If it’s true that Republicans on Capitol Hill are throwing around the idea espoused by Erick Erickson to refuse to compromise on the debt ceiling in order to turn the ensuing economic depression into “Obama’s depression,” then these individuals should be tried before a court of law and thrown in jail. For this reason and many others, it’s time for Democrats at all levels of government to stop playing nice. The Republican Party has shown time and again that it is an irresponsible governing body that would rather destroy the country than concede “defeat,” as if melting the U.S.’s economy were not defeat enough.
It’s also time for reasonable citizens throughout Virginia and the U.S. to speak out against the crazy political schemes that the Republican Party hardliners are cooking up in the short and long term. Lest we forget, there was a reason “that evil” president FDR created an unheard of social welfare state in the 1930s and 40s. FDR’s “New Deal” was a direct result of the kind of society which the Republican Party is attempting to piece back together today.
This truly is not wholly an issue of partisanship anymore; it’s about keeping our country from folding into two completely opposite camps, the far-right extremists and the rest of us. The latter is not necessarily going to be merely the “leftists,” but those who see themselves as moderate or even, conservative. The irony of calls for allowing the U.S. to default is that those who fall into this camp are also some of the very same individuals who argue implicitly or explicitly about intergenerational justice (“the deficit is not fair to future generations not yet able to vote”). But what exactly do these individuals think will happen to the U.S.’s economic standing and standard of living if the U.S. defaults? Future generations will also take the brunt of the criminal actions of a hard-line ideological minority who saw collective suicide better than admitting room for compromise.
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
