Every House Republican but four, less than a handful, have all proudly voted to kill Medicare.
Not merely to cut the program, but to destroy it utterly. Destroy it, and then "replace" it with some totally half-assed lame Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute spawned and engineered to make things much worse voucher/coupon gimmick. Something that only a greedy pack of health insurnace lobbyists or bored College Republican interns stuck in between running one-sided Iran War computer sims could love.
Village pundits, this particular morning it was CNN's very own in-house unserious neocon and perpetual austerity pimp Fareed Zakaria, are not lamenting this totally vile development. No. Not at all. What they are openly lamenting is that the President of the United States 'has missed a real opportunity' to help slash Social Security and Medicare by giving a "partisan speech". 'Partisan' defined as basically meaning: a speech where a real alternative vision of government, including other ways of dealing with our debt and deficits than the brutal and petty ways presented by the Movement Conservative Rightwing as "the only serious option" was sketched out, and, bonus pout and scold from the deeply distressed media peanut gallery, it was also a speech where Movement Republican fee-fees were hurt in the process. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Democrats, when you come back to DC to get back to work, you are going to face some very serious Teabagger-inspired fiscal blackmail on the vital issue of raising the debt ceiling. You are going to be told, by the Village and the GOP hand in hand, to slash the Social Safety net and to put a nasty trigger or cap on spending as the price for doing something the GOP has absolutely no political leverage to refuse to do. If they don't raise the debt ceiling, they will harm the nation grievously, and in a way that they cannot spin as being the fault of anyone esle but their own. It would be political suicide, and the only way they can blackmail you is if you all refuse to notice this is the reality of the debt ceiling vote.
There is something that every Democrat should understand without having to be told. Ever.
There will never be a day when Social Security, Medicare, or any other part of the American Social Safety Net is not under siege by the Republican Party.
As long as even a single solitary social welfare program exists, it will exist under political duress. There is no tweak, no compromise, no brilliant adjustment that can or will change this reality. It doesn't matter if every last program on the books is somehow miraculously reworked or deftly restructured in some previously undreamed of but ingenious way that causes them to always break even. It doesn't even matter if every single policy and program devised to help the poor, the sick, the venerable, and the unexpectedly destitute all somehow magically become little big self-funding engines of pain-free perpetual social progress for all time.
The Social Safety Net is provided and maintained by the US Government, it's extremely popular and widely supported by the American people, and it works.
That alone is enough for Movement Conservatives to wage a permanent policy war against it.
There is nothing you can do, short of agreeing to quit on every front, to 'take' something off the table. You can only give them a new low bar to lower further the next time they want something.
There will never be a day when the Democratic Party, the American Middle Class, the working poor, women, minorities, the physically and mentally challenged, and the poverty stricken are not under siege by the Republican Party.
When you get back to work, say "No!" to being blackmailed, and tell them where they can stick their idiotic triggers that will do nothing but cripple your ability to politically deal with anything on policy but watching more wars get launched inbetween the passings of more undeserved and un-paid for massive tax cuts for the wealthy.
Nobody who will be in the chorus demanding that you collectively help the GOP by volunteering to cut your own throats, especially including the vapid cabal of Villagers backing up the foamy mouthed Teabaggers overreaching demand for overreaching demand, actually care if any of you, including the President, ever gets elected ever again.
Look at what they just did on Medicare. They don't care. Serial killers and tropical spiders have more empathy for their prey.
There are no more Pells or Chafees or Rockefellers to be found in the current incarnation of the GOP. Even Supply Side St. Ronald Reagan would be driven out of the current GOP as a gutless liberal RINO. The only acceptable end result for the current GOP when it comes to the Social Safety Net is for the big bad ol' federal government to be completely out of the Social Safety Net business. But that is not all. They also want to strip women of their rights to control their own body. To stop anyone from keeping the nation's environment clean. To prevent the punishment of greedy white collar criminals who legally fleece the poor and working class and demand taxpayer money when their scams blow up in their faces. It's all up to you not to buy the conjob.
If the GOP is talking Social Security or Medicare with you, it's not to help you save it. It's to vote for 'the hard choices' only after they have made sure that the Democratic Party has put it's fingerprints all over the murder weapons, and then they will crucify the Democrats from coast to coast as being the fiends who gutted the Social Safety Net they wished had never existed in the first place.
Look at Wisconsin. New Jersey. Florida. Look at what the GOP is doing there, and on all fronts. In the House. The Senate. The Supreme Court. The media. What they just did in voting virtually lockstep for Paul Ryan's deficit increasing and middle-class abusing budget plan.
They want Billionaires vs. Bake Sales, and if you don't defend the principles and people that make the Democratic Party relevant, then, the very existence of the Democratic Party is in peril. Fareed Zakaria doesn't give a damn if you cease to be, but every single person who realizes how important Medicare and Social Security is will.
Screw everybody who isn't rich, and frame the Democrats for it if you can.
In the end, that is the only "Grand Bargain" to be had, and it is neither 'grand' nor any 'bargain'.
Make John Boehner cry and Fareed Zakaria and David Gergen pout. I don't know a single person who has ever voted for a Democratic candidate who isn't waiting to proudly join you up on the wall for the fights to follow.