After a two-week shutdown, leftist RINOs in the House and Senate quietly folded as usual, to join the leftist Democrats in funding govt for another three months and raising the debt ceiling till February. At which time we'll go through all this yet again, with nothing really changed.
The tactics for each side are now clear, in case anyone didn't already know what they were:
For Democrats, get their media friends to run a solid barrage of campaign commercials disguised as "news", blaming the Republicans for the shutdown while never blaming Democrats (
TV network stories blame Republicans, 21-0, for shutdown, not Democrats | WashingtonExaminer.com). Then after two solid weeks of that carpet-bombing approach, they conduct a series of polls, and find out that, surprise surprise, most people think the Republicans are at fault. Repeat as needed, for as long as the shutdown lasts.
It is clear that big-govt leftists are pretty much guaranteed free rein to keep borrowing and spending without limit for many years to come. Any Republican resistance will be allowed to show itself briefly, and then will fold up and go away at the first actual threat of trouble, leaving the big-govt advocates free to continue unabated.
For Republicans, only recently-elected TEA Party candidates can be trusted to do what they were elected to do (stop the wild spending and wilder borrrowing). RINOs and other such establishment Republicans can be counted on only to melt away like a snowball on a hot stove, cave to the Democrats, and meekly vote their way. So the Republicans tactics are clear: Get the RINOs voted out of office, and elect more TEA Party candidates in their places. If this does not happen, then we will basically have one-party government in the nation for the forseeable future, with debts rising to two, three, or ten times their present ($17 trillion) level.
DETAILS OF THE POSTPONEMENT BILL:
Sketchy. I've seen a few snatches on TV, amounting to:
1.) Fund the government through Jan. 15, 2014.
2.) Raise the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, 2014. This one puzzles me. I thought a Debt Ceiling was a dollar figure, not a date. Does this mean that big-govt people can now borrow all they want, packing some extra away for a rainy day and exploding the debt even more than it already is, and then must stop doing that on Feb. 7?
3.) Form yet another supercommittee to discuss budget agreements. There is no requirement that this committee actually get anything done or agree to anything. They must report, umm, something, by Dec. 13.
4.) Restore some kid of income verification for Obamacare signups.
Basically the Republican cave-in came too fast for the Republicans to accomplish anything by standing firm, in a Vietnam-war kind of way, where troops bled and died to take territory, only to hand it back to the enemy a week later via "negotiations".
Anyone know any more details on what this "agreement" cave-in contains?
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
