Pres Obama: David, in pursuit of strengthening SS, I'm willing to cut SS benefits

[AZ Progressive]

116. Obama and the Republicans are playing the Good Cop / Bad Cop Game

From a blog post in 2007:

"Thursday, August 9, 2007
Democrat, Republican: Good Cop, Bad Cop
The people of this country are strongly polarized along the Democrat/Republican, Liberal/Conservative, Left/Right axis. It's puzzling, until you think that maybe it's a distraction from the real issues. Or that they are really one and the same, and only appear to be different on the surface. This is so the parties, and the public, will argue about things that don't really matter, such as whether or not to allow the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools. In the meantime, both parties voted to invade Iraq, with few asking, "should we invade Iraq at all?"

I say, the Democrats and the Republicans are playing out the role of good cop/bad cop. In case you don't know what that is... In the movies, when cops interrogate a suspect, "bad cop" barges in first and roughs up the suspect. "Good cop" rushes in and pulls "bad cop" off of the suspect, and yells at him to stop beating up the suspect. He then turns to the suspect and says, "I'm a nice guy. I'm here to help you. Just tell me what you know". The suspect, afraid of bad cop and thankful for good cop's intervention, begins to trust him and spills the beans.

Today the Republican party (better called the Neoconservative party), is doing overt things that alienate the American public. Bad cop. The people then think that the Democrats are here to save them. Good cop. The next Democrat president will proceed to do things he wouldn't otherwise get away with because our guard is down. The Democrat president wouldn't undo the authoritarian Executive Orders that Bush has executed which add frightening powers to the Presidency. Today, the Dems don't even talk about undoing those EO's anymore."

From http://rabbit-hole-journey.blogspot.com/2007/08/democrat-republican-good-cop-bad-cop.html