Political Ragnarök, or, Obama’s Boldly-Played Budget Battle Bet-The-Ranch Blowou

[DixieBelle]

Obama has sent a budget to Congress. Obama’s budget makes no effort whatsoever to cut spending.

Obama is not “failing to lead” as some people are claiming. That is all wrong.

All suggestions to that effect are all wrong. Obama knows exactly what he is doing.

Obama is setting up a confrontation and he plans to win.

Obama is betting that he can force the GOP to make their proposed cuts, which he can blame them for, which he can truthfully say he does not support. Then he can attack the Republicans for making the cuts. He will appeal to the people who are suffering from the cuts, and strip away GOP support. They will be angry and mobilized.

Obama then plans to force the GOP into a funding crisis just as Clinton did. Obama plans to destroy the GOP reform wave of 2011 just as Clinton destroyed the GOP reform effort in 1995. Obama’s team attempted to use the Tucson massacre in the same fashion that Clinton used the Oklahoma City bombings, to discredit the GOP. Obama is acutely aware of the Clinton playbook. This is another re-run.

If Obama wins, then the GOP / Tea Party effort is over and the Democrats have won the whole ball game. Obama gets reelected, the GOP is finished as a political party, and we have a mess for some number of years while a new party forms. But odds are it will be too late by then. A majority of people will be dependent on the Government.

It is that serious. Obama’s brazen, no-cuts budget proposal is not a sign of weakness.

It is a bold chess move that demands a strong response.

Obama has chosen to make this budget the big confrontation. This is the decisive political moment. Obama is prepping the battlefield.

Will the GOP win, lose, fold, get clobbered and not know what happened? Or will they call Obama out, see him and raise him, and make their case to the American people? Do the American people really care about the fiscal insanity and national bankruptcy? Or will the people who personally lose from the budget cuts have all the energy and outrage? Does the GOP have the courage to push ahead, no matter what?

Lenin said there are decades where nothing happens, then there are weeks where decades happen. We are heading into months where decades are going to happen.

Stay tuned.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/20267.html

Interesting (and startling) perspective.

[DefiantSix]

...Then he can attack the Republicans for making the cuts. He will appeal to the people who are suffering from the cuts, and strip away GOP support...

Since when have the NEA (either the teacher's union or the faggots at the Endowment for the Arts), the welfare abusers and GE been rock-ribbed supporters of the Republicans?

[Janice]

Barry Soetoro (D-Indonesia) submitted his 2012 campaign platform instead of a budget ...

He has the same goals as all the Muslims who hate America.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I absolutely agree with the op-ed.

However, as much of a threat as this strategy is:

1) This ain't 1996. In 1996 the looming bankruptcy of the US was, even by contemporary reckoning, 20 years away. It is now 15 years later from that point and everyone sees the wolf at the door.

2) The TEA party was spawned because people recognize just how insane spending has become. Many who birthed that organization did so because Obama shocked them with his Stimulus bill though he ran against Bush's $300BN/year deficits. That extra trillion in spending has since become an annual feature.

3) ObamaCare is still synonomous with "expensive bullshit that only powermongers wanted".

4) Obama is Carter, not Clinton. Clinton knew when to shut-up and walk away from the liberal agenda to secure his personal agenda of getting re-elected. Carter is a true believer. Obama is a true believer and he is his own god.

5) WaPo and CNN believed Obama when he campaigned on fiscal responsibility. That is why they gave him a pass on Rev Wright and his neophyte narcissism. Today they are eviscerating his proposed budget.

6) The GOP didn't have as many alternative news venues at its disposal. While talk radio brought us 1994 the innerwebz have eroded the MSMs stranglehold all the more, RE: the race card has been exhausted; libs may use it but it has failed to shield Obama from genuine criticism.

7) Nobody in the dem ranks was talking about a primary to Clinton's re-election bid. Even if such a challenge never materializes in 2012 Obama is still weaker for it. Their ranks are too muddled and disorganized. Even DU cannot decide whether to punish heresy or close ranks against Dread Queen of the Undead, Sarah.

I give Obama a low to moderate probability to affect his strategy hinged upon MSM reception of his budget. The next week will be crucial especially once GOP proposals begin to surface. If the MSM reports, "Yeah the GOP plan sucks but Obama gave them the room to do it" then 2012 is ours to lose.

My second caveat is whether Americans accept cuts to their personal entitlements. That is the true danger here but again, everyone sees the wolf at the door and it growls in Mandarin.

[DixieBelle]

Excellent analysis Snugs and I agree 100%.

[DefiantSix]

Excellent analysis Snugs and I agree 100%.

+1

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I refer you back to point #4 which reads:

4) Obama is Carter, not Clinton. Clinton knew when to shut-up and walk away from the liberal agenda to secure his personal agenda of getting re-elected. Carter is a true believer. Obama is a true believer and he is his own god.

Then I direct your attention to this nugget of juicy nuggetness:

As President Obama huddles today with Senate Democrats on his $3.7 trillion budget proposal, the Congressional Black Caucus is emerging as one of the loudest House Democratic critics of a plan that Marc Ambinder at National Journal calls "The Budget Nobody Likes."

In his press conference yesterday, Obama insisted that "just like every family in America, the government has to do two things at once: It has to live within its means and it has to invest in the future." He compared the budget to the balancing act many families must make when they decide to cut back on eating out and other luxuries in order to save for their kids' educations.

Yet, several House Democrats, including CBC members, have disagreed. A spokesperson for Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.--who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, where the real fight with GOP deficit hawks will be engaged--criticized the president's analogy, saying, "It isn't cutting luxuries, it's cutting things that are vital."

http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/476850/congressional_black__caucus_%22cannot_accept%22_obama_budget_cuts_

For Obama's trap to work correctly he needs to keep his core constituency from hollering about it.

But Obama is Obama and Obama worships Obama. Accordingly he assumed if he set the trap it would remain unmolested by his own party for the GOP to walk into but instead the CBC is waving it at him wanting to know what it all means.

IOW, he never consulted with them. He never explained his plan with them. He assumed the power of his persona would quell their uncertainties.

Now the GOP has political cover because the president's own camp called the budget unacceptable.

Also consider the source of this article and refer to Points #6 & 7.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

via Ace of Spades HQ:

...Obama has vowed to veto the $100 billion in cuts budget (which doesn't go far enough but that's too much for Bam-Bam the Destroyer.)

Which means that the only alternative is a government shutdown, which the GOP is loathe to do because last time (in 1995) they got blamed for it and were hurt politically.

Now, the alternative is that if Obama vetoes, and we have no budget, Congress can pass a Continuing Resolution like the one now in place. But if a CR keeps spending at the same high levels, then Obama has won, obviously -- it doesn't matter if a budget keeps spending at ruinously high levels or a CR keeps spending at ruinously high levels; either way, spending is kept at ruinously high levels.

But Boehner says if forced to pass a CR, that too will contain cuts.

“I am not going to move any kind of short-term CR at current levels,” the Speaker told reporters at his weekly press conference. “When we say we’re going to cut spending, read my lips, we’re going to cut spending.”

...

This is an interesting play. He doesn't say that the spending would be deeply cut, but let's assume he's smart and it does cut just as deeply: This would be a tactical effort to make Obama either shut down the government himself or accept the spending cuts.

There's a doctrine in law about the Last Clear Chance to avoid a tragedy, and how the person who had that Last Clear Chance to stop a tragedy should bear the costs should tragedy come to pass. (Look, I don't have the details; they're not important.) Boehner may be attempting to engineer a situation in which the public sees Obama had the Last Clear Chance to avoid a government shutdown, and therefore any shutdown is on him.

The problem for narcissists is: when you are convinced you are smarter than everyone else you do not plan for the opposition to make their own smart moves.