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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe New Yorker's George Packer: Republicans are still winning
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The government shutdown is over. National default has been averted, for now. According to an estimate by Standard & Poors, the Tea Partys brinkmanship cost the American economy twenty-four billion dollarsmore than half a percentage point of quarterly growth. House Republicans have suffered a huge tactical defeat of their own devising, and their approval ratings are at an all-time low. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress appear strong for refusing to give in to blackmail.
But in a larger sense the Republicans are winning, and have been for the past three years, if not the past thirty. Theyre just too blinkered by fantasies of total victory to see it. The shutdown caused havoc for federal workers and the citizens they serve across the country. Parks and museums closed, new cancer patients were locked out of clinical trials, loans to small businesses and rural areas froze, time ran down on implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law, trade talks had to be postponed. All this chaos only brings the government into greater disrepute, and, as Jenny Browns colleagues dig their way out of the backlog, theyll be fielding calls from many more enraged taxpayers. It would be naïve to think that intransigent Republicans dont regard these consequences of their actions with indifference, if not outright pleasure. Ever since Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural, pronounced government to be the problem, elected Republicans have been doing everything possible to make it true.
These days, Republicans may be losing politically and resorting to increasingly anti-majoritarian meansgerrymandering, filibuster abuse, voter suppression, activist Supreme Court decisions, legislative terrorismto nullify election results. But on economic-policy matters they are setting the terms. Senator Ted Cruz can be justly described as a demagogic fool, but lately hes been on the offensive far more than the White House has. The deficit is in fairly precipitous decline, but job growth is anemic, and millions of Americans remain chronically unemployed. Democrats control the White House and the Senate, and last year they won a larger share of the national vote in the House than Republicans did. And yet the dominant argument in Washington is over spending cuts, not over ways to increase economic growth and address acute problems like inequality, poor schools, and infrastructure decay. The whole debate over the last couple of weeks is playing against a backdrop of how much to increase austerity, not to invest in the economy, Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, said last week. We are living in a time of government withering on the vine.
While House Republicans go home to sift through the debris of their defeat, the sequester remains in place, with deeper cuts ahead. A hiring freeze at United States Attorneys offices will continue and they will have to go on using volunteers. There will be no new agents to fill training classes at the F.B.I. Academy, while the bureaus concrete headquarters, on Pennsylvania Avenue, crumbles. The loss of government scholarships at the National Health Services Corps will mean fewer doctors in underserved areas. Jenny Browns friends and co-workers in Ogden will look for jobs in the private sector. And the talk in Washington will return to deficit reduction. ?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/10/28/131028taco_talk_packer?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
This is glaringly obvious, but too many people are completely blindered by their partisan goggles.
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)Maybe guys like Packer can grow a pair and start calling things as they are. Or maybe he's keeping his options open for when they're in power again and he can write pro dumbass-war articles as he did prior to Iraq. See? I understand you guys. I always said you were smart.
cali
(114,904 posts)called repubs out frequently.
what in this article don't you think hews to fact? And do you disagree that what he's describing is problematical?
BeyondGeography
(39,374 posts)it's just about being a dick.
There's a reason the press has ceded ground to comedians. The Republicans have been running circles around the media forever. Take deficit reduction, does Packer actually think Republicans, who made the national debt what it is, actually care about that? And isn't that the main point, that one of our two major political parties is utterly bankrupt and out of control? When they lose the WH, they kick and squeal like babies until they do something to wound the country. When they win it by whatever means, they take the country to the edge of disaster. These articles strike me as comparable to making road design the focus of a drunk driving accident. Start focusing on the drunks, ffs.
chillfactor
(7,576 posts)republicans are still whining!
Laelth
(32,017 posts)This quote is far too accurate:
-Laelth