How to Use Financial Reform to Crush Wall Street AND the Repugs

From TPM: Suddenly, repugs jump on financial reform bandwagon.

From Zandar: And Blue Dog Senator Tom Carper defects.

Doesn't anyone remember how Tom DeLay and Trent Lott used to play this game? They deliberately wrote bills to be so insanely wingnut freakazoid that no dem - not even the repug-est Blue Dog - could vote for them. Even moderate repugs - and there were a few back then - couldn't vote for them. The bills would pass by a single vote, accomplishing two things: Passage of extremely partisan bills that reached wingnut goals previously considered impossible, and cutting Democrats completely out of the legislative process.

It Worked. It worked like a charm for a decade. And it got us to this Reality-Denying Backwards World of Wingnut Freakazoid, UnConstitutional, Anti-Democratic Clusterfuck Destruction.

If the repugs really have decided they need to vote for Wall Street reform to save their electoral asses, I say Don't Let Them. Re-write the bill to make dealing in derivatives - an activity that adds literally nothing to economic or human well-being - a capital crime, punishable by death. Restore Glass-Steagall with regulatory control squared. Or cubed. Add a new income tax category for hedge-fund managers of 99.5 percent. Take away the voting rights of any financial planner/advisor who has ever knowingly steered a client to an investment that lost money.

Whatever it takes to ensure no repug votes for the bill.

Then round up every dem who has a problem with this, lock them in a teeny-tiny room with no water, no food, no toilet and no air, and don't let them out until they swear on their campaign accounts to vote for the bill.

That's how you win. And win not just the vote, not just the next 50 votes, not just the propaganda war, not just the next 10 elections, but the Battle for the Soul and the Future of the Nation and the Planet.

Stop diddle-fucking around.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....