“But democrats do it too”. :rolleyes:
The story I just read in the Washington Post suggests that he was trying to create a bill that could pass using only Republican votes, because he’s still that much of a fucking asshole. A bill that could get 217 votes from bipartisan sources? Nope. Poor baby might lose his speakership, and we can’t let that happen, far better to fucking endanger the fucking country.
No wonder I was confused… I was still somehow imagining he was behaving rationally!
The Whigs would too, if they were still around.
You’re just engaging in the old ploy of saying “both sides are the same, I’m being objective and rational, see!” You’re not being objective, you’re being intellectually lazy. If you would do a little research you would discover that Obama frequently ceded almost all points at the beginning of negotiations on a bill, in fact, John Boehner once bragged that he “got 98 percent of what he wanted” in a previous debt limit face-off.
See if you can find any quotes of Democrats similarly smirking about the way they worked over the Republicans. You can’t because that’s not the way it’s been happening.
The racist tea baggers are somehow stopping the amazing Messiah, the Senate, and the Taco Supreme Court.
Power to the people!
I mean, power to the government. I hate those terrorist tea people.
Yep, that’s sure an opinion, in the same way that if I mixed some eggs, pork fat, quick-dry cement, and melon rinds together it’d sure be a pudding.
You missed my point. The issue is that the statement “but democrats do it too” in this situation is completely false. The democrats don’t do it too. This is not a typical partisan dispute; this is the republicans playing hostage tactics with the world economy and credit rating out of sheer bloodymindedness.
Congratulations! You just chose one of the most expedient ways of demonstrating that you have absolutely no understanding of the issue at hand or indeed what the discussion is even about. Nice one!
Indeed it’s rare to gain such a total understanding of a poster’s viewpoint with so few words to work with. It’s a marvel of compact completeness.
Oh? What do you – yes, you, personally – think will happen as the last minute approaches?
Picture it: time’s almost up; Boehner says “we’ll keep offering strings-attached bills filled with our demands”; Reid says “send us a no-strings-attached bill or no go”; Obama says “and even if the Senate backs down, I’ll veto anything but a clean bill.”
Who, in that scenario, do you think (a) is bluffing, and (b) will back down as the deadline looms ever closer?
But it is a special case. Can you point to ANY legislation near this scope that has been passed with zero votes from the minority party? If you can’t come up with even one, I can’t see how you can claim that it is not a special case.
Fact Check - Reps are also working within the rules of the same system. Also, while the Dems were in their rights to pass this bill the way they did, their are ramifications for doing so. It’s almost as if they thought they’d never lose control of anything ever again. They gambled and lost.
Oh, please. If that were the case right now you’d have the same people on this board spouting the same “How dare they. It’s a law. Give it a chance. Etc.” Some of the more moderate Reps would have less to complain about, but that’s about it.
It doesn’t matter- there were over a hundred Republican amendments to the ACA… but the caucus made the point to allow zero support, as a symbol of their opposition to Obama. Like McConnell said- their number one priority was to ensure Obama didn’t get a second term. So they didn’t allow a single Republican to vote for it.
That’s different than any other era, and any other big piece of legislation. The Republican caucus made a tactical decision to deny support- not because of the legislation, but because they wanted to hurt the President.
Right now the Republicans are losing, big-time. They can’t even get a vote that would pass the House. The one that already passed went to the Senate, was voted on, amended, and returned- but Boehner refuses to allow a vote. I’d say the Democrats’ decisions are looking better by the day.
Ha. Pelosi offers a defense for her stupidity and you not only buy it, but think others must, as well. I don’t.
First, she uses “the bill”, not “a bill”, which would better support your and her’s defense. Second, the last part of the quote, as seen here:
…indicates that she was talking about after the law was passed, not after it merely left the senate. Or are you under the impression that the senate machinations were done in a “fog of controversy” but the once it got past there all the controversy about the bill magically—POOF—disappeared?
Glad to out that the clearing up of the misconception never actually happened.
I don’t know which one blinks first the House or the Senate but if a bill gets passed that is agreed upon, I honestly don’t think it gets vetoed. So I guess I’m voting for the President to back down first.
You’re taking off the table the possibility that they 1) wanted him to be a one-term president (which every opposing party does when a new President is elected) AND 2) were opposed to the bill in its totality, not to mention how it was finally passed, without enough time to even read the final version.
I don’t think they are. At the very least, “conservatism” got reset. And that is very important to, you know conservatives. And people like McCain received a wake up call that they have abandoned their principles in exchange for what they think will be a few more votes in the future. They’re actions have brought to the fore the fact that the legislation is not ready for prime time, that it is unfair, that the Mighty Obama has been changing the law willy-nilly (possibly unconstitutionally) by giving exemptions, and that he is woefully intransigent. Having congress subject to the law is a good thing. Carving out the medical device tax is something that has almost 80 votes in the senate, but at least now it looks like it will be delayed. Not even the unions are happy with it, and are asking, “Where is our special exemption?” It has been revealed that even if the ACA is a beneficial piece of legislation that it is not ready yet and is STILL being shoved down our throats. And when all the problems are brought to light and a very reasonable one-year delay on the mandate is proposed, it’s discounted out of hand. How dare we question our King?
Push back against the bill in the past few weeks has brought all this to light. So, even if the conservatives don’t get their way, I think it was worth doing. At this point, the only way they “lose” is to capitulate.
I frequently read Red State to keep tabs on what the crazies are thinking. And they really do see Boehner and other members of the leadership as “RINOs”, weaklings who always cave, etc. I see that as ridiculous. But I also think it’s ridiculous when liberals accuse Obama and Reid (and Pelosi when she was Speaker) of the same thing. All of the party leaders on both sides are IMO reasonably stalwart defenders of their side’s ideology, but are just not as adamantine as the most extreme members of the respective bases would prefer.
But if he loses his speakership, the next Speaker just does the same thing (brings to mind Nixon’s “Saturday night massacre”). I can’t really blame him for sticking to only bringing up bills to the floor that have his own caucus’s support. To say “no, I can’t do that because this is endangering the country” is to admit that his own party is a danger to the country. And then he ought to not just bring things to the floor to get Democratic votes, he ought to resign from the GOP. Right? I mean, that’s what I’d do, but I’d never be a Republican to begin with.
I like a proposal that I saw contributed by a reader to Jim Fallows’s blog. Harry Reid should attach the immigration bill the Senate passed earlier in the year to the CR (the House Republicans hate it although it would be a lifeline to potentially help them not be completely made extinct in a country where Hispanics are inexorably becoming a greater and greater political force). Then when they go to conference with the CR the House passed with their conditions attached (delay Obamacare is I think the big one), they can say “okay, you drop your attachments, we’ll drop the immigration ones, and we’ll just pass a clean CR”. Voila–compromise! 
The special case is a party that meets in secret on Inauguration Day and vows never to support a single thing that the new president may want to do.
Considering the long leadup, including lots and lots of Republican offered amendments, I don’t find #2 plausible. The whining about how it was passed is just that- whining.
It wasn’t the demands that were objectionable- it was the tactics. Causing a shutdown (which they planned, executed, and then celebrated) and threatening a default is unacceptable and should get them nothing. The Democrats had no choice but to oppose it, due to the tactics.
Chances are, if the Republicans had simply passed a CR as usual and extended the debt ceiling, certain things like delaying the medical-device tax might have happened. Probably not a delay on the mandate, which most supporters see as a critical part of the bill. But now they get virtually nothing, along with lots of angry people. So say the polls, and so say the crusty old veterans I work with who really, really hate Obama- they think the Republicans are being very, very stupid right now.
It’s not just that they adopted this strategy precisely to enable the argument **magellan01 **is now making. It’s also that Democrats controlled larger-than-average majorities in both chambers, meaning most of the swing seats they held, and meaning that the remaining Republicans are more conservative than average. And it’s also that the parties have more closely aligned with partisan interests than they were even two decades ago, with fewer Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans, etc., who were the traditional bipartisan votes.
It wasn’t a clean vote, it had no democrat support at all. It was a last ditch attempt at getting something out of this and not look like they caved 100%. It was like a 90% cave.