Accepting Keystone XL Language Looks To Me More Like A Deal Than A "Cave"

Republicans have decided they won't consider extending the payroll tax cut for people who work for a living (as we all know, Republicans prefer tax cuts only for the rich, thank you very much) unless the Obama Administration agrees to come to a decision on whether to support the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline in two months' time rather than after the election as they had already agreed to do.

Republican Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell is on record that he "will not support any bill without the Keystone XL language as part of the agreement.” The consensus description of what it will mean for the President to accept this demand -- that is to say, not to veto a payroll tax cut extension that includes this Keystone XL language -- is that it is a "cave" or even an "embarrassing cave," presumably indicating Presidential weakness, lack of principles, selling out his environmentally literate constituency, or whatever.

The whole point of this exercise is for McConnell to get in a little symbolic hippy punching (it upsets environmentalists that we are pointlessly destroying the world and Republicans think it is fun to upset them even if to do so is ultimately suicidal because Republicans are stupid assholes) and, more to the point, this presumably better sets the scene for demagoguing the pipeline issue during the Presidential campaign which Republicans would do anyway -- and, really, one can no more restrain Republicans from their Drill Baby Drill! war dance than one can keep them from doing the Electric Slide at buffet suppers, they're dumb hicks what can you expect? Just let it happen.

And since inclusion of the language really just means that in two months' time the President will come up with some bureaucratic blather that yields a decision that defers the decision until after the election anyway, who cares?

Sure, we can point out that the jobs numbers Republicans are attributing to the project are wildly inflated, sure, we can point out that conceding the value here of public infrastructure investment creating jobs gives the lie to their endless claims to the contrary when it comes to every single infrastructure proposal Democrats make with the sole difference that Democrats don't like this one so Republicans do, sure, the oil refined via the pipeline goes on an international market and so doesn't even actually address jingoistic domestic supply worries Republicans like to crow stupidly about and which only the shift to a renewable system Republicans revile because Democrats approve it could actually address, sure sure sure sure.

So what? It doesn't matter. Republicans will demagogue the issue whatever we say or do, they will say they want the opposite of whatever Democrats figure out is the best solution to our shared energy and environmental and schlerotic macroeconomic problems whatever we say or do. None of this matters.

Republicans say this is what they want and giving it to them changes almost nothing at all, so compromising on this isn't caving on principle. This isn't a philosophical debate they are having, in case you didn't notice. In fact, it's much more like actually governing, albeit in a form articulated by the intense stupidity and belligerence of so many of the participants in the process. What giving in to the Keystone language Republicans demand in exchange for getting the extensions Democrats demand (to head off an unnecessary shock to a fragile inadequate economic recovery that would harm almost everybody and to ameliorate the hardship of so many unemployed citizens whose lives touch almost everybody, too) is kinda sorta just getting a best case outcome given the demands of the stakeholders actually at the table, however mean and dumb they may be.

I don't think any of this muddles Democratic messaging on the environmental threat of tar sands, on the stimulative effect of infrastructure investment, on the irrationality of wealth concentration, on the demand that the rich need to pay their fair share, or anything else. I don't think either side will make a single argument differently than they otherwise would or behave differently in any other way either.

Maybe Democrats could try to get another bite at the minute tax on the richest of the rich apple in exchange for agreement on the Keystone language if they want, though it's not like they will get it or it will make any difference, really, and maybe Republicans won't take yes for an answer even if the President agrees to the Keystone language (since, after all, McConnell is also on record that making Obama a one-term President is his first priority, and keeping the economy in the shitter by any means necessary is the best tool Republican tools have on hand to try to accomplish that first priority, no matter how many lives it ruins). Who knows?

The payroll tax cut extension is actually stimulative and its curtailment would likely depress the already desperately inadequate recovery -- and so getting the extension and the extension of unemployment benefits is much more real than anything presumably lost by the demands Republicans are making for getting it. Since Republicans are monolithically obstructing almost every other stimulative policy tool actually available to government, we should take what we can get on the best terms we can get. Republicans will lie and demagogue the same whatever Democrats do, trying to circumvent such mischief is a fool's errand, and pretending that a compromise on language that doesn't commit us to any outcomes anyway to be a deep betrayal of principle is to misconstrue the stakes at hand to the detriment of sense.

Obama's actual acceptance of the pipeline would be such a compromise of principle, and I do worry that will happen after his election unless activists really educate, agitate, and organize to stop it (the Administration wasn't making encouraging noises before they decided to defer the decision after all). The general sense of the Hill is that forcing a decision on the Pipeline sooner than later is actually more likely to derail the project than to realize it, but all Republicans really seem to want is the pretext for a quasi-culture war fight with environmentalists, which likely means they will have the fight whatever happens here anyway.

Accept the dumb language and get the real extensions and then keep on making the substantial case against the pipeline and just hope more, and better, Democrats win in 2012 to do something more like the right thing than the wrong thing.