Gotta love it. This is off-topic as far as the sequester is concerned, but spot-on for the theme of Republican rhetoric being empty and self-negating.

A company Romney visited to push his message that President Obama is anti-business — in the wake of the “you didn’t build that” comment — this particular company relied on federal loans to get started.

Thus, Romney proves Obama’s point, while making meaningless mouth-noise.

Seems not every­thing he does needs to be about cam­paign­ing or bash­ing Rom­ney.

And not everything he does is campaigning or bashing Romney. Much of his daily calendar isn’t reported, simply because it’s not of interest to most Americans. Of course, more of his time will be spent campaigning between now and November, because that’s what he has to do in order to keep his job. It’s the system that was set up long before he got the job, but it’s rather silly to suggest that he shouldn’t try to keep his job.

Pre­sum­ably spend­ing time telling peo­ple about the GOP plans to renege on the won­der­ful debt deal he crafted is not as use­ful as telling peo­ple Rom­ney maybe a poten­tial felon.

Pretty much.

Seems not every­thing he does needs to be about cam­paign­ing or bash­ing Rom­ney. He does have a day job after all. Pre­sum­ably spend­ing time telling peo­ple about the GOP plans to renege on the won­der­ful debt deal he crafted is not as use­ful as
telling peo­ple Rom­ney maybe a poten­tial felon.

Well, Obama never made that claim about Romney (though it increasingly looks true). But for the rest of it, you’re assuming the President’s “day job” has less to do with getting things done, and more to do with telling people things the press should be saying. I disagree. The press has a day job too.

For the reli­gious types, think of it in terms of sin­ning. You know
some­thing is bad and you shouldn’t be doing it, but you’re still damn
tempted like any­one else and you give in occa­sion­ally. So,start with
the premise that every politi­cian deep down loves to spend money, just
some con­sider it a big­ger sin and don’t “lapse” as often.

I think of it precisely the opposite. They know government should be funding certain things — that’s what the government is for — but they too frequently give in to the “sin” of cynical partisan campaigning instead.

Obama isn’t run­ning against John Boehner. He’s run­ning against Mitt
Rom­ney. Focus­ing on the bud­get does noth­ing to help him in that
regard,

Seems not everything he does needs to be about campaigning or bashing Romney. He does have a day job after all. Presumably spending time telling people about the GOP plans to renege on the wonderful debt deal he crafted is not as useful as telling people Romney maybe a potential felon.

What I keep com­ing back to is how elected Repub­li­cans either don’t believe their own rhetoric, or don’t under­stand it.

For the religious types, think of it in terms of sinning. You know something is bad and you shouldn’t be doing it, but you’re still damn tempted like anyone else and you give in occasionally. So,start with the premise that every politician deep down loves to spend money, just some consider it a bigger sin and don’t “lapse” as often.

What I keep coming back to is how elected Republicans either don’t believe their own rhetoric, or don’t understand it. They’ve mounted a Holy War against Government Spending — and even against Government itself — and have invented a long series of baseless arguments to rally people in support of this jihad.

Elected Republicans seem to know very well that these arguments have no substance. That’s made clear in the ease with which they cast the arguments aside when political expediency demands it.

(It’s like this: Remember when candidate Barack Obama was criticized for being “inexperienced” in government? Now candidate Willard Romney is bragging about his dearth of experience, even insisting his previous time in government had no noticeable effect on his thinking. Yeah, he’s running on his experience in business — which he refuses to talk about. And remember, Romney hasn’t been active in the business world since AOL was a major force in dialup internet.)

The danger here is that so many Americans have bought the rhetoric which elected Republicans are cynically feeding them. The whole anti-government, anti-spending, anti-everything-Obama-is-for argument is false and hollow and  simple self-serving partisan noise. Worse: as the testimony I discuss in the article reveals, this argument, and the effects it would produce, are actively destructive to our nation. 

When cynicism and partisanship are valued above patriotism and citizenship, we’re all in trouble.

It’s not that surprising. Obama isn’t running against John Boehner. He’s running against Mitt Romney. Focusing on the budget does nothing to help him in that regard, since there is no record of Romney’s federal budget policy. There are only general platitudes and running a concrete record against Romney’s general hand-waving is a loser for Obama.

As someone who actually has sympathy for this argument and is pissed that people want to cancel the defense cuts, what I find more surprising is that Obama and many Dems don’t make more hay about it and would rather campaign on painting Romney as Gordon Gekko or as a gaybasher or other nonsense. I think Obama knows that his approval rates swooned during the debt ceiling debate so even when the House GOP is clearly out of bounds, he doesn’t dare get sucked into budget debates before Nov, which the TPers may secretly be trying to make him do. Its all about rallying the liberal interest groups and villianizing Romney till Nov. Substantive budget debates are for another time.

I agree, Michael.

What is more frustrating still (for me, at least) is that the argument is so often no only absolutist, but inconsistent. I have yet to see a stated Republican position on economics that is in keeping with Republican actions on economics.

Possibly someone will want to say the same about Democrats. When Democrats are allowed to put their policies into effect, we can then judge whether that’s a fair charge.