While it may seem unpresidential in some ways to partake in a he-said-she-said blame game, President Obama speaks as if he’s in denial. Earlier this month while on his town hall tour, he kept referring to the politics in Washington as being the bigger problem hindering America. He said people don’t have patience for all the shenanigans on Capitol Hill. It’s accurate to say that Obama’s administration has been nearly gridlocked by political battles, but this isn’t some nameless group that’s responsible for this mess.
There’s less blowback and repercussion from saying that our political mess is caused by two parties that can’t get along, but it’s not the truth. The reason Washington has been in gridlock since Obama took office is almost completely the responsibility of the Republican Party.
The Democrats refusal to cast blame on the responsible party is as confusing as their never-ending willingness to compromise on even the most sacred of beliefs. We learned during the debt ceiling debate just how far the Democratic Party is willing to bend in order to keep Republicans from sabotaging the system. And we learned just how far Republicans are willing to go to gain even the smallest bit of political leverage.
Republicans were unwilling to vote to raise the debt ceiling unless it was attached to a plan to slash government spending in an effort to balance the budget. Democrats gave in and Republicans got basically everything they wanted. Congress is supposed to slash spending by $10 billion over the next two years and $900 billion for the following eight years. The real mess will come in 2014 when we try to cut $100 billion in a single year.
If Republican’s don’t think we should raise taxes on the wealthy even though the wealthiest American’s pay obscenely low taxes, then we won’t. If Republicans feel that we should keep giving massive subsidies to oil companies, then we’ll keep doing that.
When exactly did the Republican Party lose power? Democrats will give in on issues supported by Republicans and the Republicans will back away because they will not compromise, even if it means winning. You can’t have a two-party system where one party refuses to acknowledge the other. Our government has been invaded by self-interested political pirates, and the Democrats still think they’re dealing with a rational party that has legitimate public interests. You can’t have a public interest if you essentially believe that it’s every man for himself and greed is good. The free market and less regulation will solve all of America’s economic woes. This is the party ethos. If the Democrats somehow think that the winning strategy is to wait for the dysfunctional Republican Party to implode and that public perception will be on their side in the end, then they’re wrong. If they can’t control the narrative, if they can’t paint a picture for the average voter to at least show how these political battles are being fought, then they might as well just hang it up and call it a day. If the Democrats aren’t willing to fight, then they aren’t fighting for us.
