Orwell's Republicans: More Uncertainty Makes You More Certain

     The latest piece of ideology from Republican La La Land-a world where presidential candidates Gingrich and Romney run against their own individual mandate and while eviscerating Fannie and Freddie, GOP darling Gingrich is the Freddie Mac extraordinaire who raised $1.6 million in lobbying fees-the GOP House has again obstructed the extension of Obama's payroll tax holiday despite the fact that most economists think this could markedly bring down GDP estimates for next year.

     Here is the delightful irony: while they claim they can't do a 2 month extension as this will somehow "introduce uncertainty" into the economy they are the ones making things uncertain.  The whole point of the 2 month extension was to reduce uncertainty as no one would have to worry about the clock running out in December and having the payroll tax cut suddenly expire.

    For economic forecasters this obviously has made things much more uncertain. Now they don't know whether it will be extended or not and are forced to make two tentative estimates-one if it is finally extended, one if it isn't.

   The idea that passing this bill would have led to uncertainty is yet another Republican Orwellian moment: the uncertainty of not knowing whether payroll taxes will rise in January makes us more certain. It's a wonder how anyone can vote Republican at all. The must be able to handle a very large heaping of dissonance, or Orwell's doublethink: two plus two must be five because we know it's really four.

    This may however explain why the Republican voters still can't settle on a candidate, with after Newt's surge, now Firedoglake's Ron Paul is on top in Iowa further muddying the water-more uncertainty...

    Meanwhile Norquist tells the GOP not to worry, letting the holiday expire is not a tax hike-after all it was passed as a temporary bill. True, though it was temporary to help with the recovery, as things are far from fully recovered yet there remains a need for it.

    Of course, Grover doesn't care if letting it expire hurts the economy. The pledge is to never raise taxes not to do whatever is necessary to help the economy.

   Yet in a sense Norquist is right-why should allowing a temporary payroll cut to expire be considered a tax hike? Technically he is correct though why did he think differently when the question was allowing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy to expire which were also temporary and were supposed to expire this year?

   More Republican doublethink.