Unfortunately, we've been here before. As the concessions to obstructionist Republicans over the watered-down economic recovery package showed, appeasement is futile.

On January 5th, the Nobel prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predicted what would come to pass in an early statement of Krugman's Law. For all of his goodwill, White House meetings, compromises and lofty rhetoric, the new President would - and did - get the back of the hand from Republicans:

"Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they'll demand 100%. Then they'll start the thing about how you can't cut taxes on people who don't pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they'll demand cuts in corporate taxes. And Mitch McConnell is already saying that state and local governments should get loans, not aid - which would undermine that part of the plan, too."

(Mercifully, President Obama did not yield on that last point. Merciful, that is, because the transfusion of federal cash to empty state coffers helped propel the dramatic improvement in second quarter GDP.)

And as I've previously suggested, there is also Krugman's Corollary. Fearful of a Democratic majority for years to come, Republicans are afraid not that Barack Obama's economic recovery and health care initiatives will fail, but that they might succeed. Or as Krugman himself put it on January 26th:

"Conservatives really, really don't want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don't want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending."

Of course, the health care and stimulus debates are not exactly analogous. In the House, Blue Dog Democrats threaten key components of the reform package. In the Senate, Baucus and his ally Kent Conrad long ago created a self-fulfilling prophecy, as evidenced by Conrad's proclamation that "the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option."

Which is why Barack Obama might do well to heed the advice of his foe, former Vice President Dick Cheney. As the minority vote getter George W. Bush prepared to assume the presidency, Cheney in December 2000 said on Face the Nation:

"As President-elect Bush has made very clear, he ran on a particular platform that was very carefully developed. It's his program, it's his agenda, and we have no intention at all of backing off of it. It's why we got elected."

On another occasion, Cheney put it more succinctly in advocating the $1.4 trillion Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that passed in 2001 with the support of Senator Baucus:

"We don't negotiate with ourselves."

(For his part, Baucus said of that vote, "Every day it looks like a better and better decision," adding, "In many respects, I think politically I helped the party. We Democrats would have been in trouble in 2002 just saying no to every one of the president's proposals.")

And so its goes. As President Obama should have learned by now, when the irresistible force meets the immovable object, the immovable object wins. The lesson of Krugman's Law by now should be clear to all: to go forward, Democrats simply must go around the Republican monolith that can't - and won't - be budged.

—Perrspective 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

1 Comment

Here, here brother! I couldn't agree more that Dems need to find some backbone.

Posted by Larry on September 17, 2009 12:14 PM

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