From the fool me once files
by digby
Brad DeLong has a question for Ezra Klein about Grand Bargains:
As a Clinton administration staffer, a question for Ezra. Suppose we do a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal over the next two years. Why don’t you think that the next time the Republican Party gets back into power afterwards they won’t do what they did the last time they had working majorities everywhere in 2001-3, and indeed the time before that they had working majorities in 1981-2: large tax cuts for the rich that destabilize America’s public finances.
It’s hard for any veteran of the Clinton Administration to reach any conclusion other than that fixing America’s long-run fiscal dilemmas requires first the complete destruction of today’s Republican Party, and those of us who care about America’s fiscal future need to turn all of our energies to that end. Can you give me reasons not to believe that?
This is a really good question. It’s not as if the Democrats haven’t done a ton of Grand Bargaining over the past couple of decades — and the result is always that the Republicans demand more. I recall having an argument back in 2000 with a long time Democratic operative who insisted that the Republicans could never demagogue them again because Clinton balanced the budget and left a surplus. Surely the people now understood that the Democrats were fiscally responsible. How’d that work out for us?
Or, for that matter, how did it work out for us on foreign policy and national security and women’s rights and affirmative action or anything else? At every turn the GOP has moved further right and the Democrats have felt compelled to scurry after them, all the while insisting that the country would see them as the more “reasonable” and “responsible” for having done so.
The bottom line is that Grand Bargains are a huge part of our problem. Indeed, the only thing that’s saving us at the moment is the fact that Republicans think obstruction is more politically beneficial than agreeing to anything the hated Obama wants to do. Still, I doubt very seriously that the GOP will continue to ignore the opportunity to degrade the welfare state if the Democrats offer it up again. Paul Ryan’s “bipartisan” revival tour shows the outlines of the next phase. And we have every reason to fear that President Obama’s “hot mic” comments might just as well have been whispered to him.
The sad truth is that after the last decade it’s become clear that changing this situation doesn’t only require “destroying” today’s Republican Party, although it does. I’m afraid today’s Democratic party has to be “destroyed” as well. DeLong excepted, they haven’t learned their lessons any better than the GOP.
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