This New York Times Editorial is a scathing analysis of the Republican Party's irresponsible strategy on the Debt Ceiling negotiations. The GOP''s radicalism will impose an long term costs on US Taxpayers resulting directly the brinksmanship over the Debt Celing they employed to extract the maximum in concessions from the Obama White House and Senate Democrats.
Magical Unrealism
In full public view, the party’s mainstream jumped the tracks of reality on issues of spending and taxes, brightly illustrating the ruinous magical thinking that has led to a downgrade of the nation’s credit and invited a double-dip recession. When asked if they would reject a deal to cut the deficit that had 10 times the amount of spending cuts as it had tax increases, the hands of all eight candidates went up. Even a tincture of new revenue, though mixed with huge cuts in government spending, would be too much for the modern Republican Party.
The magical thinking that we should roll the Federal Government back to the way it was in 1911, and not to try and govern with a 2011 Federal Government, that they find so abhorrent.
That has been the nature of every Republican debate this cycle: deny the truth or tell an outrageous lie with such bellicosity that no one dares to challenge it.
Representative Michele Bachmann, for example, said the credit downgrade was because the government could not pay its debt. Standard and Poor’s actually said it was because lawmakers like her did not take a default seriously. Representative Ron Paul ridiculously claimed that the United States is bankrupt.
Republicans elevated their hatred of modern government over the country's economic welfare. The Republicans debate in Iowa was so divorced from reality it strikes me as almost Stalinesque in its rigid adherence to Party doctrine, when confronted by reality.