GOP House to Democratic Senate and every last voter: Hey, buddy, got a deal for you. Rather than rob you of the 100 bucks you got on you, I'll extort only fifty now, but fifty again next week. I'm just that kind of bandit, considerate and compromising to the end.
On this elongated mugging, Harry Reid has demurred. Said the majority leader's spokesman of the House's stopgap pillaging of a mere $2 billion a week: "This isn’t a compromise, it’s a hardening of their original position.... It would impose the same spending levels in the short term as their initial proposal does in the long term, and it isn’t going to fool anyone."
Ay, there's the rub. For Republicans are even better at fooling folks than at wreaking fiscal destruction. It's an experience thing; they first had to hone their skills at mass deception in the 1960s and '70s before leveling responsible government during the 1980s and beyond. If your interests lie more in theology than politics, you might say it's an Original Sin thing.
But, whatever. Muggers are muggers and their sociopathic tendencies of instant gratification naturally incline them to thoughtlessness, which happens to be a not uncommon characteristic of the American electorate to boot. So the muggers figure they're on pretty safe ground.
They can again pillage, plunder and rape fiscal responsibility in the name of political nobility, and then later -- again -- dramatically tsk-tsk the regrettable shambles and rubble that is our fiscal condition. And the victims will cheer them.
Or this time, maybe not. That's the $61 billion question -- or, for the GOP, gamble.
One would like to think that Republicans' manic overreaching on the nation-dooming threat of collective bargaining would trigger the electorate's suspicion of their federal accounting claims as well. So far, no signs of that. But who knows. The centrist electorate, being uncentered, can turn on a politically well-spun dime -- which, however, and, unfortunately, isn't exactly the currency of Democrats.
Perhaps this well help: "[A] nonpartisan study by Goldman Sachs ... said the GOP spending plan for $61 billion in spending cuts could reduce Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth by 1.5 to 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of the year."
Orrrr, perhaps it won't. Logic and rationality are poor combatants in a street fight, especially against the Bloods, who specialize in piercing, stiletto volume and jackhammering repetition.
"I’m not sure how Senator Reid rejected spending cuts that he hasn’t seen yet," said some delightfully distorting Baghdad Bob of Eric Cantor's propaganda department, "but it certainly reinforces the notion that he is willing to shut down the government rather than cut one penny in spending."
Harry, you brute.
I've a confession, though. As dreary as political things are, for us junkies they don't get much better than this.
My reformational plea is soundly Augustinian: Permit me, Big Guy, to do a chastely bit better -- but not yet.