Then they shouldn’t blame Republicans for obstruction. They got the bills passed that they wanted to pass. There isn’t a whole lot they still want that they haven’t been able to do.
You really seem to want things both ways. Either democrats never pass anything because they enjoy blaming republicans for filibustering their bills, or they’ve passed everything they want, and their complaints about republican filibusters are groundless.
If you’re going to talk entirely in extremes, the least you could do is pick an extreme and stick with it. Which of these do you actually believe?
What I believe is that the Democrats have already shot all the bullets in their gun and complain that the reason they haven’t hit the target yet is because the Republicans won’t give them more ammunition.
Every idea the Democrats have that they complain Republicans are blocking is just more of the same legislation they already passed. You can’t blame obstruction for your poor performance when there’s nothing new you want to do anyway.
Oh please. That’s an idiotic statement. The president has bent over backward, to his ultimate detriment I might add, to compromise with Republicans throughout most of his administration.
It is very telling, at least to most thinking people, when the president proposes legislation after legislation, a number of which initially drafted by Republicans, mind, that are summarily blocked by Republicans.
Stop playing games.
Every idea, eh? If that’s really the case then I suppose you’ll have no problem backing it up so, yeah, cite?
Listen, I know you’re a Republican who is totally bought in to the concept of Democrat=bad, and that’s fine, but please, at least put forward some semblence of an argument to advance a rationale for support of your side.
Why don’t you tell me what new ideas the Democrats have that Republicans are blocking? They did stimulus, but they want more stimulus. they did health care. They didn’t do cap and trade because they didn’t have enough support in their own caucus to pass it. Is there anything I’m missing, any big agenda items the Democrats would have passed if the 2010 election had gone down differently?
OMG captures the modern conservative mentality perfectly in this post. He offers no examples. But he feels it very deeply. The logic works like this: I wish that P were true.
Therefore P is true. Basically conservatives are driven entirely by cognitive dissonance: some things are just to painful for them to contemplate – like the avowed behavior of their leaders in Washington in post 34. So they take refuge in things that they feel are true- that must be true.
Back in reality -shield your eyes OMG- the Republican Party opposed Romneycare unanimously – though for some reason you didn’t hear a peep of difficulty in 2008 during the Republican primaries. How about that? But my favorite example comes Republicans fillibustering the creation of an 18 member deficit reduction task force in Jan 2010 - despite the fact that the resolution was co-authored by Judd Gregg and had received explicit support by McCain and McConnell. Six Republican co-sponsors joined in on the fillibuster of their own bill!
Don’t look OMG! Avert your eyes! Obstructionism can’t exist. It must have another explanation.
ETA adaher: Jobs bill. There was one a year ago. And this month Republicans blocked the Veterans job act. The stimulus worked - see the Bloomberg link in post 19. It stopped the depression in its tracts but unfortunately wasn’t powerful enough to push a full recovery. Thank Snowe for clipping some $100 billion of the most potent stimulus (highest multipliers)- aid to the states.
Jobs bill is just a renamed version of the stimulus bill. Where the first one didn’t fix things, the next few would have? Especially given how small the later jobs bills proposed were?
THe veterans jobs act demonstrates everything that’s wrong with the mindset of the Democratic Party. It duplicated what 6 other programs already do. Which makes this the 7th time the Democrats have had the same idea and acted as if it was new. But I’m sure they are aware, they just want to show people they care. Whether or not it actually accomplishes anything.
BULLSHIT
“But this vote is stark reminder that Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans are willing to do absolutely anything to fulfill the pledge he made nearly two years ago to defeat President Obama. It doesn’t matter who gets in their way or which Americans they have to sacrifice in that pursuit, even if it’s our nation’s veterans.”
SENATOR PATTY MURRAY (R)
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/veterans-jobs-bill-blocked-in-the-senate/
The 5 Republicans who had the decency to vote for the Bill:
Brown, Snow, Collins, Murkowski, Heller.
Expensive bill, yes. 1 billion dollars. But the investment in JOBS is not a black hole like a War. The American people get a healthy return on their investment in their people.
At least they saw the irony in the Bush years not paying for 2 wars to the tune of
40 Billion Dollars, and yet the 40 who voted the Bill down don’t think that one in four unemployed Vets require an opportunity for employment in Law Enforcement, Security, Fire Fighting - roles for which they are already trained and uniquely qualified.
For Shame.
The stimulus did work. The stimulus did not resolve all problems. The stimulus was weakened in order to get Republican buy in.
Please stop misrepresenting facts in order to advance a story about your favorite team. It harms America when you do that.
A great article on the Stimulus
He’s just reconfirming his status as a Republican.
MfM pretty much hit it. There is indeed reason for cautious optimism depending on the nature of the victory. The GOP pendulum is swung pretty far over to the pander to the far Right base side; after the midterm success of that tactic it was pretty much how many felt they needed to go. But once that side of the party has had their turn at bat and has only obstructionism, an Obama re-election, and loss of ground in the Congress to show for it? Yup the less extreme in the party may be able to step back up. That will mean cooperation, not rolling over; giving and taking and being able to advertise the results as their success rather than only pointing at how fine of a job they’ve done preventing the other side from moving the ball in service of the country.
We’ll see. Of course I’ve been the same person who keeps seeing how informed self-interest should have motivated a long term deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians years ago … the ability of individual actors to punish themselves out of “principle” never ceases to amaze.
The Republicans in Congress just got done spending the past 3 1/2 years trying to undermine Obama’s chances for re-election. Now that this will no longer be their primary goal, they have less incentive to sabotage the nation and engage in their treason. The degree of obstruction will depend on whether Mister Tan Man can control his caucus or if the Teahadists will take over his party. With any luck, there will be fewer Republicans and less nut jobs among them. With great luck, Pelosi gets the gavel back. What should happen is that they accept the will of the people, which they refused to do in 2008. What will happen is that they’ll obstruct just like they have been.
The only evidence that the stimulus worked is a theoretical model the CBO used.
The only evidence that the stimulus and auto industry salvation bill didn’t work is a theoretical model that ideologically-blind conservatives use.
I find that I have to agree with only your last sentence.
I think what will happen is that the Republican’s priority will be either impeaching Obama or preparing the ground for the 2016 election. They will continue to try to show how the government is ineffective and useless by trying to ensure that the government is ineffective and useless. Obstruction has now become the only tool they can see in the toolbox. I mean, the senate recently obstructed and blocked a bipartisan jobs bill for veterans. 60 votes will soon be needed to re-name a post office. Obstruction is all the Republicans know how to do now.
The worse they can make government, the happier they are; when one party has a platform of “government is terrible”,then guess what? Government will be terrible.
When Canadians were really, really pissed off with our Federal Governing Progressive Conservative party in 1993, do you know what we did? Pretty much eliminated them as a party. They were reduced from a majority government with 169 seats to a destroyed party with TWO seats. TWO. The party never recovered and eventually were absorbed by the Reform party who borrowed the name “Conservative” to attract more voters. The federal parties in Canada have never forgotten that the Canadian voters can actually kill them anytime we want. Even our current arrogant Prime Minister seems to remember that.
We rely on empirical evidence. Unemployment wasn’t affected significantly. We’re just supposed to believe it would have been worse. By that standard, the Bush tax cuts were a smashing success. Without the Bush tax cuts, unemployment would have been 10% by 2003!
You have a model to show that theory, I assume. Otherwise of course you are just pulling stuff out of your nether regions. Guess which way I’m going to guess…
It would be nice to see politics go back to more co-operations between the two sides, but given the extremists that are calling the shots for the GOP, that’s not going to happen.
I fully expect to see a push to “impeach” the president, and I bet the hook will be “Fast and Furious” unless something else comes up that is better.