A premonition for Boehner, the GOP leadership, and inevitably, the Republican Party...
RUSH: What's going on in the fiscal cliff argument is very simple. Barack Obama wants the Republican Party to essentially destroy itself. Of all things, when you think of the Republican Party, what do you think of in terms of what it stands for? Tax cuts for everybody. The Republican Party stands for you keeping more of what you earn. The Republican Party stands for -- well, at least it used to, but the image of the Republican Party's tax cuts. Certainly not tax increases.
What Obama is attempting, in the fiscal cliff deal, is to get John Boehner and therefore all Republicans to confess. If he can get the Republicans to raise taxes on the rich, then Obama feels he is helping the Republicans destroy their brand, destroy how it is that they're known and understood. And in the process, what are we talking about? The fiscal cliff, what's that? We're trying to save the country. What Obama wants is for the Republicans to agree that tax cuts, from Reagan forward to Bush, created the current climate.
The recession is because the rich didn't pay their fair share. In fact, the entire situation of economic inequality is because the rich haven't paid their fair share. They want the Republicans, by agreeing to raise taxes on the rich, to essentially confess that it's been tax cuts, low taxes on the rich that explain the economic calamity. Not liberalism. Not wanton federal spending. Not socialism. Not Obama. Not the Democrats. Not entitlements. Not spending. No, none of that's to blame. Those are all the fixes, you see. All the Democrat policies are how we save America from what the Republicans believe in: tax cuts for the rich.
"Tax cuts for the rich are why we have such income inequality! Tax cuts for the rich are the reason for everything that's wrong economically!" That's what Obama wants. This is politics. It's about destroying the Republican Party. You look at the Obama's modus operandi. From the time he was in the Senate in Illinois all the way forward, the way he runs is to clear the playing field. This talk about leveling the playing field?
He doesn't want any opposition, and that's what the fiscal cliff is about: Eliminating any credible opposition. So if Obama succeeds at this... Let's play it out. If Obama succeeds and ends up getting a confession from Republicans that tax cuts are the problem, tax cuts are the cause, what happens to the next Republican who campaigns on tax cuts? The guy doesn't have a prayer.
It's difficult to see otherwise when more Americans seem willing to give up more of their liberties, particularly when it's the liberties of fellow citizen's and not their own, in a self-indulgent effort to seek more perceived security. We've been warned of this so many times before, folks...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." ~ Somerset Maugham
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
"For those looking for security, be forewarned that there's nothing more insecure than a political promise." ~ Harry Browne
"The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both." ~ Christopher Hitchens
"If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us." ~ Thomas Sowell
Opposition in the face of despotism IS LIBERTY! Don't give it up so easily, Republicans.
