With the president in the death grip of his "centrist" allies, Digby looks at our mixed-up two-party system: "It's no way to run a country"

"The only stimulus bill Americans like is called a 'military supplemental.' They just hate the fact that we have to have a war."

"Which is why F-22s are a perfect industrial policy!! Expensive, and they've never actually been used in a war."

-- online exchange today between two waggish colleagues

"These so-called centrists are actually conservatives who maintain the status quo -- which always works in favor of the moneyed interests.

"The only time we even get a chance to move forward is when these people fuck things up so badly that there is simply no choice but to change something and then it's usually a battle between us and the Nazis for who gets a turn at the table.

"It's no way to run a country."

-- Digby, explaining our two-party system (see below)

by Ken

During the election campaign I had too many conversations with progressive friends and colleagues that went more or less like this:

ME: "I worry about what happens, say, six months down the line, when all those people who say now they understand that turning around the economy will take time decide that time's up."

PROGRESSIVE FRIEND: "No, that's the great thing about this election. I think it shows that people understand that this is all actually a process, and it will take time."

Of course we know that as far as House Minority Whip Eric Cantor is concerned, time ran out on the president the very moment the clock started. And to prove it, he's prepared to offer any lie you're prepared to listen to, starting with promises the president is supposed to have made that prompt passage of the stimulus package would prevent further job losses.

The reality, of course, is that the president stressed every time he spoke about the economic mess that the first order ob business was to minimize further damage, and the reason it was so important to act promptly was that the downward spiral was indeed a spiral: As credit dried up, and businesspeople became less and less willing to lend and less and less able to borrow, everybody would retreat deeper into their shell waiting for the "all clear" to sound.

But as I keep saying, the crucial discovery Republicans have made since the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush in the White House is that if you do it right, there is no price to pay for lying. And you could probably count on your fingers, with maybe one foot's worth of toes, the number of times any Republican has publicly spoken the truth on any subject since 2001. My goodness gracious, they got through an entire election campaign hurling nothing but lies, obfuscations, and character assassinations.

Meanwhile as the new administration settled in, the Right-Wing Noise Machine and its allies at Fox Noise created a whole new propaganda blitz, about the Infotainment News Media's alleged "honeymoon with Obama," despite the INM's unflinching maintenance of its solemn obligation to propagate any attack, slur, or cockamamie rumor passed to them by any still-unindicted Republican.

So Eric Cantor is free to make up lies about what the adminstration has said, and none of the coconspirators in the Infotainment News Media say "boo." Indeed, from the moment the presidential election results were known, the Republican approach to the administration has been a continuation of the election campaign: all lies all the time.

Oh, there were wounded noises at the outset about how they weren't being consulted on the legislative process, when in fact they were being consulted more, probably, than any new administration has ever consulted an opposition that commanded only minorities in both houses of Congress -- and more, certainly, that the administration consulted the progressives who played a major role in his election.

So let's make it clear that in many ways the president has done himself no favor by --

* HIS TO-THE-DEATH COMMITMENT TO "BIPARTISANSHIP"

I get the feeling that he really believes in this bipartisanship crap, and really wants to change the tone of American political discourse, which he understands can't be done overnight. But in the process, he gave all the power to people who never for the tiniest microsecond considered working with him, who never considered him anything except, plain and simple, "the enemy," to be destroyed by any means they could come up with, including further destroying the economy for their possible future advantage. The people who wanted to help him were shut out and all but openly sneered at. Administeration priorities like the stimulus package were compromised, perhaps fatally, by compromises made to please Republicans who would never under any circumstances have cooperated with him, unless he embraced bipartisanship Republican-style.

And what is bipartisanship Republican-style? Back before the president-elect had even been inaugurated, when the R's made it clear that they were going to even the ideologically mildest Obama appointees, notably Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, Digby laid out the basic principles:

There is nothing mysterious about any of this. This is just how Republicans act as an opposition party. It's about tying Holder to Clinton to Obama (and "Chicago politics" and "smell tests" and "honor") and creating an ongoing sense that there is something fetid and corrupt about Obama even though there's nothing specific anyone can point to. They simply see the destruction of Obama as the most expedient way to return to power and they will go after him personally and obstruct his agenda at every possible turn.

They really do believe that bipartisanship is date rape -- they have done for the past 30 years. And there aren't any Republican political professionals who didn't come up in that school. To them, this is what politics are all about. Since they have paid no price for this beyond a fairly even ebb and flow of electoral politics there's been no reassessment of their methods. Dems don't play the blame game. Republicans do.

Dealing with a ruthless obstructionist opposition party that always operates in bad faith and never misses an opportunity to weaken the president was always going to be part of Obama's challenge. (And it doesn't matter if the public hates it -- the whole point is to wear them down until it's just too exhausting to resist.)

If you haven't been watching Fox the last couple of days you are missing something. It's all there.

* DUMPING THE ECONOMY INTO THE LAP OF THE UNSPEAKABLE LARRY SUMMERS AND HIS WALL STREET AND BANKSTER CRONIES

Summers seems to have underperformed even his most vehement critics' direst expectations, and succeeded only in consolidating his own power, seemingly always to the advantage of the bankster and Wall Street communities, whose interests have been faithfully watched over by Bushman Tim Geithner.

* NOT ONLY NOT SEPARATING FROM BUT CARRYING ON BUSH REGIME POLICIES

You know the litany: on the war(s), on our legal obligations to prosecute torture, on surveillance and general government secrecy, etc. etc.

* IN THE END, PURSUING A "CENTRIST" COURSE THAT RETURNS ALL POWER TO THE ELITES WHO GOT US INTO THESE MESSES

In fairness, there were people who warned all through the campaign that Obama not only never claimed to be any sort of progressive but isn't. I'm coming to think that part of what continues to fool us is the eloquence with which he can describe issues like race, climate change, health care reform, and the state of the economy. For eight years the federal government denied even the existence of these problems. However, just because the president can describe these problems so intelligently doesn't mean he shares progressives' views on what to do about them.

He chose for allies me-first "moderates" like Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman, and now he's seeing just how little they can do for him. Anybody could have told him that for these people looking out for themselves is a full-time job and then some, but he wasn't listening to anybody who knew.

* * * * * * * * * *

Where all this leads, I don't know. But FoxNews.com is reporting gleefully, "Deficits, Taxes and Time Appear to Doom Health Care Reforms."

Talking about health care in the White House Friday

Just yesterday I had the pleasure of quoting Digby's trenchant explanation of how "centrist" Dems are lying in wait for the Obama administration to fail and, with luck, to jeopardize the party's large congressional majorities, as happened with the failure of the Clinton health plan in 1993, leading to Dems' loss of control of both the Senate and the House in the 1994 election. It's worth quoting again:

I'm wondering why anyone wouldn't assume that's exactly what the "centrist" Dems hope will happen again. Doesn't it stand to reason they would like to see the majority whittled down, if not lost all together, particularly if they can portray it as being at the hands of fiscally irresponsible tax 'n spend liberals who reached too high? Again?

I see no reason to think they don't know exactly what they are doing. Tanking health care may not be good for the party or for the country, but they may very well believe it will be good for them individually.

Obama will be gone in seven years (or earlier). They are forever.

At the time I was proposing a rule: "When you want an explanation to make sense of weasellike but really business-as-usual behavior by clumps of American pols, go directly to Digby."

And I got back the neatest explanation I've ever encountered of the real dynamic of our two-party system:

One of the problems with our two-party system is that these so-called "centrists" (they used to be in both parties but are for the time being pretty much confined to one) actually run things. I call it Goldilocks politics -- you know, one's too hot, one's too cold, but the lukewarm buckets of spit are "juuust right."

The right are radical authoritarian Nazi types and the left are radical progressives who want to change the system in favor of the hoi polloi. These so-called centrists are actually conservatives who maintain the status quo -- which always works in favor of the moneyed interests.

The only time we even get a chance to move forward is when these people fuck things up so badly that there is simply no choice but to change something and then it's usually a battle between us and the Nazis for who gets a turn at the table.

It's no way to run a country.

Um, no, it isn't, is it?

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