Tea Party darling defeats establishment candidate in Texas senate race

[Fear_Itself]

If Tea Party congressmen compromise with Democrats, they will lose the support of their base. Compromise may be a realistic necessity, but their base won’t stand for it, since they ran on a platform that reviles it.

[adaher]

Bases often hate compromise. Remember all the protests during the shutdown negotiations by liberal groups fearful that the President would agree to cut Social Security or Medicare?

Bu the public as a whole prefers compromise, which is one reason Reagan and Clinton left office with such high approval ratings. A good economy helped too, of course. Dissing your base is often a sure path to popularity, provided you get tangible accomplishments out of it.

You could be right, maybe they’ll be stupid, but I think they’ll do what’s right. Presidential elections tend to focus politicians. If the people speak, and President Obama is reelected, they’ll work with him. And if the people speak, and Republicans control all of Congress, he’ll work with them.

No one benefits from four years of gridlock.

[gatorslap]

@adaher

The deficit, actually. The Tea Party has expended more of their political capital for proposing a tough deficit reduction plan that reforms Medicare than for anything else. abortion is a divisive but safe issue. Half the people will like what you do in most cases, half won’t. The budget is a lot tougher to deal with, which might be why the Democrats don’t want to propose a plan that reduces the deficit as much as the Republicans have.

Cite? Everything I have seen says the Republican plan increases the deficit. But perhaps you are referring to a different Republican plan.

[adaher]

The Ryan Plan?

Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan

Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan
6

April 5, 2011

In response to a request from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, CBO has conducted a long-term analysis of a proposal to substantially change federal payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, eliminate the subsidies to be provided through new insurance exchanges under last years major health care legislation, leave Social Security as it would be under current law, and set paths for all other federal spending (excluding interest) and federal tax revenues at specified growth rates or percentages of gross domestic product (GDP).

CBO analyzed major provisions of the proposal as they were described by the Chairmans staff. The specifications may differ in some ways from the plan released today by Chairman Ryan in The Path to Prosperity: Restoring Americas Promise. CBO has not reviewed legislative language for the proposal, so this analysis does not represent a cost estimate for legislation that might implement the proposal. Rather, it is an assessment of the broad, long-term budgetary impacts of the proposal, with results spanning several decades and measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). It is therefore quite different from a cost estimate for legislation, which would require much more detailed analysis, focus on the first 10 years, and be based on more recent baseline projections. (CBOs most recent long-term projections, which are the basis for this analysis, were issued in June 2010 and were derived from the agencys March 2010 baseline projections.)

The reports that Ryan’s plan increases the deficit disingenously compare it to the CBO baseline, which assumes the Bush tax cuts expire and Medicare payments to doctors are cut. It’s a “current law” baseline and it’s really awesome at cutting the deficit. And the best part is, Congress doens’t have to do anything!

The problem is that the Medicare cuts to doctors are catastrophic and would likely kill the Medicare program. Since Democrats do not support these cuts, it’s disingenous for liberal websites to claim that Ryan’s plan increases the deficit compared to the baseline.

[Beware_of_Doug]

@adaher

The House last week more than tripled funding for an updated version of a Cold War-era tank the U.S. Army says it doesn’t need. If the vote made questionable sense to some watchdogs in an era of tightening military spending, it made a lot of political sense to lawmakers seeking to preserve jobs in their districts.

Even with a two-year ban on earmarks, or pet projects that often can’t be justified as national priorities, the action was the latest evidence that members of the U.S. Congress are still finding ways to deliver the goods for their constituents.

I think if you’d ask many TP’ers, they’d tell you (not without some stammering of course) that the military is not part of the problem of Big Government.

[Bridget_Burke]

@adaher

…I don’t know how you’d measure it,but I think we’re seeing a much, much better performance out of Republican officials than we did in the Bush era or previous. And the precise nature of the complaints coming from democrats only reinforces that they are actually governing as conservatives now.

If we can get the topic back to the Texas Runoff for a minute, here’s a piece about “the real dynamics of Republican politics in the Lone Star State”…

…Cruz is hardly a measure of Tea Party purity—and far from a repudiation of the Bush era. In fact, George W. Bush made Ted Cruz. He began as a legal expert for Dubya’s presidential campaign in 2000—after the bitter rivalry between the Bush/Rove camp and the Perry people had begun to divide the Texas GOP. Cruz was a Bushie—and still is. He got positions at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission and, recognizing that service, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appointed Cruz as the state’s solicitor general in 2003. Last year, when Cruz filed for U.S. Senate, it was the up-and-coming political star of the Bush family, George P. Bush, whose group Hispanic Republicans of Texas became one of the first to give him a big endorsement.

Meanwhile, the Bush family’s most bitter rival in Texas politics—Perry—had become the toast of the Tea Party movement. The longest-serving governor in the state, he consolidated power far beyond what Bush had ever achieved in the state, and over time, he built an unlikely political fiefdom…

If this were just about the Tea Party, we would have seen at least some level of consistency in last night’s outcomes. But while Cruz beat Dewhurst, three different state legislative runoffs resulted in Tea Party losses, largely because they’d supported major cuts to public schools. ParentPAC, a pro-public education group, had major victories in the state. There was a hard-line Tea Party victory in the state Supreme Court race, but in the state’s Railroad Commission, the Tea Party candidate lost.

Now back to your regularly scheduled digressions…

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@adaher

The reports that Ryan’s plan increases the deficit disingenously compare it to the CBO baseline, which assumes the Bush tax cuts expire and Medicare payments to doctors are cut. It’s a “current law” baseline and it’s really awesome at cutting the deficit. And the best part is, Congress doens’t have to do anything!

The problem is that the Medicare cuts to doctors are catastrophic and would likely kill the Medicare program. Since Democrats do not support these cuts, it’s disingenous for liberal websites to claim that Ryan’s plan increases the deficit compared to the baseline.

Nice try, but that’s backwards.

Federal payments for Medicaid under the proposal would be substantially smaller than currently projected amounts. States would have additional flexibility to design and manage their Medicaid programs, and they might achieve greater efficiencies in the delivery of care than under current law. Even with additional flexibility, however, the large projected reduction in payments would probably require states to decrease payments to Medicaid providers, reduce eligibility for Medicaid, provide less extensive coverage to beneficiaries, or pay more themselves than would be the case under current law.

[adaher]

@Beware_of_Doug

I think if you’d ask many TP’ers, they’d tell you (not without some stammering of course) that the military is not part of the problem of Big Government.

We’re actually starting to see some Republicans question the defense budget, and most of them are Tea Partiers.

The Tea party has been a way to energize traditional conservatives, but it’s also provided an opening for guys like Rand Paul. Never thought I’d see a real libertarian in the Senate.

[boytyperanma]

@adaher

Never thought I’d see a real libertarian in the Senate.

Probably never will either.

[adaher]

rand Paul is pretty darn close. Wants to cut military spending, voted against Patriot Act extension…

Those are the kind of debates the supposed “small government” party needs to start having.

[boytyperanma]

@adaher

rand Paul is pretty darn close.

Yeah I guess that explains the stunning endorsement from the Libertarian Party chairman released the other day. I mean he did fall short of calling him a donkey raping shit eater, that’s close right?

[adaher]

I do not consider the LP to be the arbiters of who is and who is not a libertarian any more than I consider the catholic Church the arbiters of who is and is not a Christian.

[boytyperanma]

@adaher

I do not consider the LP to be the arbiters of who is and who is not a libertarian any more than I consider the catholic Church the arbiters of who is and is not a Christian.

Do they get any say as to who is Catholic?

[gatorslap]

@adaher

In response to a request from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, CBO has conducted a long-term analysis of a proposal to substantially change federal payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, eliminate the subsidies to be provided through new insurance exchanges under last years major health care legislation, leave Social Security as it would be under current law, and set paths for all other federal spending (excluding interest) and federal tax revenues at specified growth rates or percentages of gross domestic product (GDP).

That’s not the Ryan plan, that’s a hypothetical proposal. I’d like to see a CBO analysis of the numbers that Ryan claims at the end of his plan. Others have looked at it and claimed that it’s off.

Furthermore, that doesn’t include the increase in military spending that the GOP wants.