Wherein Huckleberry Graham tells the president to "man up"
by digby
I guess he told him:
"In February or March you have to raise the debt ceiling. And I can tell you this, there is a hardening on the Republican side. We're not going to raise the debt ceiling. We're not going to let Obama borrow any more money or any American Congress borrow any more money until we fix this country from becoming Greece. And that requires significant entitlement reform to save Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy. Social Security is going bankrupt in about 20, 25 years. Medicare is going bankrupt in 15 or 20 years. [...]
"Yes, we will play that game, Mr. President, because it's not a game. The game you're playing is small ball. You're talking about raising rates on the top 2% that would run the government for 11 days. You just got re-elected. How about doing something big that's not liberal? How about doing something big that really is bipartisan? Every big idea he has is a liberal idea that drowns us in debt. How about manning up here, Mr. President and use your mandate to bring this country together to stop us from becoming Greece."
In case you were wondering, yes Graham is running for re-election and has often been considered something of a squish. So he's going to be very, very hardcore over the next two years. Whether anyone believes it is another story. I've always found him to be somewhat lethal and reptilian myself, so I can only imagine how unpleasant it's going to get, particularly since the Villagers all consider him the personification of the reasonable conservative and I see no reason to think they'll change their minds just because he turns into a rabid partisan.
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