I guess I’m the type who likes to ask cui bono sometimes. That’s why I could never be a serious person:
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, believes “some” Republicans “want the economy to actually fail.” Paul Krugman recently said in his column, “[I]t’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.” Eugene Robison, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was recently asked whether it’s possible Republicans would sabotage the economy. “Well, let me be honest,” he said. “It has occurred to me that this is a possibility.” E.J. Dionne Jr. and Dan Gross have raised the same concerns.
A few months ago, Kevin Drum wondered whether this will ever be “a serious talking point,” adding, “No serious person in a position of real influence really wants to accuse an entire party of cynically trying to tank the economy, after all.”
It’s a no-brainer, if the economy is bad enough, Republicans have a good chance to win the White House. What’s the downside? Maybe you lose a few seats in Congress.
But Eric Cantor is an honorable man. So are they all, all honorable men.
J
Great title for this post about economic sabotage. That Beastie Boys song is a classic.
Rick Taylor
After a while, it doesn’t matter what their motives are, given what they’ve done. Holding the economy hostage and getting US treasuries downgraded should have been enough to convince anyone.
Loneoak
You can’t be serious without disingenuous, apparently. Because what other conclusion could one possible come to about their advocacy for policies that will hold back the economy?
Zifnab
The “moderate” Dems would all fall upon their fainting couches, you can be sure.
Pliny
Meanwhile, the Democrats simply don’t give a shit, as high unemployment and the resultant downward pressure on wages pleases the ownership class.
agrippa
I do not need to know the intentions.
I need only take notice of the effect.
And, proceed accordingly.
Klaus
Props to Shakespeare.
Chris
From wikipedia:
The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, for a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
This, I suppose, would be the equivalent Big Action: nobody would believe that someone would have the impudence to impede economic recovery for political motives. It’s just too far out there to be true.
BGinCHI
Until they pay a political price this will continue. If the media just continue to call this “politics as usual” there will be no incentive for the GOP to stop this.
I’d say it could also end by their constituents figuring out they’re being had, but that’s not likely with Fox and talk radio feeding them all the bullshit they can swallow.
We need a new journalism.
James E. Powell
Also too, if it were to become accepted as fact that the Republicans are deliberately tanking the economy to make Obama look bad, not only would a super-majority of Republicans and all of the teabaggers support it, but every candidate in the Republican debates would gravely intone his or her support, sadly holding that it was necessary pain to save the country from the dreaded KMS.
Based on a blog post from 2003 that wished ill upon George W. Bush, the corporate press/media would declare that both sides do it.
Short Bus Bully
I realized a long time ago that this is exactly why I could never be a successful politician; my propensity to tell people that they are full of shit. I can be very diplomatic and accepting of others at work when shit needs to get done, but put me in a political situation and the “fuck you’s” start to manifest at an alarming rate. That dog just don’t hunt in Washington, too low class.
That being said, everyone mentioned in that snippet who won’t call the Rethugs out on this shit is a straight up pussy.
Mino
Yes, and if they manage to take the global economy down with us and initiate a world-wide depression, well, hookoodanode?
Which might be a decent defense, cause they’re stupid as a bag of rocks.,,,,,,
Carl
Mike Lofgren — a Republican staffer for 16 years on the House & Senate Budget Committees — admitted Republican bad faith just this month:
…A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner….
fasteddie9318
@Zifnab: If we could replace their fainting couches with spike pits, suddenly this seems more feature than bug.
soonergrunt
@Pliny: I’d tell you to shoot yourself in the head for being so fucking stupid, but anyone who’d actually post what you just did would be stupid enough to miss his own head and kill an innocent bystander.
28 Percent
They’ve got their base convinced that anything done that historically stimulates the economy actually prolongs recessions. Had lunch today with a colleague who insisted that was the case and also that if the government had just not gotten involved in the 2008 financial sector meltdown that we’d be much better off now because the resulting fallout “wouldn’t have been that bad” and we’d have been able to rebuild from a clean slate. Any suggestion that the crisis that would have ensued would have been catastrophic, he explains as being a belief which results from “corporatist propaganda” from which only Fox News is immune. I shit you not.
Joseph Nobles
Just got an email that the Fed is moving $400 billion in short-term bonds into longer-term holdings. This will help keep longer-term interest rates (from car purchase to home purchases) lower and thus more attractive to buyers.
Ball’s in Boehner’s court.
Nylund
I’ll go hunt for the quotes but I think at least two GOP congressmen have already publicly stated that they won’t support any bill that will help the economy because it will also help Obama get elected.
Maude
Well, at least the Fed didn’t agree with the Republicans. They’ve decided on stimulus.
At least they are trying to help the economy.
Mitch McConnell said it best: the goal is to make Obama a one term president.
Congress gets it’s salary and bennies so what do the Republican members care if people suffer? It’s not happening to them
Never underestimate their ability for cruelty.
Nylund
That was from 9/11/2011 from an article at politico about why the GOP won’t help Obama pass the jobs bill.
Nylund
@Maude:
Yeah, but no. They’re selling one type of security to buy another, but they’re not expanding their balance sheet, so its more of a swap than a stimulus.
beltane
I’ve read that during the 1906 & 1911 famines in Russia, the Bolsheviks refused to help with any relief efforts in the belief that the wider the suffering, the easier it would be to topple the Czarist regime. I guess they were right, but the immorality of this way of thinking carried over to their own style of governance. It seems that the GOP are the true heirs to the Bolsheviks.
cleek
@Nylund:
i believe similar things were said during the debt-ceiling fiasco.
Maude
@Nylund:
It’s called a twist. It should help. They also have Europe and that whole mess in mind. Trying to keep the US untangled from Europe is a good thing. Martha Stewart said so.
reflectionephemeral
I borrowed from the same song for the title of a post about Paul Ryan’s flip-flop on Keynesian stimulus. When a Republican is president, Ryan & the GOP think that helping the economy is good; when a Democrat is president, they think it’s unconstitutional, tyrannical, socialist, and probably fascist besides.
Chris from Arlington
Yond Cantor has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
…while saying he thinks too much is a stretch, Shakespeare was right that he’s dangerous.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@beltane:
A corollary to Godwin?
Good one.
aisce
@ joseph nobles
operation twist. it will accomplish nothing. and even that nothingburger drew significant dissent on the policymaking board.
boehner “won.”
Pliny
@soonergrunt:
While it’s lovely that you think suicide is appropriate advice for someone pointing out things you’d rather not believe about the political party to which you have attached your ego, I’d love some evidence that the Democrats do indeed give a shit. Maybe focus on the two years they had majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency?
Pliny
@Maude:
Stimulus for the banks, as if they need more free money to either hoard or turn around and buy Treasuries with.
R. Porrofatto
The Republicans already sabotaged the economy in the Bush administration.
What they’re attempting now is to sabotage any hope of economic recovery and to make the suffering of the [non-rich] American people permanent.
maya
The Fed’s Twist will cost the insurance industry big time as their portfolios aren’t earning much and won’t for a while to come. Some may not be able to meet life insurance payout obligations. What are those CEO’s & VPs going to do? Now there’s the ultimate Ponzi scheme – insurance! Where is jwest to give us his/her privatization/free market explanation on all this?
catclub
@Maude: “Well, at least the Fed didn’t agree with the Republicans. They’ve decided on stimulus.”
Well, kinda. They could change inflation targets, but that might spook the zombie bond vigilantes. We don’t want that now, do we?
Also, as a corollary, we can’t have nice things.
Hoodie
@Carl: I would say it’s more this than a direct intention to tank the economy, which is simply an effect of the political goal he describes. The Republicans want to completely destroy the idea that the government can intentionally do anything to improve the economy as a whole, i.e., in any broad-based, equitable way, because doing otherwise would diminish the power they get from divisive political tactics. If they’re seen as compromising with Obama, then the voters have less reason to judge on purely ideological, partisan and emotional lines.
Cris (without an H)
Reminds me of a new (to me) talking point I heard some Republican use on ATC yesterday: “Here we are going into the fourth year of a lifeless economy…” Expect to continue to hear that particular timeframe. It’s the Obama Recession, alright.
patrick II
According to “Shock Doctrine” a then recently installed South American dictator asked Milton Friedman what to do about his stalling economy and high unemployment. Milton told him to stay the course and let the free market do its magic — to tragic results.
I think there is more than cynicism going on here. I don’t think the republicans are going to reverse most of the economic policies they are extolling now — which would show cynicism. If they win taxes will be lowered not raised, the government will give way to privatization. They will still spend on projects, but through private companies that make the holy chosen ones rich.
A couple of threads ago DougJ posted about the conflation of religion and the free market. These people believe, even supposedly intellectual conservatives like Friedman and Greenspan, have a religious faith in something they admit they don’t totally understand — the free market.
To many republicans the travails we are going through now are just the rough spots necessary to move us to the free market nirvana that will stop the governments intervention in the proper reward for those chosen who justly deserve the financial blessings of God. And if it seems bad in the short run, taking Friedman’s advice, they will keep the faith and the only problem is we haven’t lowered taxes enough or regulations enough or privatized enough. Have faith beyond the current travails, when there is no government to interfere the natural order of the blessed will be realized.
I wish they were just being cynical.
WereBear
The Republicans come right out and say that’s what they are doing!
pragmatism
my galtian overlord friend (took over his dad’s company, loves david brooks, had a clinton & gore–gone in 4 bumpersticker in college, swore up and down that teabillies were independents, blames “uncertainty” for his business woes) completely went off on me when i suggested what chuck states above a few months ago. said that even thinking that shows that i have no concept of reality and represent the worst qualities of the libtards. good times.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt:
Speaking of fainting couches, I pray to the merciful FSM that FlipYrNick has his within falling distance if ever he chance to read this vicious attack on a commenter.
Chris
@R. Porrofatto:
I don’t think that part was intentional. They really thought deregulation and supply-siding and all that would work, but… yeah.
That part, on the other hand, is.
soonergrunt
@Pliny: It’s because you’re fucking stupid that you say such things. Of course, I’m wasting my time trying to explain that. You’re too fucking stupid to understand it.
Like the difference between understanding gravity as a concept versus the earth holding us on with fairy tale wishes.
Gilles de Rais
@28 Percent: I hear the same shit from Foxbots in my office all the time.
The mind reels.
Joel
@Pliny: the whingenut is strong in this one.
wrb
@soonergrunt:
Gravity is just matter’s nostalgia for being part of a sphere
Cris (without an H)
My five-year-old has been asking about gravity, and I’ll admit my explanations aren’t much better than this.
wrb
@Cris (without an H):
It is Copernicus
mclaren
This is a good point. In the same way, we shouldn’t criticize the Nazis, because no serious person wants to accuse an entire political party of wanting to exterminate every Jew in Europe…
slightly-peeved
@Pliny: They saved the U.S. Auto industry, passed the biggest increase in the safety net since LBJ, passed one stimulus and have proposed another.
Make sure you stretch and hydrate adequately before you pick up those goalposts.
The Spy Who Loved Me
In the meantime, Chuckie Schumer has determined that if you make $250K a year in Mississippi, you’re Scrooge McDuck rich. On the other hand, he thinks that same income in New York City makes you just some middle class schmuck. Maybe we can further complicate the tax code by pegging rates to the city and state one lives in. That’ll simplify it.
TenguPhule
Once upon a time, we shot saboteurs in times of war.
TenguPhule
Because obviously there is no difference between prices in NYC and Piss Poor Missi.
dedc79
But Eric Cantor is an honorable man. So are they all, all honorable men.
Brutus would be ashamed to be associated with Eric Cantor
Pliny
@slightly-peeved:
Thank you for actually answering the question instead of jumping straight into psychotic ad-hominems because I said something you disagreed with.
The auto industry thing was legitimately good. It saved lots of jobs in the industry and protected many more that would have been in danger if the industry imploded. It really should have been a model for the fucking banks.
The stimulus was also good, although much too small, and half was tax breaks. This is sort of what I meant by “not giving a shit”: Ben Nelson basically decided on the final number by himself, and if they wanted his vote for a bigger package there are myriad ways they could have gotten it.
Healthcare reform, while having some really good parts, almost entirely consisted of brand new subsidies for insurance companies and Pharma, and while it might have some positive effect on unemployment, not for a while.
I realize that they didn’t completely ignore the problem, but my point is that they could have done so much more, and we should all be asking ourselves why they didn’t. It’s clear the the Republican party is some sort of crypto-religious cult with some supremely fucked up priorities, but the Democrats are only a little bit better, no matter how much the media keeps telling us how wildly different they are.
pattonbt
Republican: “Look, it may look like we are taking the economy hostage, but the reality is the Demonrats took the economy hostage 10 years ago with this Obama recession. They are destroying it ten fold with their sockialism and union thuggery. We are undertaking God’s and the Founding Fathers work here and SAVING the country from the job destruction policies of the tax and spend liberals”.
TV Anchor: “Thank you for that sir”
Democrat on TV: “But that is gibberish, they…”
TV Anchor (cutting off Dem): “Thats all the time we have for today. Next up, how to lose weight by eating McDonadls double quarter pounders with cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner”.
LittlePig
But Eric Cantor is an honorable man. So are they all, all honorable men.
If I hadn’t watched Brando say it on TCM this weekend I expect I’d have missed the reference.
Well played, sir.