Biden and the Republicans in Congress: the old Lucy-and-the-football routine
Joe Biden isn’t so addled that he can’t pull a fast one. Or maybe being addled helps him to pull a fast one, because he forgets the contradictory things he says.
At any rate, this is how it went:
Mr. Biden stood with five Democratic and five Republican Senators at the White House and endorsed their trillion-dollar infrastructure outline. Back-slapping and self-plaudits all around. But two hours later the President said he won’t sign the infrastructure bill unless the Senate also passes the other $3 trillion or more he has proposed in tax increases and multiple new entitlement programs…
Most politicians at least wait a decent interval to pull a double cross. But Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden are trying to prevent a revolt on the left. So they are now holding a bipartisan deal hostage to the left’s demands. This is political blackmail aimed at Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who are part of the bipartisan Senate Gang of 10: Unless they sign on to all of the progressive tax-and-spend agenda, they won’t get their bipartisan deal. And Mr. Biden and progressives will blame them for the failure.
The real question is why some Republicans signed off on the infrastructure bill in the first place, but my guess is that they figured that improving infrastructure is popular and they wanted to get some credit for bipartisanship.
They certainly should have expected a bait-and-switch routine. But as Byron York writes:
Biden’s threat was news to Republicans, even some of the ones who had been negotiating the bipartisan proposal. On one hand, the president sang the praises of bipartisanship, leading Republicans to think he might actually work with them, and then Biden, citing a plan devised by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, reneged on the whole thing.
Republican anger followed. Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer “literally pulled the rug out from under their bipartisan negotiators,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. As for the president, McConnell said, “It was a tale of two press conferences — endorse the agreement in one breath and threaten to veto it in the next.”
Lindsay Graham should know better – and perhaps he does:
GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, who was one of the bipartisan group of 21 negotiators, was much more blunt. If Biden is going to tie the two bills together, Graham told Politico Playbook, “He can forget it! I’m not doing that. That’s extortion! I’m not going to do that. The Dems are being told you can’t get your bipartisan work product passed unless you sign on to what the left wants, and I’m not playing that game.”
Graham said most GOP senators, and even some inside the bipartisan group, did not know the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer plan. “Most Republicans could not have known that,” he told Politico. “There’s no way. You look like a f—ing idiot now. I don’t mind bipartisanship, but I’m not going to do a suicide mission.” And that was that. The bright, shining bipartisan deal instantly became much less than it seemed.
So Republicans like Graham are either remarkably gullible (possible) or playing Failure Theater (possible).
There was a time within living memory when there actually was some meaningful legislative bipartisanship in the US. It was possible back then because the parties’ positions weren’t so very far apart, and the legislation proposed tended to be less extreme and supported by a majority of the public as well.
No more.
Biden is senile, and Pelosi and Schumer are evil. Not a good situation for running the country.
I mean, I guess I’m happy that Graham isn’t just rolling over. But it kind of beggars belief that he and the rest of the GOP evidently really couldn’t concieve of such treachery on the part of Biden-Pelosi-Schumer. What planet have they been living on for the past several decades?
Obviously the Democrats have become so brazen that they really don’t care anymore. They have (they believe) complete control of the narrative. The media will dutifully demonize the GOP as being a bunch of obstructionist baddies who hate working class people or whatever.
But honestly I’m glad that this trillion dollar “infrastructure” monstrosity is dead in the water anyway. Hopefully it will stay dead.
SCOTTtheBADGER:
Senile and evil are not mutually exclusive.
Senile and evil. Can’t and won’t be able to remember who or why or where he droned someone? Dangerous, even to those close to him. If only Joe knew (used to refer to Uncle Joe)!
In a previous thread Tatiana mentioned sociopaths. Only sociopaths could participate in something so blatantly fraudulent and smile about it. As Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden are now doing. They’re even gleeful. Ha, we put one over on those rubes. Sociopaths? Yep!
And . . . do not overlook . . .
” r u b e s ” ? . . . * Y E P *.
Ace points out that this was entirely Failure Theatre until President Extra Applesauce At Lunch gave the game away.
And every anti-Trump conservative should STILL be reminded at every opportunity that THIS is what they voted for.
Mike
The more the willfully blind are bludgeoned over the head, the harder willful blindness is to sustain. At least for some but some would rather die than admit to being wrong.
It wasn’t until Hitler invaded Poland that Chamberlain’s political support collapsed. But collapse it did. Nothing like a mortal threat to concentrate the mind.
There’s a corollary to the saying that, “those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it”. The corollary is that, all too often, those who do learn from the past are still dragged into a repeat of the past by those who refuse to learn the lessons of the past.
We’re seeing that today with the left’s willful denial of the Chinese CCP’s actions. If “nothing succeeds like success” then the CCP has to be planning on another ‘accidental’ release of another ‘unprecedented’ viral pandemic.
Evil tortures you with the cattleprod. Senile Evil tries to torture you with the TV remote.
You can answer that question by determining whether the conversation about Trump is in ascendancy, or is descending. If it’s the latter, and I think it is, then this is the old, familiar tune – dejected head-wagging, “Garsh they done it to us again”, so forth, all with a well-hidden sigh of relief that the old, comfortable, halcyon times have at last returned.
I’ll believe Lindsey Graham and these Republicans when they fight for and win on conservative principles. Seems to me they are in exactly the position they want to be: the principled opposition that has no hope of stopping the Democrats and implementing their own policies. Why? Because this keeps them in the good graces of their voting base, leads to reelection, and they aren’t really conservative when it comes to policy and legislation.
Look at who was in the “gop” that was involved in the bipartisan deal.
Rino’s.
And Graham allowed blue slips in the judicial committee on judges. Hmm…
My take on Graham is a fair weather conservative.