The bipartisian joy Terrible Threat of Sequestration,

Gan­dalf: Always remem­ber, Frodo, the Ring is try­ing to get back to its mas­ter. It wants to be found.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fel­low­ship of the Ring 2001

George H.W. Bush did that. He was hailed as a con­cil­ia­tor for a day, then sav­aged bru­tally by the same press until he lost the 1992 election.

Glenn Reynolds 2012

Shortly after their (deserved) vic­tory lap in an elec­tion they had no busi­ness win­ning the media began report­ing on upcom­ing “fis­cal cliff”

The press is all full of the need for a deal to be made because of the dis­as­trous con­se­quences that will come on Jan 1^st. They also urge the GOP to be “bi-​partisan” in agree­ing to such a deal.

While a large amount of the unin­formed pub­lic might be nod­ding their heads in agree­ment to any­one who pays atten­tion and has access to any media that existed last year, this might be slightly con­fus­ing. Let’s elaborate

The Deal known as the Bud­get Con­trol Act of 2011 passed the House with 269 votes out of 433 mem­bers avail­able to vote that’s 62%. On the Demo­c­rat side 49.4% voted for and 49.4% voted against (the remain­ing 1.2% didn’t vote) On the Repub­li­can side 72% voted for and voted for and 27.3% voted against. On the House side it took tough nego­ti­a­tion and no lit­tle amount of arm twist­ing to win over enough con­ser­v­a­tive mem­bers of the GOP to score the 72% that voted for it, some Tea Party types like Allen West and Renne Ellmers took a lot of heat for vot­ing for the deal while other notable Tea Party favorites like Ann Marie Buerkle of NY, Ron Paul of Texas and Michelle Bach­mann of Min­nesota defied the lead­er­ship of the speaker to get stronger cuts and were hit hard for it.

In the sen­ate the vote was 74 – 26 With less pres­sure from the GOP to get every­one on board more con­ser­v­a­tive repub­li­cans were free to vote against a deal that didn’t have the cuts they wanted. The 19 Repub­li­cans who voted against read like a Who’s Who of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment in the Sen­ate: Ses­sions & Shelby from Alabama, Rubio from Florida, Cham­b­liss from Geor­gia, Coats of Indi­ana and Grass­ley of Iowa, from Kansas Moran & Roberts, Paul from Ken­tucky, Ayotte of New Hamp­shire, Coburn & Inhofe Of Okla­homa , Toomey of Penn­syl­va­nia, Demint & Gra­ham of South Car­olina , Hatch & Lee of Utah. As the New York Times said at the time:

It is also the rea­son that many con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans refused to vote for the agree­ment, call­ing it a grossly inad­e­quate answer to a press­ing problem.

“The cur­rent deal to raise the debt ceil­ing doesn’t stop us from going over the fis­cal cliff,” Sen­a­tor Rand Paul, Repub­li­can of Ken­tucky, wrote Mon­day in an open let­ter explain­ing his oppo­si­tion. “At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 m.p.h. to going over it at 60 m.p.h..”

But in the end, objec­tions of Tea Party stal­warts not with­stand­ing a bi-​partisan bill gath­er­ing 88% of Democ­rats in the Sen­ate and 49.4 in the house (50% of those who voted) along with 59.6% of Sen­ate and 72% of House Repub­li­cans was sent to the president’s desk where it was signed.

Pres­i­dent Obama said the fol­low­ing:

“It’s an impor­tant first step to ensur­ing that as a nation we live within our means, yet it also allows us to keep mak­ing key invest­ments in things like edu­ca­tion and research that lead to new jobs and assures that we’re not cut­ting too abruptly while the economy’s still frag­ile,” Obama said in a state­ment from the White House Rose Gar­den before sign­ing the bill.

Harry Reid Said the following:

“There’s one win­ner through­out all of this and that’s the Amer­i­can people,”

And Tim Gei­th­ner had this to say:

“You’re going to see this basic under­ly­ing growth we’ve see in the United States improve over time because peo­ple will be more con­fi­dent we can live within our means,” he said. “With more con­fi­dence we can get our arms around this long term. We will have more room to do the things we need to strengthen invest­ment jobs now.”

So my ques­tion to the media is this: Harry Reid cel­e­brated this agree­ment, Tim Gei­th­ner likes it, Nancy Pelosi voted for it and The Pres­i­dent signed it. Yet now this deal is respon­si­ble for a fis­cal cliff that is appar­ently a dis­as­ter for all America.

And more­over, the MSM is lay­ing the blame for said poten­tial “dis­as­ter” squarely at the feet of the same GOP who the very same media urged to make the in 2011.

Even more amaz­ing this very same media is telling the very same GOP to make another deal, or ELSE face the consequences.

So to summarize:

Last year The Bud­get Con­trol Act of 2011 was a bi-​partisan suc­cess that Nancy Pelosi found vote­wor­thy and Harry Reid, Tim Gei­th­ner and Pres­i­dent Obama could rightly take credit for to media cheers

This Year that same deal is the cause of a fis­cal cliff and if the GOP doesn’t do some­thing to stop it they will be respon­si­ble for unless they give Pres­i­dent Obama what he wants.

Peo­ple might ask why a GOP that retained the house by a wide mar­gin should have to make a deal, I think the bet­ter ques­tion is why is a deal that a mere 16^th months ago was so wor­thy of votes and praise no longer is.

I think when the press asks GOP mem­bers to make such a deal they should remind them of bi-​partisan nature of the exist­ing law that drew their praise and ask why they are sug­gest­ing it is so hor­ri­ble now?

As Glenn Reynolds linked and Dan Mitchell said: This is an IQ test for the GOP. I hope they pass.

Update:  Let me take advan­tage of this Insta­lanche to announce the fol­low­ing: Due to a fam­ily emer­gency “Under the Fedora” will not appear this week and post­ing will be light the rest of today. My sub­scrip­tion video com­men­tary this week titled: Ralph Kiner and Seques­tra­tion will still go up this after­noon as well as the Teaser for non-​subscribers.

Also due to said emer­gency there may be a delay of up to 24 hours before new sub­scribers and tip jar hit­ters get the pass­code for the post con­tain­ing the full ver­sion of the commentary.