Notable this week was Limbaugh lapping up unnecessary and unearned publicity, based in part on his brazen stupidity, as well as the democratic party’s attempt to paint him as the leader of the republican party. (read more at Politico)
Or so Limbaugh would like you to believe (in the case of the latter).
Limbaugh’s far-right reactionary attitude towards Barack Obama (saying before the inauguration that he wants him to fail) and his proposed spending (which he heralds as, yawn, socialism) has made way for an increasingly pessimistic GOP attitude towards the president. While Limbaugh is unpopular among voters (young ones especially), his bombastic nature, loud delivery and easy-to-quote radio broadcasts full of GOP latch-words (most notably, again, socialism), make him more influential than he probably should be. Party democrats are jumping at this opportunity in an effort to increase the void between right-of-center republicans and far-right republicans by making Limbaugh’s pessimistic and grumpy attitude the party-line. Or so Limbaugh, self proclaimed “Last Man Standing” would like you to believe.
At the Huffington Post, John R. Bohrer reminds us that “as powerful and persuasive as President Obama is, he doesn’t decide who runs the Republican Party; the Republicans do.”
Instead of doing what’s best for his party and shutting the hell up, Limbaugh lapped the publicity up, and in a letter to Politico, said:
The administration is enabling me. They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama’s policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.
Oh, and then said he wants to debate Obama: “If these guys are so impressed with themselves, and if they are so sure of their correctness, why doesn’t President Obama come on my show? We will do a one-on-one debate of ideas and policies…”
An open invite for political suicide, offered by the most self-obsessed, and blatantly ignorant pundit in all of Washington. The entire “debate” would consist of Limbaugh blowing hot-air all over Obama. Nothing good would come of it.
Pundits like Limbaugh and GOP politicians starving for an attractive party-line have, since long before the election, have made and stuck to the claim that Obama’s tax plan will bleed wealthy Americans dry. Slate’s Daniel Gross debunks this argument as “bogus.”
A little reality:
What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you’d pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you’d pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day. Obviously, the numbers rise as you make more. But is $4.10 a day bleeding the rich, a war on the wealthy, a killer of innovation and enterprise? That dentist eager to slash her income from $320,000 to $250,000 would avoid the pain of paying an extra $2,100 in federal taxes. But she’d also deprive herself of an additional $70,000 in income!
Slate also debunks the recent GOP sputter claiming that Obama’s politics will lead to European-style social democracy. Points to Obama’s acknowledgment of the anti-statist Attitude in American. (read it here)
The market went down relatively consistently this week, save for a day of marginal growth due to optimism concerning China. The World Bank, still, sees a shrinking Global Economy in ‘09. It’ll be the first time that’s happened since World War II. (link)
What else? I don’t know. Blago has a book deal in the works where in which he hopes to clear his name by exposing the corrupt underbelly of Chicago politics (or something else that doesn’t make much sense.)
NYT columnist David Brooks thinks the GOP is too stuck on Reagan. It makes sense—the state has been perceived an enemy to the people since Reagan took office, and while said politics might have worked to calm the “statist” sentiments of FDR and Carter, and allowed for the “let’s make money off of money, in hopes that it trickles down through society to where its necessary, regulation optional, laissez-faire, invisible hand” philosophy that permeated through the 1990’s and until 2008, in light of what’s happened with the market perhaps we should, for now, ignore Reaganomics.
I’m not saying Reaganomics are bad—I’m just suggesting that perhaps politicians should be a tad more contextual and a tad less ideological. Especially right now.
But I suppose that’s pretty obvious.
