Why Obama is a Transformational President and the Decline of Reaganism

     Yesterday's victory is much more monumental than many are appreciating. I do see that a lot of liberals are seeing the glass as half empty right now-Paul Krugman, Noam Schrieber, Greg Sargent doesn't sound overwhelmed.

     Krugman seems to think that the President revealed he was too eager to do a deal.

     "So, why am I feeling so despondent, and why do so many other progressives, like Noam Scheiber, feel the same? Because of the way Obama negotiated. He gave every indication of being more or less desperate to cut a deal before the year ended — even though going over the fiscal cliff was not at all a drop-dead moment, since we could have gone weeks or months without much real economic damage."

    "Now, given his evident antsiness to cut a deal in this case, how credible is his promise to hang tough over the debt ceiling, which is a much brighter red line? He may say that he absolutely, positively won’t negotiate over the ceiling — but nothing in his past behavior makes that believable."


      http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/that-bad-ceiling-feeling/

     I just disagree with this very much. I don't think that making a deal rather than waiting for the next Congress was a sign of weakness. The President was not willing to take a deal at any price. And as far as those tax cuts go-Obama went from $250,000 to $450,000 on the floor The GOP went from no tax hikes for the rich to only via closing loopholes. to $1 million as the floor to $750,000 as the floor to $450,000 and Obama is the one who comes off as compromising too much?!

     I think you have to score this win where the GOP has backed off of 30 years of Reaganite ideology as seismic. It truly has changed the ideological debate in this country. Now it's Republicans who feel they need to do something about their message. For years they had a very simple and effective message. Now they are realizing it's gone from an asset to a liability.

    “Republicans no longer win the tax issue and it hurts at the ballot box. Our polling shows that even base Republicans are wanting more from the GOP’s tax message. That’s because voters think that ‘protecting the rich’ is all they are offering. Due credit to the president on that one,” said Brock McCleary, the former polling director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, who heads the firm Harper Polling. “Getting high marks for fiscal discipline won’t happen until Republicans somehow dispatch the notion that they care only about the rich. It’s an imperative to not let that define the Republican economic message.”

    "Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who noted that most of the Bush-era tax cuts were made permanent, urged Republicans to hammer out a broader message on the economy – with taxes as a component – rather than relying on a “tax cut argument that’s grown stale.”

   “The bigger issues now are going to be debt reduction and a tax code that promotes growth,” Fleischer said. “I think the Republican Party, particularly in the House, needs to be [willing to be] aggressive on showing what a pro-economic growth tax reform package would look like.”

     Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/gop-anti-tax-policy-goes-over-the-cliff-85657_Page2.html#ixzz2Gq75n2Ha

     I think that's the key. The anti tax message is becoming stale. I think a big part of it is that they've won so much already. Taxes have come down so much since 1980 that at this point they are quite low. The low hanging fruit has been grabbed. At this point after the Great Recession and all the demands for cutbacks in social spending, people now see the rich as not paying their fair share. The anti tax argument is much easier to make when the rich pay 70% than 35%-of course we're leaving out all the loopholes that make their real tax burden about half that.

    The Right wing Obama haters have long since referred to him as someone who "hates America" and wants to be a "transformational President." They saw signs of his anti-Americanism in the most seemingly innocent places-like Michelle Obama's celebratory words after he won in 2008. Whenever the President would speak, some conservative would sniff that we were a great country long before he got here.

   While this is the product of the usual conservative delusion, it is true that Obama has sought to be transformational. He has said things that clearly show he understood the challenge he faced in 2009. The country had been in a  Rightward drift for 30 years and it would be premature to presume that his election meant the nation was now liberal. Rather Obama believed that it required transformation for the country to become liberal again-as Reagan had transformed the country back in 1980.

    His basic thought was that for a politician from a party to win election is one thing, for a party's ideology to win is something altogether different. He has intended to begin a transformation. While many liberals have sneezed at his accomplishments-ObamaCare, Frank-Dodd, the stimulus-now even the fiscal deal-while ignoring something like raising average fuel efficiency standards by 2025-they are quite impressive while listed together. Passing healthcare was something Democratic President's had wanted to do but fallen short of since FDR.

   The deal yesterday ends the conservative tax cut revolution started by Reagan. Indeed, Ive even seen liberals who criticized Obama for reportedly reading about Reagan: it's strange for liberals to employ such an obviously McCarthyite argument.

   Do they think you can pigeonhole someone by their reading choices? This is like the House of Un-American activities declaring that anyone who reads the Communist Manifesto is a Stalinist who seeks to overthrow the U.S. government and set up a Marxist dictatorship.

   P.S. I've never emjoyed listening to Rush Limgaugh as much as today!