Can someone tell me why it is NOT in the GOP's interest for 2012 to default on the debt?

In the vote next month. Wouldn't a decimated U.S. economy benefit them in 2012? That's all they care about.

The GOP exists to FEED tax money back to their big donors ... who then feed it back in campaign cash.

Its the circle of life, GOP style.

Not the result they are looking for.

how WE are going to repay them? Ever seen our interest payments along? Mind boggling. Cannot operate a govt. by bribing and policing the world without a down side.

It would also make it easier for Obama to try to nationalize the congressional elections and win back the house by giving him a real enemy.

in media...to blame the opposition for any disasters (and for any made-up slight or outrage they can think of) and take credit for saving the people, the church, and the American way of life for decent, straight, gun-toting white guys.

No one who voted to take down government operations, including the military and social security checks, is going to reelected the next time around.

Wall Street uses U.S. debt as their base for all of their investments. Without it, ALL OTHER INVESTMENTS WOULD BECOME INSTANTANEOUSLY WORTHLESS.

We would be plunged into a "Mad Max" like world.

before his daddy got him out of the country before the Vietnam draft could have got him ...

People want their stuff. It's their stuff. They deserve their stuff. If there's a deficit, it's because those other people over there are getting stuff they don't deserve. Don't get between me and my much-deserved stuff.

If the GOP doesn't raise the debt ceiling people won't get their stuff.

Moreover, the people who aren't getting stuff generally have at least one class of stuff-receiving people that they empathize with. Maybe it's the military and the brave fighting men seeking to free Afghanistan from democracy. Maybe it's the poor, sick children living in the beer cartons floating in the Hudson under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Perhaps it's the valiant researchers developing that new, cutting-edge stem-cell treatment to cure psoriasis. Nearly everybody has an ox that must not, under any circumstance, be gored by not getting its stuff. It's richly deserved, yea, its crucial stuff.

Yeah, the budget deficit's huge, it's unsustainable. Just keep your hands off my stuff. If you need to cut somebody's stuff, cut the other guy's stuff. Mine's richly deserved. He's a loser, and he doesn't deserve his stuff nearly as much as I deserve mine. Got it? It's mine. I'm cool, I'm altruistic, I have empathy and love my fellow man. Now get your hands off my stuff or watch my foot send your reproductive organs into orbit around Mercury. I don't care if you are a woman.

If you compare the pissed-off quotient from not getting your stuff next week--or having your sacred ox not get its stuff which is your stuff vicariously--versus having a potentially huge meltdown later that hurts hundreds of millions of Americans, you'll see it's obvious that not getting your stuff wins hands down. After all, as long as the meltdown--which may be huge, but who really knows?--occurs after three weeks from Thursday it's in the unknowably distant future. Anything that might be trivial in the unknowably distant future is of less importance than getting your stuff tomorrow.

The question is, If the GOP blocks the debt ceiling increase because we've run up a few trillions in public debt in the last couple of years, who gets the blame for denying Americans their stuff, their richly deserved stuff? After all, Americans are all about blame. We like assigning blame almost as much as we like getting our stuff. Look at the education system. Our kids aren't getting their stuff, so we really need somebody to blame and that means tests and procedures and zero-tolerance policies and regimentation and reviews ad infinitum to make sure we can blame somebody as everybody in the system produces proof that the blame is somebody else's. But I digress, and that's a bad thing in a post this long.

When discussing blame, it's easier for the prez to control the populace. . . uh, the discussion than it is for 50 representatives with 72 slightly different stories. The press couldn't handle 3-4 reasons given for the Iraq War and demanded just one, then made sure we were pissed off when they were told a few years later that they were just told the one excuse that * & Co. thought had the widest traction. The American public can handle incredible complexity as long as it can be fully explained in 2 sentences of 4-5 words each, as long as the two sentences contain at least three of the same words. The problem is the press gets lost after the first sentence.

With a public like that, 50 different narratives will be interpreted as a "zzzz" sound, a somewhat annoying backdrop to Obama's "Look, I just want to give you your stuff, your richly deserved stuff. Yeah, there may be a problem later, but who really knows for sure. But today, the GOP is denying you your stuff--they're to blame--and I want you to help me do what's right and give you your richly deserved stuff. You deserve your stuff. They want to take your stuff away from you."

With a narrative like that, any government shutdown will last about 23 minutes, during which time Obama's ratings will increase approx. 1.1 rating points per minute while the repubs lose the same amount.

No. The GOP knows this. If they try to actually accomplish it without having a single, crystal clear story--"If we don't do something, none of you will get your stuff, your richly deserved stuff, and it will be Obama's fault"--then they lose. They cannot say, "We want to make sure that almost everybody gets their stuff" because everybody will assume that they will be wrongly denied their stuff. In other words, unless they actually *do* take Obama hostage and keep him from saying a word in public, the GOP loses *their* stuff.

The best they can do is try to maneuvre to get a concession. "We want to give you your stuff--did you know it's richly deserved?--but we want our stuff, too. If we just get our stuff you'll not only get your stuff, you'll get *more* stuff." It may work, but I wouldn't hold out much expectations. After all, the response from Obama will be, "Wait a minute--if they get their stuff, that's stuff that I could give to you. And you know you not only richly deserve the stuff you're getting now, and not only do you deserve even *more* stuff, but you deserve the GOP's stuff, too! Hell, you richly deserve it, they don't--they're losers and are holding back on giving you *all* of your stuff!"

BTW, you misunderstand the GOP's strategy every bit as much as you misunderstand their goals.

The only real way to combat them is to constantly harp on tax cuts for the rich whenever they bellyache about any expenditure. That, of course, would be shouted down as class warfare, and Democrats scamper for the baseboards at the first murmur of this. Hell, all you have to do to get most of them running for cover is to utter the heinous word "liberal".

Your post was great, by the way, but these guys scare me. With the cocksure pluckiness of adolescents, they REALLY think that they can (as a Bush Administration spokesperson said) CREATE their own reality. They really think they can. So much for Global Warming. People like that can do all sorts of reckless things in an act of "teaching them a lesson", and I don't trust them to the door with a map and under an armed guard. They MIGHT just think they can force a default and the only outcome would be blame on Obama. It'll be interesting in a terrifying sort of way if they try, because they'll find out in a hurry who their real masters are, and the moments when they do will be real theatre.

Enough of that, though; the real problem is what will be surrendered by our President in the face of this threat.

and the Republicans' constituents would abandon them if they made such a move. The reason the US dollar is still the accepted all over the world is because we have always paid, even in under much worse circumstances.

hostage with it just like they did with the tax cuts, extracting major concessions on Social Security and Medicare.

Obama better call them on it this time.

at the moment the repubs are split be tween the traditional wall street money manager type republican and the populist tea bag type.

the tea bag type wants to let the country default for spite, to show how right they are about everything.
the wall street type knows this would be a disaster and the blame would land squarely on the republicans for decades.

elected republicans want to keep both sides happy,
they need the support of the wall street ones to govern.
they need the support of the tea bag types to win elections.

they have painted themselves into quite a corner here.


I actually think the dems should call their bluff when they blather on about not raising the debt ceiling,
The Dem position should be, elections have results and we have heard the people,
no one in the democratic house caucus will support raising the debt ceiling as a result of your leadership on this mr speaker.
go out and find the 200+ votes yourself.

Let the arguments orginate in the Republican caucus. The Democrats should "defer" to the Republicans in the House on this matter and let it begin in the Repub caucus.

Democrats wil, of course, vote on this measure in the end, but the decisive commentary and battle should be in the Republican caucus.

-Laelth

Currency into double digit upward revaluation. That would
be a catastrophe. World trade as we know it would come to
a standstill.

Most of the the debt in this country is owned by Wall St. banksters. The same people who fund the 'Pugs. If they cut off the debt ceiling, they would be biting the hand that feeds them, and they simply won't do that.

When the economy completely collapses under the weight of debt, capitalism as we know it will go away.