Chris Hayes: The Republicans are waiting for Obama to pull the trigger on the social safety net

I'm going to start writing about the Debt Ceiling issue; it's smelling more and more like Cave Week 2 and we're going to have to work hard to keep the administration's hands off Social Security & Medicare. In the context of the Ryan plan, Krugman calls this "Obama's defining moment."

I doubt that they, Repubs & Dems, will try the Ryan plan now, but it wouldn't surprise me if they weakened the underpinnings of both programs as much as they can get away with. Remember this?



Sure Paul, give me a call too while you're at it. As I read that exchange, those two are new best buds and they're lining up against us.

Now comes Maddow, and a fine segment on Republican plans to crash the debt ceiling talks. After a long intro (which I trimmed off; the whole segment is here), she ask how should we understand what Republicans are up to?

She has two answers. The "kind way" is as "shameless craven unprincipled partisan hackery." (Shades of Amy Winehouse.) The "less nice way"? They are trying to "guarantee bad economic outcomes" on purpose and with full knowledge of what they're doing.

Then she asks, if the latter, why? The only answer she offers is the obvious — beating Obama in 2012. (If you're really being cynical though, you have only to look to the Shock Doctrine and the billionaires who benefit whenever it's applied.)

All this to set up Chris Hayes, who gets it almost exactly right, in my opinion. As he says, now that they (Grover Norquist's Movement Conservatives) have starved the beast and gotten everyone in a deficit panic, "the welfare state is in their sights."

A fascinating analysis until the very end. Watch:



This segment makes me very optimistic about the new Chris Hayes show that's under development. Excellent analysis by Chris, and for my money, just cynical enough — mostly.

My only addition is that it's not just the Republicans that have the welfare state in their sights, and Chris implies as much. They're need Obama to pull the trigger, since they can't do it themselves. ("Like Nixon to China", right? I wrote that over a year ago.)

Will he do it? Will Obama pull the trigger? I disagree with Hayes in his reading of Obama's goals and motives. Rewatch that Clinton–Paul Ryan exchange again. This looks like the cross-party elites when they think they're unwatched, and they've joined hands.

Obama's been signalling for a long time that he wants to damage the safety net. Cave Week 1 — a Barack Obama special, mind you — was surrendering on the Bush tax cuts, thanks to which the government has no money. Cave Week 2, I think, is being "forced" to fill that revenue hole with middle-class money and benefits, plus a few war dollars / tax loopholes for cover.

If I'm right, winning will take a lot of work. To succeed, we'll have to play chicken with Obama — by threatening the one thing he wants more than neo-Reagan cred, and that's 2012. Team Where else you gonna go? thinks you'll back down.

GP