A New Day Dawns on a City of Blind Squirrels

We’ve proved the adage.  Even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut.  Washington DC… here’s your nut.

Check the window.  Did the sun rise in the east this morning?  The big blue marble still spinning on its axis? Via The Corner, Charles Krauthammer explains how Republicans now have the upper hand in the Nightmare on Sequester Street hysteria, thanks to Barack Obama’s wildly overshoot on doomsaying.  That doesn’t mean they can hang onto that edge, however, and Krauthammer advises Republicans to make sure that Obama has to reject the authority to adjust spending to cover priorities to show just what kind of game Obama has played:

If you want a nice strategy on what the Right should be doing now, go read Charles Krauthammer’s column.  But frankly, I don’t care, let’s talk about reality.

Nearly 18 months ago, Congress was faced with a need to cut the budget, with the president hectoring them about how much they suck.  They finally agreed long enough to pass a bill that cut SOMETHING, just not right away, and they made it distasteful enough that they figured they’d have to agree on something better.

They didn’t.

At the end of last year, when faced with a looming package of tax increases and sequester, and a bunch of other disaster scenarios, they faced the reality that not agreeing on something would be an utter disaster.  While I didn’t agree with the utter part, I wasn’t looking forward to the recriminations of a non-moving Congress and a president hectoring them about how much they suck.  So they pushed it a couple more months and let a bunch of stuff fall apart. (Like I predicted a couple times, but let’s not go there.)

So, they really didn’t agree on anything.

Finally, they set a deadline that said they’d have to agree on something in order to avert something that’s pretty common in most people’s paychecks this year: A lousy raise.  Instead of a 4% raise, they’re getting a 2% raise to put into their budgets, and now the country has to figure out how not to grow as fast.  We had a Congress that couldn’t agree on anything, and a president hectoring them because they suck.

And we now have spending cuts.  Blind squirrels, all of them.

And what the heck, it’s not going to be so bad.  We’re still in debt, that debt is still going up, Congress still can’t agree on anything, and the president is still hectoring them because they suck.

For one, the unintended consequence is good.  They never intended to actually cut the budget.  They figured they could poke each other with sticks, and then finally find a middle ground, and they didn’t.  I’m kinda’ liking this: everyone in Washington hates each other so much these days that they can’t agree to do anything, so instead they do nothing, and something good happens.

I hope they keep it up.

Pass the popcorn.

Fast update:  The popcorn’s already needed.  Reason highlights the hysteria already swinging out of the Left side of the country.