I’m reading all sorts of articles that claim the GOP has royally screwed itself thanks to its shutting down the government. (And those who are trying to spread the blame around can just stop. You’re fooling no one except yourselves. This was a GOP action from soup to nuts.)
The question is, are they really as dead in the water as pundits are claiming? Are they going to lose upcoming elections? Seats in the House? Me, I’m thinking not, because people have such short memories nowadays that I’m concerned by the time elections roll around, they will have forgotten all the crap the GOP pulled and be on to the next thing, while the Democrats will be unable to take advantage of GOP incompetence.
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It’s not just people’s short memories. What pollsters tend to overlook is it really doesn’t matter what the country thinks of a particular Congressman or Senator. All that matters is what the constituents think. If Congress is dysfunctional, then so are the majority of voters.
Say what you will about the GOP, but I give them credit for playing the long game. Over the past 20-30 years, they have steered the national conversation to focus largely on the talking points of their choosing. I don’t think they’re going to be fading away anytime soon.
It also doesn’t help that both parties have been gerrymanding their districts so they’re full of people from their party. As a result, competitions tend to be less Republican vs. Democrat and more Republican vs. Republican or Democrat vs. Democrat.
What I wonder is whether the Tea Party Republicans will try to oust any Republicans who didn’t brag about shutting down the government or who voted to avoid defaulting. While I don’t buy the whole “we have a divided government, so the two sides can’t work together” argument, many Republicans see any sort of compromise as a fatal flaw and proof that someone who would (shudder) work with Democrats is not a *real* Republican. Look at all the flak Chris Christie took when he thanked Obama for helping after Hurricane Sandy.
The only thing that can revive the memories of the past few weeks come election time are well placed (and financed) media blitzes. People tend to follow the ads if they cannot choose (or remember) for themselves. Our only saving grace, unfortunately, will be help from the media.
Speaking as an outsider (up in Canada), not even close. Yes there’s hatred en masse of an unprecedented level of the GOP, it’s still over a year away to the midterm elections. Hëll, Bush Sr. went from a 90% approval rating to losing his re-election bid to Clinton in about that time.
All this does mean is that the GOP is going to probably lose a few more battles for a few months, but nothing as dramatic as the debt ceiling.
Perhaps, but Tea Party types like Ted Cruz will continue to remind people of their blunt actions with a religious fervor that’s frightening. They can’t seem to communicate in any civilized manner unless it involves big sticks. You have to wonder how many of the GOP regret ever siding with the Tea Party.
The problem with Republicans allying with the Tea Party is that in many ways, they hitched their wagon to an angry mob. The Tea Party provides lots of passion and support — but the second a Republican disagrees with them, they’ll turn on that Republican with as much passion as they gave to them. That’s why so many Republicans were afraid to correct the most insane of ideas (Obama’s isn’t American, state secession is an option, the Affordable Care Act has Death Panels), and why the Repubs who voted to reopen the gov’t and extend the debt ceiling will get lots of flack for that. Heck, Mitch McConnell said his first priority was to make Obama a one-term president, and the Tea Party endorsed his Republican challenger as “a true conservative.”
The government was shut down?
😛
James, to your comments about Christie, I suspect those actions will only add to a huge re-election victory as governor, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they cost him the GOP presidential nomination. Aside from the fact that a bullying fat guy tends to put some people off
People will continue to vote Republican for the same reason they will continue to vote Democrat. Too many voters vote based on their ideological biases and who vote the party line, based on what who party tells them to vote for. There are, of course, those who harbor the capacity to actually be offended when a politician of their own party does something sufficiently egregious, and who will change parties or vote for someone of a different party, but what percentage of voters falls into the aforementioned group, and what percentage falls into the latter one, well, that’s a question.
Luigi – I’ll agree with you up to a point. I consider myself a moderate. In 2000 I thought McCain was the best choice, but he didn’t get the nomination. By 2008, I felt he’d become too much of a sour old codger to be a good choice. I know many people from both sides, but I am seeing more and more is lifelong Republicans switching sides because they don’t like the way the Tea Party minority has hijacked their party, while the mainstream Democrats are seen as more and more moderate by those who understand the term. Hëll, I spoke to one guy in 2011, who cast his first vote for Nixon and who always voted the straight Rep ticket, said never again just because of Rick Santorum. I do not hear similar comments from my friends on the left.
Peter – As far as voters having short memories, I think if this had happened six months ago, it may in fact have been forgotten before the elections. But I think the Dems are highly motivated to ride their momentum from the last elections, and I think the serious 2014 campaigning will begin as early as January, and the Dem campaign ads really don’t need to say more than “Candidate (R) voted to shut down your government, costing this country X number of dollars and Y jobs. Vote for (D).”
I believe that if the Dems do retake the House in 2014 it will be the beginning of the end for what we think of as the Republican party.
If it hadn’t been for Palin, i might have voted McCain in ’08 – or if McCain had been ten years younger, even with the Palin factor – which would mark the first time i ever voted for a Republican.
Apropos of nothing much, but that reminds me:
Many years ago, when my Dad was a Senior Warden in our church, one of his fellow vestry members, a retired Marine colonel, asked him if he’d ever voted for anyone for President but Democrats.
Dad said “Well, no. One time I didn’t like the Democrat.”
Colonel Woodside said, “Oh? hich Republican did you voet for?”
Dad said “I didn’t – I voted for Gus Hall.”
OOpsie – the link above is to a subsection – the full article is here.
Speaking of McCain, I could’ve seen myself voting for him on a couple of occasions, because I saw him as a principled, honest, no-bûllšhìŧ person, but on both occasions, something prevented me from doing so. In 2000, had it come down to him vs. Hilary Clinton, I might’ve voted for McCain. But McCain didn’t get his party’s nomination, and instead it went to George W., the most egregiously unqualified candidate for the presidency in my lifetime.
By 2008, the principled McCain had given way to the Typical Politician McCain. He made it clear he would not pull out of Iraq, made dumb songs about bombing Iran, showed an extremely profound level of incompetence in picking Palin as his running mate, and in general, whether as a result of age or doing whatever he and the GOP needed to get elected, made it clear that he was not the McCain of 2000.
I seriously considered voting for Ron Paul that year, because (aside from his being anti-evolution and pro-life) he is consistent in his voting record with regard to small, limited government. But I was so concerned at possibly helping McCain and Palin get elected, I voted for Obama, who I thought was at least the better choice between McCain and Obama.
I’m now leaning toward voting for Chris Christie for governor. It would be the first time, I think, I ever voted for a Republican, especially for such a high office.
Ditto on the gerrymandering comment. The Dems actually “won” the House vote in 2012, but because of how districts were manage, the GOP didn’t lose ground. For the House, districting battles are where it’s all about.
It’s a bit different for Senate races and for the White House. That’s the bind both parties are in — the GOP has managed to lock themselves in for the House (election by district), while the Dems are far more winnable, by and large, on a state-wide basis (Senate and Presidency).
Not to belittle any particular election (they’re all important), but the next biggie is not 2018, but 2020, since it’s the decennial elections on the state level that determine how districting will be done. That’s why the GOP wins in 2010 had such a tremendous effect.
The main thing that the “Congress is broken” movement might drive is fueling drives toward more neutral districting movements within states.
For the House, districting battles are where it’s all about.
Which is why the GOP will not be punished in the House over the shut down. They’ve gamed the system to all but ensure that they’ll maintain the majority there for the foreseeable future.
Not to mention, far too many people seem to think that the shut down was every-other-rep-but-their-owns fault, which means the majority of these asshats (in both parties) will remain in office.
Big business was pìššëd øff by the shutdown and are already starting to finance moderate republican contenders in gerrymandered districts and I wouldn’t be surprised if they started backing democrats who are opposing Tea Party candidates.
Shutting down the govt. was, is and always has been a losing strategy for the GOP and I don’t think it’d work for any party.
Another factor to consider is that although people have short memories, folk like Cruz are threatening to pull this nonsense yet again in Jan/Feb. If they keep reminding the electorate how utterly unfit they are to govern, it might actually stick come next November.
Like all tantrum-prone children, they are completely unaware/uncaring of what their antics cost their parents – it’s all about THEM – they want what they want and they want it RIGHT NOW.
Republican districts are likely to stay Republican until the next redistricting– and more likely until the Democrats do a generation’s worth of spadework to take back a lot of state legislatures. What we may see, though, I hope, is the re-emergence of moderate Republicans as a force. The Tea Party, the religious right, and the neocon descendants of the Birchers have had their shot at running things and have failed. It’s time for the Eisenhower Republicans to break cover and take over.
I concur with the comments above on the effects of gerrymandering. The Republicans were smart enough to seize control of lots of state legislatures in 2010 in anticipation of the 2010 census redistricting, both of congressional districts *and* of state districts. (the Dems did so in some states, but not as many.) Now, there are lots of districts where a GOP win is almost a sure thing, so the incumbents don’t have to court the wider political spectrum looking for the general election. Instead, they have to worry about the primary election…and being out-flanked on the right by a new Tea Party darling. Since turnouts for primaries are traditionally low, a small but fanatic group can more easily sway the results. I’m beginning to think that the only long term hope for change in the House is for demographic shifts to overwhelm the 2010 gerrymanders in key locales in time for the 2020 redistricting. On the other side, there are a bunch of states where Repubs are pushing to allocate Electoral College votes on a district-by-district basis to allow gerrymandering to affect the presidential election as well.
David Brin recently gave an interesting solution to dealing with this – if you find yourself in a district gerrymandered to guarantee a win for a given party, register as a member of that party. That way, at least you’ll have a voice in the primary, and might be able to head off the party’s loonier candidates.
I like Brin’s idea. The alternative is to press for open primaries. Those have their own game-the-system risks, but they do have potential to counter some of the zaniness.
Remember, our federal system was not designed around party politics. That’s a system that was imposed in not too long after the Constitution was adopted, to be sure, but it’s not an intrinsic part of the way things have to work, and mechanisms legally designed around partisanship are add-ons, not core code.
The partisan in me would love to think “yep, they’ve doomed themselves.” The realist isn’t so sure.
I suspect it’ll mostly depend on what the GOP does. If we have lots of the remaining “moderates” (i.e. sane Republicans) taken out in primaries by Tea Party candidates, then the House could well flip … but unless that happens in a massive way, I think the GOP will lose a few seats but stay viable.
It would be really nice to have both parties be majority-rational, though. We haven’t had that in far too long.
I will agree that the GOP forced the shutdown.
I also agree it will count for little.
The reason is not because of short memories but because of geography.
Sabado’s Crystal Ball (hardly a right-wing organization) repeatedly has made the point that, because of the Republican slaughter in 2010, more at the state than at the federal levels, the house districts pretty much are gerrymandered for the Republicans.
It will take more than a government shutdown a year out to affect that, especially given that Obamacare will constitute an effective massive tax increase for millions.
I predict that, when the matter is presented away from the I Love Wall Street and Washington national media, most of the bad press simply will disappear.
Indeed, if they play them right, I almost would prefer to have the Republican cards.
Stop whining, Peter: The House districts were gerrymandered for the Democrats in the past, and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
You’re going to lose.
Sorry, guys, I don’t buy it.
As a guy who probably would be classes a tea party republican, I don’t see where the GOP had any choice – they put their money where their mouth is, literally.
I mean, what choice did they have? We have a Democratically controlled Senate that basically says (like the spoiled child ya’ll like the characterize the House as) “We don’t like you, and we won’t play ball, Na-na, Na-na, Na-na!” I mean, have they even voted on any spending bills? Of course not! If they did, they might have to have an adult conversation about the budget. Instead, they play the ‘ACA’ card, even though the issues are so much bigger.
And then, what happens when the government gets shut down? ‘Let’s make it as painful as possible!’ Shut down the WWII Memorial, even if it costs more to close it than leave it open. If it won’t visibly effect folks, like it would if you closed down half the government, then just leave it open.
Threaten to cut off Social Security, even if it is self funded and has plenty of money coming in. That will cause seniors and the disabled to panic.
Threaten that the US will not pay its debts if it can’t borrow more money, even if there is more than enough money to do so coming in, especially if the government is already shut down.
The last thing the folks in the beltway want is for folks to realize how easily we could survive without them!
This reads like a compilation of right wing chain emails…
And, so I get the response I was expecting – No thought, no debate, just “Right Wing” == bad.
Hey folks, the US ain’t had a budget for the last four (or MORE) years, and the democrats like that just fine. They don’t have any real limits on their power that way. If they don’t like a law, they just decide not to enforce it. If there isn’t a law to do what they want, they just create an executive order for it. The House has done its job, it has passed (many!) spending bills. The Senate hasn’t done theirs. If there are any tantrums being thrown, it is own the blue side of the aisle!
The Democratically-controlled Senate passed a budget in March (see news reports for March 23). The GOP-controlled house declined to go to conference over it despite repeated requests since then.
As for the “ACA Card,” that was a *GOP* talking point over the budget/shutdown from Day 1.
Thank you, Dave, I had completely missed that symbolic vote by the Senate last spring. I can also see why there was no conference – the two versions evidently had nothing in common to conference about.
Again, both sides basically are saying “If you don’t give me EVERYTHING I WANT then I don’t want to play with you!!!” It is just that only the Republicans are halfway reasonable to not let it go too far.
After all, what compromises did the Democrats make to get the government back to ‘work’?
Where was there room for compromise? What were the Republicans offering up?
Compromise is meeting halfway, not “give me at least some of what I want in return for nothing.”
Exactly! What did the Democrats offer up? The Republicans were there every day offering this, that or the other, and what was the response? We don’t negotiate! Give us everything, or we close the government down!
Sorry, explain to me again how voting to pay the debts that Congress has already authorized somehow entitles someone to ask for some quid pro quo?
The GOP’s attempt to shut down the ACA has failed legislatively, it’s failed judicially, and it’s failed in a presidential election. Why does that mean that the Democrats must, for some reason, negotiate or compromise with blackmailers?
Because Congress is independent of the President and independent of the courts; and because the Obama penalty become a tax is an unapportioned direct tax, and that’s unconstitutional too.
A congressman true to his oath of office has an obligation not to vote for unconstitutional conduct. What others choose to do is not his business.
Well, I think the Republicans all knew up front that proceeding as they did would meet absolute resistance from the Democrats, who (a) needed to cover their own behinds from what eventually was offered by creating the “extortion” issue, and (b) seriously believed that, if the government closed and the Republicans could be blamed for it, Republicans would suffer more than Democrats next year.
In other words, who’s responsible is a chicken-or-egg question with no clear answer. Republicans didn’t get good national coverage from this, and at least in the short term, they suffered more in the polls than the Democrats; but, Ted Cruz got an eight-minute standing ovation when he returned to Texas, and they didn’t give eight-minute standing ovations down there for Michael Jackson!
The Democrats believe that this effort won’t play in Peoria, but it looks like it will. I admit that what Republicans did won’t get them any seats in New York City; but, I doubt they were going to pick up any seats there in any event.
The Tea-Party crowd is smart enough to know that.
John Stosssel pulled a clever sleight of hand last night. He took a placard onto the street showing a “family” budget with c. $24,000 in income, c. $35,000 in expenditures, and a line of “red” debt amounting to almost $11,000. Everyone he showed it to excoriated the family for not having their financial act together and said it needed to get its finances in order.
Stossel then turned the placard over, showed his subjects a similar chart but several magnitudes larger, and admitted that all he had done was to chop off the zeros of the federal budget!
The interviewees were in shock!
This, of course, was totally characteristic of the entire coverage on networks like CNN. Anderson Cooper actually got into a personal argument with Congressman Labrador, then tried to cover his behind by saying, “You don’t get soft-ball questions on CNN — this isn’t Fox News!”
Meanwhile, to give us the “essential” government service of a health-care system one cannot even access, Obama shut down such “unnecessary” functions as the federal mine inspectors (so, if you work in a coal mine, the roof could fall in on you from an unsafe condition for want of anyone there to police the violation).
Of course, CNN ignored this, as did almost everyone else (the insurance mag I had to research for my boss excepted — I guess the miners had a policy).
This reminds me of the time during the debate over the income tax in Connecticut when I and several others went to the legislature to call upon it to cut the budget instead. “We can’t do that!” we were told by all the demodonkeys in charge. “The cupboard is bare; we’d have to cut the fire department!”
Do I hear our chief parliamentary whørë, Nancy Pelosi, sounding off here?
Of course the current shutdown (affecting only 15 per cent of the government) had nothing to do with proper governmental functions and everything to do with making people as miserable as possible, then blaming it all on the Republicans.
Herman Goering would have played his cards exactly the same way. And, as long as the news fools covering this deliberately pretend to be stupid, we pretty much can’t complain about what we got.
But, Republicans knew they would reap that harvest from the likes of Anderson Cooper up front — they hardly can complain that they didn’t get what they asked for. The question is whether Anderson Cooper will have much effect once the elections become local and the major player will be the town newspaper.
Those outlets will have little choice but to mention that, once again, the demodonkeys put a gun to their head and brayed to the wind, “Give me more drugs [by raising the debt limit], or I’ll blow my head off, and it will be YOUR FAULT!”
Hee haw, hee haw, hee haw!!!
I was going to note that the ACA ongoing funding was required by law, not as an option — but then you decided to call people whørëš and invoke Nazis and I realized it wasn’t worth it.
ALL the funding of the government is required by law. There is no such thing as funding not required by law. But, what the CONSTITUTION requires is that the interest on the bonds be paid first, that direct taxes be apportioned, that revenue measures originate in the House of Representatives so that taxation is linked to representation, and that the taxing power not be used to impose slavery as a condition of law.
As of this writing, 300,000 people just lost their health insurance in the state of Florida and will have to buy more expensive plans (or pay the unapportioned, direct “penalty” tax). That way, the government can suck their blood to pay for all of the politicized “diseases” in the ACA.
In the past, I’ve accused the Obama Administration of working overtime to make ņìggërš of all the doctors (who eventually will have to cough up their cotton balls for free); but, obviously, that wasn’t enough for the President. Now it’s clear he intends to make ņìggërš of everyone else.
The irony of that is inescapable (but then I’ve been played for a ņìggër before). Ðìçk Cheney was on Hannity tonight and finally got it right: The extremists aren’t in the Tea Party; they’re in the White House.
I have to say, I’m impressed that everyone is being fairly straight forward and non-inflammatory in their responses…except for Crim, of course, who’s being a dìçk, but that’s expected.
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What are you trying to tell us, Peter? That the insurance mag was a convoluted, racist, right-wing plot?
There was NOTHING about the shutdown not designed by the White House for any other reason than to piss people off. Indeed, I’m away from TV for most of the week, and I didn’t even notice that anything was missing! The claim that we were going to default was totally bogus (the President is required by the Constitution to pay the interest on the bonds, even if he cannot pay anything else). And the rest is just the same old hee-haw. It WAS Nancy Pelosi, not me, who seriously claimed “the cupboard is bare.”
Peter, you’re not stupid enough to take that seriously (I’ll go further: JERRY’S not stupid enough to take that seriously).
The fact is that the emperor is naked: He got away with it (for now) because no one in the establishment media bothered to cover the actual story. I didn’t make it up when I said they’d furloughed the mine inspectors. By what standard do we call their services “unnecessary” while a health-care plan no one is party to at all (yet) has to be fully manned?
And then, after spending $300 million on the web site, no one even can get in!
Peter, ANYONE reading this post could do better than that. What did it take for YOU to set up this blog? So that even wombat brains like [name your favorite reactionary here] could sign up?
The Republicans raised two issues: Defunding Obamacare (and all their lesser variants), and not going further into debt. What is the point of shutting [15 per cent of] the government and giving the President a free shot to “close the fire department” if it’s not for some objective such as NOT wrecking our health-care system, NOT digging the hole deeper, or NOT imposing taxation without representation on our grandchildren?
Those issues, however, are what CNN ignored. Instead, when the veterans tore down the barricades to pile them against the White House fence, what CNN focused its coverage on was the ONE person with a Confederate flag.
“It’s Tea Party RACISM which is the issue here,” they tell us, NOT the crass manipulation of the “crisis” by the White House which motivated tearing down the barriers in the first place.
And, they’re one of the better networks.
Sixteen trillion, seventeen trillion, eighteen trillion, nineteen trillion…
Do have your daughter let me know when she wants me to stop counting.
Nice to see that the blog nutter still seems to have his bizarre obsession with me firmly intact after all this time. I swear Robert almost makes me miss Mike.
Almost.
Some people just like to run with the bulls, Jerry, and if we can keep far enough in front, we won’t slip in the šhìŧ!
I think the GOP is in somewhat dire waters here.
We watched in 2011 and 2012 as the GOP, the Tea Party, and various conservatives in the general public denied reality and worked harder than ever at further constructing an unreality bubble for themselves. The turned to joke “news” websites like Breitbart and News Busters to read made up “news” stories and then turned on Fox News to hear the channel’s talking heads do their usual shtick of referencing the fake news websites by saying that “people are saying” or that “there have been reports” before embellishing with their own special bûllšhìŧ. When even they couldn’t lie about the actual numbers being reported via their usual method of mangling the the numbers so that they could pretend they said what they didn’t. they just went out and invented their own numbers. UnSkewed Polls became huge in conservative circle because it could give them “the real numbers” that didn’t say what every single other poll out there was saying.
We watched as conservatives, Republicans, and Tea Party members nestled in and wrapped themselves up in their security blankets woven with lies. We watched as a parade of misfit clowns that we were informed by the news from the unreality bubble represented the positions that the real America supported duked it out for the Republican nomination. We watched as an out of touch millionaire and his even more out of touch wife blundered through a presidential campaign. We watched as the unskewed “real” numbers and facts reported a Romney landslide win with 325 electoral votes.
And then we watched the bubble burst by around midnight or so on election day as the “real” numbers and polls collapsed like a house of cards in the wind. We watched classic meltdowns by the people who informed their followers that they had the real numbers, polls, and inside tracks on the matter. Oh, and we watched as the narrative switched from a win with 325 electoral votes being a landslide to claiming that a win with 332 electoral votes was a narrow/slim victory.
I thought things were changing in the landscape after that. Morris, Rove, and others were seemingly kicked to the curb. UnSkewed Polls was left looking like a joke and Dean Chambers was left ranting to an empty room about how he was right all along if only it hadn’t been all about the massive voter fraud. You could even see the stunned reactions in the general population where the diehards on the Right suddenly woke up and realized that they’ve had hucksters selling them clunkers while convincing them that they were top of the line Ferraris. You knew that the Right and the Left wasn’t going to agree about everything with regards to the path forward, but you at least started to feel like maybe the disagreements would be based on both sides getting their starting point information from a point a little closer to reality.
That was my hope. I was apparently wrong. It’s been less than a year, and we’re seeing the Republican party happily marching off of a cliff. On the national level, we’re seeing an idiot like Ted Cruz elevated in status by the lunatic fringe. We’re seeing the beginnings of the exact same thing we saw last year as we’re once again seeing real outcomes, real results, real polls, and real news blown off by the Right as “weighted to the Left” while declarations of having “the real numbers” or “the real facts” are escaping their lips yet again.
Or we get to hear a lot about how there was an election in 2010 where the Tea Party sent a shot across the bow and made a statement about how things were going to go their way in D.C. or how they were sent there to put a stop to Obama. We’re told about how the “silent majority” represented by the Tea Party was finally making its will felt and flexing its muscle. I suppose that basing an argument on the fact that Republicans too the House on a wave of Tea Party paranoia, fear, and lies five years ago is better than going off of completely made up data created by delusional clowns and con artists, but it’s still laughably flawed as an argument in 2013 for two reasons.
(1) With all of the fear mongering, lies, misinformation, and alternate reality “facts” floated throughout the 2010 election year, Republicans still only managed to take the House and not the Senate. That means that the Republicans won a victory that still made them a minority in Washington. If you’re not the majority power player in Washington, pretending that you are is only going to start to backfire on you.
(2) That was, as noted above, five years ago. Not only was it five years ago, but we’ve had an election since then and that “silent majority” that Cruz and the Tea Party are crowing about didn’t seem to be much of majority in that election. After two years of blatant obstruction by the republicans in power, that “silent majority” reelected Obama to the Presidency. That “silent majority” moved the Senate seats from 51/47 in the D’s favor to 53/45 in the D’s favor. That “silent majority” moved the House seats for the Democrats from 190 seats to 201 seats. That “silent majority” won the Democrats 7 of the 11 races for Governor in 2012.
And we’re seeing the fallout in various other ways now. Well, the “we’re” here being anyone not deciding to rebuild and inhabit the collapsed bubble world.
The paper that endorsed Ted Cruz withdrew its endorsement of him over the actions he’s engaged in. Here in Virginia, The two Tea Party darlings in out upcoming election are experiencing indifference by the voters at large. To be fair, so is the Democrat’s candidate for Governor, but he’s not seeing old reliable standbys withholding support. The Richmond Time’s-Dispatch has been a conservative stronghold of a newspaper for decades. The endorsed Bob McDonnell, Romney, and Allen in the last few elections. They’ve been friendly to the Tea Party darlings to the point of bending over backwards to ignore their faults.
The Times-Dispatch not only refused to endorse anyone for Governor this year, they endorsed the Democrat for Lt. Governor over the delusion liar that is the Tea Party/conservative fringe darling candidate, and they ripped Ken Cuccinelli and the party for rigging the nomination process to favor Cuccinelli over the more sane choices and for the Republican gerrymandering that contributed to giving us Terry f’n McAuliffe as our best option against Cuccinelli.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/our-opinion/our-choice-for-governor-in-none-of-the-above/article_6a2c5e41-20f3-561a-a25d-52eedf4741f3.html
I agree that the voters have historically bad memories and short memories. I also know that one year in political terms can be a lifetime. But I think that the damage is done. Even worse, I think that the dysfunctional Republican/Tea Party fringe is so delusional that they’re going to carry on the way they are well into the 2014 election year and remind everyone just what they are and why they need to go.
And if the Democrats are smart, and that can occasionally be a big if, they’ll remind the voters with the Republican’s own words. There is video and audio of Republicans, specifically Tea Party Republicans more so than the others, as far back as the 2010 election run-ups promising supporters that they would shut the government down if Obama didn’t do it their way and being met with cheers by ignorant Tea Party crowds. There’s video of Republicans championing a government shutdown. There is video of Republicans jubilantly celebrating the idea of a government shutdown. There is video of Republicans and Republican supporters talking about a shutdown as if it’s a good thing. It should be fairly easy to put together ads showing that the party that promised a shutdown gave us a shutdown and then tried to lie about ever wanting a shutdown and being the party that brought it upon us.
We’re only a year out and the Republicans are repeating the mistakes of 2011 and 2012. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 2014 give the Democrats back control of the House. At the very least, they should be able to continue the trend from 2012 and chip away the Republican lead enough to put an end to the ability to obstruct anything and everything on a whim. After that, if they regain enough control or all of it to start moving legislation again, it’s anybody’s game in 2016 and 2018.
Ok, after that long diatribe by Jerry, I have to ask a simple question, and, believe it or not, I am asking it honestly – “Why would anyone vote for a democratic candidate?”
No, really! I mean, as a fiscally conservative sort of guy, an engineer who knows a bit about science, as well as a BS in Psychology, so I know a bit about human nature, I don’t understand it.
Now, here is what I think from what other folks have said:
1. So I can get more. A lot of folks get a lot from the government, and selfishly think that if they vote for a Democrat, they will get more. Whether it is welfare, food stamps, unemployment, social security or government contracts, they feel that a Democrat run government gives out more goodies.
2. To take care of others. A few folks, most of whom I have found to be fiscal intellectually challenged, feel that the Democrats will take care of the ‘needy’ better. Who the ‘needy’ are, what help they really need, and how this is to be paid for, and other logical considerations are not applicable.
Are there other reasons out there?
3. Unlike Republicans who merely have a reputation of being fiscally responsible, recent history shows that Democrats are *actually* fiscally responsible. Say what you will about Dems and their “tax-and-spend” policies, it’s a hëll of a lot more responsible that the “don’t-tax-but-spend-even-more” practices of the GOP.
4. On a related point, Democrats seem to embrace empirical truth and science. Holding anti-intellectual views and engaging in science denialism are shibboleths to be considered a Republican in good standing.
5. The sheer amount of bad-faith/dishonest arguments and hypocrisy coming from the GOP side is gobsmacking. I mean, I expect some amount of bûllšhìŧ from all politicians, but in the last few years, its seems that the GOP is actively trying to corner the market.
Frankly, I often find myself asking “Why would anyone vote for a Republican candidate?”
Thanks Sasha,
Ok, point #3 seems to be “Well, our guys are bad, but not as bad as the other guys!” Actually, the funny thing is that based on this point, you should support the Tea Party, as they have actually been putting their money where their mouth is, requiring REAL cuts to spending.
#4 – Actually, this appears to be a truism to both sides of the aisle. Global warming, economics, water standards and other made up science is the norm for anyone inside the beltway (or in Sacramento!)
#5 – Our guys are more honest in their arguments…
Actually, all of your points are basically the same – our guys are bad, but I feel that the other guys are worse. Why do you WANT to vote for them? What are they FOR that you approve of?
Thanks,
Charlie
1) The only people claiming that a vote for Democrats is a vote for “stuff” is Republicans. And even then they do it simply to demonize poverty, without any consideration as to the actual value of that “stuff” and what it contributes to the greater social good.
(Yes, we can all point to some video on the Internet where a Black Woman – and it is always a Black person, and usually a Woman – thanks the government for “stuff”. Just like we can point to some video on the Internet where some clue rich person – always White, always Male – opines that if poor people would just get a job they could be a millionaire like he was, before the Government Bailout made him a trillionaire. Shoe me a serious political group with a platform that says “We vote Democrat because we want stuff”.)
2) If you are going to deny out of hand the value of a social safety net, then yes, there is no reason to vote for a Democrat. But the Libertarian answer of buying a lot of ammo and shooting anyone who breathes your air simply isn’t an alternative. The Republican “solution” of throwing ones hands in the air and invoking the Free Market like a magical talisman was tried in the 19th century, and it failed. The Tragedy of the Commons doesn’t go away just because we label some plots “Private Property”. A Dust Bowl will take down every Farmer just as a Falsely Marketed Housing Bubble will take down all stocks.
So with equal honesty, what will a Republican candidate *do*? Not demonizing the other guy for screwing up, what will they actually do to make the world a better place than how they found it? Because “I got mine” really only helps the 1%.
Thank you David for another non-response.
Your equating ‘stuff’ with some racial stereotype reflects your own prejudices more than mine. There are many more people that are looking for more handouts, whether it is free health care, subsidized housing, tuition ‘assistance’ or many other government freebies. And yes, I have had many tell me that this is exactly why they vote Democrat.
And, a safety net is fine, but what is rapidly evolving is more a general reliance and requirement for some form of government assistance. And, many of us see this as not a good thing. Governmental entities have as their first priority extending their own existence and growth, and doing any ‘mission’ as secondary.
So, what do the Republicans see as their mission? To reduce this bloated monster any way they can. But, the bloated monster fights back. Any cuts IMMEDIATELY get moved to the most noticeable and painful place possible. Would anyone notice if you cut out the two levels of middle managers whose jobs are too be sure that all paperwork is properly classified and filed in a warehouse? Probably not. So, instead, lets cut the people in the field first so that everyone will know how important our jobs are!
“So, what do the Republicans see as their mission? To reduce this bloated monster any way they can.”
The day before W. took office in 2001, there was a budget *surplus* and a plan that could *eliminate* the debt by 2010. The new administration immediately declared that a surplus was “un-American”, and the country had no right to have one. The administration then proceeded to piss the surplus away with tax cuts, then start two bûllšhìŧ unfunded wars that we are having to pay for now, a large part of that “bloated monster” you mentioned.
You want to eliminate the debt? Fine. But the solution is not going to come from the radical right who created the problem in the first place. And I am *not* saying that it will only happen with a Dem.-controlled congress, but as long as the loonies in the Tea Party are taking seats away from moderate and mainstream conservative Republicans, that side isn’t going to provide any workable answers either.
Hi Rev,
Ok, so W did some bad things, and somehow you seem to feel he was a part of the radical right. What you don’t realize is that the Tea Party arose as a reaction to both the Democrats AND THE REPUBLICANS because both have become spendthrift with the People’s money. It has just become the accepted conventional wisdom that government spending MUST increase, that the government MUST become more and in greater detail involved in each individual’s lives, and that anyone who would disagree with this must be destroyed! There needs to be MORE Tea Party Republicans, not less, so that there are more people driven by principle, and not by practicalities!
Reasons to vote for Democratic candidates:
1) You are in favor of marriage equality, and do not want it left up to the individual states to disriminate.
2) Though you may or may not find it personally abhorrent, you believe in a woman’s right to choose.
3) You believe in comprehensive sex-education and availability of contraceptives in schools as a deterrent to teen pregnancy.
4) You believe that voter ID laws are designed, not to eliminate the non-existent threat of in-person voter fraud, but to disenfranchise voters of limited economic means, especially minorities.
5) You believe that religion does not belong in science classes.
6) You understand that trickle-down economics does not work, has never worked, and will never work.
7) You comprehend that a truly unregulated free-market economy would allow a toxic chemical plant to dump their waste anyplace they want, including your own home, as long as they can save or even make a few bucks doing so.
I’ll constrain myself to the Reverend’s seven points:
(1) Homosexuals cannot marry because the form of the contract doesn’t allow it — you can’t marry your boyfriend, and I can’t marry my sister. Those are known as the Levitical degrees. The Reverend should know them well (they’re in the Bible). Notions of “equality” — skewed or otherwise — have nothing to do with it.
(2) Whatever right a woman has to hire a mover, she has no right to hire an assasin. It is Jewish orthodoxy to claim that the fetus has no legal personhood (and the Reverend says he does not want religion in the schools).
(3) I no more want teen pregnancy in the schools than the Reverend does. But, there’s nothing in the Constitution that makes any of this a federal responsibility, and Brown v. Board clearly does not apply.
(4) I’ve run the elections here, and I can say with certainty that voter ID laws do not exist to disenfranchise anyone. If the Reverend, himself, appeared at my precinct and demanded to vote, I could not deny him, ID or no ID. All that happens is that his vote goes in a separate ballot box and will be reviewed before it’s counted to insure he really is a voter living in the precinct. The claim here is false, a red herring, and a non-issue.
(5) I’ve taught biology classes. I’ve argued against creationism and can do so again any time one wants me to. It’s not science and doesn’t belong in science classes; but, the claim otherwise has nothing to do with Republicanism (witness me). Another false distinction.
(6) The Reverend does not explain what “worked” means. This claim is too vague even to be contested.
(7) Another false claim. Free markets rest on property rights and a contractually based society. In such a society, no one has a right to trespass on your property and pour toxic substances on your lawn.
Charlie, if the Tea Party wasn’t needed to fix the budget in 2000, then why is it needed now?
The TP is the political version of Frankenstein’s monster shouting “Fire bad”.
You want to eliminate some spending? Fine. My first suggestion is to stop all subsidies to corporations that earn billions of dollars in profits but pay no taxes. My second suggestion is to stop buying military hardware that the military *doesn’t want and can’t use* (see the tank factory in Ohio that made the news last year). Here’s a really radical idea: make it law that except in times when Congress has issued a formal Declaration of War (and it has to be a real enemy, no more of this open-ended War on Terror bûllšhìŧ), military spending can never exceed educational spending.
Thank You Rev!
Actually, believe it or not, I agree with just about everything you said. (I have a minor disagreement on item 1, but that is a religious thing with me, and I am tolerant of the idea if a MAJORITY should consider it to be a good idea…)
On Item #7, it is a good idea, but then you give it to people who don’t know science, and so begin to classify ANYTHING as bad, and so regulate our industries to other countries. My favorite pet peeve is the “If X is bad in quantity Y, then ANY amount of X is bad, and must be eliminated!” We have that going on with chromium 6 right now. A researcher has found a way to test for its presence to really low concentrations, so the bozos in Sacramento want to require its concentration in drinking water to be undetectable again. Problem? We are talking parts per BILLION and it naturally occurs in drinking water at that concentration throughout the state. One estimate is that, to meet this standard, water rates will need to increase by close to 50%. The bozos (I find this easier to spell than bureaucrat) don’t care. Ch6 bad, so just fix it!
As to how to reduce the debt, those are some good starts. My fantasy is to get someone in that will take the entire tax code (where do you think all those subsidies reside?) and throw it out, and replace it with ten pages of standard English. The billions in savings to the economy would be most appreciated. Let the tax accountants and lawyers work on balancing the rest of the budget!
(Sorry for the delayed response.)
Actually, point #3 is of the two sides, only one has demonstrated any sense of fiscal responsibility. The problem with the Tea Party is that they demands cuts for the sake of cuts (even if those cuts are unnecessary, cruel, and/or counterproductive) which are ideologically rather than empirically determined, and they reflexively refuse to consider revenue under virtually any circumstance whatsoever. In short, they aren’t serious.
Point #4 would be a truism to both sides only if anything on par with creationism, global warming denialism, supply-side economics, birtherism, death panels, Benghazi, etc. were as widespread, common, mainstream, and career-making/breaking for Dems as they currently are for Repubs. There simply isn’t any equivalence.
Point #5 is evident from IMHO an objective standard. YMMV apparently.
My points aren’t all the same but they do carry a theme that of the two parties, only one is reality-based and actually interested in governing — a truth bluntly stated by longtime political watchers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-27/opinions/35453898_1_republican-party-party-moves-democratic-party)
Why would I want to vote for a Democrat rather than a Republican? Because, IMHO, current Democrat philosophy reflects Ben Franklin’s sentiment that “We must all hang together, or we will all hang separately”, which I agree with; modern Republicanism pretty much boils down to “I’m on board; pull up the lifeline”, which I don’t.
Sasha, I’ll increase your taxes all you want! Indeed, lets put a tax on all Democrats to pay for all this stuff they want.
What Reed and Obama really want (always in the name of “fairness”) is for people like me to pay for benefits to people like you. This is not “taxation” in the true sense. It is stealing the wealth of one man so that government (Reed and Obama) can give it to another — kind of like those Southern states of old which made all the black people pick the cotton for little more than room and board.
And, lest anyone complain that demodonkeys aren’t the only offenders here, I’m well aware that Marco Rubio refuses to stand against the sugar subsidy.
What goes around comes around.
So tell me, Robert — and please be specific in description — what exactly are people who are “people like me”?
Robert, please explain — and be specific — who exactly are people that are “people like me”?
Sasha, you’ll have to be more specific first. You represent that the Tea Party wants to make cuts that are “cruel,” “unnecessary,” “counterproductive,” and not “empirically deermined.”
All of tese categories are laced with value judgments obviously yours (but I would assume are shared by others).
There are three principles involved here:
1) All government (good or bad) costs. There’s no such thing as a free lunch; someone pays for it somewhere.
2) I would be the first to admit that the police power of a state does not manifest itself solely in some blue meanie wielding a club or a gun; but, such general police powers belong to the states as a matter of constitutional law, and one of the fundamental checks against their abuse lies in the power of those disaffected to move.
Now, if I were to ask Michael Bloomberg (hardly a right-wing “crazy”) where he’d rather do business — the Big Apple or Laramie, Wyoming? — we all know what his answer would be; but, even Bloomberg recently admitted (on CNN) that, were NYC to start preying on New Yorkers like France is preying on Parisians, the victims well might look toward Wyoming, which for SUFFICIENT political reason could supplant New York City.
This reveals the fundamental weakness of all forms of neo-fascism. New York well may have a “law-enforcement” problem that requires some increased expenditure of “welfare” funds; but, when the fascists get in and get too greedy, the golden goose flies somewhere else, leaving New York with an even bigger problem.
That, of course, provides the “empirical” evidence that the system is out of whack, because if it doesn’t get rebalanced at that point, the Big Apple goes bankrupt.
3) Moving such general police powers to the national level completely end-runs such natural checks, by imposing increasing fraud, waste, and inefficiencies (not to mention socialist cost-shifting) on everyone, regardless of where they’re located. The productive have no where to run.
Within that context, what then is a “cruel” or “unnecessary” cut; and, what experiment do you propose to conduct to provide us with “empirical” rather than “ideological” information?
I realize that not everyone who supports Obamacare (or any similar federal program) does so purely for financial advantage; however, MOST of those who support such efforts DO expect so to benefit, and the ultimate proof of that can be seen in HOW the supporters try to distribute the tax burden:
“Don’t tax you; don’t tax me; tax the man behind the tree!”
Thus, what we get is PREDATORY government sans constitutional restraint — two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. Inevitably, that destroys democracy because the sheep have no interest in conforming to the vote.
(Indeed, the proper response is to arm the sheep, shoot the wolves, THEN have the vote — but that’s another thread).
In any event, to answer your specific question, who else considers Tea Party cuts AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL to be “cruel” per whatever standad you secretly are keeping in your back pocket? Because, since all of these are not constitutionally authorized, none of them qualify as “unnecessary” or “counterproductive.”
“Ok, after that long diatribe by Jerry”
You call it a diatribe? Fine, tell me where I’m wrong then.
We saw exactly what I outlined above throughout 2011 and 2012. We watched the collapse and the meltdowns election night. And we’ve seen Cruz and others blow off polls recently in exactly the same bûllšhìŧ way that was being done by the Right in 2011 and 2012.
Their march into the delusional breach hurt the GOP in 2012. They lost a presidential election and they lost ground that they gained in 2010. Yet now we see them plunging yet again into the delusional breach and the bubble world they created for themselves.
It’s not a diatribe to point out facts that you dislike. And the fact is that the Republican party is doing everything it can to allow the fringe in its party to hurt the party as a whole.
Yes, they lost ground, and that is a very scary thing. It is looking more and more like we are going the route of Rome, with the populous voting itself ever more bread and circuses, and ever more politicians willing to try and give it to them.
Again, what are you voting for? What do you want?
I’m not sure answering you properly is worth the time that it takes of that I have right now. Your contributions in the thread so far have primarily consisted of two things.
1) You said something false that was easily disprovable. Once some showed that it was false, you blew off the idea that it was false, threw out talking points to pretend that what you said was still basically correct, and then continued on your merry way.
2) You post in talking points, demand answers, get answers, blow of the answers as non-answers in talking point filled posts and then demand answers again.
You don’t come across as wanting answers. You come across as looking for an excuse to ignore answers and throw around talking points and inanities like following Rome. Maybe later when I have the free-time to waste, but addressing your demands right now isn’t worth the limited time I have today.
Jerry,
Sorry my using your own tactics against you hurts you so much. My question was “Why vote for a Democrat” and the answers I get from you is “The Republicans hurt themselves in the last election.” This is a reason to not vote for a Republican, but it is no reason to vote FOR a
Democrat. I didn’t say you were wrong or right, I was asking a totally different question.
Again, as Mr Morden might ask “What do you want?”
“Jerry,
Sorry my using your own tactics against you hurts you so much.”
You made statements with regards to the events around the shutdown that were incorrect and backed them with nothing beyond babbling talking points. I pointed out where you’re position was incorrect and backed it with a link showing that you’re statements were incorrect. If you think that these two things are the same, it’s small wonder that you’ve been so confused as to how the Republicans and Democrats treated discussions and compromises differently.
“My question was “Why vote for a Democrat” and the answers I get from you is “The Republicans hurt themselves in the last election.” This is a reason to not vote for a Republican, but it is no reason to vote FOR a Democrat.”
My answer has been nothing of the kind. My answer has been that it’s not worth bothering to answer your question based on some your statements here. In my five prior posts here, only one has been devoted to your demands that people explain why they might vote for a Democrat. That would be this one.
http://www.peterdavid.net/2013/10/20/so-where-does-the-gop-stand-now/comment-page-1/#comment-856010
And then, at the very end of this post, I reiterated that point.
http://www.peterdavid.net/2013/10/20/so-where-does-the-gop-stand-now/comment-page-1/#comment-856044
Of the five prior posts I’ve made, two had nothing to do with you whatsoever, one didn’t address your question at all, one flat said answering you with regards to the question was a waste of time, and one spent only the small portion of the post reiterating that answering your question was wasted time. Yet somehow that translates into your mind as you asking why someone would vote for a Democrat and me answering you that the Republicans hurt themselves.
Again, if this is how you comprehend what you’re looking at, it’s small wonder that you’ve been so confused as to how the Republicans and Democrats treated discussions and compromises differently.
As an aside, Peter, can I just say that it’s great to see you posting a political topic here again. It’s been a long time, and I take it as a sure sign that your recovery continues to go well.
I’ll second that, reverend:
Welcome back, Peter!
Charlie E: “I mean, what choice did they have? We have a Democratically controlled Senate that basically says (like the spoiled child ya’ll like the characterize the House as) “We don’t like you, and we won’t play ball, Na-na, Na-na, Na-na!” I mean, have they even voted on any spending bills? Of course not! If they did, they might have to have an adult conversation about the budget. Instead, they play the ‘ACA’ card, even though the issues are so much bigger.”
The Senate voted on a bill. They then requested conferees multiple times over months to iron out the differences. The Republicans refused to appoint anyone and refused to talk about the issue. Then, after the midnight deadline, they ran to an empty room, posed for the cameras and declared that they, the reasonable ones, were waiting for the Democrats to send conferees and have a discussion but that those gosh darn stubborn libs just refused to even talk about it like they always do. I’m sorry, but the Republican liars that have been saying that Obama and the Democrats have refused to negotiate or make concessions to Republican ideas or desires are, well, liars who are playing to the suckers in their voter base. Even when it came to writing the ACA, you had Republicans telling Democrats that they wanted to work together to make the ACA bill work while getting caught on camera telling crowds that they were going to do everything they could to kill it. You had Republicans crying in front of the cameras that the Democrats refused to negotiate on anything or allow any Republican input in the writing of the ACA. And then you saw some of those same Republicans turning around and running on the safety measures and/or positives that they inserted into the ACA in the next election.
It’s one thing to buy the line when it’s a fresh lie. It’s another thing altogether to buy it when the lie is yet another proven lie in the six years of lying about the Democrats refusing to budge or compromise on anything or to even talk and negotiate on matters.
Also, the “‘ACA’ card” was played by the Republicans. They’re the ones who promised their fringe base that they would shut the government down if they didn’t get their way over the matter of the ACA and they’re the ones who in fact did it. They’re the ones who have wasted time and money by voting in the House 46 times to repeal the ACA, swearing that they would repeal it, swearing that they’ll stop it by any means necessary, and then calling it a “compromise” by suggesting that Obama could have his ACA, just without any funding whatsoever to continue to implement it and even then only after a one to two year delay in any further implementation.
That’s not compromise. That would be like me telling you that you’re allowed to have a car, but you’re not allowed to have the keys for a year or two and you’re never allowed to have any gas or a battery for the thing. Oh, and as soon as I can lie my way into having the support to do it, I’m taking the car away from you anyhow.
It was the Republicans who put a gun to the head of the country and informed Obama and the Senate Dems that it was going to be their way or no way or else they would pull the trigger. Obama was correct in this case to refuse to negotiate after it got to that point. You don’t negotiate with hostage takers. Give them what they want and you’ve handed them a new, shiny tool to use that they now know will work for them. Where does it end after that? What’s next? They declare that we’ll go over the cliff if the minority power in Washington doesn’t get its way on immigration reform? They declare that we’ll plunge into shutdowns and defaults if the minority power in Washington doesn’t get its way with social security reform? They’ll take the country over the edge with them again if they don’t get their way on tax cuts?
You don’t do what the Republicans did. If they actually believed the lie that they’re telling everyone about being the “silent majority” in the country and about how the Tea Party represents the mainstream “silent majority” these days and not the fringe that they’ve shown themselves to be, they would have faith in the fact that in one year they have an election coming that would give them the ability to do things in the proper and correct way. They would know that they have one year to wait for a House and Senate majority power.
They know that they aren’t and that they don’t though. They know that the 2012 elections, both the state and federal level outcomes, showed that 2010 wasn’t the start of a trend. They know that they’ve shot themselves in the foot over the last three years. That’s why they’ve gone to the extreme and taken to acting like desperate idiots.
And, frankly, anybody who supported the act of hostage taking by the Republicans should be held accountable just as the Republicans who did it should be held accountable. That’s not how our system works. Support that kind of thing and you support the death of our political system.
And if you support something like the stunt they pulled, you help to make it work, and you help turn it into just another tool? It will be used by the other side down the road. You can take that prediction to the bank. And if you supported that kind of thing when the Republicans did it, you’ll have no right whatsoever to voice complaints when the other side does anything even remotely like it.
Charlie E: “The last thing the folks in the beltway want is for folks to realize how easily we could survive without them!”
You’re shortsighted and you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re playing the pick and choose game. A number of things we need to work do work because they’re on the state level and we have state governments. A number of other things work on the federal level and stop working in a shutdown. Some of those things are things we need. If that were not the case, my state’s Republican Governor would not have been having emergency meetings to prepare for the possibility of a shutdown, the continuation of a prolonged shutdown, and the possibility of default by the feds.
Charlie E: “Hey folks, the US ain’t had a budget for the last four (or MORE) years, and the democrats like that just fine. They don’t have any real limits on their power that way.”
No, they don’t. And if you really want to claim that not having a proper budget passed means anything goes and there are no limits on the powers of the majority party, you really have no clue what you’re talking about and are doing a good job of showing that to everyone here.
Charlie E: “If there isn’t a law to do what they want, they just create an executive order for it.”
Yeah, we know. Obama’s 163 executive orders must be frightening to you. He’s used so many that he’s parctically a dictator! Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity was so abusive. And Executive Order 13645 (Authorizing the Implementation of Certain Sanctions Set Forth in the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012 and Additional Sanctions With Respect To Iran) should have been passed as a proper law, dámņ it!
It’s amazing that we never heard any whining about executive orders (or czars for that matter) from the Right when W. was in office despite the fact that he wrote 197 executive orders by this point in his terms and a total of 291 by the time he left office. As a matter of fact, the Right practically had orgasms over Executive Order 13425.
Charlie E: “Thank you, Dave, I had completely missed that symbolic vote by the Senate last spring. I can also see why there was no conference – the two versions evidently had nothing in common to conference about.”
Ah, yes… I see. You’re wrong, but you’re not really wrong because you spouted nonsense. Bill was passed. The House and the Senate could have had six months to bang out the differences. But, nope, doesn’t count and your false statement about what happened is still true because there were just too many gosh darned differences in there to find common ground or even to try. So the Republicans telling the Democrats to shove it 18 or 19 times throughout the year actually means that teh Republicans were the ones begging to have talks and the gosh darned evil Dems were just adamant in their refusal to even talk about compromise. You know, compromise? That word that the Republican leadership was asked about on TV and said famously stated that “compromise” was not a word he liked?
Two friends need to stop someplace and eat while traveling. One girl wants to eat at a health food restaurant. The other girl wants to go to Burger King. The first girl suggests that maybe they should look at the signs they can see while heading down the road and approaching various exits to see if they can spot a place where they can both get something. The second girl responds by telling the first that she can fûçk off and that it’s Burger King or nothing. And she says that 19 times as they drive on down the road.
You know what? The girl who suggests that they look for a middle ground option while driving down the road is the one most people are going to see as the responsible or reasonable one in that specific discussion. The one who says “Fûçk You!” 19 times is the one that most people are going to see as the petty, whiny, childish bìŧçh. And that doesn’t change just because the petty, whiny, childish bìŧçh waits until five minutes after all of the restaurants have closed before suddenly declaring that she’s willing to look for a place where they can both find something to eat.
The Republicans told the Democrats that they could go fûçk themselves 19 times throughout 2013. Then, after the deadline passed, the Republicans ran to an empty room, posed for the cameras, and put on a show for the stupid to swallow where they declared that they were there and willing to talk if only those gosh darned Democrats wold be willing to come negotiate and compromise. Sorry, but the Republicans get to wear the petty, whiny, childish bìŧçh shoes here because they absolutely fit.
Charlie E: “Again, both sides basically are saying “If you don’t give me EVERYTHING I WANT then I don’t want to play with you!!!” It is just that only the Republicans are halfway reasonable to not let it go too far.”
Again, no. The give me everything I want crowd has been the Republicans.
The House Republicans have wasted taxpayer time and taxpayer money on 46 useless, pointless, and, as you put it, symbolic votes to repeal the ACA. And then, when they couldn’t get their way, when they proved 46 times that they did not have the votes to get that done, they held the country hostage and held the budget hostage over the insistence that they be allowed to delay and defund the ACA.
Again, that’s not compromise. The ACA became law. It was passed and signed into law. It was challenged and went to the Supreme Court to be ultimately upheld. So rather than attempting to, you know, do what our system was designed to do and run on the issue next year in the hopes of gaining enough seats to have the ability to properly repeal the ACA, the Republicans threw a temper tantrum.
After voting 46 times to repeal the ACA, the House Republicans tried to shove variations of the Graves resolution on the Democrats. You know, where the ACA would be delayed and defunded until 2015.
LABRADOR COSPONSORS BILL TO STOP GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, DELAY OBAMACARE
Tuesday September 17, 2013
EAGLE, ID – Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID) announced today that he is a cosponsor of a resolution introduced by Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) to fund the government for Fiscal Year 2014 while fully delaying and defunding ObamaCare until 2015. The Graves resolution – which has 59 cosponsors – would prevent a government shutdown from taking place after September 30, 2013, when current funding for the government expires.
Yeah, I can see where that’s an idea that’s considered compromise right there. The Republicans “compromised” on repealing the ACA, something they didn’t have the power to do, by holding the country hostage with demands that the ACA be allowed to exist with zero funding, thus making it for all intents and purposes essentially nonexistent, and that it be delayed until fiscal 2015.
I’m sorry, but that’s not compromise. And you certainly don’t try to force someone into “compromising” like that with you by holding the budget and the country hostage over it because you want to have a childish temper tantrum over not having the actual votes in congress to get what you want.
Oh, by the way. The complete and total liar that is Raúl Labrador, the guy who has his name on that bit up above, has since claimed that the Republicans have never pushed to repeal “Obamacare” and that’s just a media lie. I’m personally waiting for his office to send out the statement that his statement may in fact have been false, but that it was never intended to be taken as a factual statement to begin with.
Charlie E: “After all, what compromises did the Democrats make to get the government back to ‘work’?”
Let’s see… Obama and a number of the Dems wanted a full year’s budget deal in order to send a message to businesses, investors, and entities to whom we owe debt that we would be a stable economic force for the foreseeable future. The Republicans, the minority party, let themselves be led around by the Tea Party Republicans, the minority fringe in the minority party, who are convinced that the shutdown was a good thing, worked in their favor, and should be on the table again in the election year. And what did we get from that? A short term bill that kicks the can down the road and one where we get to come to this point again in just a few months.
Obama and a number of the Dems wanted spending levels to come up at least close to pre-sequestration levels on a number of programs. The Republicans, the same Republicans that cried about how horrible the “Obama sequestration” was for our country and how much it was hurting us fought to keep spending levels kept at sequestration levels. Guess where pretty much everything still is?
And, by the way, the House Democrats made that compromise offer, as well as going with a short term offer, before we hit the shutdown point.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/325573-house-dems-counteroffer-well-accept-sequester-cuts
But the petty, whiny, childish bìŧçh House Republicans said that they would have “Obamacare” and its head on a silver or else no one else got anything.
So remember- In Republican Land, Republicans demanding everything and offering nothing in return is compromising while Democrats offering concessions and compromising on multiple points is called refusing to compromise.
Robert Crim: “In the past, I’ve accused the Obama Administration of working overtime to make ņìggërš of all the doctors (who eventually will have to cough up their cotton balls for free); but, obviously, that wasn’t enough for the President. Now it’s clear he intends to make ņìggërš of everyone else.
The irony of that is inescapable (but then I’ve been played for a ņìggër before). Ðìçk Cheney was on Hannity tonight and finally got it right: The extremists aren’t in the Tea Party; they’re in the White House.”
You probably get little tingles shooting up your leg whenever you get to use hateful language like that, don’t you? We’ll just add that to the now rather long list of why you’re not worth attempting to have intelligent discussions with.
Charlie E: “Ok, after that long diatribe by Jerry, I have to ask a simple question, and, believe it or not, I am asking it honestly – “Why would anyone vote for a democratic candidate?”
No, really! I mean, as a fiscally conservative sort of guy, an engineer who knows a bit about science, as well as a BS in Psychology, so I know a bit about human nature, I don’t understand it.
Now, here is what I think from what other folks have said:”
Yeah, because it’s worth answering questions from a talking point spouting person who has made several factually challenged claims already when they basically tell you up front that they’re going to ignore what you actually say and rather respond to what they think you’re saying based on how they want to interpret (i.e. twist) what you actually said. Yes, you just know that will be a productive exchange of ideas.
Pass.
“Nìggër” is hateful when it is hateful; “ņìggër” is descriptive when it is descriptive. I lived in a black area of New Haven for 17 years, Jerry, and as one of my (black) friends once said to me (after learning of some of the slings and arrows of my more outrageous fortunes), “There are white ņìggërš too.”
It’s not my fault if you don’t know how to speak English.
A standing ovation for you, Jerry.
A straightjacket for you, Robert.
For a pass, you sure type a lot!
Sorry, Jerry, if I don’t believe like you, and you find that offensive.
I see your point, because both sides are basically posturing heroically claiming that they are willing to ‘compromise’ and ‘meet’ but only if they are going to get their way.
At least, at this point, we are just going to see what kind of train wreck the ACA is. Of course, our health care system may not survive it…
I would also like to add here (Robert has already said it once here, and it gets repeated often), that the Supreme Court has ruled on the ACA and declared it constitutional. That is their job and nobody else’s. Not yours, not the Republicans in Congress. Every time you call it an “unconstitutional law”, you are lying. You may not like the decision, but it stands.
Yes, it is constitutional because it is a tax, and even though it was never portrayed as a tax during its creation, that is what it is, and always will be. It is also an amalgam of back door deals, additional regulations and other business as usual BS that we now get to watch destroy our health care system. How will we adapt? What ways around the ACA will we find to actually get health care? Will pay as you go and illicit cash medical facilities spring up across the country? We will get to find out!
Reverend, you “know neither the scriptures nor the law.”
The Supreme Court does not pass on laws; it decides “cases or controversies,” see Article III, over which it possesses “jurisdiction.” Like all officers of the government, its members take an oath to defend the Constitution, and the oath of a justice is neither “higher” nor “lower” than the oath of anyone else.
The Court ALWAYS owes “proper deference” to the determinations of members of another co-equal branch of the government.
Therefore, the process of adjudication (where constitutional questions are presented) is for the Court to ASSUME the constitutionality of a law — because it ASSUMES other officers were true to their oaths — then lay the Constitution on the table, lay the STATUTE on the table, and THEN see if there be any POSSIBLE way to line the two up. Only when this cannot be done BEYOND REAASONABLE DOUBT is the statute declared “unconstitutional.”
There NEVER is any determination of “constitutionality,” and the judgment (1) binds the parties only, and (2) answers only the specific objection raised by the parties.
Now we understand Justice Roberts “middle” opinion. If the tax question had been squarely presented, the question could NOT have been answered because of the Anti-injunction Act raised by the Fourth Circuit. But, the tax question was NOT what went to the Court. The issue presented was the COMMERCE question and whether the exaction could be a “penalty” as envisioned by the ACA.
The Chief Justice answered that question in the negative, leaving the ACA on the edge of a finding of “unconstitutionality.” But, as mentioned, the analysis cannot end there, for it becomes the Court’s function to determine if ANY OTHER construction of the statute will save it. The Chief Justice said, “Yes, if I call the ‘penalty’ a ‘tax.'” In that case, the constitutional problem presented is no different than the one presented in the Social Security cases, and as we all know, the Court upheld the Social Security Act.
That, incidentally, was precisely the argument advanced by Justice Ginzburg.
Again, that determination binds the parties only, explains the JUDGMENT, and PERHAPS will be a precedent for future cases with IDENTICAL facts and questions.
However, what I raised is completely different from what the Court decided. The questions I presented were (1) whether the “penalty” really could be an indirect tax, and (2) whether the taxing power can be used to end run the Thirteenth Amendment.
I answer both questions in the negative. A “direct” tax — a tax on something you already own as opposed to a tax on something you obtain — must be apportioned (which the ACA “tax” is not). Now, if you’re really quick, you’ll say the Obamatax is a tax on something you get (health insurance); but, in fact, its a tax on something you DON’T get (health insurance).
What, then, is my specific objection? None other than that such an effort violates the Read Amendment, which added to “capitation” the words, “other direct tax.” The Read Amendment was installed PRECISELY to prevent the end run attempted. For example, I could end run any need to apportion ANY direct tax by making it a tax on something you don’t do, viz., walk on the moon. We all know Americans have walked on the moon, so why not balance the budget by imposing a tax for “not walking on the moon.” The answer is that the condition is mere cover for a tax which really is some kind of capitation.
The dissenters raised this precise objection and mentioned in their opinion that the tax matter had not been briefed to the Court. I actually went to the Court inside the time allowed for rehearing and moved for leave to intervene, but the motion was denied even a hearing because I was not a party to the litigation.
Translation: You, Crim, are not a party, the judgment binds the parties only, and if you want to become a party, you’ll have to bring your own suit and start from ground zero.
Of course, such a suit IS subject to the Anti-injunction Act, so I have to wait until someone at the IRS actually tries to steal my money.
That has not happened yet, to me or anyone else.
None of this even addresses the Thirteenth Amendment question; however, since Jerry professes such worry about the fate of our democracy (if tactics like those employed become general), the short answer is that democracy will fail anyway when it becomes reduced to two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch. Democracy works for issues like how many mine inspectors we need. All of us benefit from the schools; most of us got our kids there on a road. It simply is silly to say that all Tea Partiers are “anarchists” trying to “destroy” the government.
What we do want to destroy is PREDATORY government, and what we want to make clear even more is that even good government costs. Whether it’s education, road construction, mine inspection, or health care, none are natural resources free for the taking like some rock, tree, or mud puddle. So, even if it’s reasonable to agree that some kind of mine inspection be needed, there remains the question of how much inspection we’re willing to fund.
The Democrats (and some Republicans before them — as you point out) have skewed that question by abusing the borrowing power, thereby passing off the responsibility for the funding to people who cannot vote. But, the power one has over his or her representative is precisely the control we have over the taxing power — that’s in the very structure of the Constitution — and it is taxation without representation to transfer that power IN ANY FORM from the House of Representatives.
That’s unconstitutional (violates Ninth Amendment rights associated with the Bill Origin Clause), and we STILL haven’t gotten to the Thirteenth Amendment question, which perhaps is the most powerful objection of all.
For, what is the difference between an ante-bellum Southerner forcing black people to pick cotten for free and you making me pay for your “free” health care?
The answer is: No difference. The slaver makes a ņìggër of the black man, and you make a ņìggër of me.
In scriptural terms, both actions deprive a man of the ultimate power to “work out his salvation” — the TRUE evil of slavery.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ACA’s requirement that I pay for a bunch of services I never will or even CAN use. I’m a single male who NEVER has used drugs. My chances of needing “drug rehabilitation” or “maternity care” are ZERO. But, the premiums the ACA imposes aren’t designed to pay for my maternity care but for Peter’s wife’s care. She complained during Peter’s illness re all the co-pays and how the current system was imposing costs on her family; but, she does not hesitate to impose similar costs on me. Whether she knows it or not, she’s making a ņìggër out of me.
That brings me to your final point: WHERE in the Constitution does it say the Supreme Court has ANY power (let alone exclusive power) to determine “constitutionality”? That certainly is not in my Constitution. Rather, it is a power the Court assigned to itself (in Marbury v. Madison) as a necessary adjunct to its declared power to determine “cases or controversies.”
The point initially made stands: Oaths of office (which the Constitution specifically DOES require) bind EVERY officer of the government, not just the Supreme Court. The President, for example, could declare a law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it, and that executive discretiuon is used by the Executive all the time. A common citizen, for want of “standing,” cannot even challenge it. And, even if such could be challenged, who would enforce the judgment? Andrew Jackson answered that question in the Cherokee litigation. The Cherokees won in the Supreme Court, and Jackson said, “OK, you enforce it!”
Then he did what he pleased.
Strangely, I agree with Jerry that what the Republicans did potentially is damaging to the democracy. Van Hollingsworth made the point, for example, that if positions were reversed, what would be the reaction if the Democrats refused to fund the government unless more gun control were in the continuing resolution?
So, one should not do something like this cavalierly, and to the extent that’s what happened, the Republicans should suffer.
That is NOT what happened.
The ACA is unconstitutional (for many reasons independent of whether the exaction is a “penalty” under the commerce clause). And, the government generally is being funded via a total abuse of the taxing and borrowing powers. Governments have extensive powers to borrow to redress national emergencies (like wars). If they fritter away that power to pay for baubles, what will they do when they really need the money?
So, in addition to everything else, there is a genuine national-security problem here, and there’s no further time even to talk about it; but, it is enough to say that, IN THIS CASE, the Republicans were well within their rights and responsibiulities to act as they did.
Glad to see PAD back in the swing of things, though I have less time to spend on blogs than I used to.
As to the main question, who knows? A year is a lifetime in politics. A week ago it seemed like the President was on top of the world, having united the democrats in stopping the GOP from delaying the healthcare bill. Today 10 Democratic senators are calling for a delay to the health care bill. He’s gone from having vanquished his foes to late night punchline fodder in a matter of days.
Things happen fast. Predict what will be going on a year from now? I don’t have the hubris.
Not sure it’s hubris here. We’re not talking in total theoreticals here. There have been tensions brewing in the GOP for some time now. We’ve been watching the lunatic fringe in the Tea Party slowly take that over since their inception and recently we’ve watched as they’ve tried to grab the steering wheel of the GOP’s car and only ended up crashing the GOP’s car and almost crashing the country. And they’re apparently too stupid to learn.
And it has nothing to do with anything that Obama is doing or will do. It has nothing to do with the Democrats or anything they choose to do or not do. It has to do with the Republican fringe shooting the entire party in the foot and continuing to blast toes off for at least a good half of next year.
And it has to do with the stress fractures in the party. The mainstream GOP and the Tea Party Fringe have left the honeymoon phase behind them and they’re headed for divorce court. They’re going to have a bumpy next year to two years as each side wrangles for control over the party. The mainstream GOP faction will ultimately win, but it’s going to do damage for a while.
Nate Silver is also predicting that the recent actions by the Republicans will hurt them. He’s not exactly an amateur at predictive models and has been spot on with his predictions in the past.
“Nate Silver is also predicting that the recent actions by the Republicans will hurt them. He’s not exactly an amateur at predictive models and has been spot on with his predictions in the past.”
Huh. I got the opposite impression from his last post (last that I read, anyway).
“As I discuss in my book, the more common tendency instead is that people (and especially the “experts” who write about the issues for a living) overestimate the degree of predictability in complex systems. There are some other exceptions besides presidential elections — sports, in many respects; and weather prediction, which has become much better in recent years. But for the most part, the experts you see on television are much too sure of themselves.”
“There’s been plenty of bûllšhìŧ, in other words. We really don’t know all that much about how the shutdown is going to be resolved, or how the long-term political consequences are going to play out.”
“1. The media is probably overstating the magnitude of the shutdown’s political impact.”
“2. The impact of the 1995-96 shutdowns is overrated in Washington’s mythology.”
“3. Democrats face extremely unfavorable conditions in trying to regain the House.”
“4. The polling data on the shutdown is not yet all that useful, and we lack data on most important measures of voter preferences.”
Seems to me he is not at all willing to go out on a limb here and predict big losses by the GOP. Neither am I, at this point. I won;t even rule out a net win for the GOP–if the Obamacare problems persist or worsen, if foreign events go south, as they may, if unforseen scandals or demonstrations of incompetence grab the national zeitgeist…all bests are off. A year is a long time.
This is at http://www.grantland.com/fivethirtyeight/story/_/id/9802433/nate-silver-us-government-shutdown# if folks want to go there and decide for themselves what Mr Silver is predicting or not.
That link is from the 10th, Bill. 16 full days before I posted and written before the shutdown ended and the fallout had become more clear.
Silver has done several interviews this week stating that the recent actions in the shutdown and right after the shutdown will hurt them. I’ll see if I can hunt down video or audio for a link.
In the meantime, there’s this joy to behold that shows that, yeah, the fringe is gonna create another meltdown year for the GOP as they push the nutball wing of the party.
“GOP event hails ‘superhero’ Ted Cruz as right-wing Jesus”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/28/gop-event-hails-superhero-ted-cruz-as-right-wing-jesus/
I’d be interested in seeing those interviews. The most recent thing I found was Silver criticizing Politico for claiming that the shutdown was responsible for McCaullif’s lead in the VA gubernatorial race.
I figured his website would be the best place to find his thinking but, as a I said, it’s just the latest I could find. If he has changed his mind since the 10th I’m eager to read about it.
All I can tell you at the moment was that it was that it was a radio appearance I channel surfed into where he was on for maybe five minutes. I couldn’t even tell you the host off the top of my head as I don’t listen to the guy. He’s so far into the bomb throwing left that he usually annoys me after about ten minutes. I only stopped surfing because he mentioned Nate Silver coming up after the break.
His comments were that the Republican’s comments and handling of the situation post-shutdown were showing signs in the data of it hurting the Republicans. He didn’t predict a sweep, but he stated that the current data indicates some damage done.
“The most recent thing I found was Silver criticizing Politico for claiming that the shutdown was responsible for McCaullif’s lead in the VA gubernatorial race.”
No, that’s been brought about by the fact that our AG is a total nutter.
Well, let that be a lesson–if he can change his mind so thoroughly after just a few weeks it shows how a year can be a lifetime in politics.
His site should be up again soon and perhaps he will expand on this.
I’m not sure that it’s a change of mind though. The piece from the 10th that you linked doesn’t say that the shutdown would not/will not/did not hurt the Republicans. All it said was that at the time of that writing there were parts of the press over hyping the impact on the republicans and that there were factors that were then unknown or that didn’t match up to past shutdowns.He touches on these factors-
“We really don’t know all that much about how the shutdown is going to be resolved, or how the long-term political consequences are going to play out.”
We know know how it was resolved, how at least some political leaders have reacted, and how some of the Tea Party, both in elected office and on the battlefield, have screamed about primary challengers for the Republicans who “caved” on the deal.
“The best measure of this might be the generic congressional ballot, which measures overall preferences for Democrats or Republicans in congressional races around the country. However, very few generic ballot polls have been released since the shutdown began, and the exceptions are from dubious polling firms like Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen Reports.
That isn’t to say Republicans are without any reason for concern: The most recent Gallup poll shows a much sharper drop in Republican favorability ratings than in those for Democrats, which could presage a shift in the generic ballot.”
Since the shutdown, we haven’t seen a generic congressional ballot, but we have seen multiple polls indicating that fewer people want to see Republicans in control in any way in DC right now.
“6. The increasing extent of GOP partisanship is without strong recent precedent, and contributes to the systemic uncertainty about political outcomes.
Congress has gone through periods of relatively high partisanship before — for example, at the turn of the 20th century. But the degree of polarization in the Congress is higher than at any point since the Great Depression by a variety of measures, and is possibly at its highest point ever. (Most of the evidence suggests the trend is asymmetric: Republicans in Congress have become much more conservative, while Democrats have become only somewhat more liberal.)”
That’s actually an interesting one. It also goes along with what I’ve said for the last two years and what I was saying the summer of the 2012 elections. The Tea Party incumbents and the Tea Party power players are pushing for harder right turns than ever before. They’re playing to the fringe. Watching the fringe scream and react in the last two weeks only supports the idea that the fringe mat hurt the Republicans come this time next year.
That will certainly be true if the fringe gets its way and pushes yet another showdown in a few months time.
Ultimately though, the only useful predictions are which side gains seats or holds the balance of power in the House and Senate.
One can say “this will hurt the GOP” and even if they win the senate AND House (unlikely), still claim that they would have done better had it not been for yadda yadda, so they got hurt, I was right, neener neener. Subjective predictions are useless.
If I had, at gunpoint, to predict the results right now, over my protestations that this is a fools endeavor, I’d predict little change in either the House or Senate…maybe a small Dem pickup in both. But if Sherman and Peabody jumped out of the wayback machine and told me that either party had a massive wave election victory I would not be stunned, not a year out. Anything can happen. And as Silver was saying (at least on the 10th) pundits who claim otherwise are simply speaking to hear their own voice.
And speaking of those fractures…
“Senate Conservatives Fund Endorses McConnell’s Primary Challenger”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/361626/senate-conservatives-fund-endorses-mcconnells-primary-challenger-betsy-woodruff
“10 Questions for Matt Bevin, Mitch McConnell’s Tea Party Challenger”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/10-questions-for-matt-bevin-mitch-mcconnells-tea-party-challenger/
Let’s pop the popcorn and line up to see some nice, bloody, family infighting in KY before an important election.
Cruz is certainly spending his fair share of time in Iowa. Although I’m surprised that RawSory article you posted, Jerry, doesn’t include a quote from western Iowa’s own nutball King.
It’s also worth noting that some Republicans are ignoring the polls that don’t help them. When Ann Coulter was on Fox News, she said the only polls that matter are the ones from a politician’s constituents — meaning every negative poll can be dismissed as “someone else” (and not “the American people,” who are the ones polled here). Another Republican, when told on CNN about terrible poll numbers for the Republicans after the shutdown, answered, “Well, that’s just one poll.” And while Republicans cited unpopularity with Obamacare as their reason for the shutdown, they ignored the polls that said 69% of the country didn’t want to shut the government down because of Obamacare.
I think this will lead to another Karl Rove-type meltdown, where someone who ignored every negative poll and trend is in a state of utter disbelief and denial when they lose. After all, everything they paid attention to said they were doing so great!
When Ann Coulter was on Fox News, she said the only polls that matter are the ones from a politician’s constituents — meaning every negative poll can be dismissed as “someone else”
When I heard Ann Coulter on the radio say the same thing, I took it that she was saying polls in general are worthless whether or not they are in your favor, but I could have heard it wrong.
Not so much that polls are useless, but that national, or even state polls are not important to House (or state legislative) members, because the only folks they have to worry about are the voters in their own gerrymandered districts.
Broader polls have more of a tie to Senate and Presidential races (a major reason why the GOP has been more vigorously proposing repealing the 17th Amendment as well as toying with how electoral votes get allocated by states).
The other thing to consider is that it’s a year before the next election. Which is plenty of time (from the GOP’s perspective) to recover and gin up some other scandals. Their strategy is (not without justification) a short memory on the part of the electorate.
The reason for repealing the 17th Amendment (it actually never was ratified in the first place) has NOTHING to do with gerrymandering districts. Rather, it has to do with the amendment’s general incompetence.
The Constitution created delicate balances distributing power, the better to protect liberty. The States play a critical role in that process (including as ultimate guarantor — see The Federalist # 28). General sovereignty lies in the States, and that is where things like welfare programs properly belong. The original thinking was that the States would be jealous of their power and unwilling (except for the most compelling demonstration) to give it up. This check keeps the federal government from doing what it has been doing for the last 100 years: Expanding far beyond its proper boundaries, to the detriment of us all.
The original plan, which gave the States qua states representation in Congress, provided the PRIMARY check against unconstitutional behavior, and NOT the Supreme Court. Indeed, on close questions of constitutionality involving expansion of federal power, action by a properly constituted Senate was a powerful guide to the Court because such an expansion first would have to be approved by the States before it even could get to the Court. Hence the presumption would be that the States really thought such an expansion necessary.
The 17th Amendment created a fraud. Ostensibly it increases democracy by allowing the states’ citizens to vote directly for Senators. In fact, it DECREASES democracy by removing a key check on government and allowing a further removal of popular control over the system from local centers of power to those distant vistas where the people’s voice can be drowned by all the well-heeled lobbyists.
Both demodonkeys and republicrats benefit from this perversion (it’s not a partisan issue).
It’s unclear how removing election of US Senators by the citizenry of a state, and returning it to state legislatures increases the powers of the states to reign in programs you think should be handled locally.
On the other hand, it does allow district gerrymandering that stacks state legislative districts (as well as House districts) in favor of one party or the other to therefore also influence the election of US Senators. And the corruptibility of state legislatures (it’s easier to pay off a few dozen or hundred state reps than an entire population) was one of the reasons why the Populist movement pressed for the 17th Amendment in the first place.
Your paranoia is showing.
I realize that I’m one of the few people here who reads either the Constitution or the principal commentaries on it, so for the most part, I just have to consider the source.
The Senate represents the States qua states, which possess of their own accord the general powers of sovereignty. That’s because, upon separating from Englend, the colonies established themselves as separate countries no different than Germany or France. The Articles bound the States together in something like a league; in this league, each State had an equal voice commensurate with the equality of its independence.
Thus, Rhode Island had a vote in Congress, and Virginia had a vote. Neither standing alone could impose its will on the other.
The Articles proved unworkable and generated what even Thomas Jefferson called “a house incompetent to business.” The proposed new constitution substituted for them numerous significant changes, but no proper interpretation of those changes is possible without reference to the Articles because the commissions of the delegates to the 1787 Convention specifically authorized them only to propose revision of the Articles.
The resultant general revision produced, on the Madisonian/Montesquieuan model, a system of checks and balances which included the ultimate division of authority between the States and the federal government. That ultimate division was reinforced by military power upon the model of the English Civil War (and this is the real reason why we still have the Second Amendment today, despite all the slaughter in the streets).
Madison’s checks and balances did not rely on any declaration of rights (there was no Bill of Rights in the original Constitution) but on what he considered the fundamental character of human nature, which was to grab and hold as much power as possible for as long as possible, thereby steering the lion’s portion of the pelf to the holders. Madison argued that such people, once invested with power, only most reluctantly would give it up.
The strength in the Madisonian system is that the federal government is supreme but is limited. The States are not supreme, but their sovereignty is general. That’s why, in federal court, litigants have to allege jurisdiction whereas in state courts litigants usually don’t.
Hence, when the U.S. Senators are chosen by the legislatures, they are chosen by a polity which has in its hands the actual powers of government, and Madison’s argument is that the legislators won’t want to give any of that power away. Senators elected by legislatures answer not to the people genrally but to the legislators who both elected tham and can fire them if they so please. Such Senators will do the will of their masters and not give away power properly belonging to the States.
The Senate thus became the primary check against investing too much power in the federal head.
But, what is “power properly belonging to the States”? Many at the Convention, e.g., Gouvernor Morris, spoke of the need to keep the proposed Constitution flexible, since no one could predict the exigencies of the future. Under the Articles (Article IX), the federal government could exercise none of the great powers unless 3/4ths of the States voted to do so. That supermajoritarian principle was reformulated via the Great Compromise so that a Senate representing States qua states could (when a majority of Senators concurred) transfer State power from the States to the federal government should an adequate demonstration be made that such a transfer truly was beneficial.
The Framers did not want to create a government permanently ossified by Eighteenth Century notions or technology.
A key element which cemented all this in place was Article V, which specifically PROHIBITS depriving a State of its representation without its consent. That provision permanently prevents Congress from REDUCING the number of a State’s senators (“no State shall be deprived of its EQUAL representation in the Senate”), but it also permanently prevents Congress from ELIMINATING COMPLETELY a State’s representation in the Senate — viz., representation of a State qua state.
The Seventeenth Amendment was proposed by the Progressives and sold (kind of like Obamacare) upon the lie that only the “equal” part of the prohibition counted. This, the Progressives argued, meant that only 3/4ths of the States had to ratify the amendment to make it effective (because no State’s delegation was being increased or reduced). But, the prohibition extends to stripping the States of their representation qua states completely — what the Seventeenth Amendment actually does.
The historical record is clear: Seventeen states (mostly in the South) failed to ratify the amendment before it was declared (by Wilson) to be in effect. Arkansas eventally added a ratification, and one state (Utah) voted it down.
(Rhode Island was the other non-Southern State to refuse ratification.)
Now, upon the language itself, one can construe Aticle V two ways: That the provision requires a unanimous vote (which did not happen), or that the provision requires only a 3/4ths vote except that non-ratifying states can’t be compelled to obey it. In either case, at least some states, e.g., Florida, unconstitutionally were stripped of their representation, so the amendment as it actually has been applied never was ratified, and for 100 years, we’ve had an illegal Senate and legislation “passed” by a body which is not the Senate.
“Paranoia” has nothing to do with it. But, I am still looking for a federal judge who (a) has a commission, and (b) has the balls to say that, e.g., our Declaration of War on Germany and Japan never happened!
What’s that old saying: “All the money in the world will not buy yesterday.”
“Your paranoia is showing.”
Well, at least we know where his messed up versions of history and reality come from. He’s obviously a fan of WND and Alex Jones. That’s one of their many messed up versions of reality.
Good Lord,
Charlie and Robert Crim are the most insane people I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of Tea Party nuts. I wish I could make my own reality like they do.
Actually, unbelievably, Crim has been somewhat more sane than usual in this thread.
Dear state GOP and Tea Party freaks,
Thank you ever so much for rigging the primary process in order to appoint fringe nutsack and Tea Party darling Ken Cuccinelli when it looked like the more moderate and infinitely more appealing Bill Bolling would have walked away with a primary nomination. You lost.
You lost the Governor’s race. You lost the Lt. Governor’s race by running a Tea Party freak who was all about social issues and spitting hatred.
You may have even lost the AG’s race.
And you know what else you did? You saddled us with Governor Terry fûçkìņg McAuliffe. Thank you ever so much for that.
And you know what’s sad? You and your supporters are too fûçkìņg stupid to learn. You’re already talking as if losing the race means that Virginia agrees with you. You’re already talking about how you just didn’t push the issues hard enough. You’re already deluding yourself with tales of how you would have won if only there had been no third party candidate who, despite leaning left on more issues than right, you want to pretend was a spoiler who only bled votes from Ken Cuccinelli rather than from both and by being the None of the Above candidate that many voted for him as.
Thank you Tea Party Freaks and fringe GOP for being stupid beyond belief and being too dámņëd stupid to learn.
Where does the GOP stand now? On the edge of the cliff with smile on their face as they happily contemplate stepping off of the edge because they’re so f’n stupid that they think that they can fly despite having watched their fellows fall to their deaths on the jagged rocks below.
Allowing Jerry to analyze the GOP is kind of like allowing Herman Goering to analyze the Weimar Republic (which means one won’t learn very much from the analysis). But, if Jerry’s dissatisfied by being saddled with McAuliffe for four more years, I suppose that’s some consolation.
What are the facts?
These were my observations to Sabado some time ago (which turned out to be pretty accurate):
Virginia marginally was a red state — until Obama was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees, which turned its color. Obama won in 2012 (and hardly against a Tea Party radical) by capturing the votes of all those people he imported, and I told Sabado that I’d be surprised if Cuccinelli won this time simply because, for now, the base numbers in Virginia are against Republicans running statewide.
We can add to this fundamental difficulty several factors:
McAuliffe outspent Cuccinelli about 5-1, which does make a difference in a close race. As long as 6 months ago, Cuccinelli was looking very far afield for funds and even franked me (in Southern Florida). McAuliffe, for being the Clinton’s big fund-raiser in the past, simply had too many avenues to too much fast cash (including a lot of money from people who aren’t Virginians). That more than Cuccinelli’s positions probably made the difference in what was a giant, šhìŧ-slinging campaign.
Cuccinelli also was hurt by the government shutdown (especially among all those imported government employees) but aided by the continuing wreck of Obamacare. Professionals probably will debate for some time whether the order in which these two events occurred, along with the disparity in funding this generated, made the difference. The one thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that the “tea-party craziness” invented by Jerry and other rabid demodonkeys had little to do with it.
Far more likely a factor was the presence of a relatively popular Libertarian in the race. This one’s a hard factor to measure, because some Libertarians would have rejected Cuccinelli for his pro-life positions (the usual division of Libertarians 2-1 for Republicans in the absence of a Libertarian candidate doesn’t necessarily hold here); however, opposition to abortion really is not something any honest candidate can wheedle. In terms solely of the result, one can fault Cuccinelli for taking (or at least allowing himself to be painted as having) an “extreme” view on the subject (a strict Catholic position here simply is not where the majority of Americans are at). But, this element has nothing to do with the Tea Party (which came together over the fiscal mismanagement of the federal government and originally included a fair number of moderate Democrats).
I told Sabado that I expected Cuccinelli to lose by about the same numbers that Romney lost to Obama, and that prediction turned out to be pretty close (especially considering it was made about six months ago). Take the Libertarian out of the race, and a good case can be made for a marginal Cuccinelli win (except that the Libertarians are here to stay and won’t be vacating the political stage soon).
This, of course, answers Peter’s original question at the beginning of this thread: How much will the government shutdown impact Republican chances in 2014? Answer: Unless they do it again, not much. By the time Obamacare fails of its own accord, people will be more concerned by the impact demodonkeys have had on their wallets than by how Obama manipulated a pseudo-issue to keep a few tourists from seeing the pandas at the zoo.
P.S. I just got a revealing communication from Sabado, and in terms of spending alone (not money raised), he’s saying the difference was more like 2-1. I’ve heard all sorts of numbers, but Sabado’s in Virginia, so let’s correct the record for now (without Jerry’s anticipated help).
The fact remains that McAuliffe had (and spent) a lot more money, and very much of it from donors outside Virginia.
Here’s a good question: To what extent did Republican “baggage” (from “Gift-gate” to the choice for Lt.Gov.) have on the result? And, what about the recriminations between Cuccinelli and Bolling (who, like Charlie Crist in Florida, wasn’t happy about being deprived of “his” nomination)?
Neither of these factors have anything to do with Cuccinelli’s ideology, let alone that of the Tea Party.
You are, Bobby, as per usual, talking out of your ášš.
The spending, the tricks, and the ads mean squat if one factor is changes. That factor is Bill Bolling running. I was ready to vote for Bill. I know a number of people that were happy with the idea of voting for Bill Bolling when he threw his hat in the ring. Then the fûçkŧárd Tea Party Teapublicans played games, nixed the primary process, and selected Cooch and E. W. “Too Insane To Be Electable” Jackson behind closed doors to make the fringe happy.
Even the diehard conservative local paper, a paper that’s nominated dámņëd near every single Republican in dámņëd near every major race for as long as I can remember, refused to endorse Cooch and Jackson (actually, the refused to endorse anybody for the big seat this year) and took the state party to task for rigging the game to have Cooch as the nominee.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/our-opinion/our-choice-for-governor-in-none-of-the-above/article_6a2c5e41-20f3-561a-a25d-52eedf4741f3.html
People wanted to vote for Bill Bolling this year. Some stayed home. Some voted third party as their anger-with-the-parties vote. Still others, myself included, voted for the write-in and wrote in Bill’s name. Bill Bolling was a popular potential candidate. Terry is a carpetbagging waste who is going to be a place filler for four years. So take your usual know-nothing pontificating and shove it up your áršë.
“Obama was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees, which turned its color. Obama won in 2012 (and hardly against a Tea Party radical) by capturing the votes of all those people he imported”
Right… Obama filled Northern Virginia with hordes of new government employees and then capitalized on the people he “imported” to get the win.
If you actually believe that, you’re even more delusionally stupid then I thought. And that’s saying a lot.
Well, Obama did go back in time to plant that phony birth certificate. And asking a Teabagger to admit they were wrong will get the same response you’d get from the Fonz, no matter how much reality tells them different.
Gee, Jerry’s learned a new word! Or, at least he learned how correctly to spell an old one.
As for the rest, Jerry, I did what any professional analyst would do: Went to Sabado and looked at the map! The “blue” part was right around Washington, D.C.! Just like two years ago!
Here’s the e-mail I sent to Sabado on 01 September 2013, after Sabado predicted a narrow McAuliffe win:
* * *
“Your prediction is supported by Cuccinelli, himself, who is trying to raise money outside Virginia to make up for his want of contributions there. I’ll guarantee you he’s been to see me, and I’m in Florida.
“I think you also have to consider that Virginia has picked up a lot of Obama’s government growth. This, recall, was a key factor in Obama taking this ‘battleground’ state in 2012.
“Finally, consider what the Libertarian presence in Virginia really represents. Libertarians (like me) are kind of like Republicans but are not. In other words, they’re more likely to vote Republican than Democrat, but they’re just as likely not to vote at all, especially if the Republican is seen to be too outside of the libertarian philosophy or corrupt.
“Is this fractioning of the Republicans good or bad? In the short run, it probably means defeat. But, the underlying dynamics present a strategy for ultimate victory. The financial numbers simply are not there for more demodonkeyism. Add to that some of the goofy stuff Democrats are supporting these days (the circus in California is instructive — unisex bathrooms?), and you have just as good a scenario for Democrat self-destruction. That simply will take longer.
“Republicans need to stick to their guns: Smaller government, lower taxes, less waste, fewer regulations, no more borrowing, and sabotage Obamacare (which is going to collapse anyway).
“If they do that, eventually they’ll win. Either that or the country goes broke, and the Republican states secede!
“Robert Brian Crim
Naples, FL.”
* * *
Science is validated by predicting results. Einstein’s famous prediction of relativity was that the star light will bend when it passes through the sun’s gravitational field — and his prediction (published in 1916) finally was validated in 1922. Here, two months out (an etermity in political time), I confirmed what Sabado was saying, and I told him exactly where to look — WHY he was right.
For those with short memories: September 2013 was BOTH before the Republican shutdown AND the failure of Obamacare’s website — the two events essentailly were a wash. I have no doubt that Jerry, in his own little fantasy world, crawled into his own little fantasy ballot box and voted for Bolling. Goodie for him! But, does this not prove the greater point?
You get what you vote for! If you vote for a compromise, that’s what you get. I learned that a long time ago, when I voted for Rowland and should have voted for Scott. So, you can’t fault the Tea Party for saying that the time to compromise (at least on certain matters) is over. You can, of course, say you’re for some other alternative (that’s a different thing). But, the point is that neither the Tea Party nor the Libertarians are going away. They will be running in EVERY election, and if the GOP does not want these two alternatives to run off with their votes, they’d better take notice and act accordingly.
The answer might be to try to capture the middle by going with someone like Christie. Christie is more conservative than most think, but he has a liberal cast today because he has to if he wants to get anything done in a “blue” state. Reagan was the same in California when he was governor (I was there). That is, of course, the difference between being a governor and being a senator — like Huckabee said, you have to GOVERN. Perhaps Bolling could have done that, but clearly some in Virginia preferred someone else.
You cannot blame someone for preferring someone else.
“As for the rest, Jerry, I did what any professional analyst would do: Went to Sabado and looked at the map! The “blue” part was right around Washington, D.C.! Just like two years ago!”
No Bobby, what you did is what any halfassed researcher or dumb schmuck lazy school kid would do. You looked at one thing, liked what you saw, and then declared yourself right and a genius.
You’re a moron.
Gee, the “blue” part was right up there around DC just like it was two years ago. Yeah…
I wasn’t aware that Richmond, Virginia located a good two-plus hours down 95 from DC, was right up there by DC. And I’m pretty sure that the residents of Nelson, Albemarle, Charlottesville, Newport News, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, and Charles City will be shocked to find out that they’re right up there by DC.
And, dear God, who could have known, until Bobby was here to guide us to the light, that the NC/VA border was right up there around Washington, DC. Why, this information must be told to those voters in Brunswick, Greensville, Chesapeake, Sussex, and Suffolk. Those poor, uneducated fools! They need to be told that living right there by the VA/NC border means that they live around Washington, DC! Let the wisdom of Bobby prevail!!!
by the way you dûmbášš. You also came across as someone who acts like a halfassed researcher or lazy school kid for another reason.
Go look at the maps for 2008, 2006, and 2004. Guess what. They election maps show almost exactly the same wins for each side. So, please, tell us about how exactly, in this delusional fantasy world you live in, Obama was able to start filling the northern part of Virginia with hordes of new government employees and somehow make it a Democrat stronghold before the presidential election of 2004.
By the way. In September, before the government shutdown, the government had just 2,723,000 employees. That’s a 47 year low. And these numbers are for civilian jobs. Members of the armed forces are not counted in that total. If they had been though, the numbers would still be lower than it has been in decades.
You are an idiot of epic proportions. If God were to bless you tomorrow with all of the intelligence you believe you possess to add it against what you actually possess, the deficit you’re running now would still drag your IQ down to about that of a Doberman Pinscher suffering from the mentally debilitating issues caused by too much inbreeding.
Please seek help. Please get the medication that you need. And if you can’t do that, just please go away.
As all can see, Jerry is behaving like the infant he is again. When his statistics gleaned from the internet fail to impress anyone, he turns abusive, like the little boy who beats another kid’s dog because he can’t get at the kid. Now he’s too the “you’re sick; you’re crazy” stage, then he’ll move to the “shunning” stage, obliging us all to bear-bait him back into bubbling like a yeast cake while foaming at the mouth.
But, I expect that from him, and now everyone else should too, because he’s a genuine demodonkey horse’s áršë, and the way to counter that is to give as good as you get or better, then enjoy the laugh.
So, back on your laudenum, Jerry (or is it being a crackhead that you prefer?). When you lived in Tampa — oh, I’m sorry: You lived in ST. PETERSBURG and PÍSSÊÐ in Tampa — you must have known that there were lots of Demodonkeys in that city too (which proves nothing). The only relevant data explains why Virginia has moved from a 50/50 battleground state to a “likely Democratic” domain, by 2-3 percentage points. The increase in the federal bureaucracy AROUND WASHINGTON, D.C., is PART of the answer.
Nothing more was said or implied.
“The increase in the federal bureaucracy AROUND WASHINGTON, D.C., is PART of the answer.
“Nothing more was said or implied.”
Sure Bobby. That’s all.
“Obama was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees, which turned its color. Obama won in 2012 (and hardly against a Tea Party radical) by capturing the votes of all those people he imported”
“As for the rest, Jerry, I did what any professional analyst would do: Went to Sabado and looked at the map! The “blue” part was right around Washington, D.C.! Just like two years ago!”
Again, you’re an idiot. The areas that went Democrat this year and two years ago are the same that went Democrat before. And, please, explain how your point that Obama “was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees” doesn’t make you look like the bûllšhìŧ spewing idiot we’ve all started to know you as when Obama won the same areas, and the state, in the 2008 before he was the President.
You’re an idiot. Here’s something else for you.
2004 vote totals- 3,198,367
George W. Bush – 1,716,959
John Kerry – 1,454,742
Michael Badnarik – 11,032
Michael Peroutka – 10,161
Other (+) – 5,473
2008 vote totals- 3,723,260
Barack H. Obama – 1,959,532
John S. McCain, III – 1,725,005
Ralph Nader – 11,483
Bob Barr – 11,067
Other (+) – 16,173
2012 vote totals- 3,854,489
Barack H. Obama – 1,971,820
Willard Mitt Romney – 1,822,522
Gary Johnson – 31,216
Virgil H. Goode, Jr. – 13,058
Other (+) – 15,873
The greatest increase in voter totals from 2004 to 2012 was seen in in the jump from 2004 to 2008. Again, that was before Obama was President. That was before, as you explained about your delusional fantasy world, Obama “was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees.”
Now look at 2008 VS 2012. The difference in the voter totals was 131,229. out of that, Obama only increased his total votes by 12,288 votes. Romney won 97,517 more votes than McCain. The remaining 21,424 votes are reflected in the increases to the other candidates.
So Obama, in your delusional fantasy world, “was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees” to reap the benefits of 12,288 votes. In the meantime, everyone else got the remaining 118,941 votes went to everyone else; mostly Romney.
By the way. Here’s something else.
2008 to 2012-
Chesapeake increased its votes by around 3,000 votes.
Albemarle increased its votes by around 3,000 votes.
Richmond increased its votes by around 4,000 votes.
Henrico increased its votes by around 8,000 votes.
Prince George County increased its votes by around 1,000 votes.
Buckingham increased its votes by around 600 votes.
These are all places that went Obama in 2008 and 2012 and had more or less equal percentages for Obama. Total? 19,600 votes.
Now lets look at Northern Virginia and the supposed government workers who won it for Obama despite the fact that there were fewer state and federal workers in Virginia in 2012 than there were in 2008.
Loudoun – Increased its votes by around 21,000 votes.
Fairfax – Increased its votes by around 13,000 votes.
Arlington – Increased its votes by around 7,000 votes.
Alexandria – Increased its votes by around 3,000 votes.
Total- 44,000 votes increased. Hm. Does this number back Bobby’s delusional worldview here? No. Note the comment above about the more or less equal percentages for Obama in the areas away from DC that saw increases in voter numbers from 2008 to 2012. The same thing didn’t happen in Northern Virginia.
Loudoun – 2008 53.67% of the vote was for Obama. In 2012 he got 52.53%.
Fairfax – 2008 60.12% of the vote was for Obama. In 2012 he got 59.57%.
Arlington – 2008 71.71% of the vote was for Obama. In 2012 he got 69.10%.
Alexandria – 2008 71.73% of the vote was for Obama. In 2012 he got 71.11%.
Now let’s look at the statewide totals.
Obama in 2008 – 1,959,532 or 52.63%
Obama in 2012 – 1,971,820 or 51.16%
Up 12,288
McCain in 2008 – 1,725,005 or 46.33%
Romney in 2012 – 1,822,522 or 47.28%
Up 97,517
Libertarian in 2008 – 11,067 or 0.30%
Libertarian in 2012 – 31,216 or 0.81%
Up 20,149
Independent in 2008 – 11,483 or 0.31%
Constitution in 2012 – 13,058 or 0.34%
Up 1,575
Other (+) in 2008 – 16,173 or 0.43%
Other (+) in 2012 – 15,873 or 0.41%
Down 300 even
Every name in the race saw increases from 2008 to 2013 except Obama. Other (+) also saw an insignificant decrease. 118,941 votes out of the increase of 131,229 went to everyone not named Obama.
Sorry, but your statements do not match reality, Bobby. In the northern Virginia counties where there was an increase in voter turnout, there was a decrease in the percentage of the vote that went for Obama. In the other parts of the state that went Obama in 2008 and 2012, the percentages broke more or less then same with some increases for Obama in the overall percentages.
McAuliffe (1,064,016 votes and 47.75%) won more of the state than Obama did. Northam (1,209,987 vote and 55.08%) won more votes than McAuliffe did and won more of the state than McAuliffe or Obama did.
What won the 2012 and 2013 elections for Democrats here in Virginia was a combination of the changing demographic in the voting population and the fact that the Republicans ran stupid fûçkìņg candidates; even more so in 2013 than in the Presidential election in 2012. That demographic shift, a heavy shift from 2000 and 2004 to now and seen mostly in the central, eastern and northern parts of the state, played more of a role in 2012 and 2013 than northern Virginia did. Republicans pìššìņg øff nonwhites and women played more of a role in Virginia than Northern Virginia did.
McAuliffe got 51% of the female vote, 90% of the black vote, and 56% of the moderates. In the age demo, the two biggest groups are the 45-64 (46%) and 30-44 (23%). They broke 37% (-19 pct. pts.) for Cuccinelli, 56% (+12 pct. pts.) for McAuliffe in the 30-44 and 48% (-11 pct. pts.) for Cuccinelli, and 46% (+5 pct. pts.) for McAuliffe. Those + & – points are compared to the last election for Governor.
And you know what would have changed a lot of that? Not running Tea Party freak darlings for the Gov and Lt. Gov slots. Bill Bolling would be Governor elect of this state right now had the state GOP not rigged the process so that they could nominate the darlings of the fringe. There were moderates willing to vote Bolling, myself included, and there were Republicans pìššëd øff enough about the shenanigans that they stayed home. There were still others on both sides who voted third party (145,295 for 6.52%) or write-ins (10,262 for 0.46%) who would have otherwise gone for Bolling.
There’s another number for you. The 2012 presidential election had a much higher turnout than the 2013 gubernatorial election did. There were around 2 million more votes cast in 2012. In 2012, all of the independents and “other” votes totaled 60,147. In 2013, all of the independents and “other” votes totaled 155,557. In an election with 2 million fewer votes, the “anger” or “other” votes were 2.5 times higher in 2013 than in 2012.
Put Bolling on the ticket rather than a Tea Party freak darling and you get less pìššëd øff moderates and Republicans voting Republican rather than “Other” and “Write-Ins” and less pìššëd øff Republicans staying home.
You’re an idiot, Bobby. You know nothing and you cling to one number, one factoid, and ignore the ten, twenty, or thirty others that shift the meaning of your little factoid away from what you say it should mean. Cling to your one little fact and ignore everything else that needs to be looked at to figure out what happened. You’ll just look stupid. But, hey, that is what you do best.
And no matter what you say here now, nothing changes the fact that the biggest increase in the Norther VA voter population was 2004 to 2008, under W. Bush, and not 2008 to 2012 under Obama. Nothing changes the fact that there are fewer federal and state employees in Virginia now than in recent years past.
And you know what else? Nothing changes the fact that only a world class fûçkŧárd, that would be you, would claim that “Obama was able to fill the northern part of it with hordes of new government employees, which turned its color.” The color turned from the 2004 to 2008 elections and stayed as it was from 2008 to 2012 and 2013.
Please, Bobby, explain to us all how Obama filled the northern parts of my state with hordes of new government employees from 2004 to 2008. Please explain to us how Obama filled the northern parts of my state with hordes of new government employees from 2008 to 2013 when federal employee numbers are down under Obama.
On second though, don’t. The flood of bûllšhìŧ you’ll unleash might drown innocent victims.
“When you lived in Tampa — oh, I’m sorry: You lived in ST. PETERSBURG and PÍSSÊÐ in Tampa — “
Wow. That must really be sticking under your craw, Bobby. I mean, that one must really be making you feel like the idiotic little šhìŧ that you are.
You lied multiple times about what I said with regards to where I lived, got caught, got called out by more than just me, and then crawled away muttering an identical line without being man enough to admit that you lied and without being man enough to apologize for saying that I lied about where I lived at the time despite my clearly stating in multiple threads that you were in that I lived in Virginia, that I hadn’t lived in Florida for over ten years, and that my short stay there was in St. Pete. And here you are again whipping out your lived in-pìššëd in line to embarrass yourself once again.
Bobby, pretend that you’re a man for all of three minutes, apologize for telling lies about me, admit that you (as per usual) got it wrong, and move on with your life.
You may now have the last word. You’re an idiot, you’re a liar who apparently obsesses on the times he gets caught and called out on publicly telling lies and then crawls deeper into denial over it, and you’re not worth any further time. I’ve really only responded to you with this much information and detail so that others have more statistical data on hand than your blarney and blather.
Welcome back to your status under the shroud. Done with you now.
“Every name in the race saw increases from 2008 to 2013 except Obama. Other (+) also saw an insignificant decrease. 118,941 votes out of the increase of 131,229 went to everyone not named Obama.”
Should read-
“Every name in the race saw increases in their percentage of the votes from 2008 to 2013 except Obama. Other (+) also saw an insignificant decrease. 118,941 votes out of the increase of 131,229 went to everyone not named Obama.”
Is he STILL going on about this Florida thing? What was that all about and why?
“What was that all about and why?”
Some time back (The Martin/Zimmerman shooting still being new and fresh in the news) Bobby kept making weird comments about he and I essentially being neighbors and how I should well know ‘X’ about some local thing in Florida since I lived there. When I told him that he was a nutter and that I didn’t live there, he said I was a liar.
He posted that he knew I was a liar since he had gotten the information about where I lived (Tampa, Florida) from me. I had, Bobby claimed, flat stated that I lived in Tampa in one of the Zimmerman threads while making a point about the case.
I pointed out the handful of Martin/Zimmerman related threads to Bobby, pointed out my relatively minimal presence in them, and pointed out that the only post in any of those threads where I referenced my home state was when (I believe if memory serves) Malcolm asked me about certain ordinances that I should know as a police officer. I clearly stated that it wasn’t my state, that I lived in VA, and that even when Florida briefly had been where I lived over a decade earlier, that I was in St. Pete and my knowledge of specific local ordinances as a resident there were outdated and still wouldn’t translate over to where the shooting took place anyhow. I further pointed out to Bobby that I had in other threads at that time discussed the fact that I lived in Virginia, discussed that Bob McDonnell, heavy in the news cycles as a possible Romney VP and for the ultrasound bill, was my state’s governor, and flat stated that I lived in the central Virginia area. I also pointed out that I knew people on the blog in real life, had had them in my home, exchanged snail mail with still others, and was friends with still others and Peter on Facebook where I listed my home as Virginia and that I would have been called out for saying that I lived in Tampa during the Zimmerman debates by any number of people here. Oh, yeah, and the really fun bit was in no post did I mention Tampa at all.
Nope. I was the liar according to the Gospel of Bobby. Then a couple of other people (one was you I believe) said something to him as well. He apparently looked back on the threads and came back with a comment about how, ah, my admission to him on the issue was now that I had briefly lived in St. Pete, pìššëd in Tampa, and la dee da.
He lied. He then said I’m the liar. I never changed my story or statements. He gets backed into a corner. He then isn’t man enough to just admit that he’s wrong and explains that I’m the one at that point admitting something or another and fails to ever be man enough to say that he lied and/or was wrong.
I think it got under his skin so badly because of other stuff going on at the time. That was around about when he was telling some here that he was far better at them at actually being able to understand what he was reading and about how he was the one with the command of the facts. Yet here he was showing everyone that his ability to understand what he reads was so staggeringly pathetic that my flat saying I lived in Virginia, I had lived in Virginia for almost my entire life, that may state’s governor was Virginia’s governor, that my brief stay in Florida was over ten years earlier, and never once mentioning Tampa at all translated into Bobby World as my living down the way from him in Tampa.
I think it stung him. It was after that point that he seemed to develop a little obsession with dropping my name in posts when I wasn’t even involved in the threads in question. It was bad enough that I’d made him look bad in a prior thread, but now his antics and fixation on me in contrast to his boasting of the time had made him look like a total idiot. Had to hurt.
And now, all this time later, he’s whipping out the exact same lived in/pìššëd in line again out of the blue. Yeah, that one stung him real bad and apparently still floats around in his mind every time I post something and he reads it.
How does it feel living with me in your mind that much and to that degree, Bobby? Like I said above… Man up, say you got it wrong, apologize for the dumb šhìŧ you said back then, move on, and let it go. Frankly, in all seriousness, you need to for your own well being. Whipping out your little “When you lived in Tampa — oh, I’m sorry: You lived in ST. PETERSBURG and PÍSSÊÐ in Tampa — “ completely out of the blue like that after all of this time (and with the all caps on St. Pete) does not make you look very mentally healthy or stable.
And, off the main topic but interesting in the timing thanks to this discussion, we bring you George!
George Zimmerman arrested for domestic violence
He was arrested 1 p.m. today.
Hmmmm… Violent tendencies and use of a firearm while acting with unwarranted aggression…
I’m starting to see a trend here. Of course, his history of past violence and unwarranted aggression was well documented before now, but, well, I’m sure Fox News, Breitbart, Rush, and the rest will find some way to spin it yet again as poor George being the heroic victim in all of this.
“George Zimmerman was arrested on domestic violence charges Monday after pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend, breaking a table and pushing her out of her Seminole County home, deputies said.”
*************
“Zimmerman has had a string of run-ins with law enforcement. In September he was handcuffed by Lake Mary police but released after his estranged wife, Shellie, and her father accused him of threatening them with a gun while they were moving her belongings out of a house the couple shared until Shellie Zimmerman filed for divorce.”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/trayvon-martin/os-george-zimmerman-arrested-20131118%2C0%2C1837318.story
Just to show how impossible it is to make accurate predictions this far out, who would have thought it would only take 6 weeks for the GOP to erase the 9 point advantage the Democrats had in the generic polls? Independents went from favoring the Democrats by 2 points to favoring the GOP by 9. thanks Obamacare! But who knows what twists and turns remain ahead of us?
We have Ted Cruz on tour with Rafael Cruz. If anyone needed any more proof that a lot of the Texas and Southern Tea Party rallies are little more than oportunities for the mentally unstable to get together and cheer the even more mentally unstable, seeing Rafael Cruz play to the masses should be it.
“We have our work cut out for us,” he said. “We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago. I’d like to send him back to Kenya, back to Indonesia.”
“We have to unmask this man. This is a man that seeks to destroy all concept of God. And I will tell you what, this is classical Marxist philosophy. Karl Marx very clearly said Marxism requires that we destroy God because government must become God.”
“Socialism requires that government becomes your god. That’s why they have to destroy the concept of God. They have to destroy all loyalties except loyalty to the government. That’s what’s behind homosexual marriage. It’s really more about the destruction of the traditional family than about exalting homosexuality, because you need to destroy, also, loyalty to the family.”
I rather liked his recent mental breakdown as he went on about how Atheism leads to child molestation and perversity. Who knew the Catholic Church was an Atheist organization?
Apparently the crazy runs in the family and the fruit didn’t land fat from the tree. And, double fun, Cruz the Younger likes letting Cruz the Older whip up the crowds and get cheering Tea Party freaks to look like cheering Tea Party freaks. It’ll go over great in the GOP primaries. Should scare the šhìŧ out of anyone sane.
By the way- The Virginia races are all but officially done. There’s some kicking, screaming, whining, and additional poor sportsmanship to be displayed by the Republican candidates, but the AG’s race is essentially done.
Virginia has done something that it hasn’t done in decades. It bucked its longtime trend and elected a Governor who is the same party as the sitting President. Moreover, we now have all five major offices held by Democrats. Out Gov, Lt. Gov, AG, and both senators are all Dems. And the reason that conservatives can thank for this? The Tea Party and the fringe.
“who would have thought it would only take 6 weeks for the GOP to erase the 9 point advantage the Democrats had in the generic polls?”
And you and I have both agreed in the past that “Generic Candidate” polls are pretty much junk. As soon as we start seeing real names VS real names we have something, but generic blank is pointless.
I would not consider the generic poll as pure junk; it can give one at least a sense of how the parties are being perceived by the public and could influence serious factors like whether some congressman decides to spend more time with his or her family and whether or not the parties can convince good candidates to toss their hats in the ring.
It would be naive to think that it is pure coincidence that these polls coincide with the growing sense of panic among many Democrats on the Hill over the ACA results. Would anyone have predicted a few months ago that many would be considering voting FOR a GOP bill to alter the law? Or that Obama would be in the 30s with his approval rating?
But as I said, who knows what will come next. Maybe when the website makes its Nov 30 deadline for not sucking all will be fine for the White House. Alternatively, expect some lively Thanksgiving day family banter on what a cosmic çøçk-up this has been.
Bill, in 2003 the Democrats were crowing because the generic polls had the beating W. Bush and they were doing well in various generic polls showing leftward leanings on the state levels. Then they plugged actual names into those blank, generic slots in 2004 and, well, it didn’t go so well for the Democrats.
Obama’s popularity is dropping in large part because he put his foot in his mouth. It’s also not being helped by a bad website roll out and, perhaps more importantly, by the national media running so many ACA horror stories that end up being debunked without giving any play after the fact to correcting the false story the aired before doing it again while ignoring anyone who steps forward and shows, with proof, that they’ve used the ACA and it’s done what it’s supposed to do.
Generic polls are also showing frustration with the party in power. Just like in 2004, the party in power catches grief in those polls for anything and everything that people want to complain about because a generic poll allows people to fill in their imaginary perfect candidate. Of course that person is going to win.
But the Republicans have to run real candidates next year and in 2016. You know what? They’re going to need some new names in a lot of races and they’re going to have to work really hard to get a national nominee ready for the big run in 2016. As it stands right now, if you plug in real names into many of the polls, especially in a 2016 poll, the Republicans go from somewhat bad to going down in flames.
The theoretical race for 2016 is Hillary VS Republican. The only name on the horizon that doesn’t get stomped flat is Chris Christie and Chris Christie still loses. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and other favorites of the party right now get destroyed.
“Generic” wins don’t translate over in most races when names are plugged in. Generic polls are junk polls.
Well, maybe the Democrats are fools for going into full scale panic over the polls. I can entertain that notion.
If the biggest problem the ACA had was bad press it would be in fine shape and Democrats would not be fleeing it with a desperation that is forcing the White House to propose changes that just a few days ago it said were “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” Bye bye baby.
Obama’s rating are paralleling Bush’s at this point in time, which must make Democrats nervous–the midterms for 2006 were pretty gruesome for the party with a guy whose popularity was in the 30s. When they were doing better–as was the case for Reagan and Clinton–that was not the case.
As for the presidential election, 3 years out of it Obama was barely a blip. Too early to make much of it.
“As for the presidential election, 3 years out of it Obama was barely a blip.”
Uhm… Read what I wrote again. 2003 and 2004. The Dems were crowing about generic polling putting them in a win against W. Bush. Obama isn’t in that equation at all or ever.
That was the big win for then that turned into the lose when they actually had to run a real person, Kerry, as a candidate and not merely a blank slate, generic candidate with no details.
Generic polls are pretty much junk.
I haven’t heard republicans crowing about generic polls vis a vis the presidential election–the focus is on 2014. And, when republicans are at parity or besting the Democrats in the generic polls, they tend to do well, I think that has been the case in the past. So while you may believe that the generics are of no value, one cannot entirely blame the Democrats for pressing the red panic button as they watch their former lead evaporate and an issue–Health care!–that they had previously owned suddenly flip into the favor of the party that was once associated in the public mind with pushing grannies off of cliffs.
But a year is forever. If 6 weeks can see the GOP go from a circular firing squad to gleefully watching their opposition begin to nervously suggest delays and modifications in the ACA, who truly knows what another 8 such cycles could bring. Right now the GOP is, uncharacteristically, just watching the carnage and not pushing their luck with overreach, but there’s plenty of time and opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
In the contest between GOP over reach and Democratic refusal to acknowledge problems, who knows who will ultimately emerge as the lesser of two evils, the party that people will proudly hold their noses and vote for?
They’re not crowing about it right now. You brought it up.
” their opposition begin to nervously suggest delays and modifications in the ACA”
Which is to some degree another false narrative.
There has never not been a point where the Democrats and their supporters have been saying that changes would need to be made. Even Obama has said that adjustments would likely need to be made when the thing rolled out once they found out what worked best and didn’t work as it should. Hëll, there have been something like 19 or 20 major changes tot he law in the year or so prior to the roll out.
No one on the pro-ACA side has said that it’s perfect and will never need tweaking and adjusting. The opposite is actually true. But, again, that crazy, pro-Obama, liberal, MSM is out there reporting on the idea of changes to the ACA after the roll out as though there was never any indication that there would ever be one and that tweaking things to make the roll out and the implantation smoother is the sign that it’s all falling apart.
Even generic polling doesn’t give the Republicans the edge they need to take back the Senate or even to get the numbers they need to fight a veto. As such, these are the facts- The ACA will not be defunded, repealed, or otherwise shut down in between now and 2017. The Republicans have three years to be known as either the party that helped fix it or the party that continued to do whatever they could to sabotage it and intentionally inflict pain and damage on the American people.
John Kasich is a Republican. He looked at what he could do and has at least tried to work with the system on the state level. In Ohio, they’re getting people registered and they’re helping people navigate the system and find ways to cover themselves for less than they were before. In NC, the Republican-led legislature and Republican Gov. Pat McCrory refused to participate and now you have people who cannot get covered properly or are losing the “junk” policies they had and not able to find new policies for less or take advantage subsidies to lower costs.
They can count on people not knowing about that right now, but not for three years. Word will get out to even the dumbest people that some people are not getting what is being offered not because of the President, but because the states led by the GOP are intentionally screwing their own people for partisan political gain.
The GOP get to either be part of the solution or part of the problem. They appear to be desperate to be THE problem. That will hurt them in the long game. But, beyond that, what will hurt them is what else they’re doing right now. They want to be the party of no and the party of the nutbaggers. As they push crazies like Ted Cruz and his ilk more and more, they’ll just push away more and more voters.
“There has never not been a point where the Democrats and their supporters have been saying that changes would need to be made”
Boy, there sure are a lot of Democrats out there who seem absolutely gobsmacked at the need for the proposed changes. One would think that since this is just SOP there would be no need for contentious meetings with White House Staff, open revolt from vulnerable candidates, an apology from the president, a glum news conference, etc, etc. This isn’t all just unfair news spin. This is a mess, born of hubris and bad management. “‘What We’re Also Discovering Is That Insurance Is Complicated to Buy” the president said today. Wow. Just wow. Seems like something that might have come up at some point. As with the claims that Obama had no idea how many problems the website had until it was too late, the excuses make him seem even weaker.
Time will tell whether or not those who have so far correctly predicted problems will be proven correct in predicting that once people can actually log on to the site even worse problems will begin to make themselves obvious (I’ll predict right now that the current timetable, which would have the new menu of health care plans for the ACA marketplaces (almost certainly more expensive than now and more expensive than the administration would hope) be revealed right before the election, will be pushed back).
You’ll know the whole thing is in trouble if they start calling it Bidencare.
“Boy, there sure are a lot of Democrats out there who seem absolutely gobsmacked at the need for the proposed changes. One would think that since this is just SOP there would be no need for contentious meetings with White House Staff, open revolt from vulnerable candidates, an apology from the president, a glum news conference, etc, etc.”
First, the apology from the President is not about having to tweak or adjust things in the first few years of the ACA going into full effect. The apology from Obama is because of his declaring, despite what you could read in the ACA itself, that all policies could be kept regardless. That wasn’t even the constant message. There’s actually video out there of Jay Carney stating that you could keep your policy with some exceptions. But Obama, being Obama, went into overreaction push-back mode in response to Republican talking points and turned it into everyone keeping their plans no matter what, again, despite what’s in the actual text of the ACA.
Second, you know as well as I do that the Democrats have proven to be even greater political cowards in the last decade plus than the Republicans sometimes are. When the going gets tough, they turn to jelly. This is the same party that stormed into power in 2006 by promising big changes, talking tough, and declaring that there was a new sheriff in town only to run their yaps for two years while pretty much just rolling over for W. Bush whenever the pressure got too much for them.
Gee, Democrats who were standing tough when they thought public opinion was going their way who have now started to duck and cover at the first signs of bad polling data? Color me surprised.
“But Obama, being Obama, went into overreaction push-back mode in response to Republican talking points”
At this point the opinion that the president deliberately mislead, misstated and/or outright lied is way beyond just GOP talking points. It’s the opinion of most Americans, including many Democrats, including elected Democrat politicians.
I think you are underestimating the potential problems the entire bill faces if things do not turn around and quickly. This is not just a matter of fixing tweaks. The number of people signed up is dismal, even given the lowball estimates the White House gave, (no doubt thinking they’d exceed them easily). The trust is broken. Simply blaming the press and the GOP when one can recall time after time the administration seemed to be going out of its way to look like they are driving a clown car…Sebelis testifies on capitol hill and, while grimly insisting things are going well and getting better, one of her critics just pulls up the site and it’s down. It’s down. They send that woman out there and don;t even have the common sense to make dámņ sure, by any means necessary, that she doesn’t look like a fool. The press secretary looks like Baghdad Bob insisting there are no Americans in Iraq right before a marine escorts him off camera. This does not inspire confidence.
Not only do they have to make that dámņ site become the greatest thing since lolcats, they have to convince people that it really! works! and THIS time, we mean it!
If it doesn’t improve and fast enough that enough people sign up–death spiral. The GOP won;t have to do anything, the law will be neutered into an unworkable mess. The fact that the president retreated today even though every unbiased analysis I’ve read says that this will provide a short term political band-aid at the price of putting the act’s long term health at risk tells me that is not nearly as unlikely a scenario as I would have once thought.
What would replace the Act, I have no idea. The fantasy that people will embrace single payer after watching them screw up this lite version seems very dubious to me.
Hillary?
What the hëll has she ever done? Other than give us the original Obamacare (as Clintoncare) and screw up in Benghazi?
She’ll get the votes of people like Jerry who can’t stop foaming at the mouth along with stars-in-the-eyes feminazi princesses who want to make a symbolic statement. The sane people will go with someone else.
That’s why when I see “new polling shows that Clinton would beat/lose to Christie in a presidential race,” I just roll my eyes. I hardly trust any polls before June of the election year, let alone two years ahead.
Let’s put it this way–no way did even the most pro-GOP partisan dream they would see this headline a few weeks ago: “A Month After the Shutdown, Republicans Are More Trusted to Govern Than Obama”
Congress has a 9% favorability rating, somewhere near chlamydia, and yet ” On every issue cited by Quinnipiac’s pollsters, respondents said they trusted congressional Republicans to do a better job than Obama. They preferred the GOP on health care (43 percent to 42 percent), the economy (45 percent to 41 percent), the federal budget (45 percent to 40 percent), and immigration (41 percent to 40 percent).”
I sure didn’t see that coming, so for now I’ll just sit back and munch on the popcorn.
The good news for the president is that it’s hard to imagine him having another moment where his administration looks this incompetent and he stands exposed as a liar in the eyes of most Americans. At least, one must how so, for the sake of the country. He has 3 years to win back the trust he’s squandered but I hope he doesn’t think congressional and senate Democrats love him so much that they are willing to go very far in making that happen.
“They preferred the GOP on health care”
The Republicans have a health care plan beyond “If you’re poor, just go die”?
Yes, Romneycare, as supported and backed (then) by such groups as the Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, as soon as the Dems conceded to it as the only way to get something passed, it became for the GOP the Uttermost Communistic Evil That Must Be Fought At All Costs.
“The Republicans have a health care plan beyond “If you’re poor, just go die”?”
And yet, those polled preferred it to Obamacare. tells you something about Obamacare…or your assumptions.
“Romneycare, as supported and backed (then) by such groups as the Heritage Foundation. Unfortunately, as soon as the Dems conceded to it as the only way to get something passed, it became for the GOP the Uttermost Communistic Evil That Must Be Fought At All Costs.”
If Obamacare is just Romneycare, one wonders why it took 3 years to make a failed website. What was all that money spent on? Why is it failing? Just ramp up Romneycare on a larger scale.
But at least my friends on the left are moving beyond the denials that there is anything wrong with the ACA. They are currently stuck in the blame stage, but that’s still a sign of progress. Bargaining to follow. Though judging from how quickly Obama folded on the “keep the old policy that last week we said was so bad it would be like throwing out a baby to allow you to keep it” policy, that may not go so well. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jay-carney-against-keep-your-plan-fixes-we-see-that-as-throwing-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater/
And yet, those polled preferred it to Obamacare. tells you something about Obamacare…or your assumptions.
No, it tells us a lot about Republicans and their opinion of most Americans.
Blah, didn’t finish my thought.
It also tells us that many Americans fall prey too easily to Republican propaganda and enjoy their ignorance of the GOP’s +40 failed attempts to kill the ACA.
Bill, are those the same polls that showed over 60% supporting the ACA, but less than 40% supporting Obamacare?
Yes! It’s called: Get the government out of the market completely so that market forces cannot continually be tricked into costing everyone evermore money!
There is no one in America today who cannot get medical care when they actually need it. You go to the emergency room and complain. Will it eventually cost you money? Yes! Just like anything else that one buys! But, the Democrats have nothing better to offer than to make slaves of the doctors, and in the long run, that won’t work (and probably would not get through the courts).
The current bášŧárdìzëd proposals NEVER will control costs. That’s because the people writing the bills KNOW that, e.g., YOU have $5,000 to spend on medical care. So, now you go get a subsidy from Uncle Sam to shift the cost onto someone else. You STILL have the $5,000, and they STILL know you have it. So, instead of $5,000, they charge you $7,500, pocket the subsidy, and then tell you how much better off you are since you still have $2,500 left to pay the taxes!
That’s NOT a good deal!
The polls are to be trusted, except when they go against one’s own opinions.
Do the “40+ failed attempts to kill the ACA” include allowing the insurance companies to continue offering policies made illegal by the ACA or is that ok now that the president is for it?
It must be hard to be an Obama cheerleader these days–his supporters attack a position with nearly religious fervor and then, when he reverses course and decrees the formerly forbidden plan as his own, they have to reverse course and look foolish.
The fact that whether or not Democrats voted for the recent proposed law to allow people to keep their old policies is almost directly determined by whether or not that Democrat is from a competitive district tells you something about the ACA’s current popularity. And why should people trust an administration that uses, as it’s defense, “it’s not that we lied, we just didn’t know what was going on and how complicated it all is?”
They may fix the website beyond even the rather shocking 80% working rate they say they expect by the end of November but will they get the trust back? My far left liberal friends are beginning to give in to despair and the paranoia that goes with it–apparently the website failed due to hacking by the Koch brothers, don’t you know? (these are the same friends who, up to a few days ago, were insisting that the ACA was really working save for a few needed tweaks and anyone who said differently was just a right wing shill.)
Ahh, yes, since I thought Obamacare was a good start that didn’t go nearly far enough, I’m a cheerleader. If only Obama didn’t do a bunch of other things that pìššëd me off (see: TSA, NSA, etc).
But hey, since I like one thing Obama did, I must be just like those friends of yours, eight? Here’s a hint, Bill: don’t be friends with anybody who’s ‘far’ into either side of the spectrum.
And yeah, in this case, I consider the polls indicative of how many of those polled have short and long term memory problems. The GOP doesn’t want to do šhìŧ about health care, doesn’t want to do šhìŧ about the economy, doesn’t want to do šhìŧ about the budget, and doesn’t want to do šhìŧ about immigration.
Want a government that does nothing? Continue to vote Republican; after all, that’s what they’ve done for the better part of the last 8 years!
“Do the “40+ failed attempts to kill the ACA” include allowing the insurance companies to continue offering policies made illegal by the ACA or is that ok now that the president is for it?”
Undercutting the way the system was in part designed to work isn’t okay. But the fact is that the ACA had a major regulatory shortcoming and Obama stuck his foot in his mouth.
There was a grandfather clause in the ACA for some plans sold prior to the enactment of the ACA. One problem came from not having something in the system to nix the continued selling of such junk plans after that point. As a result, insurance companies sold new plans that were neither grandfathered in nor complaint with the ACA regulations that they knew were going to be enforced and nix those plans in 2014.
The ACA regulations failed by not mandating that the sale of such plans require the insurance companies to notify new plan buyers that their plans were not ACA compliant and would not be in effect after 2014 if not simply outright eliminating the continued issuance of such plans after 2010. Obama failed and shoved both feet in his mouth by not changing his rhetoric to reflect that fact and state clearly and openly that some plans would die out as they were being sold after first phase initiation of the ACA despite the fact that they would fail compliance in 2014.
“It must be hard to be an Obama cheerleader these days–his supporters attack a position with nearly religious fervor and then, when he reverses course and decrees the formerly forbidden plan as his own, they have to reverse course and look foolish.”
So you’re saying they finally know what it feels like to be a GOP supporter, Tea Party member, and an Obama detractor then? I mean, that’s what the SOP of the GOP and Tea Party has been since January of 2009. Say something is great, even write the bill themselves, and then turn on a dime and condemn it with all their breath if Obama happens to make so much as one positive comment on the issue.
And, actually, I’ve seen far more Obama supporters annoyed that he backtracked and is allowing, in their words, the GOP and the spin machine to play this situation. On some level I agree. As I’ve said, the first month of this is not the indicator of success or failure. Neither is the first year. A system-wide change of this nature is going to take a lot of time and work to get in place. This is not something as simple as declaring that the speed limit has changed from 55 to 65 on the local freeway.
But, again, Obama stuck his foot in his mouth by not adapting his rhetoric over the last couple of years.
“The fact that whether or not Democrats voted for the recent proposed law to allow people to keep their old policies is almost directly determined by whether or not that Democrat is from a competitive district tells you something about the ACA’s current popularity.”
Yeah, because, again, since the Democrats have usually shown themselves to be the greater political cowards when things mattered, we should give great meaning to them acting the part of the political cowards again.
“And why should people trust an administration that uses, as it’s defense, “it’s not that we lied, we just didn’t know what was going on and how complicated it all is?””
And, again, that’s not entirely what happened. But, hey, let’s trust the other side to “fix” something that they’ve been dámņëd and determined to kill since die one. Let’s believe the people who are complaining that this just isn’t good enough and needs to be fixed when these are the same people who were swearing that they would kill it at any cost just a short while ago. Hey, makes sense to me.
“They may fix the website beyond even the rather shocking 80% working rate they say they expect by the end of November but will they get the trust back?”
Who do you truest more when each side is lying?
Let’s have a few more members of the GOP and the press inflate the numbers of people who have lost their policies while falsely adding in that these people can’t get new coverage. Let’s trot out a few more people to talk about how they’re suffering under the ACA only to have their stories turn out to be greatly exaggerated or outright lies.
Here’s the deal. One side wants to follow through with a plan to actually fix things and make things better. The other side though? That’s the side that’s been lying for almost five years now, making up stories about death panels, citing cropped wording in the bill and pretending it meant something completely different than it really meant, citing passages in the bill that never even existed, or taking advantage of the ignorance of the average Tea Party supporter to the point that you still see so many of these mental retrogrades making comments about the ACA, from what’s in it to how it was passed, that have as much relation to reality as claims of flying pink elephants with giant purple wings.
Do we trust the side that badly stuck its foot in its mouth but otherwise wants to actually fix things and improve on what was there before or do we trust the side that has lied nonstop about every aspect of this since day one, tried to kill it at every turn, and wants to give us in its place absolutely nothing?
Yeah, let’s go back to where we were before. Let’s go back to that glorious time when rate increases with reduced benefits were a regular things and outmatched what we’ll see here. Let’s go back to when insurance companies would bill you the $500 for the ambulance ride from the life threatening wreck you were in because, unconscious, bleeding, and at death’s door, you failed to get the ride expenditure pre-approved. Let’s go back to when being a woman was essentially a preexisting condition and they were often charged more because they might get pregnant one day. Let’s go back to that wonderful age of insurers who dropped policy holders when they got really sick and needed it most because it was no longer profitable to keep up their end of the deal. Let’s go back to when insurers would drop cancer patients and then that person could never get their own policy again because having had cancer and beaten it once was a preexisting condition.
And, yeah, let’s talk preexisting conditions. Let’s talk about supporting the side that wants to o back to the system that put my wife through bankruptcy because her seizure disorder, both inexpensive and easy to control in and of itself, was a preexisting condition brought on by someone else plowing into the back of the car she was in and thus when she needed something serious done it destroyed her finances for years and finally put her into bankruptcy before we met and I was able to put her on my insurance so that she could get a few things done she desperately needed done but hadn’t attended to because she had no insurance and didn’t have the money to pay for it.
Because, and will talk the big GOP lie line here, you will be turned away in this country if you have no insurance and no money to pay up front. And if you do have that emergency and they treat you? Then they will destroy you financially for years over it.
Wanna talk the GOP’s bûllšhìŧ line about death panels? Let’s talk about the real thing. Let’s let the GOP and the Tea Party happily march us back to that time when your doctor could tell you and the insurance company that you needed a specific treatment, but the insurance company refused coverage because they, lawyers and bean counters and not doctors, decided to get in between you and your doctor and declare that such treatment was unnecessary.
Yeah, let’s trust the side who has fought tooth and nail for five years to keep that status quo in place, fought tooth and nail to kill any reforms in that system, and told more and bigger lies about the thing for five solid years to be the trusted ones to “fix” the reforms that they swore that they would kill dead if and when they got the chance.
Sorry, but I’ll take the lesser of the two evils here.
“My far left liberal friends are beginning to give in to despair and the paranoia that goes with it–apparently the website failed due to hacking by the Koch brothers, don’t you know? (these are the same friends who, up to a few days ago, were insisting that the ACA was really working save for a few needed tweaks and anyone who said differently was just a right wing shill.)”
I don’t know about the Koch brothers, but there was at least some attempts to damage the site. But that’s just par for the course these days.
And it is working. Badly at the moment, but working. Again, it’s a huge program, a huge change, and it does need tweaks and fixes. That’s expected with something of this size and scope. And that’s not only Obama supporters who have said that about measures like this.
1) Quick question: Which Democrat said this?
“This is a huge undertaking and there are going to be glitches. My goal is the same as yours: Get rid of the glitches.”
2) Quick question: Which news organization said this about the ACA website?
“Visitors to the site could not access it for most of the first two hours. When it finally did come up around 5 p.m., it operated awfully slowly.”
Trick questions. The answers?
1) Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee, about Medicare Part D in 2006.
2) The Washington Post reporting on the Medicare Part D website.
Funny how the same members of the GOP who begged for patience, asked for time, and promised a quick fix, and for a law that didn’t have the petty opposing party in a power position to actively try to sabotage as much of it as they could for partisan political gain as we’ve seen in the last five years from the GOP on this matter, seem to think that now that everything has to roll out perfect on day one and any “glitch” in the system, a system that they were supposed to assist on the state level and refuse to do by the way, means the whole things should be sht down.
Yeah, ask me which side I’ll trust more here. Do I trust the side that stuck its foot in its boneheaded mouth but genuinely wants to fix things or do I trust the side that’s been nothing but lies on the issue nonstop for going on five years now and wants to “fix” things by going back to the same system that screwed more people than they claim this one will.
Tough one that…
Did Medicare Part D have the same rollout problems as the Obamacare online marketplaces?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/nov/13/steve-israel/medicare-part-d-and-obamacare-health-care-gov/
How Democrats Saved Bush’s Medicare Drug Program
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/how-democrats-saved-bushs-medicare-drug-program
Obamacare Applications Ahead Of Bush Medicare Drug Benefit Signups
As of Oct. 25, 700,000 people had submitted applications for coverage on the new exchanges, the online marketplace where uninsured Americans are expected to buy federally subsidized health insurance afforded them under the health law.
Only 10 percent of seniors had voluntarily enrolled in “stand-alone” drug plans as of December 2005, which was a month before drug coverage first became available, Avalere said. “If the Part D enrollment experience is applied to exchanges, fewer than 700,000 people would be expected to enroll in exchange coverage by November 15, 2013,” Avalere said.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2013/11/02/despite-trouble-obamacare-applications-may-be-ahead-of-bush-medicare-drug-benefit-signups/
the best defense for Obamacare seems to be “the other guy is worse!” And while that may well be sufficient for some, it is a hard sell for the entire country, as we can see. The rollout of medicare D has about as much resonance for someone facing bad news on their insurance front as the Smoot-Hawley act. When the Pirates of the Caribbean ride broke down the pirates didn’t eat the riders.
Incidentally, the latest Gallup poll shows the act underwater–40% approve, 55% disapprove. hard core Obama partisans will once again cover their ears and insist that since some of those want single payer, ie an even MORE government controlled system, that it means the Act is actually supported. They’ve been insisting on that all along, as support dribbles away and more and more Democrats begin to think the unthinkable. This is a slow motion train wreck and a lot of the supporters need to take a long hard look at how they let it happen, actually MADE it happen–but I predict most will just continue to double down. I know from some facebook acquaintances that being told by ACA supporters that they are just too stupid to see a great opportunity when they see it has amazingly not turned them into huge fans of the Act. Funny, that.
Had they called the GOP’s bluff–delayed the implementation of the plan for a year, which, clearly, they needed to do (and Obama was too disengaged from this, his signature effort, to bother to find out they needed to do), they would be in much better shape. But they traded the needed fix for a terribly short term victory, one already cosigned to the dustbin. This thread hadn’t even the chance to do before all those gains got reversed, and in a way that is likely to continue to hemorrhage support for the president and his party.
(Unless one assumes that Obama is telling the truth about being so out of the loop that this obvious course of action never occurred to him. Which is worse, if you ask me. As Walter Russell Mead, a guy who voted for Obama thinking he was smart (I know the type)says, “Reflect on that for a moment. The President of the United States is sitting in the Oval Office day after day. The West Wing is stuffed with high power aides. His political appointees sit atop federal bureaucracies, monitoring the work of the career staff around them. The President has told his core team, over and over, that the health care law and the website rollout are his number one domestic priorities.
And with all this, neither he nor, apparently, anyone in his close circle of aides and advisers knew that the website was a disaster. Vapid, blind, idly flapping their lips; they pushed paper, attended meetings and edited memos as the roof came crashing down. It is one thing to fail; it is much, much worse not to see failure coming. There is no way to construe this as anything but a world class flop.”
“And it is working. Badly at the moment, but working. Again, it’s a huge program, a huge change, and it does need tweaks and fixes”
The fact that someone as intelligent as yourself can describe a government program with an 80% failure rate (with the hope that a mere 20% failure rate is just a few weeks away) as “working” is one reason why other intelligent people may not look with confidence upon government programs. The bar is set mighty low. Though evidently not low enough.
“Ahh, yes, since I thought Obamacare was a good start that didn’t go nearly far enough, I’m a cheerleader. If only Obama didn’t do a bunch of other things that pìššëd me off (see: TSA, NSA, etc).”
Craig, if I ever want to call you out, I’ll do it by name. If you don’t match the description why assume you are the one being described? It’s like when I’m giving a test in class and I hear whispering and I’ll say “Ok, folks, no talking during a test!” and someone from the corner always pipes up “But I wasn’t talking!” I usually go into my Lewis Black I’m about to have an aneurism imitation and yell “Then I wasn’t referring to YOU, was I?”. You don;t need to establish your independent thinker bona fides, not after all these years of posts!
“Here’s a hint, Bill: don’t be friends with anybody who’s ‘far’ into either side of the spectrum.”
Good lord, why not? That describes some of the best people I know. Ditch their friendship because they disagree with me on politics? Who wants to live in a bubble?
Of course, it becomes easier to do that when you set up a “My side vs the Side that Wants to Kill People” situation. And certainly conservatives could play that game. After all, we were told that anything that did not reduce the number of uninsured would “cost lives” and judging from the puny numbers signed up and the considerably larger numbers who have lost their insurance, it looks like this year the Act will result in more uninsured…one could say it has “cost lives” yes? But that’s just cheap partisan shilling, to be avoided no matter what the schadenfreude.
“As I’ve said, the first month of this is not the indicator of success or failure. Neither is the first year. A system-wide change of this nature is going to take a lot of time and work to get in place.”
It’s not just the failure. It’s WHY it failed. No accountability. When they get asked who was responsible for seeing things got done they do the trick of claiming responsibility but saying they did not know about the problems, which means they were not really the ones responsible. SOMEone should have been in charge, by which I define as being the person who knows how the project is going and what needs to be done to make the deadline or change the deadline. Putting my health in the hands of people who simply mouth the “failure is not an option” mantra scares me, as it would anyone who has worked under folks like that. Failure is almost an inevitability when you think like that.
I do agree that the GOP, after a respectful (and brief) amount of time watching Democrats form a circular firing squad, need to come up with genuine alternatives. They probably won’t guarantee that all will be insured but neither does Obamacare, it would seem, based on the evidence Would any plan satisfy those who have invested so much in demonizing the opposition? No, but so what–the majority of the public is not that invested in one party or the other. They will go to where it looks like the good ideas are, implemented by people who seem to know what they are doing (the second part is a balloon easily burst, as the president is discovering). Time to hammer out a plan. It won’t be perfect but Obamacare has made that unnecessary. It just has to cover pre-existing conditions, at a minimum. That’s something that has been a problem for too long and the vast majority want to see something done about. Allowing children to stay on their parents plan is a good part to keep as well, though 26 seems to be stepping on the feet of the other part of Obamacare–getting young and healthy people to pay into the system to make up for the older, less healthy ones. Whatever. Come up with a plan and designate an actual human body to see it through. Mitt Romney isn’t busy. Just saying.
Jerry, I also think you are overestimating how long the Act has to start working well before disaster sets in. If the rollout is a mess, if the only people signing up are the ones who are less healthy, then the premiums will skyrocket next year, causing more people to drop out–at least the ones who are healthy and these premiums as a good deal, which makes the premiums rise the next year and etc etc. The so-called death spiral. There was always a danger of that happening anyway, the disastrous rollout has made it far more likely, wouldn’t you agree?
And we aren’t even sure that these problems will be the big ones. Right now people had trouble just getting on. What if it turns out that once they get on a lot of folks don’t like it? Obama sold this as “if you like your plan you can keep it, you’ll just be paying less for it.” Being told “hey, he’s a politician, they say stuff like that.” not only fails to quell the anger it probably increases it.
That came out totally unclear.
As I understand it–correct me if I’m wrong–the idea is to get EVERYBODY on a plan, even those who don’t want one because they figure (usually correctly) that they don’t need one. the young and healthy. Partly it’s because if misfortune hits them and they are uninsured we all end up paying for it and partly because we need those people who put more money in than they take out to make up for the ones who take more out than they put in.
So while I expect that the people who have been able to get through the webpage are mostly happy with the results–if you were uninsurable ANY insurance is better than no insurance–those aren’t the ones we need to worry about are they? If they are the majority of the ones signing up the Act fails.
Now there is a penalty for not signing up but it’s puny the first year. I’m hearing from a lot of young folks who are willing to eat it. That’s a problem. Maybe if the site was easy to navigate they might put in the effort but it’s not and they are not an age group that’s big on patiently waiting for a bureaucracy to tell them how much they have to pay for something they don’t want in the first place.
Allowing people to keep their old plans–I won’t call them bad plans or crappy plans, who am I to make that call–short-circuits the whole system. The sticker shock (“But it’s a better plan!” seems to no placate those who bought the whole “keep it and pay less for it” lie) is a necessary aspect. The money has to come from somewhere. In any insurance business, especially one designed to take care of a lot of people who will actually need it, there must be those who are in it and don;t need it.
Are those people happy with what they have seen? Are they deeply motivated to keep trying at the website until it works? Is the sticker shock not so great that they say “screw it” and take the penalty? It was always a hard sell to get everyone to voluntarily give all their information and buy something they may not want–given the bad news already and more to possibly come, it’s even harder. And without that it fails. The GOP doesn’t have to do a thing.
I would have listed that all as unlikely but the speed with which Obama threw out the “fix” surprised me–at this point it’s almost like he’s given up on the Act as it was planned and is just buying time.
They need to win back trust, be straight with people about the winners and losers under the Act and make the argument that even the losers should be for it. OR…they can stay in battle campaign mode , rally the dwindling troops, blame blame blame…which seems like a better way to anger half the electorate than to get them to do what you want them to do.
And it’s a very bad idea to put your opposition in the position where, to win, they simply have to do nothing. If insufficient people sign up it dies.
And, oh look, where the states are also doing what the states were supposed to do, the ACA is getting people signed up and getting positive feedback despite the website being messed up.
Yeah, can’t have news like that spreading to damper the doom and gloom reports and counter the latest fictional horror stories.
How we got Obamacare to work
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-we-got-obamacare-to-work/2013/11/17/3f2532bc-4e42-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html
“In our states — Washington, Kentucky and Connecticut — the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” is working. Tens of thousands of our residents have enrolled in affordable health-care coverage. Many of them could not get insurance before the law was enacted.”
*****
“One such person is Brad Camp, a small-business owner in Kingston, Wash., who received a cancellation notice in September from his insurance carrier. He went to the state exchange, the Washington Healthplanfinder, and for close to the same premium his family was paying before got upfront coverage for doctor’s office visits and prescription drug , vision and dental coverage. His family was able to keep the same insurance carrier and doctors and qualified for tax credits to help cover the cost.”
*****
“In Connecticut, more than 50 percent of enrollment in the state exchange, Access Health CT, is for private health insurance. The Connecticut exchange has a customer satisfaction level of 96.5 percent, according to a survey of users in October, with more than 82 percent of enrollees either “extremely likely” or “very likely” to recommend the exchange to a colleague or friend.”
*****
“Since Howard Stovall opened his sign and graphics business in Lexington, Ky., in 1998, he has paid half the cost of health insurance for his eight employees. With the help of Stovall’s longtime insurance agent and Kentucky’s health exchange, Kynect, Stovall’s employees are saving 5 percent to 40 percent each on new health insurance plans with better benefits. Stovall can afford to provide additional employee benefits, including full disability coverage and part of the cost of vision and dental plans, while still saving the business 50 percent compared with the old plans.”
*****
“In Connecticut, Anne Masterson was able to reduce her monthly premiums from $965 to $313 for similar coverage, including a $145 tax credit.”
*****
Yeah, can’t keep having the news media letting slip stories like that. People might get the idea that the ACA could actually work and work well for them.
Not so fast, Jerry:
Washington, turns out, screwed up its own web site, miscalculated the premiums, and allowed a lot of people to sign up for far less than they actually will have to pay. The woman the President cited and praised in the Rose Garden appears to be a typical case in point. The premium will cost her more, she WON’T get a subsidy, and the so-called “bronze” plan she can buy has deductibles so high that any policy she could afford would be useless to her.
There’s no such thing as something for nothing, and Obamacare incorporates use of insurance in the worst way. No insurance company can pay, dollar-for-dollar, what you can pay out-of-pocket in the operating room. That should be obvious. Insurance companies have employees, lights, taxes, and insurance of their own. They need a building to conduct business, have to pay the postman, and somewhere in all that have to turn a profit if they want to stay in business. About the best an insurance company can do is charge $2.50 for every $1.00 it pays in claims. To use insurance companies as primary payers for all health-care costs is nuts.
Yet, you propose to use them as primary payers for EVERYONE including people who have 100 per cent chance of getting sick (a pre-existing condition). Well, I can write a policy for ANY pre-existing condition, provided that you pay me $2,500 so that I can pay the hospital $1,000 and use the $1,500 to pay my employees and everything else.
But, of course, no one would do that when they could just pay $1,000 directly to the doctor. And, if it doesn’t happen that way, then you or Peter or someone has to cough up the $1,500.
It’s no answer to blame the two-thirds of the states which have followed the Cato Institute’s advice and refused to expand Medicaid or open exchanges. Why should they do that when they would be facing bankruptcy in only a few years once the federal subsidies run out. You blame them for having calculators and knowing how to count.
But, even were that not true, you cannot blame those who oppose this American variant of fascism for opposing the neo-fascists. Indeed, if you were anywhere near as intelligent as you like to portray yourself, you fully would have expected such opposition to have occurred. Why? BECAUSE I’M HERE! And, you know that I won’t co-operate with the fascists no matter how many times you call me “nuts.”
There are millions of Americans like me, and my job is not to fix it but to end it.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and those like you who support them are far more than misguided humanitarians or even rabid leftists. What you’re trying to pull on America is genuinely EVIL.
Craig, if I ever want to call you out, I’ll do it by name.
Fair enough. But you responded to me directly. 🙂
Who wants to live in a bubble?
The last time I checked, there were plenty of people out there who aren’t pushing their brand of political crazy on everybody else. These people are, not surprisingly, not on the far left or far right, and they outnumber the ‘fars’ by a wide margin.
And yes, I ‘lost’ several such people during the run up to the signing of the ACA, and then again during the last presidential election. This included family and long-time friends. Life needs less crazy, not more of it.
(as an addendum,by “it dies” I mean as a working solution to the healthcare problem. It’s too late to repeal it, there would be years of chaos. It might be scotchtaped and modified to something that costs way more than promised and delivers way less and both parties will point fingers at each other as to why the free lunch came with a bill and tiny portions. But government does not give up a power, especially one that would be so, um, useful, in the open to graft, corruption and abuse front.)
It might make people think twice about allowing further government control on our lives, if there is anything they have left out.
Speaking of where the GOP stands on an issue…
George Zimmerman was arrested after being accused of pulling a gun on somebody. Again.
But hey, at least there’s no body this time, right? So we can just let him keep his gun until the next incident, and maybe one of these days they’ll just catch him bloody-red handed?