Words to live by, words to regret

By Carl 

Obama: 'Inexcusable' not to reach budget deal:

"At a time when the economy is still coming out of an extraordinarily deep recession, it would be inexcusable -- given the relatively narrow differences when it comes to numbers between the two parties -- that we can't get this done," Obama said last night at the White House.

Obama has played this budget debacle exactly right, in my opinion, and it's paying huge dividends for Democrats across the nation. He has come off as statesman-like and put no political capital on the line here.

Conservative pundits have been screeching like seagulls about how Obama needs to be more involved, how it's wrong of him to go off to fundraisers for 2012 while the nation faces a crisis, yaddayaddayadda.

First, one wonders where these asshats were during the 6 1/2 years that Bush spent down in Crawford through things like Katrina, but I digress.

The Constitution is pretty clear about the delineation of budget responsibilities: it falls to Congress. What the conservative tactics tell me is, Pelosi and Reid have been playing hardball, drawing lines in the sand and refusing to commit to anything beyond them.

Those lines must be pretty fair ones, too, for moderates or we'd hear a lot of complaining about how entrenched the Dems are being, how special interests are playing fast and loose with the budget and so on. As well, we'd hear that the sides are very far apart. Obama has made a particular point of noting the narrow gap between the two sides.

Clearly, conservatives feel they can get a better deal from Obama. To his credit, he's refused to upend his Congressional leadership.

Contrast Obama with this: 

Boehner 'No daylight' between tea party and me:

"Listen, there's no daylight between the tea party and me," the Ohio Republican said in an interview with ABC News conducted Wednesday.

"None," he said, when questioner George Stephanopoulos pushed back. "What they want is, they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that's going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There's no daylight there."

I'm grinning as I write this. Boehner is from Ohio. Ohio is a battleground state. While Boehner can slather his district with pork to ensure his re-election, the one thing he cannot do is persuade people that insane folks are sane.

His seat is officially up for grabs now. By marrying himself to the Teabaggers, he will now make the Speaker of the House of Representatives officially responsible for every hate-mongering sign, every slanderous blogpost, each and every outrageous stunt the Teabaggers pull, in and out of Washington, D.C.

There's eighteen months. That's practically an eternity in national politics nowadays. He's hitched his wagon to a failing star whose light is dimming after the supernova of 2010. The Koch brothers' money is running out, or else Glenn Beck would still have his job at FOX and Wisconsin would still be electing Republicans.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)