JeffG @ Protein Wisdom:
So asks Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government.
But before I get to his answer, allow me to offer mine, in brief: they don’t believe in limited government, and they are at war right with Obama to make sure he gets the “blame” for cutting the rate of spending some insignificant amount — all because his threats to make the cuts needlessly and sadistically painful for ordinary Americans has convinced the GOP to abandon its entire base, who actually applauds cutting government spending, particularly in an era of wild profligate spending, no budgets, constant calls for new revenues for government, and a trillion dollar “one-time-stimulus” about to be renewed for the 5th time as part of the baseline budget in a continuing resolution that almost certainly the GOP will again fold on.
Or, even more succinctly, because the GOP is about politics, not principles. And while they lack the latter entirely, they haven’t the ability to compensate for it, sucking so badly as they do at the former.
It’s surreal, but here we are: the GOP has positioned itself as the party that really really doesn’t want to cut government, but they’ve been forced into it because of a deal they made with Obama to resist tax hikes.
That is, they are aimless, confused, out-gunned pseudo-pragmatists. And, of course, weepy pussies of the highest order.
There. Someone had to say it.
Now back to Mr Wilson:
Sequestration may in fact have been Obama’s idea, but it was brought to the floor in the House of Representatives not once, but twice by Republican leaders. There, it was approved not once, but twice. In the Senate it passed easily with bipartisan support.
If Republicans didn’t like the Budget Control Act, they should have stuck with Cut, Cap, and Balance and passed the Full Faith and Credit Act — legislation that would have prioritized payments to our creditors, the military, Social Security and Medicare had the then-$14.294 trillion debt ceiling been reached — in order take Obama’s default threat off the table.
Instead, both Republicans and Democrats voted for the Budget Control Act, knowing full well that the so-called supercommittee it created would most certainly fail to achieve any agreement to cut spending. It was designed to fail. This whole idea that a grand bargain was somehow in the offing was pure fantasy.
