conservatives(also tm), who cannot lose elections unless they are not conservative enough.  In this world, ACORN hasn't been dissolved, it helped Obama steal the election.  In Foxland, the only way to save the America that has been besieged by socialists, is to leave it.  In this type of world, it doesn't make any sense for the GOP to compromise with Obama.  Perhaps Tea Party republicans would stomach a compromise to to avoid the fiscal cliff in theory, but in practice it would involve letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the rich, cutting defense spending, and cutting social entitlements that most Republicans actually like, Social Security and Medicare chief among them.

The citizens of Foxland (or 'Foxians' as I will now refer to them) don't want a messy legislative battle.  They don't want to see the GOP compromising, or cutting popular programs, or raising revenues in any way, shape or form.  They want to see Obama crushed, and the Great Liberal Menace pushed back.

Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like helping the country.  They can't be bullied, reasoned, or negotiations.

Yes I'm using hyperbole.  Get over it.  -tryingsense

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