The Game Changes On August 2

Steve Benen's analysis jibes with what I think. Until the country actually starts defaulting the GOP has all the advantages. They can make any irrational demand they please, because there is no price. Indeed, as August 2nd approaches, we'll start seeing the demands escalate and become ever-more hysterical, because that's how to get the most bang for the buck.

(After spending so much time in the theater, I finally understand how these drama queens think.)

As soon as the country actually starts defaulting, however, the GOP loses every single one of their advantages, and the Dems gain every single advantage. The GOP will be frantic to make a deal, because their constituencies are unusually-exposed to market turmoil, of which there will be much - too much!

My own opinion is that Dems should let the process drag on until November, and let the credit rating of the U.S. be utterly-destroyed, because then there will be no choice but to impose a shocking increase in taxes, which will be paid primarily by the rich (because that's where the money is), and we will stop deficit spending altogether. We will bring an end to the corrupt paradise the rich now enjoy, where others pay the taxes, yet they get the full advantage of the borrowed money, particularly for financing foreign wars. The readjustment will be dreadful, but it will be instructive, and honest, for a change.

In any event, Steve Benen notes:

Adam Serwer wasn’t commenting specifically on the GOP leaders’ comments, but his piece this morning about the bigger picture rings true:

Republicans are furious because President Obama’s gambit — to make himself look like the “adult in the room” by offering Republicans a disastrous but sweeping debt reduction deal that would combine tax increases with cuts to the social safety net — appears to be working. It’s working in the sense that it has revealed for all to see that Republicans aren’t really interested in cutting the debt.

It’s really not even close. On the one hand we have President Obama, who proven himself eager (perhaps too much so) to compromise, ready to make concessions that anger his base, prepared to pursue $4 trillion in debt reduction, and even willing to make risky changes to entitlement programs. When the president told reporters yesterday he’s “bent over backwards to work with the Republicans,” no one anywhere suggested he was wrong.

On the other hand, we have congressional Republicans, who’ve taken the debt limit hostage for the first time in American history, are threatening to crash the economy on purpose, want less debt reduction than the White House, and refuse to compromise on anything.

It’s precisely why David Brooks wrote last week, “If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.”