13 October 2013

On a minor point of Republican bullshit

One of the more cutesy talking points which the Republicans have been trotting out lately is that, while President Obama refuses to negotiate with them over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown, he's quite willing to negotiate with leaders of hostile foreign governments such as Putin and Rouhani.  Superficially this does seem telling, but if one examines the comparison more thoughtfully, it's revealing in quite a different way.

Neither Putin nor Rouhani is explicitly threatening to deliberately crash the US (and world) economy unless Obama submits to a set of demands.  If they were, Obama would no doubt tell them, too, that he refused to negotiate under such duress.

Obama has stated clearly that he is willing to negotiate with the Republicans about whatever issues they want to discuss, but they have to let a clean CR and debt-limit increase pass first -- they have to take the gun away from the hostage's head before real negotiation is possible.

In short, he can negotiate with Putin and Rouhani because they are not making de facto terrorist threats against our country.  Right now, the Republicans are.

4 Comments:

Blogger Robert the Skeptic said...

So now the Conservative Circus is making noise about the Veterans who can't visit their memorials closed due to the Shutdown. So let me see if I can weight the critical choices here - one one hand, millions of families needing medical coverage; on the other hand, vacationers barred from visiting some National Park? Hmmm, this is a tough one.

13 October, 2013 22:06  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What the hell is wrong here? Can we at least be married to documented activities and statements that we made an hour ago? The media is killing this country's stock price. The GOP and their brain dead soldiers are making the country look raggedy.

Who are they fooling with that bullshit? The whole country saw the president waste time reaching out and now they're going to lie as if everyone forgot. It's time to bury these bastards.

This is my attitude towards the leadership if democrats lose 2014. http://youtu.be/rW7WlT6OJxE
I'm not in the happiest of moods right now. I've been pissed for a good while now.

Vic78

14 October, 2013 07:41  
Blogger (O)CT(O)PUS said...

The extreme right wing of the GOP reminds me of a man who slit his wrists just to lower his blood pressure.

14 October, 2013 15:56  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Robert: They have no idea how they're coming across. They've sunk completely into their Randroid alternate reality -- those people needing medical coverage are "moochers", 47-percenters, etc.

Vic78: At the moment they're fooling only themselves. Their approval is about 10 points below its record low, but they're telling each other the polls are "skewed".

Octo: Too bad they want to slit everyone else's too.

15 October, 2013 02:53  

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