In 2011-2012, I was the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 6th District. Then, as now, the Republicans were taking the whole American economy hostage to compel the Democrats to meet their demands. And so part of my job as a politician waging a campaign against a Republican foot soldier and tool like Bob Goodlatte was to tell the people of this overwhelmingly Republican district about this Republican evil.
My whole reason for running was that the Democrats were on this, as on so many issues, failing to talk about what a terrible thing the Republican Party had become. (Terrible long before Trump, who is just the same Republican wolf without the sheep’s clothing.)
And isn’t it the same problem now. The Democrats have grown stronger to the point that the Democrats are firm now that they will not give an inch to these indefensible hostage-takers. And that’s very important. But another part of the job is to make the Republicans pay a political price for this essentially criminal behavior. And that means helping the American people to see what this debt ceiling business reveals about the Republican party, so that as many Americans as possible withdraw their support from this Party that is in so many ways destroying what’s best about this country.
Here’s what I said from that candidate’s platform, after explaining that defaulting on the payments we already owe would send the national economy and the global economy into a non-trivial tailspin. Millions of Americans would suffer real consequences:
“What kind of Americans — what kind of a political Party — would hold a gun to the head of the nation, and snarl ‘Meet our demands or we’ll blow America’s head off’’?”
If someone held a gun to a child’s head and made that threat, we’d know that the gunman didn’t care about the child. Likewise here: what the Republicans are doing shows beyond any doubt they don’t care a whit about the nation or the people.
Being willing to wound or kill someone to get what they couldn’t get by following the decent norms of the American system shows that this Republican Party has the moral character of a criminal.
Not legit to try to achieve policy outcomes that one could not get because the American people had not chosen to give them that much power.
(Depending on the situation, adding the usual stuff about how it’s not about spending but about paying our bills.
(Plus, when talking to more audiences appropriate for fleshing out the picture, some history to say that this debt ceiling matter was always automatic — might quote Reagan on that’s how it should be — until the Republican Party started to change in the 1990s, and started using the debt ceiling to threaten to hurt the nation if demands were not met.)
But the emphasis, when hoping to move people who might vote for Republicans to reject this demonstrably evil thing the Republican Party had already become, was on that image of holding a gun to the head of the country, threatening to blow it off if their demands were not met.
The reality is that the Republican conduct on the debt ceiling is atrocious, and the darkness it reveals about the Republican Party is accessible for people, if the Democrats make it their business to fully expose the deep ugliness and utter lack of patriotism of the Republican Party of this era.
Lack of patriotism! That is one important way that ugliness can be sold. The Republicans are the Party of False Patriotism. What a thing to expose how the Party of “Make America Great Again” is really the Party of blatant anti-patriots, willing to wound the nation to get what they want for themselves.