Pulling Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

Obama campaigned to the center, he is governing from the far left. And it is clear that his major policies are not supported by the majority of Americans. As the election of Scott Brown to the Kennedy's ancestral seat punctuated, the public is delivering a backlash. What has the GOP done to further that backlash for the past year? Absolutely nothing. Which is precisely what they should have been doing. When your opponent is committing suicide, you stand out of the way. What you don't do is give them the number to the suicide hotline and hire them a publicist who will blame the suicide attempts on you.

But that is just what it seems our GOP is doing. The only way Obama will be able to salvage the 2010 and 2012 elections will be if he succeeds in painting himself as reasonable and the Republicans as obstructionists - or, if in an act of insanity, the Republicans become complicit in Obama passing his socialist agenda into law, either by joining in or refusing to filibuster. In this regard, meeting with Obama on the left's health care legislation and allowing "Pay As You Go" legislation to escape Congress without a filibuster are just mind numbingly stupid errors.

I recently blogged on why the GOP should reject Obama's offer to meet on the health care monstrosity and how they should make a counteroffer to meet on deficit reduction and spending excess. But it seems that the GOP is planning to attend, regardless. They are insane.

And now we have Obama signing Pay as You Go legislation into law today. Pay As You Go was passed on a party line vote a few days ago, along with an increase in the national debt ceiling. If any piece of legislation deserved to be filibustered, it was that piece of Orwellian dribble. I have blogged on this legislation here and here. Pay as You Go does nothing towards imposing fiscal responsibility, it provides a smoke screen for Democrats both to claim fiscal responsibility and to justify tax increases, and because of the accounting rules of the CBO, it makes it virtually impossible for future Congresses to enact tax cuts. So it was both a propaganda victory for the left, a way to deflect attention from another increase in the national debt ceiling, and a brake on conservatives. That is a big win for the left. Way to go GOP.

If the GOP doesn't have the backbone to explain to America why they are filibustering a piece of horrendous legislation, if they think not using the filibuster will protect them from the left demagouging the issue, they are utterly insane. Obama is on the defensive and the GOP is demurring because they think the public is too stupid to understand reality. These jokers will pull defeat from the jaws of victory between now and November, I am sure of it.