Crazy

Can someone please explain to me how the few Republicans who oppose Boehner's debt ceiling plan are "crazy," but the couple hundred Democrats who oppose it are ... not?

No, I didn't think so.

I mean, you could adopt the view of that idiot savant from the New York Times, Paul Krugman, who consistently pushes a textbook question-begging fallacy as though it were a rational point of view, and say that the Republicans are worse because they are wrong, and the Democrats are right, regardless of your ability to actually demonstrate that without resorting to mere opinion.

But other than by question-begging, you can't seriously back up the claim that the Republicans who oppose the plan are the problem, not when the Democrats are unanimously opposing the plan, and there's far more of them who could push the bill over the top.

So why do we keep hearing that the Republicans who oppose it are crazy and evil and stupid, but we don't hear the same about the Democrats? There's one primary reason: the Tea Party is the most influential grassroots political organization in a lifetime in this nation, and the left fears it and wants to discredit it.

I could go on about how the "cut, cap, and balance" approach that the Tea Party folks support is the only rational plan moving forward: the Boehner, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, and Obama proposals would all result in increased spending and almost certainly decreased credit rating. Even if you don't believe that, however, it is certainly rational to believe that, as it is in line with what S&P has recently said; and further, it is rational to believe that if we don't being to actually cut spending now (again, something the other proposals do not do), that we have a greater risk of long-term financial problems than if we default now.

The Washington DC mentality -- mostly because of fear of losing their own jobs -- is to always put off what can hurt until tomorrow. There's no doubt that default now would hurt. But I think bankruptcy -- which is the likely result of continuing to increase spending and debt -- will hurt more, so without actual spending decreases (not merely cuts in projected spending, but cuts in year-over-year spending), I would not support a debt increase, myself.

I could also point out how people who say not raising the debt limit would mean default are lying, but I've proven that several times over already (as have others, yet the myth persists). Again, it would be painful -- cutting massively across government so that we do not default -- but, again, that's better than bankruptcy.

So I could go on and on about these things, and show that the "Tea Party" position is more rational. But if your position is just, as the Democrats keep (dishonestly) saying, that we just need to increase the debt limit, and that this is the most important thing so we can get back to the problem of jobs ... then why are all the Democrats opposing all of Boehner's very modest proposals?

It's not a handful of "Tea Party Republicans" taking us to the brink here. The math is very plain, even for math-challenged people like Krugman: it's the Democrats who are preventing the debt limit increase. They refuse to back a (laughably) modest proposal by Boehner, and refuse to come up with any alternative.

It is utterly irrational and malicious to claim that Republicans are "taking America hostage" because a handful oppose the bill, while Democrats are "justified" because ... well, they just are; or that the Democrats are standing up to Boehner's bill because they are "trying to ... save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today."

Think about that: Nancy Pelosi is literally saying that $80 billion in cuts per year over 10 years is going to destroy life on this planet ... after she ballooned per-year spending about 15 times that in her short time as speaker, and the yearly increases moving forward are going to far exceed the amount Boehner proposes to cut.

Then again, no one today should be naive enough to look to Krugman or Pelosi for rational thought. Apparently, though, they do.