To talk about the default as something people were for or against was a media tactic to avoid talking about limits on gov’t.

Voting against raising the debt limit is NOT a vote in favor of default, i.e. the gov’t not paying their promised interest payments to bondholders.
Two other possibilities:
2) Cutting other gov’t spending.
3) Printing money.

What was obvious then, and is obvious in many comments above, is the PC attempt to increase, not cut, gov’t spending, by raising the debt limit.

Everybody who really wants smaller gov’t should be against raising the debt limit.

And big spending gov’t, including being supported by Reps, won that round, again.

Let’s also remember that tax cut fiscal stimulus means more win-win deals made by those who earned the money by prior win-win work. More gov’t spending is always a win-lose deal, with the taxpayers the losers, and the gov’t winners getting Other People’s Money over which they take less care.

After the dot.com bubble, tax cut deficits led to growth; after the housing bubble, gov’t spending deficits have not.
Where is the data that indicates more gov’t spending is more growth oriented than lower taxes? What little data exists, because tax cuts are so few, indicate higher growth from tax cuts.

But yes, tax cuts are easier to sell politically than gov’t spending cuts.

I assume all you progressives here are in favor of higher more aggressively enforced taxes in Greece? all in the name of paying the bondholders? and you’ll take some reductions in social spending too right? what is happening in greece now will come here…make up your mind now whether it is morally ok to force younger generations to pay the odious debts of corrupt politicians and selfish older people.

The real truth is that Obama and the Democrats want the same “concessions” as the Republicans, they just don’t want to say they want them.

One side may be striding proudly, the other shuffling ashamedly, but they are both most clearly traveling in the same direction.

An “unsustainable level of government spending” is quite relative – if one studies Keynes, deficit spending is good, not bad.

The important figure to pay attention to is the level of government spending in relation to GDP. What level of government spending are you suggesting is unsustainable?

We own the global currency reserve and can borrow money practically for free. Why not borrow more? Why not borrow a ton of money, stick it in glass jars, bury it 1,000 feet underground, and pay Americans to dig it up and keep it?

Income inequality anyone? I’ve got some charts and graphs from grad school laying around here somewhere, I’m sure…

But – let’s not give the 2010 beneficiaries the benefit of the doubt here. I think it is in the country’s best interest (not just the Republican party’s best interest) that we remove some of these politicians that think radical rhetoric is where we need to go to get anything done.

I think it is ridiculous to say that Democrats don’t want to also cut the deficit and halt the growth of national debt – not that you were.

I wish I was subscribed to some of those conservative mailing lists, I think debt ceiling debates would give me extensive entertainment on Sunday mornings

Either way, yes – the strategy is definitely the same: “Let’s hold up their main priority, red meat bill and tack on as much partisan nonsense as we can.” Both sides, all the time. Regardless of relative partisanship levels.

But why do moths commit suicide by running into candle flames?
Why do Tea Party conservatives tell us to default on our debt payments?

That’s the $10M (or however that phrase goes) question in today’s politics.

While I side with the libertarians on some of the defense policy issues (like Germany for instance – let’s get the troops out of there, I’m pretty sure that conflict is over), I cannot justify cutting off social spending programs that make up a vast majority of the federal budget.

Either way, we have a problem. I think we can all agree on that.

But, as Karl Smith put it, where were the elites?

I’ll take his argument a step further – where were the elites in 2004 election cycles when we had entered two wars on the credit card and issued tax cuts we couldn’t afford?

I have, from that time period, an average of 300 messages a day on the various conservative mailing lists. It was an absurdly common topic. Both sides of the isle work the same way. An idea is produced, circulates, is tested and propagated. THere is no difference between the tea party process and the owe process. The content is different but the strategy is the same.

The conversation on Up with Chris Hayes was pretty accurate in saying that there is no real over-arching group of elites that come down from above to tell politicians where the lines are drawn. There really was no push-back against the nonsense about defaulting and many of those congress members seemed very, very serious about moving forward with it.

While I agree with you, curtd59, that people who pound the drums might not be all that dim… there are certainly some of them that exhibit such a characteristic and demonstrate a fundamental lack of knowledge about economics. The statistically challenged and rhetorically limited people you speak of is referring to a growing minority within the Republican party.

There is a gigantic schism within the Republican party that needs to be addressed by leadership before the country can move forward – how can the same people who fervently supported the Bush administration policies (including two unpaid wars and tax cuts that could be construed as a method of quieting the general populace about said wars) now be the ones screaming about fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama administration?

The people looking to default don’t seem the be the same opportunity-minded, politically adept people that used to make up the Republican Party.

This isn’t dad’s party anymore.

There was never any intention to default by Republicans. It was simply a lever. Since default was impossible, resistance was a means of extracting compromises.

So, the people didn’t fail to listen. The did listen. It’s just that they were listening to the tactic, not the threat.

People who pound the drums aren’t all that dim. They may be statistically challenged and rhetorically limited, but they know a good opportunity when they see it.