Brier-Patch Politics

In the Joel Chandler Uncle Remus stories (now so politically incorrect that Walt Disney’s great half-animated version, Song of the South, can only be purchased in a pirated version or, English-captioned, from Japan), a just-captured Brer Rabbit beseeches Brer Fox not to “throw me in that brier patch.” And when Brer Fox falls for the ruse, Brer Rabbit hops happily among all sharp thorns and briers singing and taunting Brer Fox with “I was born and bred in the brier patch.”

I think we have a modern day version of this fable in the present tax-rate brouhaha now taking place in Washington. Brer Obama, after years of decrying the Bush tax cuts as ruinous, has (along with many economic advisers) now embraced them as necessary to keep this Nation from suffering a double-dip recession … even including maintenance of the Bush tax rates for couples earning over $250,000 per year (millionaires and billionaires in the Democrat vernacular). Now, if this is the formula for fixing our economic and unemployment problems, why has it taken the Obama administration almost two years to recognize it? And why would Brer Obama ask the Republicans to throw him among all those tax rate nettles and thorns … as it seems his own party might be in open revolt against the idea? I have a few suggestions:

1) The extension of the Bush tax rates doesn’t work to restore economic growth and reduce unemployment between now and the 2012 elections … in which case Obama can repeatedly play “I told you so” in the political debates then. Even though Obama’s Keynesian fire-hose “stimulus” spending over the last two years clearly hasn’t worked, the American electorate will have long since forgotten about this by 2012. So Obama’s political priorities from the beginning seemed clearly to push through as much of his left-wing agenda early on in his administration and the devil take the hindquarters (our Nation’s economic and job growth.) As Rahm Emanuel said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

2) If, in fact, there IS the likely turn-around in the economy … but our national debt continues to soar … in which case Obama can appeal to the Tea Partiers that the Republicans and their policies have dug us deeper in debt with the Chinese. (It is not accidental that Obama’s proposal includes this 2 percentage point reduction in employee FICA payments and a 13 month extension of unemployment insurance … both designed to make that brier patch toss even more tempting to the Republicans … but both certain to increase our Nation’s debt burden significantly.)

3) Will the extension of the Bush tax rates stimulate economic growth? Probably not in and of themselves. After all, this will not be a cutting of taxes. It will just extend current tax rates for two more years. However, the 2 percentage point FICA tax reduction probably will help economic growth however damaging this might be to the long-term health of the Social Security System.

4) Strangely, Obama has made this proposal AFTER the November elections when, if made prior to the elections, he might have saved many blue-dog Democrats from electoral defeat. One might even surmise that Obama desired this Republican rout in the House to make it even clearer that Republicans are the ones to blame for whatever happens between now and 2012. In other words, Obama was willing to triangulate himself away from Democrats and to sacrifice his party and even his Nation in order to get re-elected in 2012. Machiavelli, thy name is Obama.

5) The vitriol being heaped on Obama by the left-wing press, bloggers, and Democrat members of Congress effectively makes Obama into a bit of a sympathetic folk hero … one willing (for the first time in two years) to reach across the aisle to accommodate the Republicans.  This also, of course, begins the triangulation of his stance running up to 2012.

Can the Republicans resist the temptation to toss Obama in among all those thorns of the Bush-tax-rate brier patch? I doubt it, nor do I necessarily think that they shouldn't take the bait. But, if they do, the Republicans should be even more draconian in reducing future government spending and in the draining of the Democrat’s honey pot of all those unspent stimulus funds.  Otherwise, if the Republicans don't believe that they can exhibit such discipline, may I suggest some Brer-Rabbit purloo?