Thanks for acknowledging that. How do you explain the ongoing acceptance by so many people of this supposed distinction. Just ipresses me as an amazing PR success flatly lacking in factual support.
To be fair to FP, it doesn’t seem as tho he places much value in cooperation in government, doesn’t think brinkmanship and adopting extreme positions problemmatic, and contends the Ds have been just as guilty of such things as Rs. He seems to think “power politics” is - um - pretty fine.
(I apologize if I have mischaracterized what you said/feel.)
I strongly disagree with such a position, but I guess I can acknowledge that some could express an opinion that it is fine for someone w/ power to exercise it to the fullest extent possible, and their opponents’ response ought to be to seize power themselves and do likewise.
This is technically true but highly misleading, to the point of revisionism. The initial plan proposed by the Heritage several decades earlier never had significant Republican support and certainly didn’t have this at the time the ACA was introduced. So the notion that the Republicans were opposing something they otherwise supported out of opposition to Obama has no basis.
Compromises made by the Democrats in passing the ACA were not made to attract Republican support but rather to attract the support of moderate Democrats, in particular Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson.
Yes, you definitely mischaracterized what I said. I’d be curious if you can point to where you think I’ve said these things. Mischaracterizations of this sort are what make these types of conversations difficult on this MB.
The only part of what you said that’s accurate is that I “contend the Ds have been just as guilty of such things as Rs”. This has two ramifications.
As a practical matter, you have a choice of two parties, Republican or Democrat. No matter how much you might think the world is a better place if politicians cooperated for the good of the people, that’s not a reason to support a particular party if they’re just as guilty of failing in this regard as the other party.
Beyond that, once one party is willing to adopt extreme tactics in support of their political goals, then the other party has to follow along. Otherwise they will be fighting with one hand behind their backs. The only way there can be cooperation etc, is if both parties play along.
In sum, I very much value cooperation in government etc., but I don’t think it’s very practical for the Republicans to practice this unilaterally and in any event, it’s certainly not a reason to reject them considering that the Democrats are not any better in this regard.
As I said, I wouldn’t just go on McConnell’s statement.
In addition to my link which sources Eric Cantor explaining the strategy on the HoR side and many Democrats saying they heard the same thing from Republicans in both houses behind closed doors, Republican Senator Pat Toomey had the same observation. Toomey became a Senator after this strategy had been implemented, and during Obama’s second term commented that the dynamic of opposing Obama simply to deny him a political win was still in place.
If you couple the multitude of statements that this was the strategy with Republican actions in congress throughout Obama’s term, it requires overwhelming mental gymnastics to deny that it in fact was the strategy.
I’m pretty much the opposite. I am socially conservative but fiscally liberal (support universal healthcare, a robust social net, more Covid stimulus checks, maybe even UBI, high taxes on the wealthy). I would describe myself as a “big-government conservative,” if that isn’t an oxymoron.
The legislation based on the Romney-led Massachusetts healthcare reform (passed with 90% Republican support in the MA Congress) less than four years earlier had no modern Republican support?
147 amendments by Republicans, introduced and added in committees that neither Lieberman or Nelson sat on, were adopted for Democrats? Got a bridge to sell me, too?
I believe the Eric Cantor strategy was something else. What we’re discussing is “we Republicans would like to support this bill, but we are going to oppose it purely because it was proposed by a Democrat”. What Cantor was saying was “we Republicans already oppose this by an 80% margin; we’re going to apply some party discipline to make that 100% in order to deny the bill a bipartisan veneer”. That’s not at all the same thing.
Again, this type of thing is common to both parties. Dianne Feinstein just lost her Judicial Committee leadership role because she said nice things about the Republicans. And so on, forever.
Republicans in MA are a very different breed than the national Republican party which opposed ACA. Even in MA, the bill which was passed was to the left of the Republican Party position - Romney line-item vetoed parts of the bill (including the individual mandate) and was overridden by Democrats in the MA legislature.
I don’t actually see the distinction. In that scenario, those 20% of Republicans do support it, but are opposing it to prevent the GOP from getting a win.
I realize parliamentary discipline is a thing, but those 20% of Republicans weren’t actually facing discipline in order to get a win in negotiations over something they wanted legislatively, they were doing it purely to give Democrats a media loss.
This is actually a great example - Feinstein lost her role as ranking member because she didn’t give Democratic voters what they wanted - an attempt at retaliation against a GOP tactic that was employed in the Merrick Garland hearings. What was Cantor reliating against? When Bush had been president, over 80% of congress supported a stimulus bill, and there was no attempt by the Democrats to make it appear controversial.
OK - I’m sorry I attempted to characterize your position. I assume I was thinking of the following statements:
I don’t see any fundamental difference between him and any other politician as regards to “win at any cost”. While the ostensible rationale for holding up the Garland nomination was completely bogus, it was just a continuation of a tit-for-tat escalating war initially begun by the Democrats for the Bork nomination and continued for later nominations as well.
Much as you might prefer a genteel attitude of cooperation, you can’t be the only side being genteel, and you need to play the game the way the game is played. McConnell is very good at playing the game the way the game is played.
Be assured that I will make no further effort to explain or “characterize” your remarks to another poster. Apologies.
Oh - and I’m going to step away from this thread - at least for a bit. My preference (as far as that goes) would be for this thread to involve the opinions of more than one or two posters on any side.
Let’s give everyone a chance before we stratify this thread into something subsequent folk might not feel comfortable stepping into. Please?
I don’t see that as being a significant difference. At any rate, the point is that Cantor and the Republican leadership were managing the political aspects of something that the Republican Party overwhelmingly opposed on ideological grounds, not changing the substantive position of the Republican Party based on political considerations, as has been suggested here.
Once you allow that retaliating for things is legit, then all bets are off. I don’t see that as being somehow above political posturing of the Cantor sort. At all.
Not trying to snark your typo, but am genuinely curious as to where the mistake is in that statement: the candidate name or the date? (Unless you’re telling us that you really did write in Obama for an unconstitutional third term in 2016, in which case oookaay.)
Since Bork was rejected, only two nominees didn’t make it to the court, Harriet Miers and Merrick Garland. Trying to tie what happened to Garland back to what some Democrats (and Reps) did 33 years ago is what I would say is bogus.
Speaking of Obama, he remarked in his recently published memoir that what really seems to have put the kibosh on Republican efforts at bipartisan cooperation was the rise of Tea Party extremism and the specter of being challenged from the right. Especially since Obama was black, and widely described in right-wing circles as both “socialist” and “Muslim”, it made the backlash stakes a lot higher for Republicans if they were seen by their constituents as cooperating with him in any way.
I think you hit the nail squarely on the head there. I have to admit I’m surprised that the Democrats weren’t unanimous about anti-semitism; what segment of their base is anti-semitic?
I’m surprised that the Republicans in Congress were so willing to go along with him, to the point of dismantling a lot of their prior platform and philosophical points in favor of whatever Trump wanted. I would have expected the following- letting him do his own thing where it didn’t contradict the party line, and if it did, gently correcting him and eventually checking him in Congress. Instead, they seem to have closed ranks and protectec and enabled him merely because he’s now part of the party, which is atrocious at best, and criminal at worst.
I kind of wonder how the Democratic Party would have done if Bernie Sanders had won the nomination and the Presidency. Being an outsider much like Trump and with his own idiosyncratic policy aims, would the Democratic party thrown in with him, or would they have tried to check him?
After the Bork debacle, everyone knew the rules were changed. The reason David Souter got nominated by a Republican president was because of the assessment that no known conservative could get approved.
I should also mention the first ever filibuster of a Court of Appeals judge, Miguel Estrada (in part because Democrats felt that as a conservative Hispanic he might present political difficulties for them).
