More on that tax deal

Gene Lyons is always worth reading. Even when he's landing off-base, as he is in these two Salon columns defending the Obama-Republican tax deal: Tax cut deal: Obama bought himself precious time 12/08/2010 and Victory, compromise and hurt feelings 12/15/2010.

He concludes the second column with, "we get to have this fight all over again in 2012. You want to win it? Get to work." It doesn't seem to occur to him that the drive to get Obama to fight like a Democrat is exactly the kind of work that will have to be done, not just two years from now when the billionaires' tax subsidy is set to expire, but also a year from now when the proposed payroll tax "holiday" is set to expire.



And the result is not going to be good if Obama keeps up his same mode of negotiating with the Republicans, as spoofed by Zina Saunders in the animated cartoon The Season for Giving (In) Mother Jones 12/14/2010, in which Obama sings to the tune of "Let It Snow":

The Republicans are frightful
Though I try to be politeful
They never, never, never give an inch
So I'll always give up in a clinch.

They show no signs of stopping
That's why I keep flip flopping
They never, never, never compromise
So I cave and I know that's no surprise.

So this intra-Party fight is only one in a series to come. The alternative would be for the Democrats in Congress to just go to a meeting of CEO's a couple of times a year to get their instructions and just follow them without complaint.

Tags: barack obama, gene lyons, obama administration

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