The GOP’s Ingenious Madman Strategy - E.J Dionne (WaPo) on Truthdig.com

[Bill USA]

THis is really good......worth printing and showing around.


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_gops_ingenious_madman_strategy_20110306/


WASHINGTON — Richard Nixon espoused what he called “the madman theory.” It’s a negotiating approach that induces the other side to believe you are capable of dangerously irrational actions and leads it to back down to avoid the wreckage your rage might let loose.

House Republicans are pursuing their own madman theory in budget negotiations, with a clever twist: Speaker John Boehner is casting himself as the reasonable man fully prepared to reach a deal to avoid a government shutdown. But he also has to satisfy a band of “wild-eyed bomb-throwing freshmen,” as he characterized new House members in Friday’s Wall Street Journal by way of comparing them fondly to his younger self.

Thus are negotiators for President Obama and Senate Democrats forced to deal not only with Republican leaders in the room but also with a menacing specter outside its confines. As “responsible” public officials, Democrats are asked to make additional concessions just to keep the bomb-throwers at bay.

This is the perverse genius of what the House Republicans are up to: Nobody really thinks that anything like their $57 billion in remaining proposed budget cuts can pass. It’s unlikely that all of their own members are confident about all of the cuts they have voted for. But by taking such a large collection of programs hostage, the GOP can be quite certain to win many more fights than it would if each reduction were considered separately.

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[WingDinger]

1. I think of it differently, it is the door in the face sales technique.

They throw patently irrational and even impossible ideas out there. They use expendable assets to spout it. This idiocy is cynically meant to move the goalposts. So, when they call Obama a communist, you being not insane, assume that where theres smoke theres fire, and steer clear of him in the voting booth.

[yurbud]

2. if Obama's intentions were progressive, he could have used his base this way:

you've got to give them more or they'll replace me with someone lefter.

[The Wizard]

3. The Wisconsin factor

should serve as a hedge against the wild eyed Republican freshmen.
All that needs be done is for people across the country to not go to work one day a week. It will cut revenues by 20%. And no one will cut military spending.