Today in False Equivalence
By Republicans in the House and Senate, in a series of actions unprecedented prior to the first time they did it in 2011, are threatening to blow up the world economy unless the president enacts an agenda that was overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate just last year. How will this be spun as a case of Both Sides Do It (TM)? Nick Gillespie, in a technique I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of, argues that the whole hostage-taking idea was actually invented by Barack HUSSEIN Obama:
For his part, Obama is talking a good game:
No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget.
Eh, maybe. Though let’s note that “House Republicans” doesn’t equal “Congress.” There’s that pesky other body, the Democratically controlled Senate, which Obama used to belong to. You know, when he was fond of saying stuff like this back in 2006:
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. … I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.
Gotcha! Only presumably Gillespie is hoping that his readers will forget who controlled both houses of Congress in 2006 (i.e. not Obama’s party.) In other words, when Obama said that he would “oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit” he meant “engage in some (admittedly inane) posturing and cast a symbolic vote against the debt ceiling that Senate Democrats would not attempt to obstruct in exchange for concessions.” So Obama’s actions in 2006 are exactly the same as Republican hostage-taking, except for the lack of hostage-taking.
But in the spirit of bipartisan comity, let’s agree that if Republicans stop trying to get their individually and collectively unpopular rejected agenda passed in exchange for not destroying the world, Gillespie-approved Ted Cruz is welcome to spend a whole day reading My Pet Goat and The Turner Diaries on the floor of the Senate in symbolic opposition before a clean debt ceiling increase passes. Apparently, that would be the same thing they’re doing now, so what’s the problem?
The rest of the post is also quality comedy; in particular, note that he concedes that most of the Republican ransom note has nothing to do with federal spending, but still this hostage-taking is about federal spending because Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget except that they did and…sorry, Poochie had to return to his home planet.