The current majority party in the House is at the mercy of rank-and-file members who, either because they believe it themselves or because the constituents they will answer to in their next primary election do (or both), approach every issue with the assumption that President Obama, even if what he is saying or doing actually meshes with what once passed for Republican orthodoxy, is totally and completely wrong.
They have convinced themselves that these deficits are mainly the product of a spending binge that Obama and the Democratic Congress embarked on in 2009 and 2010 — and that they can only be arrested through aggressive, immediate spending cuts. Tax hikes, of course, are off the table.
You can point out — over and over again — all of the logical flaws in this reasoning, but don't assume it will change anyone's mind. That would assume that the GOP's deficit dogma is coming from a logical place. But it isn't. Instead, it's best understood as a primarily emotional phenomenon, the product of the intense resentment of and resistance to Obama that has defined the party's base (and its opinion-shaping commentators) since even before the 2008 election.
There's no reason to think that the current Wall Street meltdown, no matter how long it lasts and now matter how clearly the market expresses its disdain for austerity, will prompt Republicans to give an inch — not when they can simply claim that because something bad happened on Obama's watch, it's a direct result of his policies and that he needs to be opposed even more fiercely going forward.
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