The obstructionist-GOP narrative... can we test/prove it?

Great Debates
241

Your tactic stands out because there is no shortage of instances where you come into a topic with a book definition of the law, or an assumed “correct” interpretation and chastise others for interpreting things wrong, yet in this topic where I think your side clearly represents both the letter and spirit of the term, you throw your hands up in defeat because you claim no one can agree. Just like the law is filled with instances where different sides disagree but coexist, interpretations change over time, or disagreements are still being fought over in court and public opinion, there will be disagreements in this topic but that’s no reason not to try. Not putting in the effort is suspicious

You the know the law says abortions are legal and ok even though I’m sure you disagree. I hereby invite you to accept that and never defend the opposition, and encourage dissenters to behave according to the spirit and letter of the law and allow abortions to go on unchallenged

242

I have no idea what these paragraphs mean.

243

Except that I think you’re oversimplifying things… your analysis would make sense if there was a single action that either a party took or did not take, black or white. And the only thing that then mattered was what motivated that action. And we all agreed that democrats took that action once, in 1983, and Republicans took it once, in 2012, and democrats were very clearly saying “hey, that was OK in 1983, but it’s SUPER-MEAN now”, and vice versa. Whereas certainly one issue is motivation, but that’s only one issue, not the entire ball of wax. Most importantly, there’s NOT just one single action, there are lots of different actions and, importantly, the degree and amount of and timing of those actions. There’s also the distinction between motivation-due-to-belief and motivation-due-to-politics… so even in a very simple universe of only one obstructionist action, we might be discussing whether one instance of it was due to honest opposition to the policy, even if the arguers disagree with that honesty, and another instance was due purely to a desire to make the other party look bad, and whether one of those was “worse” than the other.

So while this issue may in fact be unresolveable as far as really objectively arguing or proving anything, if it is unresolvable, that’s not simply because it will always come down to “well, WE think that this law is good and YOU think it’s bad, therefore WE think it’s obstructionism and YOU do not”.

244

You know, it occurred to me that its silly to look for grand conclusions where every side has to agree. Do liberals agree with conservatives about who’s considered poor, or who needs tax breaks? Or the definition of a human life in terms of abortion? Or the existence of death panels? Why are we arguing as if there’s no room for disagreement as long as some conservatives object to a definition of obstructionism? Fuck that! If it were true that they knew what obstructionism was and just wanted to prevent discussion on the topic, would they act any different?

I think its fine to ignore conservatives and their objections because they have a political reason not to be sincere when talking about this issue. We don’t need their agreement to make laws supporting abortion, or a health care law, or allowing some immigrant children to stay in the country. Hell, I bet a lot of them are still arguing about what is considered torture and Obama already said we did do it and will stop.

The criteria we can use for defining obstruction is easy because we’ve all witnessed it in the past few years. Republicans blocking laws they once supported, blocking laws that once passed without issue, using the country’s credit rating as a tool, the unprecedented use of procedural filibusters to make all bills require 60 votes, filibustering their own proposals, the severe increase in the number of laws being blocked, the historical low number of laws being created by this Congress, the meeting before Obama’s term to destroy his presidency, all of these paint the GOP in a very obstructionist light. Singular instances of any of those things may not be proof, but the GOP has done ALL of the above and more. No Democratic opposition has ever approached both the depth and breadth of the type and number of obstructive policies engaged in by this batch of GOP. I think that’s proof right there. Tally those numbers up and that’s an objective measure of obstructionist tactics all done by the GOP. Its obstruction, plain and simple.

Of course the next step after proving obstruction is the hardest: how to get the GOP to care. If conservatives ever confessed their error in denying obstructionism, there is a much bigger mental hurdle in getting them to admit they were wrong and change their ways. That, I’m afraid, no amount of proof would be sufficient

245

The next Congress will have a Republican Speaker of the House and a Republican Senate Majority Leader.

So you might need some agreement from some of them for making laws, if I remember the process correctly.

246

If that happens, how about the Democrats do the obstruction that the GOP is doing now and you make excuses for how they’re not obstructing? Again, I invite you to commit to your position now, that there is no obstruction by the GOP, so that when Democrats do you, you will never once accuse them of obstruction

247

Please explain to me the difference between the “obstructionist-GOP narrative” when there is a democrat president and the “obstructionist-democrat narrative” when there is a republican president.

There is no difference between the two and each party is doing exactly what they should be doing as the honorable opposition.

This is what makes democracy the absolute worst form of government there is, except for all the others.

248

It is only honorable if each side enters negotiations sincerely and are not crazy. The GOP failed that test long ago. Consider if on one side you had Democrats, and on the other, rabid chuds frothing at the mouth to eat humans, would letting the chuds block legislation be the honorable and democratic thing to do?

The GOP are like maniacs now, unable to articulate why they should be in government, supported by fear and momentum and a healthy dose of electoral fraud, and absolutely preventing the normal functions of a healthy government. Its not about simply disagreement. Many of the things they believe in are provably false, or based on lies. They can absolutely be proven wrong in a number of cases like global warming and outed as hypocrites in health care. There’s no honor in that, there’s no sanity in it

249

I think this misses the crux of Yogsosoth’s point, and he himself moved on too, but it’s worth focusing on, because it underlies this whole discussion. The crucial point of his post was:

What you (or I) personally think about obstructionism and the ability to objectively measure it does not address the question, which was how it is that all conservatives seem to have adopted the position that it can’t be objectively measured and all liberals the opposite. And this is an issue with broader application in that it also relates to the OP’s position here, which seems to be - more or less - that the one objective fact is the number of filibusters and since everything else is murky that carries some weight.

The answer to that question is that it happens that Republicans have been in opposition for a while. They have not controlled the presidency in 6 years and the senate in longer and for while didn’t control the house either. In that circumstance, a party naturally falls into an “obstructionist” posture, not because they are inherently obstructionist in nature or because they dislike the president because he’s black or anything of that sort, but just because while they like their own agenda and dislike their opposition’s agenda, they have little hope of getting their own agenda enacted and the best they can do is block the other side’s.

But what happens in such a case is that the side which has more of the power, and does have hopes of getting their agenda enacted, becomes frustrated at the attempts by the opposition to block it. And when this happens, “obstructionism” suddenly becomes a dirty word in their circles, and it gets attacked from all sides, and a lot of pundits and wonks and analysts and bloggers devote a lot of energy to proving that the minority party is the absolute worst obstructionists ever, with all sort of charts and graphs and helpful stats, such as the OP posted earlier in this thread. Meanwhile, back at the minority party ranch, obstructionist tactics are seen as heroically resisting the evil schemes of the majority, and very little energy is expounded in denouncing it, and only a bit of rearguard deflection of majority accusations.

So that’s how you get threads like this. Like so many other threads of this sort, it’s largely a reflection of what’s circulating in liberal circles generally, with each poster adapting the available arguments to their own mindset.

So fast forward a few years. Let’s imagine that the Republicans are the majority party after 2016. I don’t predict that this will happen, but I do predict that if it does happen that several other things will happen. Most significantly, that the positions of various ideologies WRT obstructionism will flip. Republicans/conservatives will complain about Democratic obstructionism and Democrats/liberals will see this as virtuously keeping the barbarians at bay. But I also predict that on this MB, you, Bricker, will at some point start a thread pointing to some Democrat obstructionism and noting the position of liberals about things of this sort a mere few years ago. And at that point there will be several types of reaction, but which will vary in tone more than in substance. Some, say elucidator, will post something mocking about “liberal hypocrisy”, while others, say Max the Vool, will seriously say that they don’t find this type of discussion productive because it’s too hard to compare different situations among other things and let’s talk about the issue on its merits.

And so on.

250

My God, it’s like you have a TARDIS.

251

The GOP are like maniacs now, unable to articulate why they should be in government, supported by fear and momentum and a healthy dose of electoral fraud, and absolutely preventing the normal functions of a healthy government. Its not about simply disagreement. Many of the things they believe in are provably false, or based on lies. They can absolutely be proven wrong in a number of cases like global warming and outed as hypocrites in health care. There’s no honor in that, there’s no sanity in it
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Very selective memory. You have forget the amount of Bush Derangement Syndrome that existed with much vigor towards the previous administration.

You love obstruction and think is valid with a republican president, and cry foul when the same is done to a democratic.

252

I see what you’re saying, but… how do you know that in fact what’s happening is your decent-people-meaning-well-getting-frustrated narrative vs our loyal-opposition-saw-black-president-and-tea-party-and-went-crazy narrative? What can we look at that might differentiate between them?

253

Possible… but surely if you are making this claim, particularly in this thread which asks for actual evidence, you have some nice countable objective numbers which indicate that the level of obstructionism during the Bush years was approximately equal to what it is now?

254

How do you know anything? There are things that are highly subjective and it’s wise to be a little cautious about your own motivations in ascribing to one version over the other, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a cautious assessment. I gave my reasons upthread for thinking the Democrats are the more partisan of the two parties, but I don’t think this is something that can be proved by some objective measure.

My comments here were not intended as a proof that one version of what’s occurring can be shown to be objectively true over the other. I was just responding to Yogsosoth’s point, which seemed to be about an ostensibly objective measure in its own right - the apparent fact that Democrats and liberals are the ones who are at least attempting to find objective measures. And my response was that this is an artifact of the distribution of political power at this particular juncture. That’s all.

255

And, they just filibustered it.

256

Well, technically it is a filibuster, but realistically, if you cannot muster 60 votes for it, it is a pretty sure bet you won’t get 67 votes required to pass it out of the Senate. And yes, well done, Republicans.

257

Then why not vote?

258

Not selective. Things were never as bad under Bush with respect to opposition from Democrats than it is now with opposition from Republicans. Simply count up the number of filibusters and cloture votes initiated by Republicans for some proof. Look at the number of federal appointees blocked for more proof. Remember david, just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it wrong, and just because some people freaked out over Bush doesn’t mean its the equal of the entire GOP collectively trying to shut down the government. But I suspect you’ll never admit that, so do keep living in your own world

Like I’ve said before, the GOP are crazy. They obstruct laws they themselves created and supported. They filibuster their own bills. They are, objectively speaking, obstructionist and not doing what they’re doing for the good of the country. The Democrats are trying to help people, therefore excuse me if I give them a pass when they try to block yet another GOP bill to cut taxes on the 1% while increasing it on the middle and lower class :rolleyes:

But hey, you seem to know what obstruction is, as you’ve condemned the Democrats with that label. How would you define it? How would you measure it?

259

I feeling like you’re saying two different things:
(1) Republicans are acting more obstructionist, but that’s just a natural response to not being in power for 6 years
(2) And actually, Democrats are really more obstructionist overall

Which of those do you think is true? Both?
I feel like to the extent that there IS evidence (and there isn’t as much as we’d like), it is heavily against Republicans:
(1) Republicans were willing to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, something democrats never did while out of power
(2) the much discussed graph of filibusters
(3) Various comments made by Republicans

As to your comment about being out of power for a long time, well, by 2006 democrats had had 6 years of a Republican presidency, and Republican house and senate dating back to 1995, barring the period when Jim Jeffords became an independent). Was late 2006 a year with record numbers of filibusters, or record numbers of anything else that would indicate obstructionism? Because if (a) Democrats are more obstructionist, and (b) anyone out of power for a long time gets sick of it and starts obstructing; then 2006 should be an obvious high water mark of obstructionism.
I realize that at some level this is just subjective, but the whole point of this thread is to look for the ways in which it’s NOT subjective. After all if you think one thing, and I think the exact opposite, and we’re both people of fair mind and intellect, it ought to be at least POSSIBLE to come up with some evidence that supports one of us over the other…

260

I think both are true, but with some clarification.

  1. I don’t know if it’s so much being out of power for 6 years specifically, and I think the parties pivot fairly quickly in this regard. As said, if you’re out of power the best you can do is block the other guy so that’s what you do, Republican or Democrat. I’m sure it tends to build up further over time, but the major change happens the minute you lose (or gain) power. What takes longer is for the “narrative” of your supporters, to change from focusing on the righteous need to stand up to the oppression of the majority to the notion that “obstructionism” is a bad thing.

  2. I see “obstructionism” as being part of a broader issue. In my (subjective) estimation, on the whole Democrats are the more partisan of the two parties, and are more likely to take relatively extreme measures to block the evil schemes of their opponents, as compared to the Republicans. I see obstructionism as being a nothing more than a subset of this broader tendency.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. As it happens, the Gang of 14 deal was made in 2005, which indicates that things were coming to a boil at around that time. But as previous, I don’t think these things are reliable indicators anyway, so I wouldn’t make much of it.