GOP Mutiny Upends Boehner's Bid to Compromise

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Dec.23, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

           Telling House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) where to leap, unruly GOP conservatives upended any chance to compromise on the “fiscal cliff,” where expiring tax and spending cuts threaten to plunge the nation back into recession.  Proving that party boss 57-year-old Grover Norquist still manipulates what’s left of the Republican Party like the Wizard of Oz, House conservatives couldn’t betray their tax-slashing guru, creating the impasse with only eight days to go until doomsday.  Harping on the ever-shrinking federal budget deficit, conservatives insist that its “a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” showing the kind of black-and-white thinking more associated with religion than politics.  When the economy was stuck in neutral with interest rates soaring in 1979, a conservative white knight named Ronald Reagan promised to fix the nation’s economic malaise with tax cuts.

             Long before his death from advanced Alzheimer’s disease June 5, 2004, Reagan had become Norquist’s conservative icon, swearing his allegiance to the tax-cutting fervor that became Reagan’s political legacy.  Back in 1979, the economy still reeled from the oil shocks of the mid-‘70s, with Americans all-to-familiar with the Organization of Oil Exporting Nations’ [OPEC] stranglehold on U.S. oil supplies.  Inflation raged, wages stagnated and the nation’s GDP shrank.  With the help of then Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts helped stimulate the U.S. economy back to health, though budget deficits quadrupled during the Reagan years.  Despite Norquist’s tax-cutting zealotry, today’s economy is entirely different.  U.S. oil companies now buy 90% of exported oil from Canada and Mexico, not as conservatives insist the Middle East.

             No one hypes the myth of tax cuts better than Norquist.  He’s brainwashed a generation of young conservatives led by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) into believing that only tax cuts stimulate the economy.  Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke knows differently.  Setting a monetary policy with lowest interest rates since the Great Depression, the Fed has helped pull the economy out of the deepest recession in post-war history.  When the Commerce Department reported Dec. 20, Q3 [third quarter] GDP at 3.1%, conservatives were thrown for a loop.  Had Hurricane Sandy not wiped out portions of the East Coast Oct. 30, who knows how high GDP might have gone.  Conservatives in Congress don’t base policy on economic data:  Only the Tea Party’s religious principles that only slashing government spending, specifically entitlements, can grow the economy.

             Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate Ryan pitched the Tea Party Cool-Aid to voters before the election that President Barack Obama’s economy was failing because of a liberal spending binge.  For nearly four years, the GOP spin machine called Obama the most liberal president in U.S. history.  They insisted that Obama grossly mismanaged the U.S. economy into the Great Depression.  Voters didn’t buy it.  All polls showed voters blamed former President George W. Bush for handing Obama the worst economy since the Great Depression.  When former President Bill Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention Sept. 6, he told a national audience that no president could have fixed the broken U.S. economy in four years.  It made sense to voters, handing Obama a landslide victory Nov. 6.  Today’s “fiscal cliff” mutiny directly relates to Romney’s failed campaign.

             What the Tea Party couldn’t get on Nov. 6, the unruly mob now tries to seize by bucking Boehner in reasonable negotiations on the “fiscal cliff.”  Romney insisted the economy was failing despite the slew of Labor and Commerce Department reports saying otherwise.  Now Tea Party zealots insist that the economy can only grow by slashing government spending.  They’ve been told by the Fed and most nonpartisan economists that the government should not cut spending at a time of economic weakness.  They’ve all seen the same GDP and employment numbers showing steady economic improvement and shrinking federal budget deficits but still insist on no tax hikes and slashing entitlement spending.  There’s no correlation between the Tea Party’s actions and any reputable economic data.  Holding the nation hostage, the Tea Party House gang shows why the founding fathers placed power in the U.S. Senate.

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.