The New Improved Hypocrisy – The Radio Dept.
I generally find accusations of political hypocrisy to be pretty tiresome. Good for a little zing but not much more than that. Consistency is overrated, etc. But this one is so infuriating that I can’t help myself but post about it. And that’s because it’s less about hypocrisy and more a matter of oh my god, what color is the sky in your universe?
The key GOP talking point during the shutdown was that it was all Obama’s fault because he was refusing to negotiate. Just talk to us they insisted.
Now that the shutdown is over, Obama says he would love to get those negotiations going. And the Republican response:
“I think it’d be crazy for the House Republican leadership to enter into negotiations with him on immigration,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) told reporters on the eve of the GOP’s shutdown surrender. “And I’m a proponent of immigration reform. So I think what he’s done over the last two and a half weeks — he’s trying to destroy the Republican Party. And I think that anything we do right now with this president on immigration will be with that same goal in mind: which is to try to destroy the Republican Party and not to get good policies.”
Yes, the lesson they learned from all that was that Obama is singularly focused on trying to destroy the Republican Party. This is the same guy they were insistent they wanted to talk to less than a week ago. But now, they have decided, he is simply an enemy with no interest in pursuing policy. So the solution is…to refuse to even talk to him…about policy…which you yourself think is necessary (Labrador was one of the original bipartisan group pushing for immigration reform).
That’s not a coherent position; it’s a temper tantrum.
If you think I’m exaggerating, here’s another quote from Labrador: “After the way the president acted over the last two or three weeks where he would refuse to talk to the speaker of the House … they’re not going to get immigration reform. That’s done.”
The crazy thing is: you can actually start a negotiation with someone you don’t trust. What you do is, you ask for things that you want and see if you can trade them for things that the other side wants. If the end result of that bargain produces something mutually satisfactory, then everybody wins. If that person has no interest in producing a positive-sum result but is totally intransigent, then you don’t have to take the deal.
For the Party that loves the free market, they seem woefully unaware that profit-seeking parties have the capacity to enter into mutually beneficial relationships that do not require uniform agreement.
Oh, and just to be clear, immigration reform was the thing the Republicans wanted to get done in order to remove a crucial wedge that was driving away Hispanic voters. Which is to say: Obama is trying to pursue a policy that at most will be electorally neutral and which very easily could help the Republican Party. So, yeah…