The debt talks provide an ideal opportunity for the Democrats to pull out one of their current techniques. It goes like this.
If the Republicans
keep us from having what we want, then they are holding such and such “hostage.”
This is a horrible technique because it
attempts to delegitimize and dehumanize the opposition. It is similar to the claim that
anybody who supports abortion rights is for “killing babies.” It is perhaps worse since it can be applied
to anything.
It is particularly pernicious
coming from a president who, during campaigns, preaches that there are no red states and no blue states there are only the United States.
One measure of the independence of the media would be whether they supported this kind of talk which it poisons the well of the national debate.
I just returned from a 4 day business trip where the hotel offered only 1 cable news channel. I can assure you THAT channel supports “that kind of talk”. And you may add “I won’t play that game” to the list of phrases I would like to hear less often.
ReplyDeleteTo be balanced the Rs said that Obama’s proposal to avoid sequestration “wasn’t serious” and McConnell snickered when Geithner presented the President’s proposal.
And on Wednesday Geithner said, in a very dismissive way, that O was willing to go over the cliff if the Rs will not concede to a tax RATE hiked on the wealthy.
This may be posturing (which is really getting old), but what if it’s not?
p.s. the comment about Geithner being dismissive is not necessarily a slam since I think he is extremely intelligent and is often simply exasperated by having to answer questions formulated by the small brains.