From Hope to Nope: The Party of No vs. Obama

It is admirable that Republicans have made no secrets as to their big goal for 2012.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the second most powerful man in Congress, said in Oct. 2010 that, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Later given the chance to back off those remarks on Fox News Sunday, McConnell said, “Well, that’s true,” though he did attempt to differentiate between political goals and stuff like fixing the economy or something.

Earlier this year, it was announced that former Bush advisor and Machiavellian political strategist Karl Rove had set a $120 million fundraising goal aimed toward defeating President Obama in 2012.

Anyone who has paid attention to politics in the past three thousand years will already know that defeating one’s rival, whether through votes or violence, is generally a main goal. One can’t fault a politician for that.

But anyone who paid attention to this summer’s debt ceiling debate can see that the Republicans in Congress are focused on little else.

That debate began when the time came to raise America’s debt ceiling, or the maximum amount of money that the government can borrow. By federal law, Congress must set this limit. The Treasury Department can’t borrow more than what Congress has allotted. Since 1917, every Congress and president has raised the debt ceiling multiple times, usually with little argument or fanfare.

If the debt ceiling is not raised by a set deadline, the United States would default on its debts—that is, the government would not be able to pay for expenses that Congress has already authorized (This is not the same thing as a “blank check” for the president to spend as much money as he wants, like some Republicans claimed).

In short, after much back-and-forth between the parties and the failure of multiple bills sponsored by both sides of the debate, Speaker of the House, John Boehner walked out of meetings with the president.

It’s not exactly confidence-inspiring when the most powerful person in the House walks away from negotiations—then stops returning the president’s calls—while in the meantime Congress is bickering over whether it’s okay for the U.S. to fail to pay its debts.

On Aug. 2, the very day the U.S. would have defaulted, Congress raised the debt ceiling.

In the days following the “agreement,” financial services agency Standard & Poor’s lowered the U.S. credit rating from the highest possible, AAA, to one lower, AA+. Lowering a credit rating doesn’t do much immediate damage to a country, but it does let the rest of the world know that perhaps the U.S. isn’t the best place to invest their money at the moment. Eventually, this could cause borrowing costs for everyone to increase.

S & P stated that “the downgrade reflects” their opinion that “the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking…have weakened” more than the company had originally thought.

That is a company telling the world that the effectiveness of American politics is weak.

That doesn’t inspire much confidence, either.

But that’s just an instance of Republicans trying to reform fiscal policy through holding the nation’s debt hostage; you might say, it doesn’t reflect an overall theme among the party.

Let’s look at a few other empirical facts about what has gone on since Republicans took hold of the House last year.

Two-hundred and sixteen of the House’s 435 members have signed a pledge to never vote to raise taxes. The pledge is written by lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, whose leader, Grover Norquist, has pledged to “de-fund” the left by “hunting down” liberal groups and “extinguishing their funding sources”.

No Democratic congressman stood up and yelled “You lie!” during any of President Bush’s speeches during his eight years in office. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted those words during a speech a mere eight months after President Obama’s inauguration.

Even as President Bush drove the country further into debt with policies and wars that many Democrats didn’t agree with, no Democrat said that their “number one goal” was to put the president out of office.

These are numbers that can be looked up by anyone, and can be found on many an unbiased website or newspaper.

Let me speak now as an indebted college student who will graduate in a few months into an economic situation less inviting than a tax hike to a Republican congressman. What is the Republican plan for 2012, other than “beat Obama”? The ambiguous goals of “cutting government spending” or “reforming entitlement programs”?

Please, Republicans, show me a concrete plan that will give me a fighting chance of finding a job or retiring at a reasonable age. Removing the president from office might be one way of reaching your goals, but until I find out what those goals are, I probably won’t get behind your plan.