If Democrats have wanted a Ronald Reagan to emerge from the increasingly Carter-like chrysalis Barcak Obama was woven around himself, they may have finally gotten their wish through Obama’s soon to be infamous alms-for-hostages fiasco.
In return for welching on his long promulgated pledge to terminate the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy–designed to expire for the express reason that they were never affordable– Barack has pulled off another of his no-win compromises. In exchange for protracting unemployment insurance for the chronically jobless, Obama caved to the Republicans (never more resplendid in their villainy) and agreed to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest fuckers on the planet lest the GOP suicide bomb Washington by clogging up the Senate and allow all the tax cuts, including those for the Holy Middle Class, to expire.
This is quite possibly the the biggest face-palm moment in Democratic history. Wasn’t fiscal sanity, especially closing the deficit, the unanimous battle cry of the Tea Baggers? Didn’t the “Pledge to America” include words like “to whom much is given, much is expected”? So how the hell could the GOP have hoped to justify their gall? The promise  to prevent tax hikes made in their”pledge”mentioned “entrepreneurs” and “family-owned small businesses”. Which of these categories enfolds the board of Goldman Sachs, or Los bros Koch? And If liberals can’t get tax revenue from the rich now, while the Dems control Washington, what possible chance will they have two years from now when the Republicans are squeezing Obama’s nuts from the front instead of in a lame-duck reacharound?
This predictable capitulation is just the latest opportunity for President Obama to play the role of the loser that gets interviewed at the end of The People’s Court. He may as well begin all his press conferences with the words “Get off my back”. Obama’s logic is that had he not blinked, the Republicans would have cashed in every dime of their post election cred and let the tax cuts expire for everyone.  Democrats, he reasons, and not the Republicans who filibustered for the tax hike, would catch all the hell.
Does this make even a lick of political sense? Recall: the conservative tax cuts were supposed to swell our economy  like a goose’s liver, yielding the rich foie gras of economic prosperity. Now, Eight million job losses later, Obama is selling his soul for a tuppence to keep our millions of jobless from becoming millions of homeless as well. But what the hell are the nation’s caviar nibblers going to do with these tax breaks that they haven’t done in the past decade?
Given the Democrat’s inability to rally public enthusiasm for any cause that does not feature a balloon drop, the President may have been right to fold his hand. A month removed from his “shellacking” (never let ’em see you sweat, O), the President seems to have no recourse except to continue playing footsie with the Republicans in hopes of sunnier days ahead–or rather, gloomier days, when the Republicans will appear to bear more responsibility for the nation’s fiscal fuck-ups than he does.
