Hypocrisy on High

From the Capital Gains and Games blog, a post by Stan Collender:

After making the budget deficit not just a campaign issue but the campaign issue of 2010, one of the very first legislative things the Republicans in Congress will do after the election is agree to a tax cut and extension of unemployment benefits (and god knows what else) that will...wait for it...increase the deficit. The two-year increase in the deficit because of the deal will be greater than the stimulus bill the GOP railed against during the election.

This is either one of the most exquisite ironies or extraordinary hypocrisies in the history of American politics. It ranks right up there with Lyndon Johnson campaigning against Barry Goldwater in 1964 by criticizing his plan to increase military activities in Vietnam and then, after the election, having the Pentagon do many of the things he had criticized Goldwater for suggesting.

I vote for hypocrisy. The Republicans are cynical, and smart. They are setting up Obama to fail. They've made sure that the ultra-rich get what they want, but they've also made sure that the benefit of all this new debt is so watered down that it does little to stimulate the economy, and they've made sure that the unemployed will be strung along until 2012 when they will again be without income. The voters will see that Obama's four years in office did little except stop the bleeding. He didn't cure the Great Recession. They will be bitter and unhappy, and the Republicans expect to harvest that vote for their backers, the ultra-rich. Oh, it won't be packaged as "vote to make the ultra-rich even richer". It will be packaged as "Obama's socialism ruined the country, let's get somebody with a sound sense of business back in charge". Pure hypocrisy.