{"id":12646,"date":"2013-10-14T10:11:03","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T09:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12646"},"modified":"2013-10-14T10:25:43","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T09:25:43","slug":"obama-stands-firm-as-republicans-back-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12646","title":{"rendered":"Obama stands firm as Republicans back down"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;Now is the time to lance the boil of Republican extremism once and for all. Since Obama became president, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party have escalated their demands every time he\u2019s caved (when he extended the Bush tax cuts through the end of 2012, offered spending cuts and then a Super Committee and sequester to get the debt ceiling lifted in 2011, permanently extended the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000 to avoid the fiscal cliff of 2012, offered a \u201cchained CPI\u201d and Medicare cuts in 2013). This time, though, Obama didn\u2019t cave \u2014 at least, not yet. And now, with the government shuttered and the nation on the verge of defaulting on its debts, public opinion has turned sharply against the Republican Party. And the GOP\u2019s corporate and Wall Street backers are threatening to defund it.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly the Republicans are acting like the school-yard bully who terrorized the playground but finally got punched in the face. They\u2019re in shock. They\u2019re humiliated. They\u2019re trying to come up with ways of saving face. With bloodied noses, House Republicans are running home, abruptly turning negotiations over to their Senate colleagues. Their demand to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act has vanished. Now, it seems, negotiations over the federal budget deficit are about to begin once again. But keeping the government running and paying the nation\u2019s bills should never have been bargaining chits in the first place, and the President and Democrats shouldn\u2019t begin to negotiate until they\u2019re taken off the table. The question is how thoroughly President Obama has learned that extortionist demands escalate if you give in to them.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Quote from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RBReich\/posts\/679863885359544\">Facebook page of American economist Robert Reich<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Now is the time to lance the boil of Republican extremism once and for all. Since Obama became president, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party have escalated their demands every time he\u2019s caved (when he extended the Bush tax cuts through the end of 2012, offered spending cuts and then a Super [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12646"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12652,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646\/revisions\/12652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}