Our political Quote of the Day #2 comes from Andrew Sullivan on (guarded) reports about what is a possible debt ceiling limit deal:
The good news for the economy: there will be no further debt ceiling moment until after the next election. It’s not done till it’s done, of course. And the magic moment will be when Boehner tries to sell this to his caucus. But this is a good sign that we will postpone jumping off the cliff for a while.
Notice the “for a while.”
Because as Matt Yglesia’s notes, we are now in a new era: a new era in which politicos see that “hostage-taking politics” works. This time it’s the Tea Party movement against a Democratic President. Is it outside the realm of possibility that seeing such hard-ball tactics work might inspire Democrats to use it against a future Republican administration?
Once the bar is lowered, it’s often hard to get it back up to where it was before..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.