John Boehner is Counting on Liberals to Stab Obama in the Back

[babylonsister]

John Boehner is Counting on Liberals to Stab Obama in the Back

By: Jason Easley
Jan. 10th, 2013


John Boehner has revealed his strategy for winning the next round of fiscal negotiations, and it involves liberals caving and forcing Obama into a bad deal on spending cuts.

This little nugget of insight was buried in the middle of the recent Wall Street Journal story on Boehner, “Mr. Boehner says he has significant Republican support, including GOP defense hawks, on his side for letting the sequester do its work. “I got that in my back pocket,” the speaker says. He is counting on the president’s liberal base putting pressure on him when cherished domestic programs face the sequester’s sharp knife. Republican willingness to support the sequester, Mr. Boehner says, is “as much leverage as we’re going to get.”

Boehner is gambling that conservatives are tougher than liberals. The whole House strategy is to convince liberals that Republicans are going to stick to their guns, and happily eat the defense cuts, in order to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The Speaker’s comments were a tacit admission that the Republican strategy of threatening Democrats, the president, and the left is not working anymore. The president has learned to wait out any threat that House Republicans make, because in the end, he knows they will cave. Speaker Boehner needs a new weapon to use against the White House, and he believes that weapon is the left’s inability to stand together.

Since splitting the left is the stated Republican strategy, stories about the president’s desire to cut earned entitlements attributed to anonymous sources should start popping up in the mainstream media over the next month or so. House Republicans tried this exact tactic during the fiscal cliff negotiations, and like clockwork the professional outrage machine on the left jumped in and started doing the GOP’s dirty work for them. (In the case of the fiscal cliff, Obama had floated a thought on Social Security as part of a deal that he knew Republicans would reject. Thus, the president used the left’s outrage machine as political cover in order to appear moderate.)

The problem with Speaker Boehner’s strategy is that it isn’t based in reality. The Republican Party is completely fractured. The divide among congressional Republicans has tricked the whole way down to the base. The traditional behaviors of each party base are currently so reversed that Democrats are deeply united right now. In fact, the left has united on fighting Citizens United, voter ID laws, and changing the filibuster rules. The left is also united on the broad principle of protecting earned entitlements.

more...

http://www.politicususa.com/john-boehner-counting-liberals-stab-obama.html

[Andy823]

1. I am already seeing it happen.

The media is putting out all kinds of BS about how the "middle class" is going to get hit by the president in the next round of talks. Of course as stated in the article the extreme left is doing their job of "helping" republicans by buying into the BS and expressing their "outrage" at what the president "WILL" do, even though the president has done nothing yet.

I get so tired of our own people jumping in to help the right wing before anything ever happens. They should wait and see what is going on, not buy the right wing talking points every time!

[upaloopa]

4. When there are lies and truths out there how can

you blame someone for not being able to tell the difference?
You must expect someone to blindly have faith in Obama and trust that the outcome will be OK.
It would help if we had a program of the players and what they will ultimately stand for and what they won't. We don't have that so giving someone the benefit of the doubt seems the right course to me.

[Andy823]

11. So who gets the benefit of the doubt?

The right wing smear machine of the president? I don't ask anyone to have "blind faith" in anyone, I just ask that people use some kind of actual logic, or facts and not be so damned gullible that they keep on buying into the right wing BS time after time after time!

Is that asking to much?

[upaloopa]

14. I mean we will get it wrong some of the time

because we don't know who is telling the truth.

[bluestate10]

16. Then use your head and try to figure out what the fucking truth is before going off.

We spend an inordinate amount of time fighting among ourselves when there are real threats out there.

[Demo_Chris]

5. Demanding liberal solutions is now "Helping the right wing"?

The article is nothing more than corporatist propaganda and talking points. The author suggests that the big weakness on the left is our inability to "stand together." In this case, standing together means accepting right wing proposals and solutions with a smile. That's crap.

The reality is very simple:

It makes absolutely no difference if the giant corporate dildo is rammed home by a Republican or a Democrat. We don't WIN just because this time we got fucked by Democrats rather than Republicans.

If we want left wing solutions we must demand them from our leaders accept nothing less.

[Andy823]

12. Just get the facts

Don't be gullible and buy into every rumor you hear attacking the president for "caving" or letting the middle class down. Is that to much to ask?

[bluestate10]

17. Oh well! The evil, invisible corporate boogieman again. We can't think for ourselves, so let's

create boogieman that may or may not exist.

[rustydog]

9. Yes, the exact same media that kept telling us up to election night that the race was neck & neck

They got that so dead-on correct, right?

[bluestate10]

15. I agree. Some people here can't stand the idea that money that is wasted in

social programs can't be cut out without hurting people the really need the programs. And no matter of reasoning will change their minds.

[still_one]

2. That is why people prefer a root canal than the republicans

[1-Old-Man]

3. When have anyone but Conservatives stabbed him in the back

As a post from yesterday pointed out the Progressive Caucus, despite its size, is nearly completely ineffective. So if Obama has been stabbed in the back by the sensible branch of his own Party its been done with a rubber knife.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

6. Many have been stabbing Obama in the back since he announced his intentions to run back in 2007.

Republicans know it. They LOVE it. And that's how they've been able to get away with everything. Liberals blame the president and other Democrats FIRST, while Republicans sit back and laugh at us. Divide and conquer has always been the Democratic Party's undoing.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Gosh, if cutting entitelments is something the WH wll not do they need to speak to Plouffe:

"The only way that gets done is for Republicans again to step back and get mercilessly criticized by Grover Norquist and the Right, and it means that Democrats are going to have to do some tough things on spending and entitlements that means that they'll criticized on by their left."
Not attributed to anonymous source. Watch the video here:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/plouffe-lays-out-wh-thinking-on-fiscal.html

[ProSense]

8. That was November in relation to the deal that

just passed, which included no cuts to Social Security.

So there is that.

[A Simple Game]

10. I really don't understand what the options are. Can anyone clear this up for me?

The author says this:

The whole House strategy is to convince liberals that Republicans are going to stick to their guns, and happily eat the defense cuts, in order to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

So how am I as a liberal that wants to save Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid supposed to react to this news? Tell President Obama not to give in on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and perhaps save them as is. Then give in to the Republicans to stop the Military cuts. Nothing gets changed. Or, do nothing and let President Obama put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid back on the table like he did last month and suffer double the cuts to these programs so the Republicans can save military funding?

So just how can my petitioning President Obama help the Republicans? I don't see it.

[Bandit]

13. "in order to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."

NONE of those are part of the sequestration..

[bluestate10]

18. Republicans will distort and lie and make them look like part os Sequestration. And on cue,

bleeding heart Progressives will go bullshit without cross checking claims. I have seen that on DU far too often.