Is the GOP Deliberately Trying to Tank the Economy?

Okay, so here's a topic outside of my recent spate of posts. And it's a question that is starting to be asked by people outside of liberal bloggers, finally. The answer is very clear: Yes. The GOP would be happy to see, and deliberately cause the economy to tank, especially if they think they can lob the blame onto President Obama's plate. Forget that all the money crap starts in the House of Representatives, and that it is controlled by Republicans. If they are successful in not raising the debt ceiling, or getting Democrats to cave to all of their demands (which will create a dire economy, but less dire than defaulting on our debts) they'll have done their job as they see it, and they'll have Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity (and its affiliates, and imitators) to spin any good that comes of it to Mitch McConnell and John Boner Boehner, and all the bad onto Obama. [Story continues below]

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"Yeah, so? That's politics!" a conservative might say as he reads this. My answer is no, it's not. We've never played political chicken with the debt limit, and Republicans haven't been shy about voting for it. The predictions of what happens if the debt limit isn't raised, go from "no good" to "rotten" to "very bad" to cataclysmic.  Possibly a world-wide depression to rival the one from the 30s.

So, what exactly is the end game here? Suppose we don't raise the debt limit, the world economy crashes, and then the Republicans are heralded as our salvation, and we elect President Bachmann or President Herman Cain or whoever. That person will have inherited a set of problems magnitudes higher than even Obama did. And they won't be able to solve them in four years (or the 2-1/2 Obama has had so far). Certainly not with the "don't increase revenue at all, and slash taxes" nonsense, magical "plan." The American people. . .most much poorer, a few even richer than now will have turned into an unruly mob that'll make the tea parties look as dainty as they sound.

My guess is that they a) don't care, or b) don't think that far ahead. I don't think they have an end game. I think they just play to win, no matter how they get there. They've constantly shown that they're fantastic at campaigning and lousy at governance. And if they're really plotting to make the economy as nasty as possible? That will prove that they're evil too.