Dick Morris on the Debt Limit: Game to Obama. Set and Match to the GOP.

Dick Morris sets out what he believes to be the next steps in the debt limit debate and concludes that Obama and the Democrats will win the battle having gotten an extension of the dent limit until after the 2012 election but Conservative Republicans will have not only stuck to their fiscal principles by blocking a tax raise and gaining vast cuts (cuts that may not be as large as many would have likes but would have been impossible if not for the 2010 election).

Here what Dick sent over in an email:

Here’s what will unfold in Washington:

Step One:  Reid and McConnell will craft a deal calling for larger so-called budget cuts (they’ll count the fictitious spending cuts achieved by avoiding foreign wars not now contemplated) and they will extend the debt limit until after the election.  McConnell will exact some language whereby Obama has to ask for the additional borrowing authority but it will require a two-thirds vote to deny it to him.  There will be a bi-partisan committee to craft further savings, but nobody will pay much attention to its results, certainly not Obama.

Step Two:  The Reid-McConnell compromise will pass the Senate with five or six defections by Democrats up for re-election and a dozen or two additions from non-tea party Republicans.

Step Three:  House Republicans will raise hell and refuse to pass the Senate bill.  Boehner will make a show of persuading them and then, finally, confronted by the “deadline” artificially ginned up by the president, he will permit it to pass with strong Democratic support.  A majority — or close to it — of his own party will vote no.

Outcome:  Obama will get credit for raising the debt limit.  Republican conservatives will be able to say they voted no.  Boehner will keep his credibility because he got a pure debt limit bill passed only with GOP votes before he crossed the aisle for final passage.

But the real outcome will be to have brought Obama’s job approval down from its bin Laden high of 55% to a new Gallup low of 40%.  That is ground he won’t be able to make up.  And, put through the rigors of tension and uncertainly, the economy will sink further into a double dip recession.  A recession brought on, in large part, by Obama’s crying wolf over the debt limit and creating an environment of financial and economic terror around its passage.

Republicans proved they can govern by passing their one-house debt limit increase.  Their fiscal conservative credentials are intact.  And Obama looks, once more, like a weak and easily cowed incompetent to his backers and a big spending and borrowing liberal to the rest of us.

Game to Obama.  Set and Match to the GOP.

Political novices will no doubt be concentrated on bashing Boehner and McConnell because, quite frankly, they have little idea what they’re talking about but I agree with Dick in this instance… This chess match has been won by the Republicans once this debt limit nonsense plays out over the next couple of weeks Republicans can get back to taking on the real fight (in my opinion) and that’s out of control spending and the debt & deficit problems. If I were Speaker Boehner I’d have a stand alone balanced budget amendment bill ready to pass the house on August 3rd!