Look let me preface this by saying that I make a lot of guesses, and many of them are wrong. But some of them are so eerily correct that I sometimes wonder if I'm sleepwalking with Dr. Who.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/~sofa%20king
I think that during the Bush years the Republicans in Congress, helped along by a few doses of anthrax, passed a number of laws designed to provide the President with near-dictatorial powers in times of crisis. Tanking the economy is definitely a crisis, and when this happened in 2011 the President took 'em to the woodshed and had them endorsing The President's own plan within a day or two. That plan took away any remaining tools the Republicans had to reverse the scheduled expiration of tax cuts for the rich. It also took a trillion dollars away from defense contractors over the next ten years. The subsequent, highly predictable results handed Republicans a 3-to-1 defeat in state and nationwide elections the following year--which is why they're never getting the Senate back again.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/sofa%20king/100
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/sofa%20king/106
Now the Congressional Republicans are acting scared shitless--which I also would be if my legislative analyst informed me that in less than 48 hours the President can lock my ass in the Capitol Building until I do my job (Constitution), send the Army to track me down and send me back to DC (Constitution + PATRIOT), remove my elderly parents from their home (FEMA), force the contstituents from my district into slave labor brigades (FEMA), take over for-profit hospitals and treat all Americans for free (AHPA) and so on--and hell yes, the President can do all that, so long as a deal is not reached on the debt ceiling.
I'm rooting for the no-compromise result, which automatically begins to fall into place in less than a day. At that point, Democrats get far more than they will ever get by trying to compromise with Republicans, and Republicans get absolutely nothing except the additional worry of primary challengers next year.
But if the Republican mastodon is finally smart enough not to step into that tar pit (again), then we have a problem, because any actual compromise rewards Republicans for their behavior up to now--a bone that we simply do not need to throw.
The funny thing is that if just one Democratic Senator puts an anonymous hold on consideration of this compromise, Democrats get everything they want and Republicans get nothing at all. It's hard to maintain the anonymity of such a move, but if it can be done, the public and the press will almost certainly blame the Republicans for it. Harry Reid could do it himself and in that case nobody needs to be told who did it.
Yeah, that's a dick move, all right. Since we're dealing with dicks, and have an opportunity to destroy them forever, I think we should do it.
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