GOP pretends past debt ceiling no votes equal current hostage-taking

One day after New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described Republican brinksmanship on the debt ceiling as "hostage-taking," President Obama used his Monday press conference to declare, "They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy." But you don't have to take their word for it that the GOP is holding the U.S. economy captive with its unprecedented refusal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. Just listen to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in August 2011 crowed that the debt ceiling is "a hostage that's worth ransoming."

Nevertheless, the kamikaze conservatives who would sink the American ship of state if their demands for draconian spending cuts are not met are pretending that Republican willingness to trigger the first-ever U.S. default is no different than past no votes of individual Democratic senators. But as the likes of Karl Rove and Byron York well know, in 2004 and 2006 Republicans had a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Put another way, Democrats not only didn't threaten to block a debt ceiling increase, they didn't have the numbers to do it.

Of course, you wouldn't know that by reading the recent screeds of Karl Rove:

"There may be no person in America with less moral authority than Mr. Obama on this issue. Six years ago he led a Democratic effort to defeat a $781 billion debt-ceiling increase."

On Saturday, Rove's reliable water-carrier Byron York echoed the same point about that 2006 debt limit hike. "Declaring themselves outraged by such spending, Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and Murray all voted against raising the debt limit. So did every other Democrat'including Sen. Barack Obama." York went on to note:

In the summer of 2011, during the last debt ceiling fight, Reid conceded his '06 vote was all about politics. "I shouldn't have done that," he told ABC's Jonathan Karl. "I'm kind of embarrassed I did. It was a political maneuver by we Democrats."

But York left out Reid's next sentence from that ABC interview:

"The Republicans were in power - there were more of them."

And that difference makes all the difference.

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