The best thing about the deal Obama cut with Republicans to extend the Bush Tax Cuts for two years is the uncertainty it removed from the market and the fact that it will let millions of taxpayers continue to keep more of their own money.
The second best thing about the deal is the full-flavored, zesty schadenfreude from the howls of outraged anguish and betrayal coming from the nutroots over Obama’s unthinkable perfidy. The reactions were so extreme you’d think he’d just agreed to hand over part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. (Think I’m exaggerating? Look below and you’ll see that more than one very prominent liberal suggested that very analogy.)
So here’s a Whitman’s sampler of outraged reactions from the left. The problem wasn’t finding them, it was determining which ones to include. There are only so many hours in the day…
- Here’s a very unreconstructed liberal who starts out his lament in classic style: “While the corporate oligarchy tightens it’s grip over power…” Man, I guess that “corporate oligarchy” bit never goes out of fashion on the hard left.
- This Counterpunch commentator suggests that Obama is only doing the bidding of his true constituency, Wall Street, in order to fulfill his ultimate goal: privatizing Social Security. Evidently Obama is just a puppet for Steve Forbes. Who knew?
- This poster on Alternet.org agrees: Now that Obama has caved, “Wall Street executives and Congressional Republicans will demand Social Security be slashed.” Yeah, I can still remember how all those Republican House candidates were demanding that Social Security be slashed.
- Moveon.org asks Obama to stand tough, not realizing he’s already down the street in a saloon, toasting his new friends.
- Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel says that Obama is shirking his “clear and imperative historic mandate.” It’s like the 2010 general election never happened for these people.
- Some liberals are even suggesting that Obama has sunk so far he’s become that most evil and unclean of creatures: a Republican.
- More than one, in fact: “The Democrats, elected and rank-and-file, for our own good, must come to terms with the notion that a Republican is in the White House, and that Democrats are the opposition party.”
- The head Kossack himself pulls a Quarter-Godwin by comparing Obama to Neville Chamberlain. (It also offers another glimpse into that parallel reality liberals inhabit, where “Republicans were so worried that the government-run program would be so efficient, effective, and affordable that it would drive the private insurers out of business.” Yeah, Republicans are so well known for fearing that giant government programs will be too efficient.)
- Oliver Willis deploys the same meme “I see President Obama has returned from his meetings with the GOP leadership and has come back waving and bragging of the agreement that cedes the Sudentenland to the Republican party on taxes.”
- Any more liberals hopping on the Obama-as-Neville Chamberlain bandwagon? Why yes! The ever-dependable Keith Olbermann: “I will confess I won’t fight if anyone wants to draw a comparison between what you’ve done with our domestic policies of our day to what Neville Chamberlain did with the domestic policies of his.” Ah, Keith. Don’t ever change.
- Finally, over in the most fevered swamps of Democratic Underground, one poster brings up the only measured and reasonable response to the situation: Armed socialist revolution! “There are 300 million of us and only 200,000 rich people in the US. Unite with your fellow workers. Tear down the walls of their mansions and haul them off to jail.”