You asked for examples of GOP leadership simply making shit up, rather than making honest arguments about small government. I’ve given you some. So you move the goalposts.
But moving goalposts or not, I’ll play along. Go ahead, give me the last time the Democratic Congressional leadership made up similar bullshit about a Republican President in order to attack his positions.
If it’s “politics as usual” to invent stuff to attack the opposition over, rather than putting a negative but basically factual spin on real stuff, then it won’t be hard for you to do.
That wasn’t the argument. It may be yours, but it wasn’t theirs. Sorry.
Do you have any basis for these claims about the law?
They set up a website where people could email them and tell them, “hey, I’ve heard thus-and-so about health care reform,” and get some facts in return. If certain bogus stories popped up frequently, the Administration could address those more publicly.
The rest was paranoia.
How so? Please be specific. Their main charge against Fox was that Fox is a political operation. Omigoshgolli - what an attack, to call a spade a spade!
You’d think telling the truth in Washington was a threat to the First Amendment.
And I know you complained when the Bushies kicked the NY Times off the press plane, and went after MSNBC publicly.
But besides that, when did being President meant that you couldn’t respond to influential critics, no matter what shit they spouted? When did “President” = “punching bag”?
IOW, gimme a break. Or to quote Sam Stone, “It’s politics. Get used to it.”
Obama tried to organize a media boycott? I missed that. As far as launching attack dogs goes, were you too young for Spiro Agnew? How about Dan Quayle going after Murphy Brown? Sheez.
I missed it, when did Obama sic the IRS on FOX and Limbaugh?
But wait, dere’s more,
nope not done yet,
and then there’s this,
When someone can even vaguely show that the Obama administration has something other than a publicly announced (not secret like Nixon’s), single digit (not five digit like Nixon’s), list of folks that they are doing anything to that compares to Dean’s plans for Nixon’s enemies list, get back to us.
CMC fnord!
I just can’t resist posting the “Master List”;
Senators–Birch Bayh, J. W. Fulbright, Fred R. Harris, Harold Hughes, Edward M. Kennedy, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Edmund Muskie, Gaylord Nelson, William Proxmire.
Members of the House–Bella Abzug, William R. Anderson, John Brademas, Father Robert F. Drinan, Robert Kastenmeier, Wright Patman.
Black congressmen–Shirley Chisholm, William Clay, George Collins, John Conyers, Ronald Dellums, Charles Diggs, Augustus Hawkins, Ralph Metcalfe, Robert N.C. Nix, Parren Mitchell, Charles Rangel, Louis Stokes.
Miscellaneous politicos–John V. Lindsay, mayor, New York City; Eugene McCarthy, former U.S senator; George Wallace, governor, Alabama.
Organizations
Black Panthers, Hughie (Huey) Newton
Brookings Institution, Lesley Gelb and others
Business Executives Move for VN Peace. Herb Niles, national chairman, Vincent McGee. executive director
Committee for an Effective Congress. Russell Hemingwav
Common Cause, John Gardner, Morton Halper, Charles Goodell, Walter Hickel
COPE, Alexander E Barkan
Council for a Livable World, Bernard T. Feld, pr idem: professor of physics. MIT
Farmers Union, NFO
Institute of (for) Policy study Richard Barn, Marcus Raskin
National Economic Council, Inc
National Education Association, Sam M. Lambe president
National Student Association, Charles Palm president
National Welfare Rights Organization, George Wiley
Potomac Associates, William Watts
SANE, Sanford Gottleib
Southern Christian Leadership, Ralph Abernathy;
Third National Convocation on the Challenge of Building Peace, Robert V Roosa, chairman
Businessmen’s Educational Fund.
Labor
Karl Feller president, International Union United Brewery. Flour, Cereal, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers, Cincinnati
Harold J. Gibbons, international vice preside Teamsters
A F Grospiron, president, Oil, Chemical Atomic Workers International Union, Denver
Matthew Guinan, president, Transport Work. Union of America, New York City
Paul Jennings, president, International Union Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, Washington D.C.
Herman D. Kenin, vice president, AFL-CIO. D
Lane Kirkland, secretary-treasurer. AFL-CIO (we must deal with him)
Frederick O’Neal. president. Actors and Artists America, New York City
William Pollock, president, Textile Workers Union of America, New York City
Jacob Potofsky general president, Amalgam. Clothing Workers of America, New York City
Leonard Woodcock, president, United Auto Workers, Detroit
Jerry Wurf, international president, American Federal, State, County and Municipal Employ Washington D.C.
Nathaniel Goldfinger, AFL-CIO
I. W. Abel, Steelworkers
Media
Jack Anderson, columnist, “Washington Merry-Go-Round”
Jim Bishop, author, columnist, King Features Syndicate
Thomas Braden, columnist, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
D.J.R. Bruckner, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
Marquis Childs, chief Washington correspondent, St. Louis Post Dispatch
James Deakin, White House correspondent, St. Louis Post Dispatch
James Doyle, Washington Star
Richard Dudman, St. Louis Post Dispatch
William Eaton, Chicago Daily News
Rowland Evans Jr., syndicated columnist, Publishers Hall
Saul Friedmann, Knight Newspapers, syndicated columnist
Clayton Fritchey, syndicated columnist Washington correspondent. Harpers
George Frazier, Boston Globe
Pete Hamill, New York Post
Michael Harrington, author and journal member, executive committee Socialist party
Sydney Harris, columnist, drama critic and writer of ‘Strictly Personal,’ syndicated Publishers Hall Robert Healy, Boston Globe
William Hines, Jr., journalist. science education, Chicago Sun-Times
Stanley Karnow, foreign correspondent, Washington Post
Ted Knap, syndicated columnist, New York Daily News
Edwin Knoll, Progressive
Morton Kondracke, Chicago Sun Times
Joseph Kraft, syndicated columnist, Publishers Hall
James Laird, Philadelphia Inquirer
Max Lerner, syndicated columnist, New York Post: author, lecturer, professor (Brandeis University)
Stanley Levey, Scripps Howard
Flora Lewis syndicated columnist on economics
Stuart Loory, Los Angeles Times
Mary McGrory, syndicated columnist on New Left
Frank Mankiewicz, syndicated columnist Los Angeles Times
James Millstone, St. Louis Post Disptach
Martin Nolan, Boston Globe
Ed Guthman, Los Angeles Ttmes
Thomas O’Neill, Baltimore Sun [died in April 1971]
John Pierson, Wall Street Journal
William Prochnau, Seattle Times
James Reston, New York Times
Carl Rowan, syndicated columnist, Publishers Hall
Warren Unna, Washington Post, NET
Harriet Van Home, columnist, New York Post
Milton Viorst, reporter, author, writer
James Wechsler, New York Post
Tom Wicker, New York Times
Gary Wills. syndicated columnist, author of “Nixon-Agonistes”
The New York Times
Washington Post
St Louis Post Dispatch
Jules Duscha, Washingtonian
Robert Manning, editor, Atlantic
John Osborne, New Republic
Richard Rovere, New Yorker
Robert Sherrill, Nation
Paul Samuelson, Newsweek
Julian Goodman, chief executive officer, NBC
John Macy, Jr, president, Public Broadcasting Corp, former Civil Service Commission
Marvin Kalb, CBS
Daniel Schorr, CBS
Lem Tucker, NBC
Sander Vanocur, NBC
Celebrities
Carol Channing, actress
Bill Cosby, actor
Jane Fonda, actress
Steve McQueen, actor
Joe Namath, New York Giants [Jets]; business; actor
Paul Newman, actor
Gregory Peck actor
Tony Randall actor
Barbra Streisand, actress
Dick Gregory [comedian]
Businessmen
Charles B Beneson, president, Beneson Realty Co.
Nelson Bengston, president, Bengston & Co.
Holmes Brown, vice president, public relations, Continental Can Co.
Benjamin Buttenweiser, limited partner, Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
Lawrence G. Chait, chairman Lawrence G. Chait & Co., Inc.
Ernest R. Chanes, president, Consolidated Water Conditioning Co.
Maxwell Dane, chairman, executive committee, Doyle, Dane & Bernbach, Inc.
Charles H. Dyson, chairman, the Dyson-Kissner Corp.
Norman Eisner, president, Lincoln Graphic Arts.
Charles B. Finch, vice president, Alleghany Power System, Inc.
Frank Heineman, president, Men’s Wear International.
George Hillman, president, Ellery Products Manufacturing Co.
Bertram Lichtenstein, president, Delton Ltd.
William Manealoff, president, Concord Steel Corp.
Gerald McKee, president, McKee, Berger, Mansueto.
Paul Milstein, president, Circle Industries Corp.
Stewart R. Mott, Stewart R. Mott, Associates.
Lawrence S. Phillips, president, Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.
David Rose chairman, Rose Associates.
Julian Roth senior partner, Emery Roth & Sons.
William Ruder, president, Ruder & Finn, Inc.
Si Scharer, president, Scharer Associates, Inc.
Alfred P. Slaner, president, Kayser-Roth Corp.
Roger Sonnabend, chairman, Sonesta International Hotels.
Business Additions
Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace and New National Priorities
Morton Sweig, prsident. National Cleaning Contractors
Alan V. Tishman, executive vice president, Tishman Realty & Construction Co., Inc.
Ira D. Wallach, president, Gottesman & Co., Inc.
George Weissman, president, Philip Morris Corp.
Ralph Weller, president, Otis Elevator Company
Business
Clifford Alexander, Jr., member, Equal Opportunity Commission; LBJ’s special assistant
Hugh Calkins, Cleveland lawyer, member, Harvard Corp
Ramsey Clark, partner, Weiss, Goldberg, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; former attorney general
Lloyd Cutler, lawyer, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Washington, D.C.
Henry L. Kimelman, chief fund raiser for McGovern. president, Overview Group
Raymond Lapin, former president, FNMA; corporation executive
Hans F. Loeser, chairman, Boston Lawyers’ Vietnam Committee
Robert McNamara, president, World Bank; former Secretary of Defense
Hans Morgenthau, former US. attorney in New York City (Robert Morgenthau).
Victor Palmieri, lawyer, business consultant, real estate executive, Los Angeles.
Arnold Picker, Muskie’s chief fund raiser; chairman executive committee, United Artists
Robert S. Pirie, Harold Hughes’ chief fund raiser: Boston lawyer.
Joseph Rosenfield, Harold Hughes’ money man; retired Des Moines lawyer.
Henry Rowen, president, Rand Corp., former assistant director of budget (LBJ)
R Sargent Shriver, Jr., former US. ambassador to France; lawyer, Strasser, Spiefelberg, Fried, Frank & Kempelman, Washington, D.C. [1972 Democratic vice presidential candidate]
Theodore Sorensen, lawyer, Weiss, Goldberg, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York.
Ray Stark, Broadway producer.
Howard Stein, president and director, Dreyfus Corporation.
Milton Semer, chairman, Muskie Election Committee; lawyer, Semer and Jacobsen
George H. Talbot, president, Charlotte Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. ; headed anti-Vietnam ad
Arthur Taylor, vice president, International Paper Company [presently CBS president]
Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association.
Paul Warnke, Muskie financial supporter, former assistant secretary of defense
Thomas I. Watson, Jr., Muskie financial supporter; chairman, IBM
Academics
Michael Ellis De Bakey, chairman, department of surgery, Baylor University; surgeon-in-chief, Ben Taub General Hospital. Texas
Derek Curtis Bok, dean, Harvard Law School [presently Harvard president]
Kingman Brewster, Jr., president, Yale University.
McGeorge Bundy, president, Ford Foundation.
Avram Noam Chomsky, professor of modern languages, MIT
Daniel Ellsberg, professor, MIT.
George Drennen Fischer, member, executive committee. National Education Association
J. Kenneth Galbraith, professor of economics, Harvard
Patricia Harris, educator, lawyer, former US. ambassador; chairman welfare committee Urban League
Walter Heller, regents professor of economics, University of Minnesota
Edwin Land, professor of physics, MIT.
Herbert Ley, Jr., former FDA commissioner; professor of epidemiology, Harvard.
Matthew Stanley Meselson, professor of biology, Harvard
Lloyd N. Morrisett, professor and associate director, education program, University of Calif
Joseph Rhodes, Jr., fellow, Harvard; member, Scranton commission on Campus Unrest
Bayard Rustin, civil rights activist; director, A. Philip Randolph Institute, New York.
David Selden, president, American Federation of Teachers.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., professor of humanities, City University of New York
Jeremy Stone, director, Federation of American Scienlists
Jerome Wiesner, president, MIT.
Samuel M. Lambert, president, National Education Association
A memo dated Sept. 14, 1971 from Dean to Haldeman aide Lawrence Higby, submitted to the Committee, included three persons not shown on either list of 20 or the larger master list. Those selected by Dean for inclusion were:
Eugen Carson Blake (per request) [General Secretary World Council of Churches
Leonard Bernstein (per request) [ Conductor/ Composer ]
Tom Wicker (New York Times)
Clark Clifford (Clifford) [former Secretary of Defense]
Vs Fox, Rush Limbaugh, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? :dubious:
And for all the talk about how the GOP is being torn apart by its refusal to accept moderates (which I believe is Democratic Party talking points and spin), there’s nothing particularly radical in people seeking to have the party they support better reflect their values.
As I said before, the Democratic Party is experiencing the same kind of tug-of-war.
Joe Lieberman is hardly a current example anymore, the party moved leftward from him years ago.
There’s some pressure on a few of the more repugnant Blue-dogs, but that’s for the electoral future. I’m not seeing much in the way of life or death tooth and claw among the Dems right now. Besides the Dems are naturally more fractous than the Pubs. We have only to look back to the Bush years to see how unified the Pubs like to be, while Clinton was widely disliked by us actual Liberal types.
Hell, Obama’s the worst mass murder since Pol Pot, the supporting evidence is pretty much the same.
Just look at it all; the death panels, the 1,000 FEMA concentration camps, the 30,000 guillotines, the half-million caskets.
What I hear is exactly the opposite: that the GOP is more cohesive than ever, but further right than ever, more of a regional party than ever, and further from the American mainstream than can be fudged over by slogans like “compassionate conservatism” or Dem-bashing.
True dat. In particular, primary challenges to candidates that don’t reflect part of a party’s values should be regarded simply as part of the game.
Not exactly. Some Dems would like to see some consequences applied when members of the Democratic caucus won’t even let major legislation get an up-or-down vote, but that’s pretty much as far as it goes, right now. Centrists can be centrists if they damned well feel like it, as long as they don’t join in GOP filibusters.
Seems like pretty weak tea compared to what’s going on in the GOP, and it’s not clear that even this weak tea will find its way onto the Democratic menu.
Not radical, no, but self-defeating anyway. Like it or not, and for many that’s “not”, success in achieving one’s goals requires forming coalitions that add up to the majority needed. A party engaged in purging its heretics dooms itself to minority helplessness. Those of its members who support such a purge thereby actually work against their own interests.
Self-described Republicans are already down in the low 20’s percentwise. Do you really think getting even smaller helps them, even if they become “purer”?
There certainly is some serious impatience among the majority Dems with the minority Blue Dogs, but do you see any of them getting hounded out the way Scozzafava has been?
If you’ve seen the political news in the past week, the attack machine seems to be cranked up on Joseph Lieberman pretty good.
Getting “smaller” doesn’t help Republicans; standing for the right things does – such as limited government, generally lower taxes and controlled spending. Those ideas would resonate in this climate.
Republicans are in the boat they are in now because they strayed from their principles in the Bush/Frist/Hastert era. They became indistinguishable in their spending from Democrats.
Why would they resonate? It is obvious a majority of Americans do not want those things; and those who say they do change their tune the moment their own porkbarrel ox is even threatened with goring.
Pay special attention to the numbers on Independents in that second link.
Obama and Pelosi have fundamentally misread their success in the past two election cycles, how much of it was a protest vote against Bush and the wars, not an endorsement of their policies.
I agree with you that people generally want less spending and lower taxes, but cry foul when some favored program faces cuts.
Well, if people want “limited government, generally lower taxes and controlled spending”, who’s going to give it to them? Republicans? Have you been paying attention for the last 8 years?
I’m not saying that Democrats will provide those things either. I’m saying it’s long past time any Republican can pretend to be for those things. We don’t have one big government, high tax, big spending party and an alternative small-government party. We have two. So you better get used to the idea of bigger government and higher taxes and more spending, because that’s what you’re going to get.
Uh-huh. And we also are similarly stuck with two parties that are both against gay marriage, ending the drug war, and reducing the military, and in favor of close ties with big corporations and Wall Street. So you better get used to the idea of all that, because that’s what you’re going to get, right? :rolleyes:
Well, if your plan is “vote Republican!”, then you should get used to the idea. If you’ve got some other plan, go ahead, but in the meantime get used to the idea, because there is not now and really never has been a limited government party.
Which party is in favor of gay rights? Did Obama come out in favor of gay marriage? No he didn’t. You and I might suspect that he is secretly in favor of gay marriage and repealing DADT, but he sure isn’t doing much publicly. Which party is in favor of cutting the military budget? Which party is in favor of repealing the war on drugs? Which party is in favor of ending corporate welfare?
If you’re in favor of these things, that’s great, but voting “Democrat” isn’t going to do jack for any of them.
If you want something other than more big government and more collusion between Wall Street and Washington, which party do you vote for? None of the above.
So? Join FairVote and fight for electoral-system reforms that will allow the emergence of a multiparty system. Then America can have a viable party that really does try to cut the military budget, legalize gay marriage, etc. Also a viable party that does try to cut down the size and scope of government, etc.
Which is pretty much how I’ve voted in the last few elections. But I’m not going to piss all over any authentic fiscal conservatives who are trying to reclaim the Republican Party. I’m skeptical, especially since they have not been out of power long enough, but surely we can do better than mere unproductive “nothing will never work” whining.
