Thank you, my dear clueless boy. Your responses never disappoint.
Here’s another completely true line: As a matter of principle, Republicans trust government.
More than that; Republicans love government.
Republicans love government for many reasons, not least of which is that is provides them a tool to oppress and intrude into the lives of the Other that they hate and fear so strongly. But the primary reason Republicans love government is that they are the party of Business. Business loves, it requires, government to create the orderly climate and future stability that it needs to thrive and survive. Business has been burned over and over by the mirage of quick profits in other countries that it attempts to exploit only to find that they are kicked out or nationalized or otherwise disrupted. Order is a core philosophy of modern Capitalism. More pragmatically, Business uses its power in governments to create laws that give them a host of special privileges, from tax relief to lowered regulations to repression of labor. One couldn’t ask for a better demonstration of this truth than the current hysteria among the establishment Republicans when faced with the prospect of Republicans gaining votes but ones who care more about social issues and religion and guns than Business. You’ll note that this brand of Republicans equally requires government to force its repugnant bigotry onto Others who don’t similarly believe. All that says is that Republicans love, love, loooovvvveeee government.
And so they obviously don’t trust Democrats to use government properly. Democrats have - very occasional, passing, inchoate - notions of using government to improve the lot of peoples’ lives. That simply won’t do, my dear. The servants might get ideas, donchaknow.
Why did I proclaim Mitt Romney the nominee in mid-2011? Because the Republicans are the party of Business and Business trusts government. That will still be true in 2016. I don’t even have to bet money on it. Lots of Republicans will be doing that for me.
Obamacare. Far more than preserving the New Deal; more like expanding it (a little).
What liberals need to ask themselves is why did they pass it without a single Republican vote, and then promptly lose their House majority, and was it worth it.
Well, if taken to its logical extreme, that would mean they support no government at all.
Trusting government, but only when you’re in charge of it, is a dilemma.
But I do agree when it comes to process, and precedent. For instance, liberals who gave courts so much power during the Warren years are now finding that conservative courts aren’t as fun.
No Republican votes were ever going to be available for anything the Democrats were proposing, as you know. Unless you can tell us what the Republican counterproposals even were, other than to fuck off.
No need to ask ourselves or anyone else. That was due to gerrymandering. Perhaps you weren’t aware that there were substantially more total votes for Dem candidates than Republicans, in addition to our increasing our Senate representation despite having far more seats to defend, and the President having won as easily as any can. That’s a clean sweep, if you’re keeping count.
Why wouldn’t it be? This was *the *issue, and we won, for as many generations to come as can be foreseen. That’s like asking if the New Deal was worth the losses in 1948.
And how exactly did “liberals” give the courts so much power? There’s a lot of case assumptions, faulty reasoning, and plain myth making in that one sentence.
Haven’t you noticed that the Republicans have a strategy of not letting Obama pass anything? What do you propose Democrats do in the face of this? Wrong their hands at how extremist they are being?
In the face of Republican viciousness, the Democrats set aside their own plans for health care reform and adopted a Republican plan, which the Republicans then then voted against to a man. And this shows that Democrats are doing something wrong?
I think this is a type of issue that really only applies to surveillance-type stuff. Democrats might not like Republicans in charge of the welfare state, but it still functions. REpublicans might not prefer Democrats in charge of the Pentagon, but that still works fine too.
The NSA is a different situation, because eventually some President is doing to decide to use it for political agendas, or be well-meaning but think, “Hey wouldn’t it be great to use NSA to reduce crime?” Think Bloomberg wouldn’t take that opportunity if he thought he could get away with it? Heck, he’d probably use NSA to monitor trans fats.
I think you missed the point. the only thing the Democrats accomplished in the last 50 years cost them the House and could well cost them the senate as well.
The House seats were the same as those in the past decade, in which Dems held control of the House. They weren’t redistricted until 2012, following the 2010 census. There’s no way in hell you can blame that election on gerrymandering.
I was aware of that. Yet somehow the Dems had control of the House with the same district lines from the previous census, in 2000, until then.
That’s my point - was it “THE issue?” Was it worth giving up the power to affect every other issue out there?
Not really. I’m just thinking of the Warren court and judicial activism. I’m a liberal myself, though judicially I’m a conservative (which is an entirely different thing as a political conservative).
They should have considered not passing anything at all so that they didn’t die on the sword of one issue.
Instead, they gave up their House majority for one issue by passing a mediocre law that was sure to be under constant attack from the new GOP majority anyway.
All truly good and lasting laws and programs, at least since after the New Deal, have been created and sustained by enjoying support from both parties.
Republicans in state legislatures have been gradually tightening the gerrymandering since the mid-1990s. It was the 2008 election that was a fluke, because the Republicans had screwed themselves so badly in the previous year and Obama was riding a first-time high that wasn’t realistic to maintain.
The gerrymandering practically guaranteed that in 2010, after the Obama high of 2008 had died down and the end of the Bush administration was a memory, the Republicans would re-take the house. And they’ve held it ever since, tightening the gerrymandering each chance they get.
And don’t forget in Texas (and some other states too, I think), the Republicans used mid-cycle redistricting to flip the delegation from majority Democratic to overwhelmingly Republican.
No, not “gradually.” Except for rare exceptions, redistricting only happens after the census every ten years.
So were the 2002, 2004, 2006 elections also a fluke? The Dems won a House majority in those too.
But they only get that chance every ten years, after the census. There was no redistricting after the 2008 election. All the districts where the same as when Dems won a majority.
Yes, Texas redistricted mid-cycle. But Texas did not turn the House Republican by itself in 2010.