COMMENTARY | After a series of failures to attach the weight of a $1 trillion tax hike to the already collapsing debt ceiling, President Barack Obama stepped before the news cameras this morning in another effort to make Republicans blink. At first Obama was "amused" that people thought he should be more involved with solving the economic and employment problems of our country. Now that he's been forced to participate and Republicans are refusing to roll over and make him look like a brilliant last-minute leader, Obama is mad. So are the American taxpayers.
While Obama and the Democrats like blaming Republicans for the debt ceiling stalemate, examination of American sentiment makes it clear that this approach will backfire.
"I don't see a path to a deal if they don't budge. Period," the AP reported the president saying, lecturing GOP lawmakers for maintaining their "unacceptable" and stubborn "my way or the highway" posture against his demands.
Despite the scare tactics of Obama and his fellow Democrats, a recent CBS News poll showed that seven in 10 in that majority who oppose raising the debt limit would stand by that position even if it means that interest rates will go up.
"And if we think it's hard now," he threatened, "imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season when they are all up."
Indeed.
However, the president seems a bit confused as to who the "they" are who will face re-election devastation if he and his fellow Democrats force this debt ceiling measure down the throats of American taxpayers as they did with Obamacare and their equally loathed stimulus package.
A recent poll by News Max/Insider Advantage suggests that any candidate backing a debt-ceiling hike will do so at their own political peril.
The News Max poll showed that the majority of Americans oppose Obama's plan by a 45 percent to 32 percent margin. These numbers reflect the results of a May Gallup poll that revealed that the majority of Americans are opposed to upping the government credit card limit. Furthermore, Gallup showed a firm 47 percent saying they want their respective representatives to vote against raising the debt ceiling.
"What this tells me," Insider Advantage CEO Matt Towery concluded "is if you are an incumbent Republican in the House and the Senate and you go to raise the debt ceiling, you can pretty much be sure you'll have a major primary opponent the next time you're up for re-election."
Republicans received that message loud and clear in the 2006 midterms. The Democrats seem to have not gotten the same memo in 2010.
Regarding all poll results, when they are viewed along party lines, it becomes clear as to who is really fighting with the majority and who is creating the roadblocks.
While 67 percent of GOP voters and 51 percent of independents oppose raising the debt limit in the NewsMax poll, Democrats support raising the debt ceiling by a margin of 44 percent to 21 percent. Where a poll conducted by Gallup showed that 57 percent of Americans are closely following the debt ceiling exchange in Washington, the NewsMax/Insider Advantage poll revealed 35 percent of Democrats admitting they don't even know enough to have an opinion.
"We keep on talking about this stuff," the president confessed accidentally, "and we have these high-minded pronouncements about how we've got to get control of the deficit, how we owe it to our children and our grandchildren."
Despite overwhelming public support for the Republican stance to seriously "pull off the Band-Aid," Obama rejected a Republican proposal to do just that, to go for $2.5 trillion in spending cuts and reforms, and to do it without imposing higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals who are the creators of most jobs in this country.
Curiously, while this debt ceiling stalemate comes from Obama's determination to raise taxes, during a 2009 interview on NBC, Obama said himself precisely what Republicans are saying now, that "You don't raise taxes in a recession."
Today, Obama says "let's do it," let's "eat our peas," which, I am sure he knows by now is far more palatable than being force-fed another huge bowl of crow.
John Tillotson once said, "The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user." The president prefers the days when people cheered and fainted when he spoke. He wants to go back to the days when all that news reporters like Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose knew about him was derived from his books like "Dreams of My Father" and the "Audacity of Hope."
Obama longs for those good old days, when bumper sticker speeches like "Hope and Change" and "Yes We Can" was all he needed, those days when his opponents were too afraid of being called a racist if they questioned his decisions and his supporters were dutifully occupying their time creating all those lovely "posters and all that stuff" rather than expecting him to deliver on his campaign promises. Barack Obama doesn't like it when people expect more than rolling up his sleeves and reading a speech from his teleprompter to be acknowledged, respected and praised as a brilliant world leader.
Just as they opposed Obamacare and the stimulus, the majority of Americans oppose raising the debt limit. Republicans are again supporting the majority.
"It's irresponsible," and "they know better," Obama said Monday.
Indeed they do, Mr. President, and it's good that you can finally admit out loud that your plan is "irresponsible" and that Republicans and the majority of Americans "know better" than to up your credit when you have no money to pay it back. Experts say it's the first healthy step in the successful treatment of addiction therapy.
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