Dick Morris: It's Political Suicide for the GOP to Accept a Penny Less Than $61 Billion In Cuts

I sort of feel this way, I guess? But how do you actually do that?

Anyway, here's Dick Morris & Eileen McGann.

The electorate that impelled the GOP triumph in 2010 will not tolerate a breaking of the Republican promise to cut $100 billion from the budget. They will accept, of course, the pro-rated share of the advertised total -- $61 billion over seven months -- but not anything less. It is a simple matter of keeping one's campaign promises.

...

And why are Boehner and Cantor marching off the cliff? The Republican Party will win a government shutdown. It will be the defining event of the 2011-2012 cycle. Faced with a choice between more spending and less spending, the American people will back less spending. The lessons of 1995-1996 do not apply. Clinton won that shutdown (in which I was instrumental) because the fight was about Medicare. Had the battle been merely quantitative -- as this fight would be -- the Republicans would easily have prevailed.

Hmm. Well, maybe.

I know for a fact that's not what they're doing, though. We're already hearing all the chatter that there is no difference between $61 billion and $38 billion when you compare it to a $3.73 trillion budget, which is true, but that just shows we need to cut $250 billion. Not even less!

So, maybe Morris is right; but I know that is not what these guys are doing.

Oh, as I was writing this, Allah posted about all the GOP bigs now starting to sell the wisdom of a deal. Including people with some credibility on the harder right, like Bachmann and Coburn.

So yeah, this is not what they're doing. They're not going to hold out for $61 billion. When these... guys started the process at $61 billion, we knew, as a fact, that the final number would be well less of that.

All the more reason it should have been started at $125 billion. Or more.

posted by Ace at 05:57 PM

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