Obama scored a major political triumph by getting Republicans to agree to raise back tax rates on the wealthy. Since 1978, Republicans have focused their popular appeal on the premise that cutting taxes on the wealthy – and secondarily everyone else -- will encourage growth

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John B. Judis in "The New Republic" : "Obama Wasn't Rolled. He Won!", January 3, 2012


Excerpts :

The Fiscal Cliff Deal positions Obama and the Democrats very well in future fights with a Republican Party that is becoming an embattled outpost for addled billionaires and white Southern revanchists. It may not happen during Obama’s second term, but the GOP may be on the way to marginalizing itself as a political party.

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With a new House and Senate, Obama stands a good chance of winning these battles in the months to come --  if  he continues to conduct these negotiations as political campaigns and not as backroom Washington affairs. The fiscal cliff deal took tax rates out of the discussion. What’s left are spending cuts. If Obama allows the Republicans and obnoxious groups like Fix the Debt to frame the issues, he’ll be in trouble. And he did seem to fall into this trap briefly when he proposed changing the cost of living index for Social Security. But if he reminds the public that what the Republicans and their allies want to do is cut their Medicare and Social Security, he and the Democrats should be in good shape.

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These divisions don’t necessarily augur the kind of formal split that wrecked the Whig Party in the 1850s. Nor do they suggest widespread defection of Republicans into the Democratic Party as happened during the 1930s. There is still far too much distance between, say, McConnell and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. But they do suggest that a process of erosion is under way that will weaken the Republicans’ ability to maintain a united front against Democratic initiatives. That could happen in the debates over the sequester and debt ceiling if Obama and the Democrats make the kind of public fuss that they did over fiscal cliff. 

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The New Republic
Obama Wasn't Rolled. He Won!
By John B. Judis
January 3, 2012


Obama Wasn't Rolled. He Won!


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