Bush Playing Chicken With Detroit in Last-Gasp Effort to Demoralize the Dems

[babylonsister]

http://www.alternet.org/story/107008/bush_playing_chicken_with_detroit_in_last-gasp_effort_to_demoralize_the_dems/

Bush Playing Chicken With Detroit in Last-Gasp Effort to Demoralize the Dems

By David Sirota, AlterNet. Posted November 14, 2008.

Bush has his thumb on the Democratic Party's most divisive issue.


It wouldn't be the George W. Bush we all know if our shamed president didn't spend his remaining White House days in a final fit of polarization.

That's what Bush's moves this week are clearly about: dividing -- not uniting. The New York Times reported that during his first meeting with Barack Obama, the outgoing president suggested he might support Democrats' economic stimulus package and aid to struggling automakers if party leaders "drop their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia." While Bush later denied an overt quid pro quo, one was obviously implied.

snip//

Bush wants to replicate this Three Card Monte -- and the Colombia trade pact is his ace in the hole.

The deal would reward a right-wing Colombian regime under investigation for links to paramilitary gangs, drug cartels and anti-union brutality. Like NAFTA, it includes few labor protections, meaning it will enrich Bush's corporate donors by forcing Americans into a wage-cutting competition with low-paid foreign workers. And, most important to Bush's legacy, the pact could bust Democrats before they ever have a chance to unify.

NAFTA proved that trade is the most divisive issue inside the Democratic Party. On one side is the party's Wall Street wing that supports free trade. On the other side is its progressive wing that wants our trade policies reformed. Lately, the latter has increased its clout. As globalization became a major campaign theme in the last two elections, the watchdog group Public Citizen reports that free trade critics replaced free trade proponents in 69 House and Senate races. These new populists, along with Democrats' more senior progressive incumbents, comprise a powerful new voting bloc promising to reject deals like the Colombia agreement and protect labor and human rights.

Therefore, if Bush successfully uses the economic emergency to hustle a faction of Wall Street Democrats into supporting the deal, he will have potentially engineered a 1994 redux: Democratic infighting, a demoralized progressive base, and these newly elected fair-trade Democrats humiliated -- and thus electorally endangered -- by their own party standard-bearers.

Certainly, with the president betting the economy on the Colombia deal, this is a difficult, high-stakes situation for Obama. But amid all the conflicting opinions he's hearing, he has the sound advice of country music's great political sage Kenny Rogers, who counsels that gambling greatness means knowing "when to walk away."

[azurnoir]

1. Wait it out

there are 2 months and 6 days left for Bush and Co. Bush will do nothing to help the American at large and any surface appearance of such has hidden consequences that will do more harm than good.

[Ganja Ninja]

4. Given Bush's record of failure I'd prefer he did nothing.

Everything he touches turns to shit anyway. Better to let Obama deal with the problem. Don't give Bush another dime. He'll only waste it.

[aquart]

2. God forbid that POS put his country first.

May the evil he's done come back to him, from every place it has gone, from every one it has harmed.

[Possumpoint]

3. Works To My Advantage

if they wait him out. I oppose any more bailouts, especially to the US auto makers. Recessions are a natural occurrence in a capitalistic economy. They are useful in that they weed out the rot and week corporations. Once they are gone the economy can rebuild on a sound basis.

[nebenaube]

5. All they need to do to completely render Bush irrelevant is...

prevent the publication of the Federal Register for one month.

[barbtries]

6. i really hate

that motherfucking murderous moronic dick. and his sidekick dick. :grr: