Republicans win even when they lose

Hooo boy, you gotta' love someone who starts a post off like this...

There are a number of reasons why I am giving only muted golf-claps to the White House's strategy on this whole payroll-tax cut debacle that is ruining John McCain's Christmas down in D. C. (Jesus, John, just shut up, okay? You look like a fool.)...

This is Charles Pierce writing on Esquire's blog.  Pierce doesn't muddle his posts with a bunch of niceties (or spell-check), he just blasts away at stupidity.  We need more like him.  Here's a bit more from the post above:

This is now merely a fight over optics, and the Democrats seem to be winning it. Good for them. It's been a long time since we could say that. But the fact is that the whole debate is still being fought out on the ground defined by the Republicans. That's been the case since the millionnaire surtax was jettisoned. That was the real game-changer. It would have demonstrated conclusively that people had been listening to what folks had been yelling in the street throughout the fall. The people who got fat in the casino that nearly broke the country would have to kick in so that the country's tattered middle-class, which had been suffering through the economy created by the casino's crimes, would get a break. For the first time in a long while, the government would have provided a different, more economically just, answer to the question, "Which side are you on?" The 1 percent would be made to give something back to the 99 percent. Once that provision was abandoned, what was left was a run-of-the-mill spending bill and the same tired debate we've been having for two years.

The point is, by now the Republicans have already won much of what they set out to get in return for extending the payroll tax cut.  They just want more, that's all - and they usually get it.  This time maybe not, but if the payroll tax doesn't get passed the economy in this election year will suffer and so will (presumably) Obama, and in addition the Republicans protected the very wealthy one again. Sigh...

--Trakker

Comments

[horsec]

the millionaire surtax gambit

Not passing the surtax will prove a Republican pyrrhic victory.

Obama let the fools win. Wait until November 2012.

[Trakker]

I wish the Democrats would learn to play hardball. I have a feeling ol' Barack is going to get the Senate to come back and negotiate (aka cave) with the Republican House because those tax cuts "are so important to working Americans." No, they are important to his re-election.