Their minds unhinged by the scope of the drubbing given President Obama, a clique on the left has come up with the theory that the Republican House is scheming to sink the economy by blocking Obama’s agenda, hoping the voters will turn on Obama, and thus vote him out in a pique. “Republicans ‘want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House,’ ” as Paul Krugman tells us. Andrew Sullivan calls the Republicans’ methods “as close to organized vandalism as one can imagine.”
The Washington Monthly accuses Republicans of “trying to guarantee failure … taking steps to ensure conditions don’t improve … undermining the strength of the country, in public, without apology or shame.”
Well, they certainly hope to turn out the president — every four years, someone tries to turn out the president and/or his party — but the thinking behind this seems odd. It rests on the idea that the Republicans think that Obama’s ideas will indeed help the country, a conviction which they do not hold.
Au contraire, they think the Democrats have done a great job of trashing the place all by their lonesome, and, given their druthers, will trash the place even more. Republicans don’t think you help the economy by deficit spending, but by cutting taxes and spending, thus giving cash to people who create jobs by investing in business, and cash to consumers, who buy what these businesses make.
They think everything Obama has done made the recovery difficult: the not cutting taxes, the unease caused by health care, the masses of debt. Against their own interests, they want to help him, by stopping his measures.
By their lights, if they wanted to trash the economy they’d go along with Obama, pass cap and trade, for example, and watch unemployment reach 20 percent.
This is a species of sabotage that not only helps the sabotaged party, but is backed by the public as well. We have two parties, of big and small government; of more and less taxes, of more and less regulations and rules.
Neither is right on all things, and neither is right all the time, so they tend to take turns in power, usually moving within a small range near the middle, with those who fall to one side (McGovern and Goldwater) losing by landslides to even unlovable figures (Nixon and Johnson) who can’t manage to hold public favor too long.
Obama is one (we know now) who falls outside of this midzone, though this was masked for a time by his so-called “conservative temperament.” When this became clear, the public began its push back to the middle, electing conservatives in Virginia and in New Jersey, electing Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and finally giving the Republicans a six-seat gain in the Senate, massive gains in the states and state houses, and a 60-plus seat gain in the House.
The point of all this was to put the brakes on Obama, and frustrate his plans to advance his agenda. If this is treason, we should make the most of it. It has the popular will on its side.
The left now is searching for methods to counter this outrage, elsewhere referred to as “politics,” but considered illegal, immoral and possibly fattening when applied to things they hold dear.
They could say Obama is God, but they did that already. They could suppress freedom of speech, but no one would let them. They could urge trials for treason, but the Sedition Act has been a dead letter for 200 years.
Soon they’ll give up, and go back to their other big scandal: Who’s the real mother of Trig?
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to TheWeekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
