Republicans Say To Hell With What The Voters Want. Dems Rub Hands With Glee

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been wishy washy as of late in his comments on the Ryan Medicare plan thus far, but on Sunday he offered his clearest indication yet that it had his support.

"I'm personally very comfortable with the way Paul Ryan would structure it," McConnell said on NBC's Meet The Press. "But we have a Democratic president. We're going to have to negotiate with him on the terms of changing Medicare so we can save Medicare."

McConnell, along with the overwhelming majority of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, voted for the House GOP budget containing the Ryan plan last week, giving them less cover to hedge on its Medicare provisions. Pressed by host David Gregory whether the Medicare proposal would ultimately be dumped in negotiations with the White House, McConnell emphatically denied the notion.

"No," he said. "It's on the table." This despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans LOATHE the Ryan Medicare plan is causing untold troubles for the GOP in elections nationwide. Not only have they lost a sure thing in District 26 in New York to a democrat for the first time in over 40 years, they have also lost a mayorship to a democrat in a heavy Republican stronghold and a seat in the state senate in New Hampshire that hasn't elected democrat since Nixon was in office. Yet, politician after politician seems to be throwing their weight behind this unpopular plan. Tim Pawlenty has watched his numbers go into free fall since supporting the Ryan plan and seems oblivious to the fact that this stance is killing his career.

On top of all this, the GOP seems to think that not raising the debt ceiling is a good idea. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he is prepared to keep the ceiling in place "unless we do something really significant about debt and deficit." He is also using the Ryan plan as a starting point for negotiations in rasing the debt ceiling. Senator Chuck Shumer said on "Meet The Press," last Sunday that this was not going to happen. The Democrats were going to fight tooth and nail to keep Medicare a government service and not privitize it to death. Good.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican candidate for president, challenged the Obama administration's contention that not raising the debt limit would trigger a default.

The United States has until Aug. 2 to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, according to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Failing to act would invite "catastrophic" consequences, Geithner has said. Military service members would not be paid, retirement investments would drop in value, and people would face higher payments on mortgages and car loans, he said. As interests payments swamp our ability to pay it back, things like Medicare, Social Security and government pay will all go the way of the dodo. Kind of like the Republicans if they continue on this suicidal path to mutual destruction.

Posturing is always a part of congressional negotiations, but Republicans are under enormous pressure from Tea Party conservatives to curtail spending. The debt-ceiling debate presents some congressional Republicans with an unhappy choice. A vote to raise the ceiling might expose them to primary challenges in the 2012 election, while a vote against it risks a default on U.S. debt obligations that could jeopardize the fragile economic recovery.

Pawlenty, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," asserted that the consequences of failing to raise the cap might not be as dire as the White House says. "There are some serious voices challenging that very premise," he said. "And the answer is nobody really knows, because we've not been at this point before." In the end, the markets could force a compromise.

Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget director, predicted in a speech last week that the impasse may soon cause bond market fluctuations that demonstrate the real cost of inaction. "We are going to deal with the problem when we have significant external pressure to do so," said Orszag, who is now vice chairman for global banking at Citigroup

Democrats finally have a wedge issue that all but guarantees a Republican blood bath come the next election cycle. I can't wait.