The Friedman Files: Case File No. 1

Thomas Friedman is widely lampooned for his tendency to take an errant comment spposedly made by a taxi driver in some far-flung foreign city Friedman happens to be visiting, and extrapolating from that comment some supposedly deep understanding of the current state of the world.

I may be starting a semi-regular series of posts modeled on The Moustache of Understanding's own modus operandi. Hence, "the Friedman Files." The only difference between the two of us is that I can vouch with certainty that the conversations related herein did, in fact, occur and - unlike The Moustache - I understand that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." In other words, while I may use some specific incident to make a larger point, I'm just some random blogger - not a Pulitzer prize winning columnist owning prime real estate over at The New York Times - and so unlike Friedman I have no problem acknowledging right up front that anything contained in these Files is just me spewing conjecture off the top of my head.

With these caveats in mind, on to File No. 1: The Case of the Low Information Bartendress.

One More Thought re: Debt Limit Negotiations

Over at Balloon Juice TimF has a post up about the debt limit negotiations and he raises an interesting point:

It looks like [the GOP] has arrived at a truly existential moment -- it has to decide who is in charge, and halfway measures won't do. Does the party serve wealthy people, who mostly want low taxes and stability, or does it serve tea party anarchists? The issue here is quite similar to the GOP dilemma on immigration in that the party utterly depends on two factions whose demands are not just misaligned but diametrically opposed. The Chamber of Commerce not only wants but in fact depends on undocumented immigrants for more jobs than most people realize, while redneck racists will do almost anything to clean the brown people out of their towns and states.

[snip]

As recently as the mid-Bush administration Republican initiatives still served the CoC at least as much as they catered to racist Bubbas. Can you imagine that now? Of course you can't. Leading edge GOP policies like Arizona's SB1070 and the Georgia law that left their unpicked fruit harvest to rot make it look an awful lot like angry, stupid Bubbas have a solid grip on the steering wheel.

Boehner and his business lobby could still rally and put armageddon back in snooze mode for a few more months. If they do it would count as one hell of an upset against a raging 'roided-up faction that has won every intra-party battle so far.

I wonder if the debt ceiling impasse might not lead the financial Powers That Be to start backing Obama and the Dems again. Despite all of the Wall Street whining about Obama once referring to them as "Fat Cats" the banksters have done very, very well under Obama's watch. The markets are up and bankster compensation is through the roof. Sure Obama and the Dems want to raise their taxes, but at least the Democratic party is still capable of acting rationally to prevent a complete financial meltdown. If the Republicans have been as thoroughly captured by their insane Teabagging base as it now appears, then the Republicans pose a much more fundamental threat to business-as-usual in this country than do the Dems -- and therefore a much more fundamental threat to the CoC and the Wall Street banksters.