Democrat strategist and ABC contributor Donna Brazile on Sunday predictably blamed the current debt ceiling impasse on Republicans and their refusal to raise taxes.
This led George Will to state what would be obvious to all media members if they weren't so in the tank for Barack Obama, namely that he and his Party have been kicking the deficit can down the road so long they're guilty of "can abuse" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Everybody knows that entitlements have to be in play as well, and if it hadn’t been for the hardball negotiations that the Republicans were doing, the President may not have come to even talking about entitlements.
DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST, ABC AND CNN CONTRIBUTOR: He put it on the table, the Republicans came into the room, got their appetizers and said, “You know what? Main course, we’ll just walk away.” Maybe tonight the President will serve dessert. It’s after six o’clock, George, I should be cooking.
GEORGE WILL: Before we have a moratorium I hope on the can metaphor, let’s look at who’s been kicking the can down the road. Democrats started kicking the can down the road when they stopped writing budgets. The President kicked the can down the road by appointing a deficit commission. Then he kicked it again down the road by ignoring the deficit commission. Then he submitted a budget in February that no one on either side of the House would support that promised to increase the deficit. That’s a lot of kicking. That’s can abuse.
Indeed it is, and if Congressional Republicans along with a GOP President had behaved this way for over two years, the media would be up in arms about it.
Congressional Democrats have not proposed a budget since Obama's fiscal 2010 one was passed in April 2009. That's 27 straight months worth of can kicking right up to this debt ceiling showdown.
It's been many decades since there's been an entire political party that has so abdicated its budget responsibility, a fact that seems lost on so-called journalists who are supposed to be exposing such hypocrisy rather than assisting its cover-up as well as its willing distortion of the truth so the blame can be diverted to the largely innocent.
This would be laughable if the nation wasn't facing another financial crisis that will make the last one look like a simple bounced check.
Sadly, this Marx Brothers movie we're watching is real, and the only ones laughing are the press as they pat themselves on the back for once again being able to convince so many people that one plus one doesn't equal two.