“A Cage Match to Determine First Dibs on a Shrinking Pie”

Matt Welch, writing in Reason:

Just think–there once was a time (for more than a century, actually), when the president of the United States thought it too imperious to deliver the State of the Union via a speech to a joint session of Congress, since that would smack of telling a co-equal branch of government what to do. Now we have a president not just taking rhetorical sides in a state issue, but actively mobilizing his political organization to affect the outcome(s), even though (to my knowledge) nothing that Gov. Walker or any other belated statehouse cost-cutter is doing has a damned thing to do with federal law.
:
The president’s heavy-handed involvement, along with House Republicans’ refusal to sign off on any new bailout of the states, means that this may very well be America’s biggest and most widespread political fight in 2011. It’s a cage match to determine first dibs on a shrinking pie. A clarifying moment.

This has really become a piece of “everyone’s blogging it by now, I might as well do it too,” but a hat tip is in order to Professor Mondo.

The danger involved in cage matches deterministic of diminishing rewards, of course, is the same prospect you have when you sew two felines into a burlap bag with each other and throw it in the river. In both scenarios, whoever is longing for a more “civil tone” is apt to be disappointed. Among others, Stanley Kurtz can see this is going to become much worse before it gets any better:

We are destined for still more polarization. Neither side can pull back, because the financial crunch is going to have to be resolved one way or another. We either scale back government and the power of public employee unions, or we move toward a structurally higher tax burden and a permanently enlarged welfare state. The very nature of the American system is now at stake. The emerging populist movements on both the right and left recognize this, and so cannot turn back from further confrontation.

But, as we all know by now, being a lefty means you get to invent your own reality:

It is a stunning propaganda victory when you think about it. A political movement…where its foundation is buried into the ground, full of incendiary rage and nothing else. Do it our way, or else! Nobody fucks with the union! BusHitler!

And that same movement…way up above, where its bastions and parapets pierce the clouds, we see its leaders engaging in the classic kindergarten teacher finger-waggling against its opponents. Now now…simmer down, behave. What we really need is less fighting, more peace, and for that to happen what you all need to do is obey me, me, me!

Of course, the finger-waggling isn’t really aimed at the opponents. It isn’t really intended to lecture anybody. It’s show-boating, playing to an audience of moderates.

Could they fall for it? On this question, all depends. And the likely answer, I’m afraid…and I’m reminded of this, after viewing this clip blogger friend Buck forwarded in an offline, after receiving it from Rob…is in the affirmative.

Moderate: A person who appreciates right-wing values but consistently falls for left-wing manipulation tactics.

And this is what the cage match is really all about. The Left will continue to make their pitch to people who, otherwise, would never accept their policies in a million years — but can be duped into thinking the tone will become more civil, if and only if we head left. “Duped” is the operative word. It’s a fool’s errand, because when it’s a cage match and the pie is shrinking, a civil tone is nowhere to be found in the near future, nor is any amicable mid-point compromise. You can’t find a middle ground between these two positions.

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes.