Because the government is different than a landlord. A landlord raises his prices too high, and the tenants find new spaces. One landlord will drop his prices lower to undercut his competition; others will follow suit. No landlord will willingly lose money – in the end, the rents represent the actual market value.
The government’s mandate can’t be dispensed with. It’s the government setting a price based on the perceived need of the worker, not the fair market value of his labor.
The fact that you characterize this as “somehow” suggests an astonishing lack of understanding about conservative principles, coupled with a willingness to talk about them anyway.
Talk about revisionist history. Clinton and Gingrich HATED each other. That was their only relationship. The difference is the atmosphere in Washington back then was such that the two sides HAD to do something. Today it seems, they really don’t. Although I agree Clinton was a smarter politician than Obama.
I think you’re conflating rhetoric with reality. McConnell defended filibusters by complaining about amendments, but I don’t think anyone really believes that the filibuster was employed because the GOP didn’t get an opportunity to propose a bunch of poison pill amendments.
The amendments are about getting the majority party to take politically unpopular votes. The filibuster is about preventing the legislation. Apples and oranges connected only by rhetoric.
Conservatives get to claim Econ 101 now? I’ll let the goldbugs know.
The Economist, a supporter of Obama, have since 2009 hammered him about his inability to cross over the aisle. That’s a big part of his job as a President and one that he hasn’t done very well at.
If he wants to be a lame duck for two years, help sabotage the Repubłicans for 2016 and be remembered for Obamacare and being darker skinned then other Presidents then I guess that’s his legacy. I hope he is more ambitious then that.
It would be an interesting exercise to define “crossing over the aisle” in non-metaphorical terms and then really assess that question.
Does it mean having congressional allies propose legislation that he could reasonably expect conservative to support? Does it mean coercing his congressional allies to support legislation that they disagree with in order to give Republicans a win once-in-a-while? Does it mean agreeing to budgets that are a compromise between his initial proposals and those of Republicans?
It’s strikes me as the kind of thing that critics say when they don’t actually follow US politics that closely. And I say that as an Economist subscriber who has great love for the magazine.
What, the President is Congress’ lackey? Do congresscritters not have a similar obligation to reach out to the President, especially one who was so soundly and convincingly re-elected? Why is Obama the bad guy here, and not the GOP in Congress?
It is revisionist history, but it’s one of those rare cases where the revision has been justified by release of insider accounts and books written on the subject. Clinton and Gingrich actually had an amazing personal relationship, to the point where both men’s aides couldn’t leave them alone in a room together lest they go too far in coming to agreements on various issues.
The results speak for themselves. The GOP Congress and Clinton got a lot done after the shutdown fight. In public, they were enemies and I’m sure a lot of rank and file Republicans hated Clinton as much as they seemed to in public. But Gingrich’s image as a creepy asshole was always overstated. He’s actually a pretty congenial, intellectual guy and so is Clinton.
Nonsense. Only one year of Benghazi hearings, then they’ll impeach Obama.
(Ok, they probably won’t impeach him. The Tea Party wing isn’t a majority of the House Republicans and the sane branch of the Party remembers the Clinton impeachment biting them in the ass.)
IMO, there’s a few things Obama did absolutely wrong which made crossing the aisle impossible:
attacking his negotiating partners while negotiations were ongoing. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s whining, but personal relationships do matter. It’s why Ed Kennedy was able to get so much done with Republicans during his Senate career. Many of them genuinely liked him personally. Obama has failed to establish any relationships, and he didn’t even get started during his Senate tenure. Biden has had to do all that work, because Biden actually is liked by his colleagues. According to Bob Woodward, whenever Obama would insult Republicans publicly while still dealing with them privately, Biden would be the guy who would have to go to Ryan and Boehner and try to put out the fire.
Attacking his negotiating partners AFTER making a deal. Imagine if after the test ban treaty, JFK decided to attack the Soviets for forcing him to make a deal he found less than ideal. Deals involve compromise and a good compromise is one in which everyone doesn’t like a good part of it. Most of the time you appear in public and say, “Thank you for making this deal possible, we’ve shown we can get things done.” Instead, he’d make the deal and then bitch about how much he hated it and damn the Republicans for forcing him to make a deal through their irresponsible brinksmanship.
Deciding what a compromise is without consulting actual Republicans. Obama does this all. the. time. He’ll propose something that he came up with without consulting a single GOP officeholder, and he’ll claim it’s a compromise because it includes things Republicans have supported in the past. So what? The details of a compromise depend on what priorities the parties place on the issues at stake. One side can’t just dictate what those priorities are. What makes this tactic of his particularly stupid is that Democrats see him as negotiating with himself and preemptively compromising. Without the benefit of actually making Republican want to deal with him, because he tends to present his “compromise” bills as take it or leave it affairs. He did this with the stimulus, with the health care law, with cap and trade, and with the JOBS Act. He sorta did it with the Grand Compromise, but at least there he actually held talks on it.
I’ll man up & congratulate adaher on his earlier midterm predictions. In the other thread, I personally had posited a GOP gain of 5-7 seats, but when all is said & done, it’s not inconceivable that they pick up 9 if Landrieu doesn’t win her runoff.
I think they’re terrible results, mind you, but c’est la vie.
So how about a few actual examples, Hannity? Remember, he proposed the Republicans’ own damn health care bill, as perhaps the ultimate example of working across the aisle. What was the response, Hannity? What have your guys said in reply to anything except “Fuck off”?, hmm?
I FULLY understand conservative “principles” and I flatly reject them. There is no market value for low skilled workers. There’s always going to be someone willing to work for less just to have a job. Any low skilled worker making more than mw is doing so only out of the kindness of the employers hearts, not because any market forces are driving them to. The one mechanism that would raise wages for low skilled workers, unions, is the very thing conservatives hate the most.
What that ultimately means is that conservatives are perfectly content to have people making a pittance for a living while happily accepting business raising their prices for whatever reason they feel like.
I’m reminded of The Simpsons with Roger Myers Jr yelling at a focus group of children when they say they want a “realistic down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots”
“You kids don’t know what you want! That’s why you’re still kids… because you’re stupid!”
I don’t actually agree with any of the three narratives you offer in that post, but I think your framing of the criticism is infinitely more accurate and fairer. If you say, “Obama did not use enough bipartisan rhetoric and his proposals were centrist as measured by 1995 or 2005, but not 2010” then at least you’re making a criticism within the bounds of reality, even if reasonable people can disagree. If one says, “Obama did not make enough effort to reach across the aisle,” then at best one is being misleadingly vague about what Obama has and has not done, and what he does and does not have the power to do as President–and at worst they are suggesting that Obama has introduced a bunch of far left proposals without consideration of conservative objections, which isn’t true for any of the legislation he has championed or signed.
Not all that crazy about a consumerist economy, but its what we got, and if the people don’t have money to spend, we’re boned. Business competing by lowering labor costs as far as they can go is like eating your seed corn to keep from starving.
I actually got a lot wrong. I was only “right” in the sense that Republicans did well, but I missed a lot of the races I called, plus I got the youth vote all wrong. I was sure young people were coming our way.
On the bright side, I did get some things right, which is nice for a chance.
Where he’s getting it wrong is that elections aren’t only about issues. They are also about character, competence, and a referendum on how things are going right now. Obama’s election did not change the country in 2008 and the GOP victory in 2014 hasn’t changed the country either. It’s just voters giving each party a chance to prove it can govern, and until one of them proves it can, voters will keep switching.
