Get behind them and shoot them in the back. 😉 BTW, I am completely serious.

At this point, the chance of swaying the progressive herd toward voting Republican ranges from 0 to low. We’ve already tried stomping our feet and standing our ground. As noted in this post, there is 100% certainty of the outcome in this example: economic disaster and finger-pointing from the blamer-in-chief. If we play a winning game of Chicken, he might actually let all of the tax cuts expire and blame the evil Republicans from now until the end of time for the terrible economy and everybody getting tax increases, which will be 100% bad for us; or, he might pull an 11th-hour “Oh, those awful Republicans want everyone to get a tax increase, but because I care so much about the middle-class, I’m going to only increase taxes on the evil rich pigs” manuever, which will be 100% bad for us. Either way, we get a bad outcome that cannot possibly be defended from the media and the tiny minds that vote for Obama, and the president gets exactly what he wants.

What do they say about repeating stupid things that fail, hoping for a different outcome? Don’t we normally accuse liberals of that?

Folks, I’m sorry if it offends your principles and honor, but there is only one even remotely viable strategy for the Republicans involved in this standoff. They have to make clear their specific reservations about this strategy (ie, a couple of hundred billion in additional revenue, if the rich people stick around to get abused, will not even touch the current-year trillion-plus deficit that Obama wants, much less help decrease debt), state clearly and unequivocally that they believe that this is ineffective and bad things will result, and vote present and let this president own the epic disaster he is going to create no matter what.

I am a person of honor and seek to do the right thing in my life; but it’s not doing the right thing to get trampled in the dust fighting a pointless battle that is going to be lost. If something is doomed to fail, the battle has zero rightness. It may give you warm fuzzies to fight – or expect other people to fight – battles that cannot be won because doing so is “the right thing” but no rightness is going to ensue by fighting and losing this battle. Losing soldiers (further compromising the fewer people we have in power) and ammunition (by ensuring that we have no leg to stand on in debate against the lowest-common-denominator public in the media wars on this topic) is stupid, not “doing the right thing.”

Will it work? After the 2012 election, I have my doubts. There are still people who support this bum, and I suspect that nothing – not riots, soup lines or kristallnacht circa 2014 – will change that. But if we let him have his way, at least we can say, look, we did not impede in any way, and look at the disaster that he caused. The left will still blame Bush, blame rich people, blame Republicans, blame everything in the world but themselves and their bad ideas, and it looks like a majority of people will believe them, but at least, for the first time in years, we would have a single easily illustrated point to hammer on as hard as we can.

The rules of battle have changed. You might think it’s more noble to send formations of soldiers into the field to get cut down by machine guns rather than cower in trenches, but when the rules change, it’s foolish, not right, to stick to a losing strategy. Let Obama own his debacle. It’s our only hope.

One: give Obama and Reid what they want, while proclaiming the inevitable disaster to come from it. This will not influence swing voters, because they will never hear the proclamation; they will hear about it, but only as evidence of GOP obstruction, on which the media will blame all the evils of the coming term. Meanwhile the conservative voters, who will know what the GOP really did, abandon federal politics as futile.

Two: put up resistance; block Obama’s expenditures by any means to hand, challenge his regulations, reject his nominees for office, whenever these violate conservative principles (which will be most of them.) Again swing voters will not hear the reasons for this, merely the bare fact of GOP obstruction; but the conservative voters, knowing the GOP is doing what it can, do not abandon federal politics.

There’s a thing Glenn Reynolds often says about global warming activists who have immense fuel-eating mansions and take jet planes to conferences in tropical climes: “I’ll believe there’s a crisis when the people who say there’s a crisis act like it.” That’s where the GOP is now: they are telling the world that government debt is a crisis. If they don’t try to stop Obama from running up more debt, they aren’t acting like the debt is a crisis; why then should anyone not already convinced of the crisis believe what they’re saying?

Swat aside their attempts to blame us like so many horseflies, and pin the tail on that donkey. Dadgummit, that’s the ONE thing that Bush, McCain, Romney, and the rest of them never even tried to do. It’s also our only hope.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

We didn’t have the House in the first two years of the “god-king’s” term, and we STILL got blamed — for everything. And our idiotic fellow residents swallowed the whole thing.

This being the case, and with the Fourth Estate now firmly in the role of Fifth Column, I don’t know what we can do to PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONKEY.

But that’s what we need to do: PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONKEY where it belongs!

Hey, I know: let’s start a meme! Flog it relentlessly, and flog the Left with it relentlessly.

I am certainly no economist or political planner, but if I had to advise the Republicans it would to do whatever they do boldly and loudly. The appearance of strength translates quickly into the reality of strength (see Iran). It is too much to hope that this would make Obama appear weak in light of his MSM bodyguards, but it would be better than the appearance of weakness. Weakness is never in fashion and if 2008 and 2012 teaches us anything it is that competence is far less important than fashion.

This may be the understatement of the 21st century and there are still 88 years to go!

This country has a serious spending problem not a tax problem. And if the Rep don’t step up now then what good are they?

Whether they give in or not Obama and MSM will do their best to blame them for whatever comes.

In any case IMO we are already on course for a downturn next year. There are widespread indications that capital formation has fallen off and we will see this manifest in the official numbers by mid next year.

Back when Clinton got his tax increases in the early 90’s the economy did well and we had surpluses. The left likes to tout the cause as the tax increases themselves. The less brain dead say only that the tax increase had no ill effect on the economy.

The real primary causes for the booming economy can be more likely found in the ending of the cold war in 89 and the subsequent downsizing of military spending (i.e. government spending) which returned more resources to the private sector where the increased capital formation resulted in an improved economy. The improved economy happened in spite of those tax increases not because of them.

Analogously capital formation has been so hammered by recent governmental interference/actions that the lapse of the Bush tax cuts in January are probably harmful but secondary to the larger momentum towards a slower economy next year.

The question is whether strategically it’s better to give in or not. My gut tells me that giving in is a too clever by half situation. It’s better to bargain honestly and straightforwardly based on Rep principles. If that means that a stalemate develops and the taxes and cuts come to be then so be it.

Let’s not delude ourselves into believing that surrender will be given any credit by MSNBC.

BTW there are some difficult factors lurking that will make the downturn worse here regardless of what we do.

Japan is nearing the end of it’s long misadventure/experiment with Keynesian economics and low interest rates that will end very badly. They have been suffering for more than two decades. It is amazing and scary that our hi-IQ central bankers have been able to watch the Japanese torture themselves and yet we are going down the same path. It’s like quicksand – beyond a certain point there’s no escaping the consequences. Yearly deficit spending (i.e. stimulus) and low interest (i.e. also stimulus) have resulted in they’re being trapped with a huge debt overhang and no way out and the situation is made worse by demographic shifts which now leave them unable to apply a solution without major pain. (The solution is to cut government spending drastically to shift resources to the private sector where higher interest rates encouraging capital investment can create sustainable growth. Private spending must be unsupported by government guarantees so that the market can allow discovery and separation of the good from the bad.)

China is a seething mess and given the Chinese tendency to screw their situation up racking millions in deaths (not so long ago history) don’t expect that to end well. The problem is that there is a strong element within their governing structure that reminds me of the 1930’s Germans – the ones looking for a little payback – and we could easily get dragged into some war defending our allies over there (trigger likely to be some rocks in the ocean). We have some experts (probably colleagues of the ones who’ve been saying for years the Iranians aren’t trying to build a usable nuclear weapon) who insist the Chinese only have a few hundred nuclear weapons. In the last twenty years they’ve been building up their submarine fleet, surface fleet, and conventional missile capabilities. It’s seriously delusional to expect that they haven’t been spending money to amass nuclear weapons. And unlike the Iranians the Chinese can reach anywhere in the US. If they have fewer than 10,000 I would be surprised – certainly not 2-300. Hopefully that disaster will be limited to economic repercussions only.

Lastly, Europe is falling apart. The recent Greek bail out in the news is – if you read carefully – no such thing. It is so heavily conditioned that it is unlikely actual cash will be shifted over to Greece, which will not help find a solution in any case. The people in charge are pursuing austerity on the private sector (higher taxes and continued high government spending) while ignoring austerity on the government side (cut government spending and workers along with reduced regulations). That’s already impacting us and we can expect Bernanke/Obama to use the Fed to support the ECB when matters worsen (downside hasn’t been explored – i.e. it can and will get worse).

I see nothing regarding Obama that indicates he has the personality, leadership stature, knowledge skillset (e.g. economics), or strength of character (he certainly is no Lincoln) to bring about a sound result or compromise in these negotiations.

It’s probably better for the Rep to stand their ground let the cuts and taxes occur and as the economy goes to the worse continue to make the case as to why it’s bad and how it connects to Obama and his actions and policies. In 2014 the Rep can offer a real alternative instead of Dem policies lite.