c) BTW, you spelled “insouciance” wrong.
They do both; that is the nature of government.
So the Democrat’s inevitable demographic tidal wave is already kaput? Sheesh, Rove’s permanent majority fever dream lasted longer than that.
It’s a little funny, if sad, to watch my fellow lefties continually rediscover that America isn’t hiding a secret progressive heart. What happens if the Republicans cast off their milestone and stop being openly crazy? Dems are screwed.
Then we can at long last sweep aside the embarrassing cultural/religious irrelevancies and get down to serious public discussion of economic fundamentals, the which we will never get from economic libertarians nor supply-side trickle-down theorists nor Austrian-school “economists,” but which we will get from the post-Keynesians and from the examples of actually existing social democracies.
Essentially, what you are saying is that when half the Republican Party “casts off” the other half, their victory is assured. After all, the Dems will be outnumbered two to one!
I’ll take those numbers with a pinch off salt. For instance it will not measure the number of workers benefitting from gov’t subsidies or preferential gov’t treatment of one sort or another.
edit: that’s the problem with Keynesianism; there never is a good time to balance the budget.
I wonder . . . if you take a Marxist polemic out of context, and ask Americans to picture worthless parasites who contribute nothing of value while making money off laborers, how many of them picture the rich and how many of them picture the poor?
The Republicans proved in 2014 what can be accomplished when they keep it under control.
In hindsight, liberals like to claim now that it was a midterm year, Republicans were supposed to do well. Fair enough, but Republicans greatly outperformed expectations, and Democrats were pretty convinced prior to the election that they’d be able to use the “War on Women” message to keep the Senate.
If Republicans perform above expectations in 2016, they sweep.
Then this happens.
shrug Then I’ll vote for them.
He bought a thesaurus not a dictionary.
BG, the article you cited in your OP shows otherwise.
Thank you, Stringbean, for those wonderful examples of irrational Republican messaging. These are the themes the Republicans are using on the middle class, folks.
To make matters even worse, there’s new evidence that the politicians are totally in alignment with donor’s interests and their alignment with voter’s interests is, well … almost nonexistent. It’s not earth-shattering, but does address some of the objections raised concerning earlier studies that came up with similar results. Basically, American government is literally owned.
I think the point is that if the Republicans are doing as well as they did in the last cycle WITH all the crazy assholes they have, how much better would they do if they purged out the loony right wing types?
The funny thing to me is that both parties continue to be lead around by the nose by their lunatic fringe, yet it’s always the middle that makes the difference and is decisive. Yet, both sides, as marshmallow put it ‘continually rediscover that America isn’t hiding a secret’ that conforms to their crazy world view and are constantly surprised when it doesn’t turn out that way.
What can the Dems learn from this to be successful? Toss out the crazy left wingers and the loonier green types and move towards the center wrt economic policy and make that your focus. What can the Pubs learn? Toss out their crazy right wingers and loony tea party and religious nutters and move towards the center wrt social policy (and freaking shoot all those anti-science idiots, or at least shut them up).
What will both sides actually learn from any of this? Not a gods damned thing…they will continue to think that if they just try a little harder the middle in the US will come around to their cherished world view and that this will sweep them to victory.
I am sure that if everyone just shut up and listened to your sensible High Broderism and adopted a reasonable and centrist position, all of this would go better.
Just as soon as you tell us what that centrist and sensible position is. Are you offering us that Elizabeth Warren is the loony left, and just as nuts as, say, Mike Huckleberry? Pat Robertson? You’re holding out a bag full of centrism. What’s in it?
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I am sure that if everyone just shut up and listened to your sensible High Broderism and adopted a reasonable and centrist position, all of this would go better.
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Our system was designed for compromise. I know it’s sad for you that you can’t just steam roll your lefty ideas through and do it all by fiat, and it’s interesting that you obviously have only disdain for ‘High Broderism’…really brings things into focus. Ironic, too, since it’s something your right winger adversary types have in common with you.
By definition it would be somewhere in the center. 
You know, that sweet spot between the two extremist nutball factions in both parties, possibly a bit to the left of center, possibly a bit to the right. The place both parties run to after they go through the farse of their primaries where they elect someone who can get through the nutters but will, in the hopes of the actual parties, be electable by the folks who actually elect people in this country. The nice thing about being an independent centrist is you can look at the good that both sides have to offer while rejecting the crazy crap and form an opinion on policy one issue at a time.
And you can also look at individuals without having to check to see if they have a (D) or an (R) by their names and judge them by their merits (or lack there of) without having to build strawman comparisons geared to make one side look good and one bad with a few simple comparisons.
The nice thing about giving nearly content free drive by advice to the right or left is that I know it will be ignored because both sides think they are correct and if they just keep pushing their pet agendas the majority of the American people will come around to their way of thinking. There is no pendulum in US politics where the center moves a bit to the left or a bit to the right based on which side has decided to rein in their crazies and act more rationally (to the American middles perspective anyway)…it’s all about pushing that fucker all the way to the stops, because really, that’s what the majority of the American people REALLY want!
The same sorts of things that are in the lit bags of left wing or right wing politics left on the door step of the American people, of course. I wouldn’t recommend stepping on the bag with bare feet to put out the fire though, regardless of whether it’s a right wing, left wing or centrist bag of goodies though.
Well, is it gluten free centrism? What programs do you advocate, what “centrist” positions should we adopt? What you are offering is the political equivalent of vaporware. Is Obama centrist? You mean the radical socialist Mooslim Obama, or the milquetoast Clintonista menshevik Obama?
The word “centrist” doesn’t mean anything, nor does “compromise” mean anything without defining what the hell it is! I might be willing to accept what’s in the bag, if you’ll just tell me what it is. Its reasonable, and involves compromise, and that’s a good thing. OK. Is that it, then? If I want to move forward and they want to move back, do we compromise on standing still?
No, not only is it not gluten free, it’s got extra gluten AND extra fat. Hell, it’s fried in lard. Might be some powered (REFINED) sugar in that fucker too.
Yeah, Obama is a centrist…so was Clinton. Pretty much if someone got elected president, they are basically a centrist, whether slightly left or slightly right of the US center. Only way they could be elected, really.
Well, ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ don’t really mean anything either, since even on the lunatic fringe there are factions and tents. And ‘compromise’ is how our system works…without it the system breaks down and nothing gets done.
I don’t know if you can say that any President IS a centrist, so much as they have to govern that way or else.