Eric Cantor is pulling out of the debt-ceiling talks. But he’s not saying they should end. In fact, he’s saying they’ve been very successful thus far. “We have a blueprint to move forward to trillions of spending cuts and binding mechanisms to change the way things are done around here,” he said in a statement. Butr having agreed on spending, now the two parties need to agree on taxes. And Cantor doesn’t want to be the one to make that agreement. It’s time, he told the Wall Street Journal, for “the president to come in and talk to the speaker.”
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One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner (and, on some of the other budget issues, Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers). One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.
But the pessimistic analysis is that if you had to write a plausible scenario for how America defaults on its debt, or at least seriously spooks the market, this is how it would start…
In other words, Eric Cantor puts at least two things higher on his priority list than the credit, economy, and future of the United States of America: 1) his own popularity with the most extreme, lunatic fringe of his party; and 2) his own job. Cowardly, craven, and irresponsible are just three of many adjectives that spring to mind for this guy.
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