It's a point that bears repeating every day.

Steve,

Thanks for another extremely well thought out post. Keep up the good work.

Given all of this, why the Republican Party believes it has credibility on economic policies is a mystery. After getting everything spectacularly wrong for years, we still hear McConnell, Boehner, & Co. sounding downright Cartman-like, demanding, "You will respect my authority!

Indeed. Why do we still hear them? Why do the people on the teevee keep playing these snippets from these manifestly incompetent, batshit crazy people?

This is a serious question, Steve. Why does the Beltway media still give credence to this plainly false nonsense?

Bush and the Republicans turned record surpluses into record deficits, destroying this country in the process. They lost big in the last two elections. This country is deep in the toilet and flushing fast thanks to the Republicans, and they want to pour more water on top so we go down faster.

All you lying dittoheads make me sick. And the fact that the 'reasonable' Dems are giving you a voice makes me sick, too.

I think it is worth mentioning that Summers is not the most credible person either. He pushed for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which help lead to the current banking crisis and it has been reported that he is blocking Vockler from being involved in current economic decisions. For the stimulus bill he wants tax cuts instead of money for public transit and infrastructure. I am not sure how he stands on the banking rescue plan being announced tomorrow, but unless it includes nationalization, proper price discovery or clawbacks it will be a step in the wrong direction.

For more on the lack of change in Obama's economic team, I recommend reading Yves' take on Naked Capitalism.

yet, despite the Democrats caving in on the stimulus and giving the Republicans half of it in tax cuts all the Dems can get is three Republican votes. the Republicans may lack credibility but they make up for it with balls. And the Democrats, whether in the majority or minority, consistently are spineless.

Obama is being punked by old school DC establishment Republicans and Democrats alike. Hell, he's brought them into his own cabinet.

Hope is fading fast.

in the appropriate context, I believe that is spelled:

ma aw-thor-i-tie

with the response "your an asshole Cartman"

Republicans have gotten everything wrong for decades, not years. People who vote for Republicans are more like a cult than a political party.

Voting for maximal abusiveness all the time gives them a thrill, and that is all it is about for them.

those who fail don't get to give lectures about how to succeed.

The problem isn't just that they failed in the first place. It's that they didn't learn anything from their failure and want to keep making the same mistakes.

the republican party is intellectually bankrupt.

those who fail shouldn't get to give lectures about how to succeed, but the MSM gives them hours and hours of airtime to do so anyway and always will.

There. Fixed it for ya.

Half-right, Steve, and half-wrong.

You are, objectively speaking, accurate on all analytical counts.

Except for one major issue, which is embedded in the implicit rhetorical questions you and Larry Summers ask: Why do Republicans think they can give lectures on economic policy?

And the answer is, "Because Democrats keep *LETTING* them, because Democrats keep accepting them as good-faith actors and negotiating partners, and because Democrats keep choosing capitulation and centrism as their guiding forces, for fear that Republicans will call them names and beat them in elections. Cartman is the right analogy -- as long as Democrats and the media continue to respect the GOP's authority, why the fuck should they change?"

Also, it doesn't help that the establishment media completely fucking sucks ass at analyzing and characterizing political/economic arguments.

They when is Larry Summers on my TeeVee? His ideas are largely Fail too.

Steve Benen wrote: "Given all of this, why the Republican Party believes it has credibility on economic policies is a mystery."

There is no "mystery". The Republicans don't care about "credibility". They care about getting their way.

The Republicans don't need to be "credible" for their policy proposals to dominate the discussion and the coverage on the corporate-owned media.

The job of the corporate-owned media is not to impartially report on and analyze which proposals are "credible". The job of the corporate-owned media is to propagandize the American people in the interests of its owners, America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc.

And that, of course, means promoting the policy proposals of the Republican Party, which is the wholly-owned political arm of America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc. The proposals the Republicans are pushing are, in fact, tried, tested, proven policies for enriching and empowering the rich and powerful at the expense of and to the detriment of everyone else.

Larry Summers said: "The people who presided over the last eight years ... [don't] seem to be in a strong position to lecture on history."

Of course they are in a strong position to lecture on history. As the studies recently cited on this very blog clearly show, the Republicans are in the dominant position to "lecture on history" -- because they significantly outnumber the Democratic voices on the corporate-owned, so-called "mainstream" mass media from which most Americans get most of their information.

It doesn't matter that their "lectures" consist of deliberate, reprehensible, despicable, brazen lies -- their "lectures" dominate the discussion because the corporate-owned mass media makes sure that they dominate the discussion. And their "lectures" are supported by the ongoing background of systematic, deliberate disinformation and propaganda that the corporate-owned media hammers the American people with, relentlessly, every hour of every day.

i believe' it's "authoritah".

Given all of this, why the Republican Party believes it has credibility on economic policies is a mystery.

I just want to put my two cents in to agree with some of the posters above: the real mystery is why they get so much air time.

Larry Summers lecturing Mitch McConnell on history, propriety and economics is funny, ironic and hypocritical all at the same time.

Why didn't Larry go back 10 years to his own part in the present clusterfuck?

Or, why didn't you, Steve, when posting this?

Keep up the work indeed.

Not to early to look at you have a Green candidate (or a Socialist one) in your House district in 2010, folks.

Sorry Steve, but the people who own the MSM support the RNC, so they get all the talking time. If the shoe were on the other foot, I wouldn't expect anyone form the RNC to get a word in.

Have these folks ever noticed that FDR's face is on the dime, not Hoover or Coolidge?

Summers: "The people who presided over the last eight years ... [don't] seem to be in a strong position to lecture on history."

How true, but didn't Bush just prove that massive deficits from borrow and spend simply destroy the economy? And Obama wants to follow the same course in spades. Ah, hem. IN SPADES!

At least Bush spend on human capital and getting people in high paying jobs in the military and private security outfits like Blackwater.

By the way, I'm glad it came out that George Stepanofoulus is part of the Obama strategy team. Otherwise one might take seriously an interview with Larry Summers, not realizing it was an infomercial.