The BS Cult
by digby
Stan Collender makes the important observation that some of the most deluded, fringe characters in politics today are the deficit scolds who have turned Simpson-Bowles into a religion:
B-S and some of their biggest supporters then made a huge mistake when they expressed surprise and extreme disappointment that the Obama administration didn't make the co-chairs' recommendation the basis of its fiscal 2012 budget, that is, the first one it submitted after the commission ended.
That demonstrated a level of political tone deafness that seriously hurt the credibility of what had now become a B-S cult. They were seriously suggesting that the Obama White House unilaterally support the tax increases and spending cuts included in the two co-chairs' plan even though it was virtually guaranteed that the GOP would never agree to do the same and would punish Democrats for doing so.
The B-S cult also showed its political naivete by pushing ahead and suggesting that voter support for deficit reduction was large enough to protect the president and that he would thrive politically if he just supported what the co-chairs' had recommended. The Bowles-Simpson insistence that there was a large, vocal constituency for substantial spending reductions and tax increases when even the results in their own commission, let alone the results of the past 30 years, proved just the opposite and made it easy for the White House, House, Senate, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives and just about everyone other than members of the cult to dismiss the B-S cause as nothing more than a political fringe effort.
In other words, the B-S "brand" was irreparably damaged. Instead of being commonly accepted as a sincere effort by well-meaning people to come up with a deficit reduction plan that could be supported by both political parties, had a chance of succeeding and, therefore, was something that many people wanted to be associated with, B-S became synonymous with bad politics and worse political judgment. That made it easy for members of Congress to run away from anything associated with it.
The fact that B-S supporters had become more of a political cult who drink their own Kool-Aid and believe what they're saying when few others do was put on display for all to see last week when something called Bowles-Simpson was offered as an amendment when the House debated the fiscal 2013 budget resolution.
By the time the B-S amendment was announced, it was already clear that no amendment had any chance of beating the plan put together by Paul Ryan and offering it made no sense because it was guaranteed to fail. Moving ahead was the budget equivalent of a presidential candidate deciding to run in a primary that she or he has absolutely no chance of winning. Not only are the results bad, but it raises serious questions about the quality of the decision making that led to entering the race in the first place.
In other words, B-S supporters again looked and sounded politically tone deaf and not ready for prime time.
Read the whole thing. It's a refreshing bit of clarity. It's so nice to see someone point out that the so-called moderates and centrists are deluded and incompetent, along with being wrong on the merits. If only the rest of the political establishment knew this.
Unfortunately, it would appear that we can add Nancy Pelosi to the cult of BS:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday threw her support behind the sweeping budget proposal crafted by President Obama's fiscal commission, a plan she once deemed "simply unacceptable."
The California Democrat said she only voted against a budget amendment Wednesday that was based on the recommendations of fiscal commission co-chairmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles because the package had been altered.
The budget amendment, sponsored by Reps. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) and Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), was a "caricature" of the Simpson-Bowles plan, Pelosi charged. She said she would have supported the original plan had it been offered up for a vote.
"They advertised it as Simpson-Bowles, but they changed the spending and revenue provisions in it, and so it did not receive support on either side of the aisle because it was not a good idea," Pelosi said during her weekly press briefing in the Capitol.
"I felt fully ready to vote for that [Simpson-Bowles] myself, thought it was not even a controversial thing. But it is not what that is," she added. "And swings of tens-of-billions of dollars mean something in terms of the lives of the American people."
Pressed if she would have supported Simpson-Bowles in its initial iteration, Pelosi said, "Yes, yes."
I'm told that she wasn't really referring to Simpson Bowles but rather the general concept of a "Grand Bargain." That's not exactly reassuring.
The only good news here is that if Nancy Pelosi says that Simpson-Bowles is a terrific plan, you can bet that the Republicans will double their efforts to oppose it. Hopefully, Pelosi was being more clever than we think.
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