I am no fan of Politico but I do thank them for their commitment to providing at least three Republicans in disarray articles a week. It’s like pornography. Or chocolate. Or little tiny ponies skipping over rainbows and grazing in the field with unicorns. Who can ever get tired of their naked infighting and disillusion?
I’ll be honest, though. If they want to solve their problems, they need to ask actual scientists. Thinking that the party of “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction,” “climate change is a hoax,” “evolution is a myth,” and “Romney is headed for victory” is going to be capable of correctly identifying even the cereal in their breakfast bowl is a recipe for failure.
More seriously, all the interested groups will fight to make sure blame is assigned somewhere else. That’s why they need an independent group to take a look at it.
Well, from this article its clear the leaders of the braindead “conservative” movement are naturally upset that they lost the prez election, although as the passions of the moment fade, there is no doubt that they selected a deeply flawed plutocrat weirdo (who was extremely unliked and unlikeable) as their nominee. They relied entirely on hatred for the socialist-fascist negro and “takin’ back our country!!” anger. (Mormons are apparently part of their country, but not negroes.)
But I have to say I am surprised at all these stories of seemingly unhappy and dispirited Repubs. They don’t seem to understand the success they are having, by their own standards. The hated federal gub’mint is totally paralyzed and utterly dysfunctional. Nothing can be accomplished and we basically lurch from one debt ceiling crisis to another. The budget destroying Bush (now Obama) tax cuts have been made permanent for 98% of the population. The senate remains paralyzed by a (very solid) Repub naysaying block, who successfully bullied the idiot Harry Reid into making no meaningful reforms to the Repubs’ historic obstruction. That’s a total victory and a done deal.
It’s clear that none of the many national crisis that plague the country can be rationally addressed; within a few weeks any supposed outlines of possible progress on such things as immigration reform and gun regulation have been largely derailed—with even Jeb Bush now stating there cannot be the remotest route to citizenship, for example. Soon Repubs will openly reject background checks for guns as well, and doing anything about the oceans of assault weapons in Gun Nation was quickly abandoned. The environment is essentially unprotected at this point, with a Dem admin eagerly permitting every fossil fuel outrage that the oil and gas plutocrats desire, from nationwide fracking to drilling in the arctic and deep water gulf, to pipelines for the catastrophic Canadian tar sands.
Further, Tea partiers have engineered huge cuts in gub’mint spending, wrecking agency after agency and “Protectin’ Liberty!” (at least the economic liberty of plutocrats). While it is true that “Defense” is also suffering cuts, how Repubs cannot see this as a historic victory is beyond me. It’s what they always said they wanted!
They have 5 “conservative” activists on the Supreme Court declaring just about every law passed by any Dem Congress in the past 60 years unconstitutional—with the Voting Rights Act next up for gutting. Aren’t “conservatives” satisfied with total victories like this? Their conservative white male “judges” across the judiciary are rendering most federal laws and regulations toothless to a degree not seen since the Four Horsemen reactionaries of the 30s. The “conservative” federal judiciary is effectively out of control, doing whatever they want for whatever phony reason they want to assert.
Finally, Repubs have successfully gerrymandered the House for a decade, and their opponents won’t even mention the fact. I suppose that one can say they are getting some bad polling numbers (so what), and that their intentional paralysis of the gub’mint (if indeed they are blamed for it) is unpopular with national majorities. Of course, in our “democratic” system, national majorities don’t vote for anything, including even the prez, ha-ha. And their extreme positions are not unpopular with Repub voters, of course.
So do “conservatives” really think they are in disarray? I have to wonder. They didn’t defeat Obama. They are prevailing everywhere else.
It’s like a cork in a dam right before an inflection point. Progress is plugged up but the pressure is building. The plug will not hold.
Nothing you listed is actually the successful accomplishment of any part of the Republican agenda. They’re all just partial obstructions of the Democratic agenda.
Would you consider the partial obstruction of the Republican agenda to be a victory?
Well, I won’t quibble over what is a “successful accomplishment” of an agenda, although having a rightwing extremist Supreme Court for twenty plus years should qualify! Obtaining a (newly made-up) personal gun right is quite a “conservative” victory.
But yes, I did and do consider partial obstruction of the Repub agenda to be a victory, especially when one is a minority party. Blocking Bushco proposals were the only “victories” we had for 8 years under Bush, and he still passed numerous anti-progressive bills, even with a Dem Congress! Short term successes still seem like victories. No one knows what the future will bring, and a big part of the Repub plan against Obama from Day One was simply making sure that nothing could get better economically. That plan still seems operational, Gringrich is still implying it exists.
I guess you are getting at long term goals. No, Repubs clearly haven’t privatized SS or abolished Medicaid or repealed the EPA. But I wonder, do they really think those long term goals can be accomplished? Or do they instead understand that gumming up the works and defunding and downsizing hated programs is the best that can be done, and which they are now doing.
Do “conservatives” really need to (for example) repeal the EPA when the forces of development and capitalism effectively can do whatever they want to the environment without real gub’mint interference?
In many ways, the Repubs are simply nothing more than a naysaying opposition party. They have few “positive” ideas, only negation and nihilism. Gub’mint is incompetent by definition, it can do nothing, accomplish nothing. And when “conservatives” ensure that gub’mint does nothing, effects nothing, they are bringing a very crucial tenet of their philosophy to fruition.
I did and do consider partial obstruction of the Repub agenda to be a victory, especially when one is a minority party.
What you’re describing is a rear-guard action, an exercise in limiting damage. While it might be carried out well, it isn’t anything like a victory. Being the minority party, and losing not quite as much as you might have, is not victory. It’s cutting your losses.
Do “conservatives” really need to (for example) repeal the EPA when the forces of development and capitalism effectively can do whatever they want to the environment without real gub’mint interference?
Somehow, I don’t think the coal industry would describe the past four years as “effectively can do whatever they want to the environment without real gub’mint interference.” Over that time, they have been hammered by rule after rule from the EPA.
Conservatives haven’t been able to make the government do nothing since the 2006 elections. They’ve only be able to curtail its expansion somewhat, and they don’t consider that a victory.
You’re only supposed to notice that Republicans seem to be flailing these days and Democrats are in charge and rank-and-file Democrats get to crow 24/7 about the GOP flailing and defend Obama against all GOP attacks. Just like in the 1990s when Democrats overlooked, rationalized, and/or defended NAFTA, Telecom dereg, welfare “reform, capital gains tax reduction, the deaths of hundreds of thousand Iraqi children, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Commodity Futures Modernization, WTO and Monica.
I think Romney lost, in part, because people voted against nutty Republican Party foreign policy.
The Republican ideology is taken on faith. For them, it is a belief system. This is why it is soooo difficult to try and deal with them. Facts, data, evidence, and science are completely unpersuasive.
When Boehner answered Gregory’s question about evidence that lower taxes cause growth he responded that there were mountains of evidence -but he couldn’t offer any specifics. I have asked my Republican friends for evidence and they just restate their beliefs but never provide any data.
Romney, and the Republicans in general, stepped into every trap the Democrats laid for them, as well as a few post holes that the Democrats themselves didn’t even know were there.
The Republicans are like an army marching through hostile, unfamiliar territory without any local guides. American society has become a dangerous, alien place for them.
all the interested groups will fight to make sure blame is assigned somewhere else.
This right here is the number one reason they will never fix the problems in the modern GOP. It’s always someone elses’ fault, never their own. They don’t have the intellectual capability or intestinal fortitude to step back, asses the situation, and correct the problem.
Sometimes I wonder to what extent Obama, in his effort to create a sensible middle by feeling GOP pain and helping them out of their self-imposed idiocy, created in their minds a new entitlement: It’s Obama’s job to get us out of our messes. We can’t help it, and it’s not our fault because this never would have happened if a black man didn’t have so much power, so it’s his problem. This may be true for the entire D.C. establishment, and is nicely aligned with the hurt feelings and jealousy typical of the deposed bully.
I’m not saying Obama shouldn’t have tried to reach out. I actually think he’s in a better position for having done that, and that we are just seeing the GOP stage of denial/anger.
The second that happens, the game is over. The big money people will never invest in the GOP again. Pretty sure the Adelsons and Kochs have already gotten the answers they need: It’s easier to buy off “centrist” Democrats than worry about batshit crazy Republicans.
It is really hard to understand politics and i can say anything but it is all messed up.
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It is really hard to understand politics and i can say anything but it is all messed up.
boca raton attorneys