Given that the number was lower (28%) back in '95 and that the GOP itself is pretty split on this with more disapproving of the shut down than approving of it, yes, really. I think even many in the Tea Party realize that this is their responsibility even if they think “blame” is not the word they would use.
If 35% blaming the Democrats seems small to you then how do you feel about 44% blaming the Tea Partiers? It is not even a majority of the country. Most in this country are buying the line that the Democrats and Obama at least share in the blame. Which yes shocks me.
It’s a good thing the White House will never listen to that advice. Boehner is the most powerful Republican of all of them. He holds POWER. He has to know better than to put a gun to the President’s head but he is doing it anyway, because he is weak and selfish. Obama is the most powerful Democrat and Boehner is the most powerful Republican. Obama knows everyone knows his face, so has to get the public to see the orange face of the man holding the gun.
Obama can’t stared down the entire faceless Republican Party - the showdown is with Boehner.
The discharge petition is the right course for the Dems in Congress to work against Boehner while Obama rips Boehner with the bully pulpit.
If Boehner is too cowardly to act against the Tea Party by October 14 and the debt ceiling is not going to be raised… Obama cannot agree to dick with the ACA or cut something, so it will be 200 Dems in the House, and 54 Dem Senators pointing to the discharge petition that needs a mere 18 Republicans in the House to save America from default. If the Republican stand with the hostage taker and back Boehner pulling the trigger, there will be no doubt exactly who ruined the economy and could drive the world back into recession.
Boehner has been reported to blink on the debt ceiling but he muddles everything with weasel words and contradictions. That is what makes him as a hostage taker so dangerous.
Obama will make sure we all know who Boehner is if he takes the world to the brink because he is coward and afraid of fifty House Tea Party fanatics and Ted Cruz…
If their priorities and values actually had sufficient merit they will survive without extreme measures as we see being played out
But when they have to make something up about almost everyone else’s values to make theirs appear to be worthy, that is a long term problem that matches the GOP’s base is largely Bill O Reilly’s age and older and white and male. The future ain’t there for a political party.
They need to stand for something worthy and right, in the correct sense, instead of constant trashing the liberals and a relentless blaming of all that is bad on big government, and all those 47% of government teat sucking moochers and their seeming powerlessness to communicate their divine truths on the liberal biased main-stream media.
But I will admit their myth-making machine is well oiled and funded and truly has many successes. The problem is they have begun to believe in their own crazy myths and can’t find their way back to reality which is needed to become a viable Party with a future.
The governors race in Virginia is one to watch in parallel with the shut down hostage standoff next door as a harbinger of the nationwide GOP decline.
Shutting down the government hits the Virginia economy probably more than anywhere else.
I hope the polls will show that the Boehner shut down for political ransom puts Cuccinelli further behind than he already is.
Cuccinelli’s unfavorable rating has increased 47% with an approval of 34%.
His GOP Repub Lt Governor running mate of sorts is an extremist Tea Party choice.
McAuliffe’s lead is made up by women… a whopping 24% gender gap.
This Ted Cruz stunt will be a disaster for the GOP unless they get Obama to pay the ransom with just about anything. I think Obama and Dems know it. If we can believe that Boehner has blinked on the Debt Ceiling … that saves a catastrophe that Obama has little way out… other than some extreme emergency measure that he does not want to do… or to give in to their hijacker’s demands.
Grownups need to take back the GOP from the spit wad fighting brats. That’s the only ‘doing what it takes’ that will save it in my view.
I ain’t saying they’re right, but this is what’s motivating them. They see that the only path back to power is through Obama’s legacy’s fat bloated corpse. And they see the only way their culture/values/party/priorities survive at the hands of a hostile president is by wrecking him.
Most of us see this as suicidal and wreckless politics and we scratch our heads in amazement; they see this as a culture and values war, and each of these showdowns is a noble battle on the path to survival.
To them, a country with it’s secular values, foreign cultures, large numbers of minorities, government dependence, homosexuals, religious tolerance, atheists, abortionists, government gun grabbers and dirty immigrants ruining our cities *isn’t worth saving. *Their culture and values are.
There may be institutional Republicans who are wary of these tactics-- the old schoolers in Congress, the comfortable Wall Street club, moderate and traditional souls in the rank-and-file-- and many of them bite their nails at night, because this war is a serious commitment. The ones who are willing to compromise with the enemy are either primaried out of power or retire.
The GOP is on record as refusing to fund the government unless the ACA is repealed/defunded/delayed. The little mini-funding bills don’t change that- the Republicans are refusing to fund the government unless they get their way.
Adding “delay” changes things, what I said is the GOP is not trying to repeal or defund the ACA any longer. This is objectively true, after Sunday they passed a bill that did not alter ACA funding whatsoever, it was a CR that only had basically one rider–that it would delay the individual mandate which is a sub-$100 tax penalty for qualifying persons who do not purchase insurance in 2014, but it did not delay the implementation of the ACA in general or defund it.
It actually mirrors the unilateral delay of the employer mandate that the President already did for 2014.
It’s hard to say that anything the House passes knowing that the Senate will reject it is any statement of the true preferences of the caucus. They could have passed a Barack Obama national holiday bill and the Senate would have turned it back.
It doesn’t matter- it’s the tactic that must be rejected, not the goal. The Democrats literally have no choice- capitulation is the end of divided government.
No, refusal to negotiate with 1/3rd of the government is the end of divided government. It’s literally saying, “if we control 2/3rds, we’ll brook no compromise with the party that controls the other third, they must acquiesce to us at every point.”
They haven’t refused to negotiate- just not with a gun to the head in the form of shutdown/default. They’ve been negotiating for years- but the Republicans are trying a new tactic- they planned (per many statements and memos) to use the shutdown and default as a bargaining chip, and this must not be allowed.
The 2/3rds have been compromising for years. The 1/3rd has gotten a lot of concessions. But now they’ve taken hostages, metaphorically speaking. This is a new thing- causing a shutdown (and I blame the Republicans because they planned for it and many are now celebrating it) and threatening debt default. It doesn’t matter what they ask for- this tactic must not be seen as legitimate.
The right-wingers in the House don’t want to negotiate. They want their way 100%. Why do you think so many moderate Republicans who negotiate with Democrats get primaried or feel the need to retire and get labeled RINOs?
Shutting down the government or threatening default is “negotiating” the same way suicide bombing is negotiating.
I know you know perfectly well that is not what I am saying. Passing a bill you know is doomed may reflect genuine preference or it may not. In some cases it does, especially if there are electoral consequences. In most cases there is room for play. But the Senate has made it perfectly clear that it will pass a clean CR and nothing else, and because the House has raised the stakes so high, it’s likely that they will keep their word.
So the House Republicans can pass anything they want just south of a clean CR and can plausibly say that the Senate Democrats are the ones to blame for the gridlock. They run little risk of the Senate calling their bluff precisely because the stakes are so high. If they didn’t want to defund the shit out of the ACA, they would not have gone down this road in the first place. So unless the caucus’ preferences have somehow magically changed over the past five days (which would make them catastrophically irrational) then their half-assed bills are just theatre.
This is really at the heart of winner take all majority rule, though. If you control 1/3 of the government, that doesn’t mean you get to control 1/3 of the outcome. Sometimes it means you straight up lose. The ACA passed with Republican votes, survived a Supreme Court challenge, and has been signed into law. These are the usual standards by which we judge the legitimacy of any law. I think we are all better off, no matter who is in charge, when we have a common understanding of what losing means. A law does not require universal consent of all members of all branches of government. For one element of one branch to act like it does is very dangerous and violates this common understanding. I think we all have a strong collective interest to resist this kind of game, no matter who is in charge.
I agree. What the right wing conservative extremists are doing has nothing to do with being a great American, freedom lover, strict Constitutionalist, or American patriot.
The debt cieling threat makes them nothing but political and economic terrorists. But why havn’t moderate conservatives been more aggressive in smashing them if most rank and file Republicans are of a more moderate mindset?
I tend to think that Independents/libertarian types outside the Republican Party who are not fond of Republican religiosity and social issues tend to loan support and sympathy to the Tea Party anti government hysteria.
Undecided-all-the-time and both-sides-are-to-blame voters need to snap out of it.
Pick a damn side and fight for it with honesty and intelligence.
Reagan was wrong-government is not the problem when ignorance becomes a mass movement that thinks it is God’s gift to America.
It’s like within the Republic, Palpatine appeared to be doing what was good and right for the Republic at first; he was an elected official, he shared everyone’s values and goals for the Republic, he was about rules and order, he was wise and noble and inspiring and “one of us.” So the members of the galactic Senate went along with him every step of the way…I mean, who could possibly foresee that he’d eventually be shooting fucking electricity out of his fingertips, right? But once the Tea Party, that is Darth Sidious, exposes itself as only looking out for #1-- well, holy fuck, what the hell do moderate Republicans do now? I tell you what: They line up behind the wrinkly old guy in the hood and hope he doesn’t vaporize them with his Sith magic, i.e. primary season.
