Politics must be a "no wimp" zone

While I disagree with the need to aggressively attack the national debt in a time when we are experiencing what the experts call a job-less recovery, the better approach would be to stimulate the economy, put people back to work on the bridges, roads, sewer and water projects, mass transportation, or other worthwhile investments in our country's future.

If the national consensus requires that the debt be worked at this time, the Democratic Party must learn that fire is best fought with fire; sometimes water helps; but you never fight fire with gasoline.

Unfortunately, Democrats enabled the Republican success in defeating the right solution for turning our economy in an upward direction. The correct approach was to look at both spending and revenue if the goal is to reign-in the deficit and the national debt.

Ezra Klein argues in his How weak Democrats enable hard-line Republicans article in his Washington Post Blog today. Mr. Klein writes in support of an article by Ross Douthat in his NY Times blog, entitled Some Advice for Democrats in which Mr. Douthat postulates that:

If Democrats expect to win political battles in an era of divided government, they need to behave as if winning those battles actually matters to them.

Mr. Klein goes further to say:

This is the reality that liberals need to face: Much of the Republican “intransigence” and “hostage-taking” and “terrorism” that they deplore is a direct consequence of the fact that Republicans assume that Democrats will always, always, cave on taxes.

Mr. Douthat concludes in his piece:

Until Democrats demonstrate a similar seriousness — until they find a way to dig in their heels and hold the economy “hostage” to tax increases the way Republicans just did with spending cuts — the G.O.P. will have no reason to take them seriously as negotiating partners. In the long run, you can’t have compromise without intransigence.

Negotiating from a position of weakness is not negotiating. It is just delaying tactics until at whatever point you make your capitulation. If the other side knows that you will not stick to your guns, but will eventually fold, you can bet that the side with the strongest will will prevail. The Republican's just proved that by their willingness to take the country into default.

Obviously, the Republican action was foolhardy from the perspective of the Country, but the Republican's are not that concerned with the failure of the country if their intransigence provides the Party a political victory.

Most people, I believe it was about 85% (most recent poll) believed that Republican obstinacy was hurting the country. Let's see what happens when the important poll (the 2012 election) does to punish the guilty party. I suspect that the spin cycle will have diluted the picture so thoroughly that many of the people who vote will have forgotten the problem, who caused it, who prolonged it and who was willing to damn the country into default for partisan reasons.