The Debt Ceiling Fight & Viciousness as a Liberal Tactic

The political fight over whether and how to raise the US debt ceiling has become high drama in Washington, and the supposed deadline of August 2 looms.  After a couple of years of an unprecedented, and, to me, reckless, harmful, and, wasteful Democrat spending orgy, the US federal government, we the people, that is, are in a big fiscal hole (link). 

The Democrat plan, such as it is, is to borrow lots and lots of more money to spend much more, supposedly to reduce the debt, but in reality to perpetuate ongoing and recurring fiscal instability that would create political opportunities to hoodwink more Americans into ceding more control over our lives to liberal elites.  The Republican plan, such as it is, after years of complicity as the junior partner to Democrat profligacy, is to spend less, perhaps even much less, to get us out of debt -- eventually.  I'm with them.

Both political parties are apparently taking hits in the popular polls, for whatever they're worth, especially this far out from an election.  But the inexorable decline in Obama's popularity and his eroding stature have been driving some liberals bonkers.  For years, of course, liberals have oft repeated the tired refrain that conservatives and Republicans are ... racist, selfish, stupid, extremists, etc, etc, etc.  So to keep up with the vicious side of their politics, some ultraliberals aren't missing a beat in the current crisis. 

Ultra-liberal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, winner of the increasingly left-wing Pulitzer Prize, has just referred (link) to Tea Partiers as the “Hezbollah faction” of the Republican Party; Hezbollah is, of course, a murderous terrorist group.  Another ultraliberal NY Times columnist, Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman, just referred (link) to conservatives with different views on the debt crisis as "a cult that has really poisoned our political system."  Comedian and Democrat Senator Al Franken, another vicious ultra-liberal apparently of the Stalinist mode, just debased the United States Senate by displaying (link) on its floor a poster shouting "Welcome Terrorists" in reference to those whose views differ from his.  Demonize, isolate, and other moves right out of the socialist Rules for Radicals standard playbook -- for Friedman, Krugman, and Franken, just another day at the office. 

As Obama sinks further in the polls and as he increasingly looks to more and more people like an incompetent, arrogant jerk, Democrat viciousness will only increase.  It's all they have left.

Addendum:  Jonah Goldberg wraps it all up here at National Review Online.

John M Greco