Let me finish tonight with this.
At the risk of challenging the conventional wisdom, a risk I have spent much of my life taking, I see no reason to expect some “grand deal” among the President, the House Democrats and the House Republicans.
Why on God’s earth would a Republican member of Congress, one interested in protecting himself or herself politically, vote to raise taxes on those he represents? Why? Because they get to make more voters angry with them by cutting Medicare? Because they get to “means test” it?
Give me a break. So this odd Republican out there is going to “both” raise taxes “and” make his somewhat better-off voters pay more for health care?
No way.
So we really don’t have to even “get” to the Democrats, the liberals, the progressives. But just for the sake of candor here, why, again on this God’s earth, would a good Democrat want to have his or her name on a vote to either cut or “means-test” Medicare so that they get to raise taxes?
I just don’t get why people keep talking about a “deal” that no politician worried about re-election – or re-nomination – would want to make.
Watch. It’ll take a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and the truth of what I’m saying will shine through. And the “sequester” won’t seem so bad after all.
Chris Matthews