A Donk Debt Ceiling Feint?

by JASmius

Which hand will Americans watch?  This one....:

President Obama would accept a short-term increase in the federal borrowing cap , rather than one lasting a year or more, a senior White House official said Monday. The statement was an acknowledgment by the administration that it may not be possible to reach a deal on a long-term increase in the debt ceiling before a critical October 17 deadline.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said members of Congress ultimately have the responsibility to decide how often they want to raise the debt ceiling, although he argued that an extended hike is preferable. …

The Treasury says it will run low on cash in as little as 10 days, placing the nation at risk of a historic default. Some Republicans have suggested that if Congress can’t reach an agreement by October 17, they might try to forge a coalition to support an interim measure to increase the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling for as little as six weeks.

Sperling’s comments Monday suggested that the White House would accept such a measure. The statement was notable because administration officials had rejected a short-term debt ceiling increase during a similar impasse in the summer of 2011, when the White House insisted that the debt limit be increased to cover borrowing through 2012.

....or this one?:

Senate Democrats could introduce legislation as soon as today that gives President Barack Obama the authority to raise the debt ceiling unless two-thirds of Congress disapproves, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

An initial test vote on the proposal, described by the aide on condition of anonymity, could occur as soon as October 11, just six days before federal borrowing authority is set to expire.

Democrats have been pressing for a one-year increase in the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling without any of the spending cuts of policy changes Republicans are demanding.

Yes, it is another rhetorical question.  In The Age Of The One, pretty much all such questions are rhetorical.  But let's take a look at each one, just for giggles.

Ensign Ed thinks that that the willingness to accept a short-term debt ceiling hike signals an imminent collapse of the Spite House to Republican Shutdowngeddon demands:

Why reverse course and agree to a short-term debt ceiling lift now? I’d suspect that the White House has discovered that its shutdown strategy is backfiring in a spectacular manner, thanks to the spiteful attempts to impose unnecessary and arbitrary pain on Americans for the last several days.  It might also be that the statement from Moody’s CEO this morning undercut their messaging to Wall Street, and the utter lack of panic among investors has killed the Obama administration strategy to force the GOP to knuckle under to Harry Reid and Obama.

Ron Fornier concurs:

Obama has at least two incentives to talk. First, there is the matter of optics. Voters want to believe that their leaders are open-minded, a trait they particularly expect in a president who promised to change the culture of Washington. Obama simply undermines his credibility by stiff-arming the GOP. Their obstinacy is no excuse for his. During the last protracted government shutdown, President Clinton talked almost every day with GOP rivals Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.

Second, Obama has an opportunity to deftly steer an embattled and divided GOP away from Obamacare and to an issue worthy of high-stakes negotiations: The nation’s long-term budget crisis. While it’s true that the deficit has dropped in recent months, nothing has been done to secure Social Security and Medicare beyond the next 10 years. Punting this red-ink quandary to the next president would mar Obama’s legacy.

In April, I wrote that both the White House and the GOP House had incentive to strike a deal that would both raise taxes and trim entitlement spending. The story traced the outlines of such a deal, but the moment was lost. Boehner doesn’t trust Obama and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. Obama doesn’t trust Boehner and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. The House speaker reportedly raised the idea of a so-called grand bargain at a White House meeting last week, and got laughed at. That is the exact wrong response.

Well, it's certainly true that Sick Willie would never have passed up such a day-glo golden opportunity to turn the PR tables on Boehner.  But then, Clinton would have prepared the propaganda battlefield long in advance of the shutdown by framing the GOP as the "unreasonable obstructionists" in large part by casting himself and his party as the reasonable statesmen "willing to negotiate."  The Speaker never would have gotten the chance to pick up that mantle in the first place.  Instead, Red Barry and Dirty Harry have gone to obnoxious and ridiculous lengths to paint themselves as unreasonable obstructionists.  And while they claim to believe that they're inevitably going to win the shutdown propaganda battle, it's difficult to see how they could have gamed it out more abysmally if they'd been deliberately sabotaging themselves.

Which ought to raise questions in the intelligent mind.  Messrs. Morrissey and Fornier make sound arguments - if you assume that O gives a damn about his own poll numbers, or even those of his own party.  And that is a very big "if".  Personally, I don't think he does.  As with Bill Clinton in the '90s, he could care less what happens to his party's congressional wing, and that wing is too idolatrously enraptured in his demi-divine, Jemimah-glorious aura not to enthusiastically serve as his propaganda suicide bombers.

Ace takes a similar tack:

[N]ote how very laudatory The Hill is regarding the wily Reid. And note the article goes out of its way to protect Obama from any political fallout from Reid's aggressive, no-compromise stance - claiming that Obama is just a spectator in all of this, and himself only wishes to compromise.

President Obama has handed over the reins of leadership on government funding and the debt limit to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Reid is now fully in charge of his party’s negotiating strategy, a significant change from past showdowns with Republicans. 

He has taken the initiative from Obama, who played the principal role in the 2011 debt-limit talks and New Year’s fiscal cliff deal. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill are relieved by the switch. 

The majority leader has brought a more pugnacious style to the debate, bashing House conservatives as “anarchists” and mocking the “Banana Republican mindset.” 

This is a welcome change for Democrats who thought Obama was too accommodating to Republicans during previous crises.

Yes, my friends, it's Dirty Harry that is the Dems' new Peyton Manning, Dirty Harry that alone has the mettle to face down Obamerika's enemies from the other side of Capitol Hill.  Not President Gutsy Call, heavens no; he's just too gosh darn nice, too pragmatic, too accommodating to do what must be done to for the American people.  Milquetoast traits he's been hemorrhaging for the past five years, including just the other day.

But I think it goes even farther than that.  As I've been saying as Debtageddon II approaches, I think O's no-negotiation-period protocol applies to the CR, to the budget, to the debt ceiling, and everything else.  It may seem flummoxing, inexplicable, nutso, and any other number of adjectives that add up to not making a helluva lot of sense - until you put it in the context of a man who sees himself as "president-for-life" and has no intention of ever relinquishing power.  Which would be entirely consistent with a man who openly ran in 2008 on a platform of "wrenchingly transforming America," and who was swept into office on the hurricane tailwinds of a deliberately induced financial panic, and who needs another one to make his coup official.  And what are the Dems trying to gin up about the debt ceiling showdown?  Watch the numbskulled DNC ad again, specifically at the 0:48 mark:





I kid about DWS scotch-taping this public access doggerel together, but if you think this wasn't personally signed off on by Godbama himself, you haven't been paying attention.

Bottom line is, Reid's bill unconstitutionally ceding legislative authority over the debt ceiling to O is just another tactical move to try to re-stimulate intra-GOP fighting; he can ram it through the Senate but it'll be DOA in the House.  We're too far down this road for either side to cave now - the GOP because the Tea Party would burn it down if they did; and the Dems because this is the bookend crisis for which Barack Obama has been waiting for five years to finish the job the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb started.

Either the GOP surrenders, or America finishes collapsing.  Either way, Barack Obama wins.

Still think he's "in over his head"?