Mitch McConnell not taking yes for an answer (UPDATE)

The GOP was for the individual mandate before it was against it.

The GOP was for cap and trade before they were against it.

And yes, the GOP was for a deal on the debt ceiling that looked liked this, which Mitch McConnell and the GOP are now against and perfectly willing to bring upon the global economic apocalypse. After all, 2012 is an election year, and the GOP has been leading up to this moment for almost three years now:

By the end of the debt-ceiling negotiations, the Obama administration had agreed to a deal that would reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion, with $2 trillion of the total coming from spending cuts and $400 billion coming from tax increases. Taxes, in other words, would be about 17 percent of the final deal. Republicans rejected it. But as little as four months ago, it was the Republican ideal.

Mike Konczal points us to “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy,” the March 2011 report released by the Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee. The report, which tried to argue that fiscal austerity would lead to short-term growth, was as methodologically unsound, and quickly forgotten. But for our purposes, that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is the report’s golden ratio: “successful fiscal consolidations averaged 85% spending cuts and 15% revenue increases, while unsuccessful fiscal consolidations averaged 47% spending cuts and 53% revenue increases,” it concluded.

So when the GOP’s economic policy team sat down to make the strongest case they could for growth-inducing deficit reduction, they recommended a mix an 85:15 mix, not a 100:0 mix. And then, when the Obama administration agreed to an 83:17 mix, the Republican leadership walked out of the room and demanded that taxes be excluded from the deal altogether. How do you negotiate with that?

You mean, how do you negotiate with a party when their leader clearly states that his #1 goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president? Even if that means an economic collapse?

Nah, I’m sure Lucy will keep the ball down this time.

UPDATE: I have to share Strangeite’s comment, expanding further on the comparison of Mitch McConnell and Lucy Van Pelt:

Lucy is insecure and very thin-skinned. She berates the other characters mercilessly, but if anyone makes the slightest criticism of her, she flies off the handle and claims the others are not playing fair.

Lucy obviously doesn’t believe in governmental regulation, given her operation of an unlicensed psychiatric booth with no training.

Her sheer incompetence at playing outfield is never her fault, but the result of a series of escalating and absurd excuses; “The moons of Saturn got in my eyes” or “I think there were toxic substances coming from my glove, and they made me dizzy.”

And last but certainly not least, while the goal at hand will be to play a baseball game, she will constantly find ways to stop the game by creating some trivial issue. Instead of playing ball, she will stand at the pitcher’s mound and carry on a one-sided conversation with Charlie Brown over some insanely trivial matter, when everyone else just wants to play baseball.

The real reason Republicans are not happy with their Presidential candidates is because they are waiting for the real Lucy van Pelt to get into the race.