No Shame-- None At All: GOP Continues To Purposefully Wreck The Economy To Hurt Obama's Reelection Chances

Unless you accidentally wandered over here looking for mediocre TV show DWTS or mediocre Democratic Party operative DWSTweets, instead of DWT, you've no doubt seen Ken and I railing about the perfidy of Republican elected officials trying-- in many cases successfully-- to undercut the economy of the country and the financial well-being of their own constituents, in the hopes of turning voters against President Obama, a strategy that has borne them some fruit. Yesterday Michael Tomasky explained in no uncertain terms why so many people now think of them as the party of predators.

The four GOP congressional leaders-- John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, and Jon Kyl-- sent a letter to Fed chair Ben Bernanke warning him against further intervention in the economy. They released the letter the day before the Fed is to announce its next steps Wednesday afternoon. “We have serious concerns,” the letter said, “that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy.” What that sentence actually means, of course, is that they have serious concerns that an interventionist monetary policy might help the economy in the next 14 months, and thereby help Barack Obama’s reelection chances. ... [T]he Republicans have now covered both bases. Their first dose of poison to the economy has been to ensure that the federal government can’t do anything via legislation to spur economic growth and activity. As with the sentence from the letter above, the way to translate Republican-speak is to assume that the truth is the exact opposite of what they say. So when they say things like “the government can’t create jobs,” they actually know very well that the government can create jobs and can do so rather efficiently and easily, provided that Congress passes, say, a bill providing direct funding for jobs, which could put millions of people to work. So their task, in the name of preventing a Democrat from being a successful president, has been to ensure that Congress do all it can to keep the economy in dismal shape.

And now comes the second dose. If the government can’t create jobs legislatively, then perhaps it can do so through monetary policy. This letter very clearly is meant to pressure Bernanke not to try anything sneaky that might actually lower the unemployment rate before the election. From Robert Reich, on his blog: “To say it’s unusual for a political party to try to influence the Fed is an understatement. When I was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, it was considered a serious breach of etiquette—not to say potentially economically disastrous—even to comment publicly about the Fed. Everyone understood how important it is to shield the nation’s central bank from politics.”

In the face of things like this, it’s supposed to be controversial that Obama has decided to stop trying to meet the Republicans halfway? Meeting today’s GOP halfway is like letting a sexual predator take your clothes off. You haven’t been touched yet, but things are unlikely to end happily for you.

Ari Berman made much the same point in The Nation yesterday, starting with Miss McConnell's infamous exercise in self-exposure right after the 2010 election. "The single most important thing we want to achieve," he lisped menacingly, "is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Berman writes what most astute observers have seen for months: "Those words have become the guiding light for Congressional Republicans, and explain nearly every decision the GOP has made since the last election. The better the economy performs, the more likely it is that Obama will be re-elected. The longer the recession lasts, the better the chance that McConnell will get his wish. And it goes beyond sabotaging his new jobs program and his proposal to bring taxes for those making over a million dollars a year into some kind of semi-fairness range where they would have to pay the same rates as middle class workers.

With Congress eternally deadlocked because of Republican obstructionism, the Fed is perhaps the only institution that can still give the economy a boost.

The Fed, of course, is supposed to be politically independent and should pursue policies that are in the best interest of the American economy regardless of political pressure. But if those policies happen to improve the economy, which in turn improves Obama’s political standing, then Republicans will predictably resort to their default strategy: just say no.

Late yesterday the Fed basically told the right-wing leaders to take their transparent threats and go suck a lemon. They announced they'll be buying $400 billion in Treasury bonds, which will further lower interest rates and boost the economy by making it easier for businesses to borrow money.

This is now playing out politically with the Rick Perry wing of the GOP, especially a certain eager beaver who would like to avoid a bruising reelection battle and run for VP instead, jumping on board the doomed Ponzi Scheme Special. After initially refusing to go all the way with Perry, Paul Ryan is now an out-and-out Ponzi Schemer. (So is Tom Tancredo's equally psychotic replacement in Colorado, Mike Coffman, an extremist with one of the savviest progressives in Colorado, Joe Miklosi as an opponent.)

On Capitol Hill, it seems they just can’t stop saying “Ponzi Scheme.”

Mitt Romney’s not the only one imploring his fellow Republicans to, please, stop calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. The one-time establishment GOP superstar Mitch Daniels did it this week, in an interview with the New York Times. Here’s what that sounded like:

“If there’s a problem with ‘Ponzi scheme,’ it is that it’s too frank, not that it’s wrong,” Daniels said. There’s polling to back him up.

Republicans polled by Gallup recently didn’t have a problem with calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme (which for the record, it totally isn’t). But independents did, and there are signs that Rick Perry’s continued use of the term could hurt his electability.

So, Romney and Daniels (and others) say, don’t go near it. Apparently nobody told Capitol Hill.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who already dragged the GOP through a tough entitlement fight over his House Republican budget package, picked up on the phrase today on the Laura Ingraham radio show.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) joined in on the fun, too. While analyzing one of the presidential debates on radio TV recently, Coffman picked up on the shift in Perry’s rhetoric on Social Security-- namely from “it’s unconstitutional” to “I’m going to fix it and protect it forever”-- and praised it, while also jumping feet-first into the it’s a Ponzi Scheme camp.

Rep. Miklosi was more than a little shocked that Coffman would endanger the vital interests of so many people in the area around Denver they both represent. "Since being elected," he told us this morning, "my opponent has pursued a radical social agenda and served as an obstructionist to all else. He voted twice to destroy Medicare and now he's attacking Social Security. It is hauntingly hypocritical for someone to oppose a woman's choice in every instance, yet so carelessly cast aside a proven and vital lifeline to our seniors."

Late yesterday Boehner had a resolution on the floor, H.R. 2608, sponsored by Sam Graves (R-MO) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), which amends part B of title IV of the Social Security Act to extend the child and family services program through 2016. All 184 Democrats voted YES, as did 211 Republicans, so it passed, overwhelmingly 395-25. Many of the worst hard-core right-wing extremists, the ones hell-bent on wrecking the social safety net and abolishing Medicare and Social Security even if it were to mean electoral defeat, voted against it, deranged sociopaths like Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Joe Walsh (R-IL), Paul Broun (John Birch Society-GA) and Scott Garrett (R-NJ). Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul were running around making believe they're running for president, so neither voted-- nor did the new sociopath just elected from NY-9 (Bob Turner). But here's the list of the 25 Republicans who voted today, in effect, to end Social Security:

Justin Amash (R-MI)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
John Campbell (R-CA)
Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)
Jeff Duncan (R-SC)
Jimmy Duncan (R-TN)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
Tom Graves (R-GA)
Tim Huelskamp (R-KS)
Bill Huizenga (R-MI)
Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Raul Labrador (R-ID)
Doug Lamborn (R-CO)
Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
Tom McClintock (R-CA)
Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)
Ted Poe (R-TX)
Tim Scott (R-SC)
Austin Scott (R-GA)
Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)
Joe Walsh (R-IL)