http:\/\/tiny.cc\/i473q)<\/a><\/p>\nThe president and Senator Reid were, of course, trying to put the best face they could on bowing to November\u2019s voter repudiation of their spending policies over the prior two years. \u00a0And Mrs. Pelosi, who had been cut out from a meaningful role in the budget talks, was speaking not just for House Democrats, but for the just barely democratic Democratic left. \u00a0And yet, as the IMF report noted, last weekend\u2019s budget deal was hardly even a start.<\/p>\n
Today the president will try to get ahead of the voter-demanded, John-Boehner-led spending cut parade. \u00a0A week ago the president was ready to block any addressing of the nation\u2019s fiscal catastrophe to maintain appropriations for an abortion provider. It was as if to say all he and his party stand for any more is the termination of pregnancies. Tonight he will be Mr. Deficit Hawk.<\/p>\n
What is going on?<\/p>\n
In last week\u2019s column, I noted that pollster Kellyanne Conway, president of The Polling Company, had sent me data showing that women were among those who swung to the GOP last year, particularly married women. \u00a0They didn\u2019t like the bailouts, or the stimulus, or the healthcare overhaul. \u00a0In short, they didn\u2019t like the spending of the president and his allies in Congress. \u00a0But they also didn\u2019t like Washington\u2019s partisan rancor.<\/p>\n
Much has been made of the 2010 move of Independents from the Democrats. But from the White House\u2019s perspective, Ms. Conway\u2019s analysis is more like Karl Rove\u2019s during the Bush years. From the Democrats point of view, she is talking about base voters.<\/p>\n
The White House would surely have preferred to see the recent budget talks fail and Federal spending continue to increase. \u00a0That is what the unions and others among their leftist backers wanted. \u00a0But to square no cuts with the demands of women, they had to pin the blame on an obstructionist GOP. This desperation to win back the female vote is why the president chose to battle on Panned Parenthood ground. But it is undoubtedly also why he endorsed a budget deal in the end. \u00a0His polling surely showed that women were not buying that GOP \u201cextremism\u201d would be why budget cutting failed.<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s question now is, are we at the end of the decades long national budget game?<\/p>\n
The current rules of the game were laid down in the Reagan presidency. Beginning in the 1980s, the GOP became the party of tax rate cuts as well as lower spending. \u00a0The Democrats wanted to raise both. The compromise became that tax rates went down, but not as much as Republicans wanted. \u00a0Spending went up, but not as much as the Democrats sought.<\/p>\n
When President Bush 41 seemed to let go of the tax wheel, his 1992 defeat was assured. \u00a0When President Bush 43 seemed to let go of the spending wheel, post-2004 GOP voters moved away from him. \u00a0Last week, for the first time since President Clinton signed, after two vetoes, welfare reform legislation, a Democratic president broke from his party\u2019s ever-larger-spending agenda. Will it continue?<\/p>\n
The answer is almost certainly to some extent — but not enough to satisfy the global financial markets or the IMF. \u00a0How about American voters, particularly women?<\/p>\n
Today the president will try to keep up what is left of the old game. He will call for some cuts in spending, but not nearly as much as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has called for. \u00a0He will try to load as much of his plan\u2019s dollars as possible into higher taxes. \u00a0But high tax rates are bound to strangle an entrepreneurial nation in a competitive global economy. \u00a0So chances are the Democrats will end up folding in the tax game. \u00a0And, as many have noted, the spending game is now a matter of how much, not if.<\/p>\n
The major issue has become this: Will divided government make sufficiently big cuts in the deficits this year and next? \u00a0Or will we have to wait for a Republican Senate and a Republican White House? \u00a0Put another way, regarding the president, how clueless is he?<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s speech will give a clue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is good gauge of the cluelessness and disarray of the Democratic Party\u2019s present leadership in Congress and the White House. Over the weekend, the president and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid congratulated everyone in sight on the just-concluded budget deal. \u00a0Meanwhile, also over the weekend, former House speaker \u2013 now House minority leader \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-debt-crisis","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}