Skillful negotiating can begin with taking an utterly unrealistic opening stand and making it seem like you’re not. In advance of this year’s approaching budget battles, Mitch McConnell tried that strategy on Sunday.
Republicans are spending an awful lot of time conflating the absolute need to raise the debt ceiling with the absolute need to get the nation’s voracious spending under control.
"[W]hen a disaster comes that is not what you expect, you expect a human reaction, not a political reaction," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco in 2007.