This opinion from The Guardian is one of those examples of Why We Need a New Press Pundits Corp, Democrats won’t win a ‘blame the GOP’ game on the shutdown and debt ceiling. Consumer confidence is crashing. If the economy goes south because of default fears, President Obama will be the big loser
So, people currently blame the Republicans more than anyone else for the government shutdown, but predicting the long-term political fallout is not as easy as that suggests. For one thing, the latest CBS News poll shows that while slightly more people believe the Republicans are at fault, a majority of them are upset with both sides for the inability to avert this crisis.
The real story is not revealed by people’s view of the politicians; it’s contained in the indices of economic sentiment. Gallup finds that Americans’ confidence in the economy has dropped like a rock, from -20pt just before the shutdown, to -35pt now. And it would not be surprising to see that measure continue to fall over coming days, with the deadline for raising the debt ceiling looming in ten days’ time.
This is not a story about deep detective work that ultimately turns up the perpetrator. We know who is to blame. It was conservative billionaire money and they planned on having this shut-down, at least since President Obama was reelected. The writer of that column Harry J Enten is one of the reasons blame either shifts or fades away, because they make it sound plausible that both sides share some of the blame. These far Right conservatives are so extreme they threatened to take out rabid far Right conservatives like Aaron Shcock (R-IL). Mr. Enten wants to be one of those kool moderates who isn’t afraid to call out both sides. Only that is an utterly false narrative. From 2000 to 2008 conservatives cut taxes and ran up the largest deficit in modern history. They crashed the economy with a combination of negligence and maliciousness.
Conservative bloggers, politicians and pundits have conveniently forgotten or suffer from the usual cognitive dissonance when it comes to their economic legacy, an historic shafting of the American people. The most that journo-pundits like Harry can come up with is, look at these polls and hey blame may shift. Facts remain facts.
Harry is looking damn competent compared to some weirdo web-site called The Independent Journal Review ( Independent? It is peppered with gossipy hateful posts just like Free Republic and and other gutters of the conservative web) from which we get this startling super scientific poll, Poll: 62% of the American People Oppose More Debt Without Slashing Government Spending
The poll, conducted by a bipartisan team of polling firms surveying 952 registered voters on land lines and cell phones, was conducted on Oct. 1 and Oct. 2. The margin of error is 3 percent.
They put their full confidence in this poorly done poll, but not Nobel Prize winners that say austerity does not work and we are having climate change. Conservatives say they are not dumb so that only leaves two excuses, they’re liars or malevolent cranks. President Obama and Democrats have gotten the debt left by conservatives, under control:
The red line that climbed like a rocket, with a little dip, that started climbing again, that was conservative economics or conservative hypocrisy or conservative voodoo at work, take your pick. President Obama takes office and even in the worse recession since the Great Depression, starts to get the deficit under control – and that is with the stimulus and payroll tax cuts passed by Democrats. No one should care what 952 low information voters think, we should all be caring about the facts.
Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart.com tells the world what it is like to have a fantasy dinner party with libruls. He really should get his doctor to renew his meds prescription.
The Long Goodbye 