OK, there’s plenty of over-the-top rhetoric on both sides of the aisle with regard to raising the debt ceiling, what Democrats should/shouldn’t give up to get it raised and so on.
But today’s Erick Erickson’s column at RedState.com is just blisteringly vile.
He’s advocating that Republicans don’t blink, to stay in the game to try to get as much as possible out of the negotiations. OK, that’s a valid point of view.
But his premise is just, well, partisan idiocy.
Now is a time for choosing. Now is your time for choosing. As I pointed out to John Boehner yesterday, despite what the pundits in Washington are telling you, it is you and not Obama who hold most of the cards. Obama has a legacy to worry about. Should the United States lose its bond rating, it will be called the “Obama Depression”. Congress does not get pinned with this stuff.
He’s advocating playing a game of chicken with the economy – which he admits may send us into a depression – because Republicans won’t get blamed for the depression if that does occur.
How craven is that?
Sure, potentially crater the economy, have unemployment soar, risk a global meltdown, hurt untold millions of Amercians – no biggie, ’cause we won’t get blamed for it!
Wow.
Update: Steve Benen weighs in:
But [Erickson’s assumption that the White House will get most of the blame is] not what’s important here. Indeed, the notion that elected officials should choose, or at least risk, a depression on purpose, based solely on their expectations about blame, is among the more offensive things I’ve seen from the right in this entire debate.
What actually matters is that Americans will suffer. The economy will get worse. The standing, credibility, and stability of the United States will be negatively affected immediately and for years to come. All of this can be easily avoided.
That’s what matters. Not polls, not spin, not which soundbite resonates. The principal concern should be over whether the public is forced to endure pain in order to satisfy the ideological whims of madmen who don’t belong in public office, but who nevertheless yield enormous power over our collective future.