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Hostages by matt coats
The Republican’s have been so successful in their hostage taking tactics not because the GOP are amazing negotiators but due to the fact Obama wants them to have a hostages. The Obama administration is told the Republicans they are negotiating with that they don’t believe the 14th amendment grants it the authority to ignore the debt ceiling. From the New York Times:
In addition to his warnings about the cost of a default, officials said, Mr. Geithner told the lawmakers the White House did not believe it had the authority, under the Constitution, to continue issuing debt if it reached the debt ceiling. Nobody in the room disputed Mr. Geithner’s bleak assessment, the officials said.
Regardless of what the White House’s actually thinks is the proper interruption of the 14th amendment, this is not how you negotiate if you are trying to put on end to hostage taking tactics. Letting the other side at least think you could possibly go this route creates a huge amount of leverage. Letting them think their failure to reach an agreement could result in them getting nothing, is how you compel the other side to give in. Instead of defusing the hostage situation the Obama administration is strengthening the Republicans bargaining position.
The most logical conclusion based on this behavior is that Obama wants the Republicans to have hostages so tell the public that the GOP “forced” him to agree to unpopular changes.
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I am so tired of Obama. He is nothing if not predictable.
I guess the only unknown left is will the individuals in congress play the fool for Obama, again. I am guessing the Democrats will but I am not so sure the Republicans will. The Republicans will look like champions of the poor if they hint at a deal and then vote against it.
Can we exchange our negotiator for the hostage?
Obama is nothing more than a Trojan horse for the corporatists. He’s the current mask they wear while they rob you blind, “legally”.
I think this is more like throwing the steering wheel away. The option still exists of course (you’ve got a spare one under the seat), but you are pretending that you don’t so that the collision seems more likely.
If you still can avoid the crash, then the Republicans have an incentive to both crash the cars, and then let you rescue things with the 14th amendment… and then they can try to impeach you for that too.
But if you proclaim that you won’t use it, then the crash becomes more likely and thus more deadly. You are encouraging negotiation.
That is all separate from the fact that I don’t trust Obama to protect my interests.
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If I truly believed Obamco was “negotiating” their position in good faith,and that Big Zero was simply an incompetent bargainer, I would also think the only “leverage” they’re familiar with is the Timothy Hutton series on cable TV.
Since I don’t believe Obama is incompetent, I have to believe he wants the same thing as the Repubs, and is merely using these negotiations as an excuse. That makes him merely evil, but in a banal way, like the Germans who supported the Nazis in WWII, not necessarily as evil as the Nazi SS running the death camps, but still up to no damn good (I’m really trying to skirt the edge of Godwin’s law on this one).
The analogy doesn’t work–the 14th Amendment is nothing like a steering wheel, something that allows you to swerve away–the Administration’s ability to “swerve”–i.e. concede the Republicans terms–is in no way diminished by throwing away the constitutional option.
It’s more like junking the fully armed twenty-ton battle tank you were going to use to face down your opponent’s rusty 30-year old Fiat, and deciding you’d better off squaring off against him in a rusty 40-year-old Yugo instead. Losing the ability to turn your opponent into a smoldering metal pancake without so much as getting yourself scratched is sure as heck not going to lower the odds your opponent puts on your swerving first!
Only someone who was actively trying to lose the game would do something so utterly harebrained, which, as Jon Walker explained, tells you everything you need to know about Obama’s real objectives in this “confrontation”.