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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPaul Krugman: The Dixiecrat Solution
NYT
The Dixiecrat Solution
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 13, 2013
So you have this neighbor who has been making your life hell. First he tied you up with a spurious lawsuit; youre both suffering from huge legal bills. Then he threatened bodily harm to your family. Now, however, he says hes willing to compromise: Hell call off the lawsuit, which is to his advantage as well as yours. But in return you must give him your car. Oh, and hell stop threatening your family but only for a week, after which the threats will resume.
Not much of an offer, is it? But heres the kicker: Your neighbors relatives, who have been egging him on, are furious that he didnt also demand that you kill your dog.
And now you understand the current state of budget negotiations.
Stocks surged last Friday in the belief that House Republicans were getting ready to back down on their ransom demands over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. But what Republicans were actually offering, it seems, was the compromise Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article: rolling back some of the sequester budget cuts which both parties dislike; cuts in Medicare, but with no quid pro quo in the form of higher revenue; and only a temporary fix on the debt ceiling, so that we would soon find ourselves in crisis again...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/krugman-the-dixiecrat-solution.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131014&_r=0
annabanana
(52,791 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,763 posts)communities. They're very good at this.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)This outlook underwrites Gingrich's Republican "revolution," it underwites the methodology of electing U.S. Reps and state legislatures, it underwrites the far right wing (before it became the dominant outlook) of the GOP since McCarthy.
And that outlook has been chronically enabled by a non-confrontational "Democrat" Party (the successful re-naming by the GOPers), and its unmistakable drift to the right.
The far right WILL NOT compromise lest its outlook be invalidated. They just WON'T.
They can be beaten, however. Unfortunately, Democrats must rely on proxies like the standard right's in-house pressure on its far right, or sub rosa, corporate power. The latter prospect would put the Party in even more political hock to corporate power.
Long-term, the Party MUST re-claim the position of a viable progressive alternative, and not rely on the GOPers to fuck up; that is not genuine party strenth, only smarmy, thoroughly modern passive aggressiveness writ large.
Time to be a real Party, and face less breakdown and violence in the future. Note: I said "less."