Ezra Klein calls this tweet from Marco Rubio “the Republican Party in one tweet.” And dear sweet God, what a logical mess it is. No one in Washington is negotiating changes to social security, Marco claims, but Obama supports these changes that no one is talking about because… Hell, I’m already lost. This makes no damned sense at all.
“Today’s Republican Party thinks the key problem America faces is out-of-control entitlement spending,” Klein explains. “But cutting entitlement spending is unpopular and the GOP’s coalition relies heavily on seniors. And so they don’t want to propose entitlement cuts. If possible, they’d even like to attack President Obama for proposing entitlement cuts. But they also want to see entitlements cut and will refuse to solve the fiscal cliff or raise the debt ceiling unless there are entitlement cuts.”
This is what Republicans think “negotiating” means — trying to trick an innocent bystander into holding a murder weapon. It’s hard to see how this is going to turn out OK.
