The Real Cost of Civility

The plutocrats and their pet rethuglicans aren't playing Mah Jongg. This is war.

Eric Alterman at The Nation (published last week, before the Tucson speech):

According to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, the president recently told friends, "All I want for Christmas is an opposition I can negotiate with." Well, he had one, briefly, so long as he was willing to cave in to its demands to bust the budget with a massive gift of more than $130 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of the country and the gutting of the estate tax. That cleared the decks for other "victories" and "compromises" and led to widespread insider approval of Obama's ability to "make the system work." Like 13-year-olds at the movies, pundits love "action," period, never mind its consequences.

It's hardly surprising that few of them noticed that even during this decidedly brief Era of Good Feelings, Republicans refused to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year. Instead, both parties agreed to extend current levels of funding temporarily to avert an immediate government shutdown, with the mutual understanding that the postelection House will be much stingier than the old one. So Obama bought himself some peace in Hawaii, but at the cost of returning home to a metaphorical house on fire.

What is not understood by those who cover contemporary conservatives (and, one fears, by those who negotiate with them) is that while they like to talk about all kinds of values, these are always subordinated to a single, unchanging and uncompromised goal: class warfare.

SNIP

Hamtramck, Michigan, recently profiled in the New York Times, is the future to which these Republicans look forward. The town already ceased taking care of the trees and grass on public property and ran out of money for street plowing just before the recent blizzard. Localities like Hamtramck are getting little help from the state legislature, however. "All our communities have done is cut, cut, cut," said Summer Hallwood Minnick, director of state affairs for the Michigan Municipal League. "They're down to four-day workweeks and the elimination of parks, senior centers, all of that. So if there's anything else that happens, they will be over the edge."

SNIP

The conservative Reuters columnist James Pethokoukis has helpfully laid out the Republican strategy. By refusing to bail out the states, local governments will be forced to go the route of either Hamtramck or Prichard, cutting services, pensions or both. Republicans may even pursue legislation allowing states to declare bankruptcy and let the unions fight it out in the courts. "From the Republican perspective," Pethokoukis explains, "the fiscal crisis on the state level provides a golden opportunity to defund a key Democratic interest group." Barack Obama, forgetting, once again, which side elected him, chose to reinforce this right-wing narrative by unilaterally—and unnecessarily—freezing the salaries of all federal workers. Once again, it pains me to add, he elicited not a single conservative concession in return. Obama, like so much of Washington, loves to see the deal done and worry about the details later. But with a radical Republican majority coming to power in the House, what America needs right now in the White House, Mr. President, is a fighter, not a referee.

I'll be civil when the class warriors surrender, and not before.