With Tax Deal, Obama Embraces Clinton's 'Third Way'

[Dulcinea]

By accepting his own reduced political standing and admitting Republican thinking into his own policy formulation, President Obama has plunged headlong into the political calculus known as triangulation.

That's what we called it back in the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton tried to save himself (and the last power the Democrats had in Washington) by posing himself against both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

All the tough talk in the president's statement Monday night was directed at Republicans, who over the weekend blocked the president's effort to extend current tax rates except on income above $250,000 per family. They even threatened to filibuster an attempt to raise rates only on incomes of $1 million or more. The GOP was ready to let taxes go up on everyone Jan. 1 (when current rates revert to higher rates from the 1990s) rather than permit a policy change unfriendly to the wealthiest.


But after the tongue lashing for the Republicans, the president proceeded to outline a deal that lacerated the Democrats. By agreeing to a two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthy — sacrificing his own long-held position — the president can be seen as embracing the centerpiece of Republican orthodoxy. By doing so, the president is putting considerable distance between himself and the convictions of progressives everywhere.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2010/12/07/131876976/with-tax-deal-obama-embraces-clinton-s-third-way

[polichick]

1. And the liberal response remains the same as it did with Clinton...

:puke:

[Deep13]

2. Clinton raised taxes.

The "cuts" are reductions from the Clinton era rates.

[ProSense]

3. This is pure spin

Republicans, Democrats and even Conservative Democrats are complaining about this deal.

There is absolutely nothing "Third Way" about this deal.

Articles like this are typical of Third Way pusher.

[DURHAM D]

4. This is not "The Third Way". It is The Wrong Way".

And if its true that Obama negotiated the deal with Republicans without consulting with Democrats than HE is just ARROGANT.

[Clio the Leo]

5. I just wish yesterday had been December the 7th...

.... so we'd have had TWO Days of Infamy. ;)

[patrice]

6. "embracing the centerpiece of Republican orthodoxy" is NOT a third way. The third way

in this dynamic is the responsibility of the people. It will be what THEY make it if they are free enough from BOTH of the sets of precursors to USE them effectively for their OWN purposes.

Something that is often left out when referring to such dialectics is that, classically, it doesn't end with whatever 3rd way that manages to manifest itself out of 2 sets of elements. The classic hypothesis is that combination and reconfiguration of elements from 2 precursor sets results in a synthesis which IS greater than the sum of its constituent parts. As a third thing that is the result of 2 predecessors, past factors inher in a 3rd way, but its gestalt, resulting from combination & reconfiguration, is relatively new. That gestalt, of the past but not contained in it as everything that has preceded it has and does, constitutes a 4th term, undefinable, of limited predictability, more of the future than of the past, a becoming, a potential present that may become another thesis which manifests yet another anti-thesis, the 2 of which yield yet another synthesis and another ? and so on and on . . .