As distinct from, say, the truth.
Maybe that’s their problem. Maybe they need to outgrow the notion that you can stay clean in a mud-wrestling match.
Because it damages Obama. They are determined to deny him any success, just like they were determined to deny Clinton any success, only more so, because . . . well, you know.
A Republican POTUS forever. Pubs appear to have internalized the idea that the Reagan Revolution was once-and-for-all. For a Dem to take the WH after that seems to them an impossible reversal of history, like a Jacobite Restoration, it cannot be legitimate, whatever the voters might say. We saw that attitude expressed venomously in the Clinton years, and now it comes back to the power of ten or more, because of . . . well, you know.
There’s always Joshua Muravchik.
Because black man?
and filibustering or otherwise obstructing the cabinet appointments will get them a Republican president?
I don’t think that’s how it works…
You’re ascribing far too much logic and thought to the Senate Republicans. At this point, their primary motivation is fear of their primary-election base, which has become largely insane teanuts. Any sign of actual comity or rational action is like kryptonite, with no use but to destroy them completely.
Guess where John McCain was today! He was on “Meet the Press”, part of their ongoing washed up Repubican losers support effort.
Guess what he had to say!
McCain claims ‘massive cover-up’ on Benghazi
Forgot to take his Aricept again…
Because Yankee.
They’re thinking that denying a Dem POTUS any successes will get them a Republican next term. That’s been their strategy since Clinton’s first term. They think that way because all they’ve got is a hammer, as it were.
And some Republicans are not even denying that personal animosity towards Obama is the single motivating factor in opposing anything he proposes:
Gingrich: Republicans Will Oppose Any Immigration Plan Backed By Obama Because They Hate Obama
John McCain’s entire political career has been about harboring grudges and settling scores. The bipartisan act he played in the early 2000’s was a put-on designed to (1) get under the hated GW Bush’s skin, and (2) win media attention to soothe his personal ego and make another run at the presidency (is there ever a Sunday when he doesn’t have an exclusive interview with one of the political talkshows?).
He’s also smarmy enough to con huckleberries like Lindsay Graham into thinking his causes should be theirs based on personal friendship. In other words, McCain is a jerk, and always has been a jerk.
Just in case anyone missed the “Cry baby” story 8 years ago, and since Gingrich is widely agreed to be the most intelligent of last year’s batch of GOP Presidential contenders,
[QUOTE=Lars-Erik Nelson]
Here was Newt Gingrich, leader of the Republican Revolution and defender of civilization on this planet, forced to sit for 25 hours in the back of Air Force One, waiting for President Clinton to stop by and negotiate a budget deal. But Clinton never came back. So Gingrich, in his rage, drafted two resolutions that forced Clinton to bring the federal government to a grinding halt.
The extraordinary behind-the-scenes tale Gingrich told yesterday morning at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast is either comedy or tragedy, or junior high school cafeteria intrigue, take your pick. It surely was not what you expect to hear from the stewards of your government.
Gingrich had been invited aboard Air Force One last week to fly to the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. With a budget crisis pending, he expected Clinton would take time out during the flight to talk about a possible solution.
But Clinton, who seemed to be genuinely grieving over Rabin’s death, stayed up front in a cabin with former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush on both the outward-bound and return trips.
Then, when the plane landed at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington, Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole were asked to deplane by gasp! the rear door.
“This is petty,” Gingrich confessed. “I’m going to say up front it’s petty, but I think it’s human. When you land at Andrews and you’ve been on the plane for 25 hours and nobody has talked to you and they ask you to get off by the back ramp . . . you just wonder, where is their sense of manners, where is their sense of courtesy?”
To Gingrich, the professor of history, this was one of the snubs of the century, ranking, he said, with the time Charles Evans Hughes stiffed Hiram Johnson of the California Progressive Party back in 1916, a slight that cost Hughes the California vote and the presidency. And it was this disrespect, Gingrich continued, that caused him to send the President two temporary financing and spending bills he knew that Clinton would have to veto thus shutting down the federal government. [septimus added emphasis]
[/QUOTE]
BTW, the Wikipedia article on the Newt shows
Well, he must realize by now that he’ll never get another shot at the presidency and is probably in his last term in the Senate. Perhaps that will mellow him out just a bit?
Doesn’t that make him a lame duck, which should inspire him to do all the bitchy last-term things the Republicans are accusing Obama of doing before he’s done them? Seems only fair… to a five-year-old.
There’s no particular reason to think McCain won’t run for re-election in 2016. Look at guys like Thurmond or Byrd. Frank Lautenberg is 89 and gave serious thought to running for another term. Back to Hagel: the Republicans are again saying they will allow a vote and don’t plan to keep this up indefinitely.
Of all the idiotic things that have been written about this confirmation process, Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post has managed to lower the bar even further with a piece that is as politically naive as I’ve ever seen:
So, Ms. Rubin takes McCain and Graham’s statements at face value–apparently unaware of the kind of incendiary rhetoric these two clowns trade in on a daily basis–then re-writes history on the Harriet Miers nomination to make a false comparison with Hagel (The opposition party was pushing for her? Outside of Harry Reid the Dems were pretty unified in opposition. And her rejection from the right was largely because there was no record of her true conservative credentials–they were afraid she’d be another Souter–rather than any pious platitude that “we can do better”).
I’m no fan of Hagel–he strikes me as a dim-bulb career bureaucrat–but let’s stop pretending that the filibuster of his nomination (the only thing Rubin got right in her article; this is a filibuster, no matter how the right tries to spin this) is anything but petty grudge-settling:
Let’s take a moment to contemplate how mind-blowing it is that John McCain would criticize anybody for being disagreeable.