If the House Republican caucus were in a hole, not only would I not give them a ladder, I’d find a backhoe and some gravel.
The majority of Americans did not vote for them (numerically speaking). With the exception of the hardcore Tea Partiers, the majority were not elected for the purpose of attempting to do away with Obamacare, and given the results of the senatorial and presidential outcomes, the majority of the nation doesn’t think it should happen, let alone be why we shut down the entire government.
Adding to that a cut to food stamps because too many people need them? Nope.
Gosh, here I thought dissent was the highest form of patriotism.
And considering your revolutionary bent, I didn’t think you believed the federal government had any claim on our loyalty to begin with. So, how can we be “traitorous” to a government that you’ve already told us many times is DESERVING of overthrow?
Dissent by differing ideas is different from actively trying to cause harm to the nation. Now, I agree that it would slightly redefine treason, but it does rise above mere dissent.
If you need my answer, ask the Mods to move the thread to BBQ Pit.
I wish I had your optimism.
[QUOTE=H. L. Mencken]
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
[/QUOTE]
(Can I hijack my own post? This Mencken quote is, in effect, a triple negative. Am I the only one who has to parse carefully to unravel the meaning of such sentences?)
Treasonous? No. Selfish immature incompetent whiners who would willingly destroy the country rather than see the opposition have any sort of success whatsoever? Absolutely. As much as I loathe Congressional Democrats, the Congressional GOP are fathoms worse.
You’re dreaming in colors. Between gerrymandered districts and keeping the poor from voting by controlling a majority of states, there is virtually no chance that they will lose the house and some chance they will win the senate since the 2014 cohort came in on Obama’s coattails.
I really pray I am utterly wrong. I do.
Meantime on the OP, I expect that by next Monday, there will be an emergency bill to keep the government open. The crunch will come when the debt limit is reached. Does Obama have the balls to announce that the debt limit is unconstitutional and he will ignore it? Accompanied by whatever legal opinions required to make his case. What can Congress do? Do they have standing to go to court and what would they argue? The only thing I can think of is that they impeach him (and I expect any court would agree). So they will impeach him; they have the votes. But the senate will laugh. Maybe not even hold a hearing or vote. At that point the debt ceiling is toast and not a moment too soon.
What I don’t understand is that the too poorest states, Mississippi and West Virginia are among the most reliably Republican states. Do those poor people really prefer the party that regularly screws them? Do they really care more about, say, gay marriage, than having a job?
The GOP has changed the house districts, they will probably keep the house the entire decade. Plus they will still have a lot of state governments.
The GOP, in theory, should be in a death spiral for at least a couple reasons. For one demographic changes in the US are working against them. Millennials, non-whites, secularists, etc. are growing in the country while old white christians are shrinking. Plus as the GOP becomes more and more extreme, they alienate moderates, which leaves less people to counterbalance the extremists.
But who knows. If the GOP does go into a death spiral that causes them to reevaluate their views, that should’ve happened in 2012. Hell, in 2010 they should’ve won the senate but didn’t because they went too far to the right.
As the GOP gets more radical and more of an echo chamber, there is less chance that rational voices will prevail. It’ll probably be the 2020s before the GOP has a real moment of reevaluation. By the 2020s millennials will consistently make up about 40% of the electorate and much of the talk radio/fox news audience will have died of old age.
Actually, poor people in poor states generally vote for Democrats, as do poor people in rich states. The difference is that in most poor states – including most of the deep South – party preference tracks income much more closely, so there are very few rich people in these states voting for Democrats. (Cite.) In other words, yes, there are people who DO care more about gay marriage than their economic interests, but they tend to be rich people from Massachusetts.
Can States redraw Congressional Districts any time they choose, or is it permissible only following a Census?
As I understand it, there is one specific reactionary with a great deal of cash who tells GOP Representatives:
“Vote this way, or I will out-spend you in the Primary with someone who will”.
And has done it at least once - nobody but hard-core hacks vote in Primaries; out-GOP’ing the last one doesn’t cost much, and Representatives are only good for 2 years - not enough time to collect “donations” for re-election. Unless the National party funds you, you have very little to spend/waste on the primary.
How much would it cost to buy a District in Kansas?
An opponent with a deep-pocket backer will scare most of them.
Even the threat of one.
Remember the “Contract for America”, 1996? That wasn’t an accident.
If this guy really exists, I can see dusting of the old Sedition laws… Consciously acting to cause harm to the country by destroying its credit is serious shit.
Here’s what you have to understand about the mindset of many of these people:
Anything bad is Obama’s/the Democrats’ fault
The Republicans represent “real Americans”
Only FoxNews has the guts to report the truth.
Any attempt to present evidence to refute any of the above points will fail immediately.
It is, in a disturbingly large number of cases, as simple as that. They don’t think that the Republicans are screwing them, so there’s no consequence for doing so.
I agree (but also hope I’m wrong). It is delusional to think that GOP is in its death throes.
Punters agree. The University of Iowa Prediction market (average of bid and ask) shows GOP as only 20% to lose control of the House, and 28% to pick up more seats. Democrats are 39% to lose the Senate and only 9% to pick up seats.
Paddy Power and several other U.K. bookies also have Party to Win 2016 Presidential Election as You Pick. (Crunching the numbers a little shows Rubio as slightly more likely than Ryan to become the candidate, but with less chance in November than Ryan, Bush or Christie.)
Pretty much the same way that I’ve felt since Obama was elected. The GOP has an interest in making the economic suffering last for as long as a Democrat sits in the White House. They spent the first four years of his administration betting heavily that if they obstructed at every turn, they’d look like heroes when they took office. This required that Obama be a one-term president as the economy was always going to take about 4 years to turn the corner. They lost a lot on that bet and still don’t seem to have learned anything. They’ve lost their way. They’re completely about politics and not about public policy.
This. I’d mind this whole charade less if the GOP had an actual alternative proposal (a real one, not just 200 pages of “All work and no play make Jack defund Obamacare”). Then we could consider their case that ACA is the worst option on merit. But they’re not even making the argument that it’s worse that the status quo anymore; it’s just “Obamacare is bad socialist fascist death panel bad Muslim Communist badness for real true Americans”. It’s puerile footstomping for the sake of hurting Obama even if it hurts millions of others at the same time. And that’s unforgiveable.
