Somewhat conflicting messages from the White House re: debt ceiling
The teabag congress must be loving this:
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday the Obama administration does not believe the 14th Amendment gives the President the ability to ignore the debt ceiling, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile President Obama…
…says he won’t negotiate under any circumstances. And his top advisors say he’s adamant on the point — not just because of the current impasse but to take hostage taking over the national debt off the table for good.
Without the 14th Amendment, the President’s leverage is rooted in depending on the on the goodwill and common sense of the Lunatic Party. So what is the deal? The teabag Congress is just going to get all rational all of a sudden just on it’s own.
…coming off a big loss on taxes….with a weak speaker that can’t even broker a deal to pay a lunch tab. Yeah. That is going to happen.
I think the President’s political instincts are correct. As appealing as executive workarounds on the debt limit are, I think it would turn public opinion against him.
The word lunatic has been stricken from Federal Law.
Louie Gohmert obviously doesn’t want his lunatic condition cut from his health insurance.
What a lunatic!
As to the point of your post… I’m not sure how this will play out. It’s interesting to watch.
“I think it would turn public opinion against him.”
Wrong. The public doesn’t care about executive workarounds. (See: George W. Bush’s & standing with the public.)
Also, During the campaign, the President’s popularity always spiked when he took a combative stance toward the lunatic party.
I don’t see these messages as conflicting. If the GOP is thinking they can take hostages over the debt ceiling, it looks to me like Obama is saying no. He told the Business Roundtable this AM that “he won’t be playing that game”.
Can he hold to that? Don’t know. Letting the GOP trash the place so we end up with more credit downgrades would be tough to just watch.
We can now definitely associate the word “lunatic” with a picture of Louie Gohmert! I’ll submit it to Wikipedia today.
According to Greg Sargent it looks like Obama told the Business Roundtable that he wasn’t playing the hostage game because he has allies in this stance (and for a fix) among the CEOs at the Roundtable.
This is pretty good, if true, but the last round I predicted that the GOP would come to their senses because their GOP business funders would force them to. That prediction was quite wrong and I’ve read that even those funders were stunned that the teajahdis let the default happen.
You can lead a teajahdist election campaign to water, but you can’t get them to carry it.
He’s playing hardball, and you think he is setting himself up for failure. This is his end game. He is finally saying “I hold the cards, this is my ball game.” They are slowly realizing they can’t make demands, as if they are in the majority.
I did hear one wingnut Senator (Chambliss?) on NPR this morning. He sounded nervous. BTW – the new catch phrase for paranoid wingnut freaks is “Obama is emboldened.”
I think that is meant to dogwhistle: “We TOLD you he is trying stage a coup and never leave office!”
Josh Marshall at TPM says what I said yesterday and predicts the mother of all government shutdowns.