Are Republicans opposing their own old ideas just to frustrate President Obama?

Great Debates
1

Off the top of my head I can think of cap and trade, as well as the individual mandate for health insurance. I’m sure there are more, and if you can add some more in for discussion that would be great! It’s a common meme among liberals that Republicans are now against these policies just because Obama is for them.

I have another theory My alternate theory is that they were NEVER in favor of these policies, but just threw them up as bullshit schemes that they could pretend to be in favor of in order to justify being against more liberal Democrat initiatives. They never expected to actually have to implement any of them – they knew the Dems would stymie their bills, just as they did to Dems bills. Now that Obama and the Dems have retreated to a fallback position of promoting the the old Republican bills as better than nothing at all, the Republicans are being forced to repudiate them without being able to publicly admit they never supported them in the first place. They are actually better off politically being viewed acting as obstructionists to Obama than being viewed as hypocrites who’ve been proposing straw-man bogus ideas for years before Obama was even a factor.

2

What percent of Republicans were ever for either of those things?

While I think that the Republicans are guilty of opposing Obama over and over simply in order to oppose him, there are times when I’ve heard prominent Republicans agree with him when he did things that were Republican-ish. For instance, his increase of troops in Afghanistan.

Keep in mind that the vocal Republicans these days (aka Tea Partiers) are a lot more conservative than those of 20 years ago.

3

I should mention that there seems to be one gaping weakness in this theory – how can the Republicans claim that their old ideas are terrible now, when there is enormous evidence on videotape of their leadership speechifying to promote them? And I don’t know the answer. but it seems somewhat dependent on compliant media. I have yet to hear any members of the press get in the leaders’ faces and really pres them on why these ideas are so terrible now when they were so great 5 or 10 years ago. I also have never hear any Republican leaders say anything in public explaining why they’ve changed their minds – they seem to be taking a cue from Mitt Romney and claiming they were never in favor of them.

4

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Keep in mind that the vocal Republicans these days (aka Tea Partiers) are a lot more conservative than those of 20 years ago.
[/QUOTE]

And some Democrats today are more conservative as well. Consider…there were plenty of Democrats that opposed those (niche) Republican ideas in the past, yet now some want to adopt those measures and implement them (or, at least parts of them).

-XT

5

I don’t know, but they originated within the Republican leaderership or at conservative think tanks. And many of the leadership publicly supported them.
The most obvious example is Romney on the mandate, but he’s not a very good example, because he actually implemented in in MA. I think he actually did believe in it, and probably still does, but he’s simply sacrificed it on the altar of winning the Republican presidential.

A third theory is that, as the Republican party has ideologically purged itself of pretty much all moderates at the national level, the old guard leadership has to abandon their old ideas as too liberal as well, in order not to get primaried. And not only that, they have to pretend they never had such crazy socialist ideas in the first place.

6

When the senate is split 60 / 40 and the 40 will not ever, for any circumstances, even try to think about putting the country before their party, you need to get all 60 to vote your way.

This means that your legislation becomes what the single most conservative member of your side wants it to be. There aren’t necessarily more conservative Dems, because in years past you could assume that: 1. Every single thing wasn’t going to be filibustered. and 2. That some of the more liberal Republicans (like the ladies from Maine) would vote with you.

That meant that instead of 60, you needed 50, and you were likely to get a few Republican votes.

The fact that 21st century Republicans are willing to go lockstep against their principles is what causes this, not a huge shift in Dems.

7

So let’s talk about specific Republicans flip flopping then rather than ask why someone who is Republican today doesn’t support what some other Republican supported 20 years ago.

Romney is the ultimate pragmatist, shifting with the wind.

Per what I wrote in my first post.

What principles are they all going against?

8

Cap and trade was 5 years ago, not 25. John McCain and Sara Palin both publicly supported it on the campaign trail.

9

But that’s the question addressed by my theory. Were these ideas EVER their principles? Perhaps their principals are and were, “No new laws, no new rules, no new taxes”, but they had to pretend to be in favor of doing something. Otherwise they would be asking to be elected to literally do nothing, which is kind of a hard sell, at least to moderates and independents.

10

Snowe was willing to vote to overturn DADT. But she had to wait until after the midterm, because the insane Tea-Party voters would have primaried her.

That, and the health care mandate, and cap and trade, and immigration reform, which Lindsay Graham ran away from with a flimsy excuse once it was clear that the morons with the Tri-Corner hats were in charge.

As to your other question, the Republicans co-sponsored a bill which included the mandate, there were 20 of them and I see some names I know as non-liberals here:

From: Summary Of A 1993 Republican Health Reform Plan - KFF Health News

11

The Key and Peele episode of the republicans disagreeing with everything Obama says, much to their demise comes to mind.

12

I honestly believe that before the Newt, my favorite pallid reptile, things were much more sane in congress. Supposedly people actually had drinks together and saw the other side as humans you could some times side with. Newt didn’t destroy that, but he started it sinking. And the final fusillade against the ship was when the S.S. Black President came over the horizon.

I’m not saying that present Republicans in congress are all complete idiots, but they are afraid of being primaried by the Republican base, who *are *all complete idiots (and I mean the base, not all Republicans. But the guys who turn out for primaries and who direct the flow of campaigns).

Couple that with the base electing, in 2010, a bunch of empty, untrained, ideological people and you have the makings of a shitstorm.

13

There was another bill proposed in the following Congress, much like the one noted by Lobohan, also including a substantial number of conservative Republicans – Consumer Choice Health Security Act of 1994.

Sponsors included:
Sen. Robert Bennett [R-UT, 1993-2010]
Sen. George “Hank” Brown [R-CO, 1991-1996]
Sen. Conrad Burns [R-MT, 1989-2006]
Sen. Daniel Coats [R-IN]
Sen. Thad Cochran [R-MS]
Sen. Paul Coverdell [R-GA, 1993-2000]
Sen. Larry Craig [R-ID, 1991-2009]
Sen. Robert Dole [R-KS, 1969-1996]
Sen. Duncan “Lauch” Faircloth [R-NC, 1993-1998]
Sen. Charles “Chuck” Grassley [R-IA]
Sen. Judd Gregg [R-NH, 1993-2010]
Sen. Orrin Hatch [R-UT]
Sen. Jesse Helms [R-NC, 1973-2002]
Sen. Kay Hutchison [R-TX]
Sen. Dirk Kempthorne [R-ID, 1993-1998]
Sen. Trent Lott [R-MS, 1989-2007]
Sen. Richard Lugar [R-IN]
Sen. Connie Mack [R-FL, 1989-2000]
Sen. Frank Murkowski [R-AK, 1981-2002]
Sen. Alan Simpson [R-WY, 1979-1996]
Sen. Bob Smith [R-NH, 1990-2002]
Sen. Ted Stevens [R-AK, 1968-2009]
Sen. Strom Thurmond [R-SC, 1961-2002]
Sen. Malcolm Wallop [R-WY, 1977-1994]

I would agree that most of these guys are now dead or gone, but I would also bet money that if they were still here, they would be right out there with the rest attacking the ideas they used to support.

14

More details please. How could she wait to vote for a bill? You either vote for it when it’s up for a vote or you don’t/

Please, more details of specific Republicans then and now. Specific statements, not some hand wavery about someone running away from something.

Again, specific Republicans then and now. We all know about Newt and Romney, but the OP posits this is something party-wide. I’d like to see that this is something one can pin on Republicans, as a whole.

BTW: The mandate is not a good example to bash Republicans on unless you also want to bash Obama-- he used it against Hillary in the '08 campaign back when he was against it.

15

Can’t find any Democrat flip flops on the net huh?

16

But as I noted in my OP, Obama took it up reluctantly, as a back up position, figuring that using Republican ideas might get health care reform passed, and that some reform was better than none.

17

You, I’m sure are aware that important bills are held until they have the votes to pass. At least if that’s how it was done until Boehner, who is borderline incompetent.

I’m on a mobile device, so I’ll give you a link later if you can’t do me the solid of checking it out for yourself. As I recall, Graham was co-sponsor of the bill, and once the Tea Party worthies started primary challenges to sitting conservative Republicans, he walked away from his own bill, saying that the time wasn’t right, because the president was focusing on other stuff.

I gave you a list of 20 co-sponsors, several of whomever are still in the congress. What exactly go you want? Brain scans? :smiley:

Yeah, but he didn’t talk about it like it was tyranny.

18

So, it’s OK to flip flop as long as one does so “reluctantly”?

The mandate might have had some Republican support way back when, but it had none during Obama’s term. The idea that he thought it might garner support among the GOP is an insult to Obama’s intelligence.

19

Have you ever been told that the difference between Romney’s scheme in Massachusetts and the current ACA is that the latter is federal and the former is state? Has anyone ever mentioned that the court challenges now arrayed against the ACA include the claim that the Constitution doesn’t give the federal government the power it asserts – an objection that doesn’t exist at the state level?

It seems impossible that you haven’t, but in any event, now you have. So if, in the future, you continue to hold this up as any example of inconsistency, I hope you’ll address this point. Thanks!

20

I understand that is Romney’s justification for opposing it now. But he also publicly and repeatedly advocated for a national individual mandate in the past, as did many Republicans, who advocated an individual mandate system instead of the single payer system advocated by the Democrats during the Clinton administration.