Maybe it really is a chess game...

[Atman]

Obama Called Their Bluff: Republicans Admit They Are Too Scared to Cut Social Security

You may have missed it, but over the weekend congressional Republicans admitted that they are terrified that any Social Security cuts will lead to their defeat.

If you are paying attention to the politics of Obama’s chained CPI offer, you may have noticed that Republicans have been running away like their hair’s on fire away from his proposal.

The reason why is that Republicans are afraid that the president is setting them up. Roll Call reported, “The debate Walden’s remarks has set off inside the GOP shows many Republicans harbor deep-seated fears about publicly supporting the entitlement cuts they supposedly back and have demanded Obama and other Democrats embrace since taking control of the House in 2011…Many GOP operatives fear Obama’s embrace of chained consumer price index, a mechanism to slow the growth of Social Security benefits over time, is a trap — a means of getting Republicans to support the policy on the record only to see Democrats savage them for it down the line.”

The Republican strategists who suspect this are partially correct. President Obama is using Chained CPI to set up a win/win/win situation for Democrats. Republicans have to choose between raising taxes in order to get the Chained CPI, arguing for Chained CPI without the tax increase, or rejecting Chained CPI. If Republicans express any desire to cut Social Security, Democrats will savage them for it during next year’s election. If Republicans agree to raise taxes at all, the base of their party will erupt in rage. If Republicans split and some of them reject Chained CPI, it will never become law. (Chained CPI probably won’t become law anyway, because Harry Reid and many Senate Democrats have promised to oppose any changes to Social Security.)

<snip>

http://www.politicususa.com/obama-called-bluff-republicans-admit-scared-cut-social-security.html

[NeoConsSuck]

1. If by chess...

you mean Americans are the pawns, then yes, it is chess.

The entire article is nothing more than political cover for Obama.

[Atman]

2. Maybe. I believe the key word is MAYBE.

Just posting a perspective. I've not exactly been on Obama's side on this one.

[babylonsister]

3. Huh? So you're saying the article is making shit up? nt

[MannyGoldstein]

22. As a matter of fact, it is:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2674770

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. We are all pawns ...

While I cannot access the article ... I can't disagree with Atman's summation. Besides, gop operatives have been saying the same thing since the day President Obama's Budget proposal came out.

[Newest Reality]

5. Well it could also

be bullshit that can easily be misconstrued as a chess game. I am no expert.

However, after all this time where commerce and industry as factions of the elite have managed to almost completely, (we are in the last phases) undo the New Deal, we find ourselves wondering about ridiculous offers of SS and Medicare on the table when they should not be and have nothing to do with the deficit excuse.

What we need is to get away from these attempts to obscure the reality we are now living in, (rather than the veils of thick, pro-corporate elite preserving rhetoric) and come to a NATIONAL CONSENSUS that the only way for all of us to make it through this worsening nightmare is to impose some powerfully strict sanctions on the Oligarchs. They are obviously out of control and if we don't stop them, it's like watching a friend ruin their life on drugs, only we get the journey to destruction along with them.

This is a decisive point and it transcends all the noise about why Obama is doing this or that. It is really about what he is not doing; what is essential and unavoidably necessary now. We should not and cannot allow ourselves to be taken any deeper into this miasma, this crucible of extremes that unchecked greed and privilege have brought all of us to. This is critical mass.

The poor are dissolving in poverty as if they really do not matter anymore. The rich are getting so rich that we need a new word to define the vast scope of their massive wealth and power. The middle class are standing between the two realizing the disparate gap in which they stand and they see many of their own falling into the cesspool that the mindlessly giddy Elite have dug for the losers in the winner-take-all game. It is a game that really ends in great loss and destruction for billions and with an entire eco-system at stake. But no, we let the addicts play and gamble and sit back and talk about the chess game or the veil of rhetorical emptiness that spells our doom if we continue to entertain that as any kind of reasonable solution.

Meanwhile the odds are getting bad for our children. They are looking at living in an corporate tyranny without the pretty packaging and it will be a nightmare superior to what Orwell described so well. They are also looking to grow-up on a dying planet that the Oligarchs would gladly trash for short-term profits and WE ARE LETTING THEM TO IT for baubles toys and so-called safety? Oh, so people could sacrifice their lives in the past so we could get here and sacrifice our own children and future generations for the sake of what? Our fear? Our lack of understanding? Our apathy? What? Tell me what it is we can call it so that our grimm historical mark will be able to define this lack of will and action at such a critical and pivotal time. What, if they can even write something or there is anybody left, will they call us who let the drunken CEO's of the world suck it all dry in a genocidal frenzy of profit?

We need a NEWER DEAL. The NEWEST DEAL EVER. This capitalistic frenzy is taking its mask off and none of the devices or PR advertisements for BP, etc., can cover-up the stomach-turning face of death behind it. We can't go on like this, no matter how much we would like to stay comfortable, (with what little comfort is left) drugged, or uninvolved.

We need to see the end of this capitalistic system as it stands, no matter what that takes, no matter how long it takes. Its time has come and gone. The time has come to envision what it will be replaced with and that does not have to be an ism, it has to be about life and us.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. I don't know whether to be

relieved or outraged.

This whole rotten thing is very unsettling, to say the least.

[MotherPetrie]

7. Sounds like wishful thinking/rationalization to me.

[oasis]

8. a pawn sacrifice on the opening move?

Steven Covey would advise Obama to "Begin with an ending in mind". Leave the gambits to the Bobby Fischer crowd.

[MichiganVote]

9. They're all full of shit. Get over it.

[Logical]

10. LOL WTF, it is bad when I am looking for an Onion link. What a crock of shit. n-t

[Orsino]

11. Dems, too.

But only a Democratic president is willing to step up and put his dick right in it. And to own it for however long everybody else is rightly terrified of the idea. He's willing to be the dumbass that Beltway media talked into this; I'll give him that.

[jazzimov]

12. Well, not really a Chess game -

or any other "game" as a metaphor.

But Obama is playing the Republicans like a fiddle.

Some may denigrate the metaphors themselves; but however you describe Obama's techniques - he is effective.

He is effective.

[DemocraticProse]

13. I don't know which I admire more about the President...

His policies or his tactics.

[99Forever]

14. Hogwash.

[magellan]

15. What would the scenario be if Obama had never put CCPI on the table?

Besides a lot less angry people?

This win/win/win situation was completely manufactured for no good reason. The Repubs will just find another excuse to obstruct.

[Shankapotomus]

16. Maybe it's not a game

Maybe it's a war. And it will have casualties. And maybe we're not pawns but participants and it's our job to hang tough, tend to our wounded but don't show the enemy any break in solidarity with our leader.

[Demo_Chris]

17. So... Obama is willing to F%$# americans in ways the GOP is not?

And we are now celebrating this as a good thing?

[winter is coming]

18. Uh huh. And we think it's okay to treat people like pawns.... because?

And we believe the President's a good chess player.... because?

[markpkessinger]

19. Right . . .

and as a result, Republicans get to claim in the 2014 midterm campaign that "Democrats tried to cut Social Security after their President promised he wouldn't do it" And they will have the video to prove it..

[MannyGoldstein]

20. This article is total fraud.

It offers zero support of its thesis, and the site seems to be ardently Third Way.

[just1voice]

21. Our lives are indeed nothing but a game to the elite

To us it's a game of life or death, to them it's playing with numbers as that's all we are to them.