Inability To Govern

Democrats are telling us that we should not vote for Republicans they are never able to govern once they get elected, but if anyone has demonstrated an inability to govern it would be this bunch of Democrats we have in office right now. Not only can they not ever win a debate with Republicans, they cannot even manage to set the terms upon which the debate will be held. Obama has lost every debate in its early stages, some even before they began, mostly by allowing the Republicans to defend their own turf.

On “health care reform” he began the debate by agreeing in secret with the drug companies that price negotiations with Medicare would not be a topic and took “single payer” off the table, and the debate still took a full year, eliminated the “public option” and wound up benefiting insurance companies more than the public.

He lost the tax argument from the beginning merely by allowing them to continue to be called “the Bush tax cuts,” and wound up extending them for two full years.

Now Obama is allowing Republicans to set the terms of the debate on raising the debt ceiling, ceding to them the budget and deficit to use as a cudgel by allowing them to say, "Obama is not going to get what he wants, the limit increase, without conceding some huge spending cuts in return."

Instead of saying, "No, we will talk about the budget and the deficit in good time, but the discussion is about the debt limit alone," Obama said he would go along with spending cuts in exchange for tax increases on the rich. And we are off and running with another artificial impasse which is about the budget instead of about the debt limit. And we are there because Obama refused to demand that Republicans stick to the subject and deal with raising the debt limit.

Instead of using the bully pulpit as a bully pulpit and thundering at the Republicans for threatening the security of this nation and its people, Obama is pleading with Republicans to be reasonable on their topic, and inviting “rich people who have done very well” to give up their corporate jets.

Democrats applauded the one time he stepped to the podium and “kicked ass” by telling Congress to stay in town over the holiday week recess, but he didn’t demand any particular action, merely demanded that they “strike a deal.” In doing that he was on Republican ground, because the true “kick ass” position would have been to demand a “clean bill” containing the debt limit increase alone.

So instead of a debt limit vote on which Democrats will vote "yes" and Republicans will vote "no" and on which Democrats can say "the debt limit was not raised because Republicans blocked it," we will have a budget battle and Republicans will be able to say, "the debt limit was not raised because Democrats insisted on tax increases."

Obama has pulled the rug out from under the Democrats again.