A few weeks ago the Republicans were holding a straight flush at the table with Obama. All they needed to do was hold their cards at the edge of the “Fiscal Cliff” and wait for Obama to fold. Had they allowed the “deadline” to pass, Obama would have agreed to anything they wanted within a few days. – because the people who would be affected were his constituency.
Instead, the Republicans dropped their cards and folded. Now Obama knows that he can run roughshod over them for everything from gun control to taxes.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he believes the primary goal of President Obama’s second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party.”
Boehner: Obama’s goal is to ‘annihilate’ the Republican Party – The Hill
Yes, and thanks to you John – he knows that he can do it.
Compare Boner to Reagan. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, and no one ever messed with him again. You can’t win a battle if you are playing to lose. Are they going to fall over dead for all of Obama’s manufactured crises?
Agree. Even if destruction of the Republican party is Obama’s goal, he hasn’t had to do very much as Republicans seem to be doing a good job of self-destructing.
I have long held that the so called leaders of the Republican Party had a shallower philosophical depth than a flea on a dead dog. Now I think I over estimated them. Over the past 100 plus years, they have given away our constitutional republic inch by inch. Now they are giving it away a yard at a time. Soon there won’t be anything left to give away.
I think you are playing right straight into it. What Boehnor did was actually pretty smart. There were three issues: 1. The tax expiration 2: The debt ceiling. 3: the expiration of the current continuing resolution for spending that expires in March. The only one of those issues where Obama really had any popular traction was on the tax issue. From a tactical standpoint, the response was actually rather brilliant. Obama and the Democrats wanted to raise taxes on everyone making $250K or more and had the political capital to do it. Had Boehner attempted to wrap everything together into one unified deal and dig in his heels over the tax issue, the Republicans would have been portrayed as “protecting the rich” and risking the jobs of tens of thousands of Americans due to sequestration right at Christmas time.
What Boehner did was managed to split the issues into separate parts, hold off the Democrats on the debt ceiling issue for a couple of months, and pushed them back to $400K on the tax increases. So this might be unfolding as the Democrats’ battle of Kursk. Yes, they made some headway on one front but not nearly the headway they wanted to make. They expended a lot of political capital in doing it. He has tied the debt ceiling to production of a budget which the Senate has ignored for 4 years. So even though the Republicans lost a few seats in both the House and the Senate, Boehner has made more progress after the election than Republicans had made since 2006.
Now this whole anti-Boehner angle is what the Democrats are counting on. They are absolutely counting on dividing the Republicans against themselves. Many of those in social media and in various blog comments calling him “Boner” are Democrats masquerading as “true conservatives” in order to make that position look more popular than it really is in order to create a bandwagon effect. These crypto-Democrats like to pretend they are hard core conservatives but their goal is to try to “walk” the discussion far into right field and to instigate a war between Republicans. The Democrats are counting on it. These people are pretty nasty political operatives and they actually honestly really DO pay people to play on social media and in blogs.
Not only did Boehner manage to keep the Bush taxes on 99% of the people, he was able to make those PERMANENT rather than expiring in 10 years and if by some chance the Republicans were to gain control of the Senate in 2014, they could go after that remaining 1% and bring them back down, too. That 1% was a strategic retreat that saved low tax rates on a lot of small businesses that pay at the individual rates making between $250K and $400K. And he really gave up nothing in doing that other than a few days time.
Considering the tactical disadvantage of having only a majority in the House, the Republicans having practically zero political capital, a President and Senate fresh off of wins, and the infighting in his own party, what Boehner ended up with was practically genius. But no .. people want everything right now and they want to pretend that somehow the House Republicans can dictate policy decisions on the Senate and Obama. That isn’t going to happen. What Boehner did was gave some on one issue without giving in at all on the other two issues. That wasn’t such a shabby deal considering the position the Republicans are in.
Excellent analysis, crosspatch. I’ve haven’t been following this very closely at all, as it’s all been rather depressing after the disaster of an election, but because I liked what you had to say yesterday on the “Why do libs believe in agw?” thread, I thought I’d check in and read your 2 cents on this. … So Boehner’s not a complete Boner!
He had no reason to compromise. Obama would have folded.
Maybe Boehner wasn’t so much interested in winning the war, as in winning the “peace” that would follow (i.e., beginning to win over some of the deluded electorate, now on Obama’s side).
You are probably right, Steven. Like I said, I really haven’t paid attention. And I know also that Boehner’s got some issues, like with drinking and crying and whatnot.
#1 – The republicans are still going to be portrayed that way (protecting the rich).
#2 – Boehnor has shown he has no backbone. He will cave on this issue as well.
The premise about who has the edge in public opinion is a moot one. Obama convinced half the country that Romney was killing wives, was a thief, and would tax the middle class. None of it true, but the media was Obama’s agent – as it still is. So regardless of what republicans do, they will be vilified.
The question then becomes so what do they do. They can, as Steve indicated, just roll over and be the lap dogs for the democrats (under Boehnor). Or they can basically listen to those who elected them and stand firm.
We know what they will do. Option 1. And that is why they are in disarray. They are listening to the media, not their constituents.
Perfect is the enemy of good. It is also the enemy of the future of the Republican Party. The strive for absolute and uncompromising conservative ideals will not win over the majority of the general population – a population that is rapidly changing in character in the other direction (more urban, more ethnic, unfortunately more liberally indoctrinated). Until and unless we accept that, while we cannot have it all (perfect), we can preserve much (good) if we broaden our positions and show a willingness to compromise.
“Peace for our time”
No.
People are yearning for a stand on principle; they are sick to death of mealy-mouthed compromisers.
Look at the immense impact Ron Paul had by standing on even extremely unpopular principles.
The young today know when they’re being bullshitted; it comes from watching tens of thousands of hours of artifice on television. They can smell a sales job a mile away.
The Rethuglicans aren’t compromising to win a few points. They’re compromising because behind the facade they are 96% ideologically identical to Dummycraps–BOTH accept the premises of statism.
Therefore, the fight is between subtly different flavors of authoritarianism–NOT between the true factions, collectivism and individualism.
Without a doubt, too, almost every one of our so-called “representatives”–actually just the most skilled psychopaths to achieve office–have some kind of hook. They’re compromised; the PTB don’t let these people into high office unless they’re wearing a leash.
Look at the few scandals that are allowed to surface. Look at Sandusky at Penn; you think that’s unique? It’s commonplace. If congressman A gets out of line, he’s burned. The higher they go, the more extreme the compromising evidence; look at the attendees of Bohemian Grove. You think any of them would survive those activities being outed?
The problem with the Republicans is, while they talk a good game about balancing the budget, when they have had their crack at governing, they have also had an extremely poor record. During the years 2001-2007, when there was both a Republican Congress and President, the debt accumulated by all previous Presidents combined went up over 50%. That was after inheriting surpluses. My conclusion is, despite all the rhetoric, both parties are extremely corrupt and more concerned about rewarding their wealthy supporters than the good of the country.
Maybe the new “Tea Party” Republicans are serious patriots, but they have been so marginalized by the media that they have trouble controling their own party, let alone the country as a whole.
Andy, I take slight issue with your point because things have changed since the Bush years, with both the base and Repub politicians. In the Bush years it was thought big spending was the way to get votes (though in no way comparable to the insane spending of O). Now Repubs are at least going to oppose new increases in spending. But, it’s going to be real hard to cut spending and still maintain support. It will be partly public relations, and mandate building in advance (Romney skirted any effort to build a mandate, and so he looked devious, and look where that got him…. defeated.) I have to say, though, that I liked the Romney / Ryan plan on entitlements… especially the part about cutting off the affluent form entitlements they don’t need. The problem seemed to be that RR tried to simultaneously show & hide their plan. They were anal retentive or something. They couldn’t just let that freak flag fly.
I am very disappointed Romney did not win. Especially his policies on energy.
Of course, me too. But time to look at why Romney failed. I wouldn’t just ascribe it to ethnic demographics and his bs “47%” line. My thinking is that people rightly perceived Romney as a deceiver, a faker, a calculating coreless schemer, and every day Romney, with things like the etch eh sketch line and his failure to stand up for ChickFilA [at least in terms of freedom of speech], reconfirmed that. People really really didn’t want to vote for a disingenuous car salesmen type.
But we knew he was bad news from the start. If we looked at his electoral record, as if it was on the back of a baseball card, we could see he was horrible. The only election he had won was in Republican wave year and he still got less than 50% (2002). Yet Romney’s (only) selling point was that he was the most electable. Inane.
Well, the alternatives were all horrible too or worse, it seemed. But that may have been because 1) the debate oriented primary encouraged “book tour” candidates (like Cain, Gingrich & wife [both hawking books], Santorum etc: next time if you have a book to sell, you should be excluded from the primary debates!!!), 2) Romney sucked the air out of the field, keeping better candidates out, 3) and Perry sucked even more air out of the field, as on the surface he looked good. (But then “Oops.”)
I was annoyed by the postponement of the debt ceiling at first but then realized that Democrats will have no ammo against Republicans now and will have to come up with some kind of deficit plan or look irresponsible. I am not sure that it is not too late though with a trillion dollar deficit and nobody wanting to cut anything or pay more taxes. Printing money and defaulting with a lower dollar seems to be the plan for now. The rich have been buying farmland,real estate and gold etc to escape the inflation tax but they all have their hazards too.
The democrats plan will be to increase spending, increase taxes, increase regulation and increase the illegal vote count so they can stay in power (ie no change). The republicans will fold because they still want the democrats to love them and stop saying bad things about them (ie also no change). Neither party gives a damn about the Constitutional Republic, We the People, nor for having a future that is worth having. Long range planning for them is 5PM today and what to drink during happy hour. At this rate, long range planning will soon cover only the next 30 minutes. After which there won’t even be a can to kick down the road.
You guys keep thinking there are two parties, when they fold time after time after time.
When they fold on Feinstein’s bill will you finally wake the hell up???
There is only one party, the party of War and Debt.
We have the same party in Australia. Liberal (War) party and Labor (Debt) party.
Both are ethically and morally bankrupt, but 49.7% of the sheeple vote one or the other in to office.
peterh,
There are two names. The difference between the two so called parties as far as results are concerned isn’t worth two cents. However, it has cost us well over 16 trillion dollars with each trying to out do the other in how much they can spend. All that was needed was for the government to keep the thugs from stealing our hubcaps on a local to global level. That would have been mere pocket change by comparison. What would have been left over could have made all of us fabulously wealthy and likely able to travel to the stars in a weekend. As it is, we are going down for the count with only the slightest chance of avoiding a huge crash and a return to the stone age.