Hypocrisy and Politics

So far both the President and the Senate Majority Leader have had to admit that they previously voted against raising the debt ceiling for political reasons and they hope that the Republicans will do the responsible thing and vote for raising the debt ceiling now. In essence their strategy has been to vote against the country's best interests for short-term political gain. At the same time they trusted in the Republicans to do the right thing even if it hurt them politically. Does this remind you of any other issues?

The Democrats have been putting off hard issues on the deficit and on entitlement programs for years. They have gone so far as to block the Republicans from trying to fix these problems. President Bush proposed a partial fix for Social Security only to have it blocked. President Obama went so far as to lie about the effects if it had passed, telling seniors that they wold have lost their investments even though Bush's plan would not have touched them.

This pattern of ignoring problems for political gain has been going on at multiple levels. The states are facing a budget crisis now because they were bailed out for two years as part of the stimulus. The stimulus money is gone leaving hard choices for newly-elected Republicans.

I suspect that this is a national strategy. The Democrats are allowing the Republicans to address festering problems then insisting that the problems either do not exist of that they can be easily solved by taxing someone else (the "rich"). The Democrats are willing to cause long-term national problems for short-term gain.