The highly publicized debt ceiling debate has drawn to a close.\u00a0 Politicians and commentators from both political parties are hailing this as a victory for the Tea Party.<\/p>\n
I am not so sure. In fact, I am disposed to judge this a victory for President Barack Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the conventional narrative, Obama is the big loser in all of this because, as Pat Buchanan said, the Republicans, thanks to the Tea Partiers, achieved some of what they wanted while Obama and the Democrats received virtually nothing <\/em>in return.\u00a0 The President originally demanded an unconditional increase in the debt ceiling.\u00a0 Then, when he recognized that this wasn\u2019t going to occur, he indicated a willingness to negotiate some spending cuts while insisting upon tax increases.\u00a0 The Republicans, though, held firm, and in the end, Obama conceded to spending cuts in spite of having abandoned his hope for any tax hikes.<\/p>\n This wisdom, I am afraid, is but a species of wishful thinking at best, deception at worst.<\/p>\n There is no way that Obama could not have known that a Republican-controlled House of Representatives would under no circumstances agree to raise the debt ceiling in the absence of conditions.\u00a0 And it is doubtful that he had much confidence that Republicans would endorse any proposals involving overt tax hikes.\u00a0 Yet so that he could obtain at least a good measure of his heart\u2019s desire while perpetuating the myth of Obama the Great Conciliator of conflicting partisan interests, the President began this series of negotiations with requests that he knew were unrealistic.<\/p>\n But it can\u2019t be accentuated enough that, far from getting \u201cnothing\u201d from the debt deal, Obama received no inconsiderable amount of what he wants.\u00a0<\/p>\n First and most obvious, Obama achieved a raise in the debt ceiling. <\/em>\u00a0This means that now there are more resources available for he and his fellow partisans to deploy in their task to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201dAmerica, as Obama promised while on the campaign trail in 2008.<\/p>\n Second, real spending cuts are immediate <\/em>spending cuts.\u00a0 So-called \u201cprojected\u201d or \u201cfuture\u201d spending cuts are nothing more or less than potential <\/em>spending cuts.\u00a0 However, as both experience and logic readily reveal, practically speaking, potentiality is nothingness. Within the next two years, Republicans managed to secure approximately 60 billion dollars in spending cuts.\u00a0 When it is considered that Obama will have at his disposal 900 billion new dollars over this same period, and when we remember that the national debt is in the trillions, <\/em>it becomes obvious that Republicans are guaranteed <\/em>virtually nil.\u00a0<\/p>\n Third, along with a motley crew of irresponsible journalists and pundits in the media, Obama succeeded in promoting the lie that a failure to raise the debt ceiling is tantamount to a default on our debt obligation.\u00a0 In reality, the two are entirely distinct.\u00a0 But reality hasn\u2019t anything at all to do with the perception that during his tenure, Obama averted economic Armageddon by compromising just enough to get the debt ceiling raised.<\/p>\n Fourth, Republicans cheer and herald this resolution as a victory for the Tea Party.\u00a0 Democrats in Washington and the media tend to characterize this as a win for the Tea Party as well, but in contrast to their opponents, they have depicted the Tea Party as having pursued their goals at the expense of the country.\u00a0 In the meantime, Obama openly laments that he was forced to consent to terms for which he lacks all enthusiasm.\u00a0 When stocks are plummeting and the world\u2019s confidence in America\u2019s ability to get her financial house in order continues to deteriorate as our economy worsens\u2014as it is guaranteed to do (at least) until the next election\u2014Obama\u2019s somberness casts the Tea Partiers and the Republicans in the role of Nero, the tyrant who fiddled while Rome burned.\u00a0<\/p>\n In short, when this deal proves to be for naught (vis-\u00e0-vis the economy), Obama can remind voters that, as Republicans are repeatedly informing us, this was the Tea Party\u2019s deal.\u00a0 <\/em>We tried it their way, he will doubtless say, and it only made matters worse. So Obama will have found himself a new scapegoat for the problems that he has created during his time in the White House.<\/p>\n Fifth, by being able to now shift responsibility off of himself and onto the Tea Partiers and Republicans, Obama can kill a second bird with this same stone.\u00a0 He can now use the worsening economy as a pretext for pushing through the remainder of his socialist agenda.\u00a0 This just might work too, for recall, Americans originally voted for Obama and the Democrats because of their belief that it was primarily the Republicans <\/em>who were responsible for having brought the country to the precipice of financial ruin.\u00a0 Obama and company, exploiting the perception that the Democrats were generally more trustworthy when it comes to matters of economic significance, convinced an economically and politically illiterate electorate that it was the Republicans\u2019 \u201ctax breaks for the rich\u201d and their support of a \u201cderegulated market\u201d that explains the mess that Obama \u201cinherited.\u201d\u00a0 As the economy further erodes in the wake of <\/em>this latest \u201cTea Party victory,\u201d it won\u2019t be too terribly difficult for Obama and an exceptionally Democrat-friendly media to push this line again.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sixth, the debt deal proposes cuts in the military budget.\u00a0 This pleases both Obama\u2019s left-wing constituents as well as some on the non-neoconservative right\u2014including and especially the much coveted \u201cindependents.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, in spite of all of the talk we have heard from Republicans regarding the dreadful \u201cObamacare\u201d and their pledge to defund and repeal this Leviathan, it is not so much as touched upon in the latest debt deal.\u00a0 In other words, Obama gets to keep his signature landmark program (at least for now).\u00a0<\/p>\n Republicans tell us that this is as good a deal as they could get given that they control \u201conly one-half of one-third of the government.\u201d\u00a0 If we really <\/em>want to restore \u201cfiscal sanity\u201d toWashington, then we need to regain control of the Senate and the White House in 2012.\u00a0 A couple of brief remarks on this line of reasoning are in order.<\/p>\n First, it is deceptive, for it suggests, and is designed to suggest, that the Republicans have less power than they really do.\u00a0 The three branches of our government are the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.\u00a0 Only the legislative and executive branches have anything to do with this debt ceiling issue.\u00a0 So, while the Republicans do indeed control one-half of one-third of the government, the Democrats control, not everything<\/em> that is left over, as this argument is meant to imply, but half of the government.\u00a0 Of course, the numbers here are not nearly as important as we may be misled to think, for that \u201cone-half of one-third\u201d of the government that the Republicans control is the House\u2014<\/em>exactly that chamber of congress where all <\/em>spending originates.\u00a0 To control the House of Representatives is to wield much power.<\/p>\n Second, those Republican politicians and pundits who are now \u201creminding\u201d the rest of us about how constrained they currently are didn\u2019t issue any of these condescending, disingenuous cautionary tales in the weeks and days leading up to the November election of 2010.\u00a0 No one said then that if Republicans only take control of the House, they would never be able to arrive at any deal on spending that wouldn\u2019t be better than the one they now have.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, my advice to Republican and Tea Party voters is to force those Republicans running for office in 2012 to specify<\/em>, not just what <\/em>they want<\/em> to do in order to restore \u201climited,\u201d constitutional government, but how <\/em>they plan on doing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n For now, though, we must accept the brute fact that this debt deal, far from being a victory for the Tea Party, is a victory for Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The highly publicized debt ceiling debate has drawn to a close.\u00a0 Politicians and commentators from both political parties are hailing this as a victory for the Tea Party. I am not so sure. In fact, I am disposed to judge this a victory for President Barack Obama.\u00a0 According to the conventional narrative, Obama is the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n