Andrew Sullivan parsed the president’s speech as I did and agrees with my assessment. But where I’m worried, he’s hopeful:
Digby worries – and I hope – that this means that Obama is prepared to put Medicare on a much more serious path to lower costs if he can win tax revenues that do not disproportionately fall on the middle class. In other words, the sentence I was waiting for:
Now, I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission. No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. I want to get this done, and we can get it done.
And we can only get this done if Obama wins this one handily and the Democrats retain the Senate. The GOP is just not serious about the debt and not serious about the compromise needed to get it. Anyone calling for more tax cuts and more defense spending than even the Pentagon wants and rules out any new revenues is not a fiscal conservative. He’s a modern, deficit-busting Republican
I can’t say I disagree with any of that. Except I’m not a deficit-busting Republican so it doesn’t make me happy.
.