No need for compromise when they’ve already agreed

No need for compromise when they’ve already agreed

by digby

So some of the Democrats on the Super Committee announced a “plan” today, which sounded an awful lot like the President’s Grand Bargain, including steep cuts to Medicare. And the Republicans predictably called it DOA because it contained some tax hikes on the wealthy. What else is new?

To those who wonder what the Democrats are smoking (giving the GOP yet another out on the Medicare issue)the explanation seems to be that they are putting forth a”reasonable” plan that includse Republican ideas knowing they will be rejected — and then won’t the Republicans look bad.

In other words, it’s the same plan they used with the jobs package. The one where they are going to end up passing all the noxious GOP proposals and none of the Democratic ones. Which the president has agreed to sign.

I don’t think the Democrats understand how the Republicans see this. I’m going to re-run this post from a commenter that explains it perfectly:

For months and months none of the Demo’s who matter would agree to any spending cuts at all without tax increases, which the GOP had made clear for some time were not on the table. Ie, they were in favor of the “balanced approach,” fetishizing tax hikes in spite of the fact that there was already $1T in cuts relative to the President’s February budget that was agreed to and more or less not controversial.

The reason this fetish exists because the Demo mentality has really strong hangups toward budget cuts. And psychologically, if they’re going to do budget cuts, they feel like they have to get something in return…

[But] you don’t have to compromise if both parties want the same thing. The Dems represented that they wanted, or at least were willing to accept budget cuts. Great, our team wanted budget cuts too.

See? There’s no need for compromise when you already agree.

And they don’t care about “looking bad” as long as they can make the Democrats look bad too. They don’t stay awake nights worrying about whether or not the Villagers love them.

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