Robert Draper: GOP decided to oppose Obama in everything on Jan 20, 2009

[elucidator]

@Evil_Captor

All I hear is crickets.

Unfortunately, those are locusts.

[kaylasdad99]

I’m not dismissing the basic premise of the OP, but why 01/20/2009, and not 11/05/2008?

[Lobohan]

@kaylasdad99

I’m not dismissing the basic premise of the OP, but why 01/20/2009, and not 11/05/2008?

Because until they knew who won, they didn’t have to start doing their homework.

They had to make sure that the newly elected tea-party worthies were on board. They had to do polling to make sure this wouldn’t blow up in their face. Luntz had to come up with the words to sell this to the angry tea-partiers. They had to let the shaky members of the caucus (I’m looking at you NE Republicans) knew they would be utterly hammer-fucked by primary challenges if they even thought of breaking ranks.

This is more than just, “Hey, we’re gonna say ‘no’ to everything, kay?” It was a strategy that they had to make happen.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

Come on folks…

An Obama idea or initiative that some Republican politicians gave bipartisan support towards.

Anything?

Bueller?

[BigAppleBucky]

@kaylasdad99

I’m not dismissing the basic premise of the OP, but why 01/20/2009, and not 11/05/2008?

Timeline would probably have been that they were in shock and mourning for a time, then the year end Congressional recess.

Probably took a bit of effort to get all the guys to agree on a time and place to meet.

And the inauguration brought them all together in Washington for the first time since November. Of course, it was also symbolic.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Euphonious_Polemic

Come on folks…

An Obama idea or initiative that some Republican politicians gave bipartisan support towards.

Anything?

Bueller?

Sotomayor?

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

I haven’t heard any GOP complaints about the indefinite detentions move. As I understand it you no longer have habeus corpus rights once the executive branch accuses you of being a ‘terrorist’. You can be jailed indefinitely- without a trial! The Founding Father-obsessed GOP seems perfectly content with this one.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Rand_Rover

So what? Are you telling me you didn’t want a Democratic Congress to oppose everything GW Bush wanted to do?

You mean like Medicare Part D, Bankruptcy Reform, the Energy Bill, Invasion of Afghanistan, Invasion of Iraq (just ask Hillary Clinton, it cost her the presidency), and both Bush tax cuts (which incidentally the Heritage Foundation predicted would completely eliminate the national debt by 2010), Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito (interesting story on how Rehnquist’s death made O’Connor feel betrayed, she apparently wouldn’t have resigned if she knew Rehnquist was at death’s door)?

Granted the tax cuts had very little Democratic support but there were Dems voting for it in both houses of congress. So the notion that Democrats were anywhere nearly as monolithically opposed to everything Bush did the moment he took office is pure fucking bullshit.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Sotomayor?

Only 9 Republicans in the senate were on board with her appointment. So I guess you can say that those 9 did not oppose everything Obama did.

Nine of the Senate’s 40 Republicans backed Sotomayor. The rest, while hailing her as a trailblazer and role model, portrayed her as a liberal who favors affirmative action, gun control and limits on property rights.

GOP strategist Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition argued that GOP senators were right to oppose a nominee whose “extreme judicial views” are bound to alienate the party’s core conservative voters.

Another article [Republican support for Sotomayor looks paltry"]](http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2009-08-03-sotomayor_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip)

[Measure_for_Measure]

Look, the Mitch McConnell has been explicit about his policy of obstructionism. In fact, it’s sort of rational: the majority party benefits from bi-partisanship. I’m surprised in fact it took the pros this long to figure that out. My fear is that the Republicans have successfully located a bug in the system as it were. Recall that most stable democracies rely on single coalitions, not bi-partisanship. Put another way, it’s normal for the opposing party to oppose everything. The history of the United States is an exception to this tendency.

Anyway, here’s the Mitch McConnell quote, which I’ve shared elsewhere: On Tuesday, McConnell sat down with Politico’s Mike Allen for a free-ranging discussion on politics. Here’s what he said:

MCCONNELL: If the president is willing to do what I and my members would do anyway, we’re not going to say no and –

ALLEN: But that’s not much of a concession. That’s not bargaining, to just give you what you want.

MCCONNELL: Um, I like to think I’m a pretty good negotiator. 

Those three comments outline the three most important dynamics driving the modern political system. (1) The top priority of the minority party is getting back into power. (2) Being bipartisan is bad politics, as it makes the country think the majority is doing a good job. And (3) bipartisanship increasingly relies on the lowest-common denominator, the things everyone “would do anyway,” not the things they can be persuaded to do as part of a more ambitious deal.

And here’s what McConnell thinks of bi-partisanship: “We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals, because we thought – correctly, I think – that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan." http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/mitch_mcconnell_the_most_hones.html

[BrainGlutton]

@Measure_for_Measure

(1) The top priority of the minority party is getting back into power.

Isn’t that how it should be, always?!

[Chronos]

MCCONNELL: If the president is willing to do what I and my members would do anyway, we’re not going to say no and –

Except they haven’t even done that. How many ideas that originated with Republicans have they now stonewalled, just because Obama says that he likes them?

And BrainGlutton, that’s not how it should be. The minority party’s top priority should be to get policies they like passed. Getting back into power is the most obvious means to that end, but that’s all it is, a means. Other means to that end would include compromise and persuasion, which the Republicans are making no effort at.

[Measure_for_Measure]

@BrainGlutton

Isn’t that how it should be, always?!

The top priority of the minority party should be advancing the national interest. Remember, “Partisanship stops at the water’s edge”? That apparently no longer deserves even lip service.

Then again if we had a system that didn’t depend upon compromise, then obstructionism could serve a national purpose. But we don’t have that system.

@Chronos

How many ideas that originated with Republicans have they now stonewalled, just because Obama says that he likes them?

Health care reform is the most obvious example. Obamacare had a public option, which Lieberman torpedoed. What we got was Romneycare. With not a single vote by the Republican Party. And the newly-found opposition of their newly anointed Presidential candidate.

[JQPublic]

When the President was elected the democrats already had control of the house and senate so I don’t think he thought he needed or even wanted any republican support.
Comments like, sit in the back or they can grab a mop if they want to help, come to mind. I remember republicans being locked out of the committee room where the healthcare law was being written. I remember reading the democrats actually changed the lock on the committee room door to keep the republicans out. It basically looked like bipartisan for almost all the legislation the first two years meant agree with me or go away. And I don’t think I’m the only one that saw it that way because the next election the democrats lost the house. That doesn’t happen when people think you’re working for the people not just your party.

[Airbeck]

@JQPublic

When the President was elected the democrats already had control of the house and senate so I don’t think he thought he needed or even wanted any republican support.
Comments like, sit in the back or they can grab a mop if they want to help, come to mind. I remember republicans being locked out of the committee room where the healthcare law was being written. I remember reading the democrats actually changed the lock on the committee room door to keep the republicans out. It basically looked like bipartisan for almost all the legislation the first two years meant agree with me or go away. And I don’t think I’m the only one that saw it that way because the next election the democrats lost the house. That doesn’t happen when people think you’re working for the people not just your party.

Uh huh. And where exactly did you read this interpretation of events? What paragon of neutrality cast things in that light I wonder? That’s almost the opposite of what I remember actually.

Also, the democrats did not have 60 seats in the Senate at any time. As you know, now we need 60 votes to do anything at all, so to suggest that the Democrats could have just steam rolled over republican opposition on anything during that period, had they just wanted to, is pretty revisionist history stuff don’t you think?

[Gyrate]

@Airbeck

Uh huh. And where exactly did you read this interpretation of events? What paragon of neutrality cast things in that light I wonder? That’s almost the opposite of what I remember actually.

Also, the democrats did not have 60 seats in the Senate at any time. As you know, now we need 60 votes to do anything at all, so to suggest that the Democrats could have just steam rolled over republican opposition on anything during that period, had they just wanted to, is pretty revisionist history stuff don’t you think?

And let’s not forget the umpteen GOP-suggested amendments to the healthcare bill, the incorporation of which produced exactly zero GOP votes. It’s not the Democrats who weren’t being bipartisan.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@BrainGlutton

Isn’t that how it should be, always?!

Sure, if you put party before country.

[foolsguinea]

@Voyager

If Bush had gotten his immigration reform package (which was pretty good) past his own parties, many if not most Democrats would have supported it.

Yes.

And remember that during the financial crisis it was the Republicans who were opposing the Administration’s rescue package. They’d rather have a depression than lose their ideological purity.

Some of us on the left were opposed to TARP as well. I personally thought the then-Secretary of Treasury was pulling a scam.

[septimus]

@YogSosoth

The fact that you think that, Rand, shows how you think, and more importantly, how you think the other side thinks.

Unlike the GOP, the Democrats want what’s good for the country, whether its their idea or the Republicans idea…

I was also disappointed by Mr. Rover’s foolish comment. It truly is the GOP and its supporters who have led our politics astray. One often reads, even here at SDMB, Republicans who “root for their team” regardless of an issue’s merit. Can you imagine Demos doing that? (I quoted Will Rogers about the Demos in another thread and was condemned for it. :smack: )

@Frylock

People like you (and they exist on both sides but they do seem to congregate mostly on the right) literally can’t see any way to do things in a democracy other than this psychopathic oppositionalism. It doesn’t even occur to you that others might do things differently–and that’s unfortunate because in this case “differently” means “constructively and basically better in every way.”

In short, you’re blind even the possibility of an honest participation in democracy.

Even as I say this you think I’m either lying or lying to myself. You can’t even imagine that there may be people who really do think this way.

But you’re wrong.

I like this post.

@John_Mace

Not buying it. If they had agreed to simply oppose Obama on “everything”, why …

I didn’t like this one. One doesn’t need to be a genius to know that “everything” was at least a little hyperbolic, yet here a poster seizes on this nit-pick as if it invalidates the argument. Wrong.

[Measure_for_Measure]

@septimus

I was also disappointed by Mr. Rover’s foolish comment. It truly is the GOP and its supporters who have led our politics astray. One often reads, even here at SDMB, Republicans who “root for their team” regardless of an issue’s merit. Can you imagine Demos doing that? (I quoted Will Rogers about the Demos in another thread and was condemned for it. :smack: )

I can imagine Communists or Marxists doing that. I can imagine yellow dog Democrats c. 1950 doing that.

My point is that while the Republicans have gone crazy, they were sane during the mid 1970s. And the Dems could lose their sanity some time in the far future. Ironically, our system was designed to be loon-resistant, especially in the Oval Office. But Congress has basically given up its war making powers. And the filibuster plus the boatload of appointees that require Congressional approval has empowered obstructionist minorities.

There have been a lot of generalizations in this thread, some of them by political professionals such as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R). Some intelligent folks from foreign lands may wonder though, what does obstructionism look like? I’ll give some examples:

1. Back in 2006 Jon Kyl worked to ban Internet Gambling. Ok, that’s his prerogative. Fast forward to January 2010 and Senator Kyl was blocking 6 appointees to the US Treasury, a year after Obama had been sworn in. Remember, this was following the worst financial crisis in post-War history. Why? It had nothing to do with the nominees themselves. No, Kyl didn’t like the 6 month delay in handing down internet gambling regulations. For that (ostensibly) he was willing to starve the US Treasury of expertise at a time that they really needed to be up and running. That’s just sabotage. Jon Kyl - Wikipedia

2. Here’s a link showing the Republican’s June 2011 opposition to a tax cut, a payroll tax cut. Now eventually they relented in Feb? 2012. But only after public outcry was drummed up. Tax cuts apparently are ok, unless they are proposed by Obama. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/republicans-find-a-tax-cut-they-dont-like----one-that-helps-obama.php?ref=fpblg

3. While recovering from the worst recession in post war history, it is well known that Republicans opposed muscular fiscal policy, to the point of blocking attempts to put it to a straight up or down vote. But they also opposed expansionary monetary policy, putting them to the right of the late Milton Friedman. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/business/economy/gop-urges-no-further-fed-stimulus.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig

4. The US faces spiraling health care costs. The Republicans have put forth no proposals to address that. Heck, they’ve even opposed bills that were put forth by the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s. And they were quite explicit about pitching poison pills designed to make health care reform go down in flames: “If you took half the states out of the individual mandate requirement, this bill falls, requiring us to draft something new, and quite frankly that is the goal,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “To find a way to get the Congress to redo this bill…. We want this bill to come to an end.”

Points for honesty. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/gop-sens-admit-goal-of-changing-health-care-law-is-to-kill-it.php?ref=fpblg Now pause for a moment. Consider the long-term deficit. It is unsolvable without getting health care costs under control. So nobody serious about the budget deficit would act that way.
It’s not all fun and games. These are serious issues, serious problems. Obstructionism and economic sabotage have consequences.