Competent vs ideology. Practical vs ideology. What works at the lowest cost vs ideology. And so on. Everything vs ideology. The majority of the country doesn’t care about ideology, especially from those on the extreme right and left who control both parties. They just want good value for their money, and neither side seems willing to give that.
Happy days are here again for the Republicans, or so you might think. Barack Obama’s popularity rating is sagging well below 50%. Passing health-care reform has done nothing to help him; most Americans believe he has wasted their money—and their view of how he is dealing with the economy is no less jaded. […] Sixty per cent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
[…]
The Republicans at the moment are less a party than an ongoing civil war (with, from a centrist point of view, the wrong side usually winning). There is a dwindling band of moderate Republicans who understand that they have to work with the Democrats in the interests of America. There is the old intolerant, gun-toting, immigrant-bashing, mainly southern right which sees any form of co-operation as treachery, even blasphemy. And muddying the whole picture is the tea-party movement, a tax revolt whose activists (some clever, some dotty, all angry) seem to loathe Bush-era free-spending Republicans as much as they hate Democrats. Egged on by a hysterical blogosphere and the ravings of Fox News blowhards, the Republican Party has turned upon itself.
[…]
As for ideas, the Republicans seem to be reducing themselves into exactly what the Democrats say they are: the nasty party of No. They may well lambast Mr Obama for expanding the federal deficit; but it is less impressive when they are unable to suggest alternatives.
[…]
Out of power, a party can get away with such negative ambiguity; the business of an opposition is to oppose. The real problem for the political right may well come if it wins in November. Just as the party found after it seized Congress in 1994, voters expect solutions, not just rage.
#28
Your alternatives are people in office or “extreme”. I presume you mean extreme right. However, if the people in office are extreme left then moving to the right makes you more main stream with the American people and this is what I think is happening.
“As for ideas, the Republicans seem to be reducing themselves into exactly what the Democrats say they are: the nasty party of No. They may well lambast Mr Obama for expanding the federal deficit; but it is less impressive when they are unable to suggest alternatives.”
They have offered alternatives, Obama chooses not to listen. It has essentially been his way or the highway.
17, GregAllen,
And the Democrats won control in Nov 2006. What have they done to fix those problems the past 3+ years?
21, MikeN,
They can’t. That would be too easy.
23, Robin1943,
I think you have a valid point. A number of Democrats are stepping down due to ignoring their constituents and taking a bullet for their team. The Democrats stepping in are hoping to fill the void and minimize a change in the balance of power by offering plausible deniability.
23, Anon,
Wait till they have us bail out California. If California can’t tax its way to prosperity, they’re going to pull a Greece on us and have us all bail them out in order to maintain all their “free” entitlement programs.
#32
By painting the party as a whole extremist they want the party leadership to put up candidates that are center or main stream to show they are not.
robin1943 said,
Your alternatives are people in office or “extreme”. I presume you mean extreme right. However, if the people in office are extreme left
If you think that the Democrats are extreme left then you have no idea what extreme left really is. Dennis Kucinich is pretty much the most extreme leftist in congress and he is pretty much ignored by the so-called biased media and the rest of his party.
#34–Guyver==you say “They have offered alternatives, Obama chooses not to listen. It has essentially been his way or the highway.” /// Care to share a few examples?
The story right now is that any Republican that offers an alternative to Obama gets drummed out of the party for “working with him” so I’m interested in what you are thinking of.
Similarly, I noted the Republican Alternative Budget of Last Year: 16 pages with no numbers. Yes, quite the alternative.
Then there are the number of times the Repugs make a counter offer, Obama accepts, and the Repugs remove their support and vote against it.
Dem’s have had a majority but not control of the Congress. Nice talking point.
No, the referenced article is much more on point than off. The country would be better without the current morass/corruption of the two party system. Anyone supporting either is wrong.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
What do you mean IF they win in November? What if Republicans win? We just HAD 8 years of a Republican president and 6 years of Republican Congress. How did that work out? Started 2 wars, didn’t defend us from the worst terrorist attack in our history, record (at the time) deficit. No immigration reform. No protecting the boarders. No deficit reduction (or even balanced budget). Bigger military spending. Bigger Medicare spending. Bigger Social Security Spending. And tax cuts. Huh…golly, hard to imagine how we end up with deficits.
It doesn’t matter WHO you elect, the public is STUPID. We want stuff for free. In the abstract, if ANY politician ask if you want a tax cut, most Americans will of course say yes…why not. But we also will not elect ANY politician who doesn’t INCREASE (endlessly) military spending (Obama has), and they must “protect” (ie. not cut) Social Security and Medicare. That’s the public’s fault, we’re greedy and stupid. We could elect common sense people, but we elect folks based on their ability to “protect family values” (is that the governments job?) or similar bulls**t.
Some of our conservative friends here make the point without seeming to realize it.
If the Rebublicans didn’t have a message/image problem the Tea Party movement would have no traction.
The fracture may not amount to anything in the long term, but its there for a reason. The bigger that fracture gets, the worse it hurts the GOP.
#36
If you think Kucinich is the only extreme left Democrat in Congress your definition of extreme left and mine are quite different. Peloisi, Waxman, Waters, Reid, Frank, Boxer are a few that come to mind.
I appreciated the “VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE” idea, but you’re just replacing one idiot with another…now you have NEW “incumbents”. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been in office, it’s what WE the public ASK them to do. WE need to stop telling politicians they must EVER increase military spending to show how “tough” they are. Our military budget should be cut by 70%. We have nuclear weapons, no “nation” will ever attack us. As for terrorist? 9/11 was 12 guys with $5.95 box cutters, NO billion dollar jet fighter will stop that. That’s an entirely DIFFERENT issue involving intelligence, special forces, investigations, etc. But we can’t do that. We can’t do ANYTHING common sense.
80% of the public is ok with ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell…even 60% of Republicans. But the policy stays. Most Americans are ok with legalizing marijuana, most have or do use it. But the laws based on magic and superstition stay. Until we ask our politicians to base laws on science and common sense and not magic and grand standing, we’ll KEEP getting the same thing, incumbents or not, because we’re going ASK THE NEW GUYS TO DO THE SAME THING THE PREVIOUS GUYS DID.
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
#41–Guyver–I assume your point goes to the fact that the tarp money was misallocated rather than a bad concept to begin with?
but if tarp was ok conceptually, it would have failed had banks been identified as failures only by their receipt of tarp money. If they then failed bringing the entire economy down with them, then the tarp spending would have been done in vain.
Silly to complain about a program that actually worked?
But the main question is avoided: who ((IN THE WORLD)) knows macro economics well enough to really know what would have happened one way or the other? On some things, and the tarp is one of them, we do have to just hope for the best. Anything else is mindless dogma posing as politics.
I guess its better to be ambiguous than mindless.
robin1943 said,
If you think Kucinich is the only extreme left Democrat in Congress your diffinition of extreme left and mind are quite different
Yes. Listen to Democracy Now for a week and you’ll find out what “extreme left” really is and just how far from it Peloisi, Waxman, Waters, Reid, Frank, and Boxer really are.
37, Bobbo,
http://tinyurl.com/n7th4j
http://tinyurl.com/2bw49qg
Conservatives or Moderates?
You don’t always get unanimous consensus even amongst your own party. Heck, look at the symbolic piece of toilet paper Obama had to sign to get Stupack on board with universal health care.
Balance of power is shifting now thanks to places like Massachusetts & New Jersey.
We can agree on this.
#42–Glass==I agree. One round of VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE would break a lot of “old relationships” and that would be good in itself. But 2-3-4 rounds of VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE “might” eventually get officials to be responsive to the public rather than the current funding of political campaigns by sub rosa quid pro quo “contributions.” Public financing of elections would help to but that takes the cooperation of the very criminals in charge, so all we can do is VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE until they come around.
Will it happen? Of course not, but I can do it for myself. Just acting locally.
“larn” = “learn”
Seems I need better typing skills 🙂
Glass said, “Our choice is middle of the road compromising Democrats (like Reid and Peloisi),”
Um, “a private citizen is a parcel and thus, interstate commerce” is middle of the road? ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No, that is utter INSANITY.
#47 That’s another issue. As long as it take $500 million dollars to run for President, $80 million to run for Senate, etc….our politicians will be corrupt. End of story. What do you EXPECT? Come on. How am I supposed to get elected without selling out to special interests when it takes THAT kind of money to have a serious campaign?
#49 Agreed, that is crazy, but Republicans and Democrats are BOTH behind that. Both parties want EVERYTHING to be “interstate commerce” so it’s under control. The Republicans don’t give a crap what the states (or people) want, they want to (and do) use Federal interstate commerce laws to fight marijuana even in states that have legalized it to some level, threatening doctor licenses (from the Federal level even though that’s a state issue). Pretending there’s a a difference between the Democrats and Republicans is like telling me there’s a difference between the Bloods and Crips. There is, in that if you’re for one side or the other, you hate the other side. I don’t see the difference between the Bloods and Crips but to THEM it’s deadly difference worth killing over. That’s how I see the Republicans and Democrats. We’ve elected both many times in my life, but all these issues remain. And people like you pretend that if we ONLY elected YOUR party ONE MORE TIME, immigration would be fixed, the budget under control, etc. Nope. Not gonna happen.
Glass Half Full said,
“#49 Agreed, that is crazy, but Republicans and Democrats are BOTH behind that.”
Right, SO crazy is middle of the road? Hardly. It is what it is. Batshit crazy. And, those who are that nuts shouldn’t be reelected. Those who support such people call into question their own sanity…
The problem with “VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE” is that people tend to think “well, my politician is ok. it is all the others that are bad.” and so the incumbents have a much better chance of getting reelected.
When the public wants what the public can’t pay for the public gets it in the butt. When the people running the country are for sale the public gets it in the butt. When the people running the nation are incompetent as well as for sell the result is national disaster. When a large part of the voters think its getting a free ride they will vote to do things that end up shafting everybody because the money just isn’t there. When the public wants things that are mutually exclusive nobody is going to be happy.
You want full employment and real high taxes? It isn’t going to happen.
You want the government to pay for free health care, SS, medicare, medicaid, good schools, good roads, a strong military, to be a super power, full employment, etc.?
A lot of that isn’t happening unless you seriously ration and um, you may need to give out poison pills to seniors or just tell them to take a few aspirin for the pain if they have major health issues. It’s like several progressives have said; They are old and they don’t have long to live so why waste money on them?
They’ve still got full medical coverage so what right have they got to complain? The government will cover the cost of the suicide pills and aspirin. (My views as expressed are based on cases in Washington state, and England.)
I think that about sums up the problem. Anybody got a solution?
The nation is racing to catch up with the EU and California and both are economic disaster areas that apt to get much worse.
Anon–yep, only bipartisan activity there is.
#58 LOL! Well said.
Go Ron Paul, go!!!
Plain should have had a hunting rifle and maybe a NRA badge.
The Reps don’t seem to have a problem with immigrants.
The Feds aren’t controlling the border and the Reps have a major issue with an uncontrolled boarder with the southern boarder being taken over by the drug lords and crime.
I’d personally like to make working people citizens and round up and drop the criminals into the sea off the Mexican coast. Okay, put them on a scow the first time and just drop them at sea the next time they show up.
Can I suggest that this nation look at OTHER democracies.
ONLY in the USA do we have 2 parties. 2 SIDES.. 2 opinions to gauge.
Other nations have MANY groups. EACH with varying degrees of opinion(not 2).
Yes there are 2 sides to a coin. but there are NOT 2 solutions to a problem. if there WERE 2 solutions it would be so EASY to fix. we have MORE discussion with UPCOMING elections and 20 people Vying to be president, then ANY other time.
In this nation, with 2 sides, HOW to you decide WHICH has the best/closest opinion TO YOUR OWN?
WE need more GROUPS, MORE OPINIONS, MORE DISCUSSION, MORE SOLUTIONS..not 2.
As opposed to the intolerant, gun-grabbing, pro illegal immigrant, mainly east and west coast left which sees any form of co-operation as treachery, even blasphemy. This is the same group that wants to disarm the public and gave a standing ovation to a foreign head of state that bashed us in our own capital and continues to do so to this day. I got news for you, people are fed up with the Dems right now.
“those on the extreme right and left who control both parties”
Uh, the former may be right – we’re seeing that power struggle play out right now; but the latter is certainly wrong as neither the left nor the extreme left control the Democrats. And, by the way, just to be clear, extreme left would refer to violent communist revolutionaries that simply don’t control a thing in this country, let alone a major political party. As far as the mainstream left goes, it would be nice if they did control the Dems; this country would be in a better place and poised for more positive change than it is. Instead the last two Dem presidents have been centrists and Carter was liberal socially and conservative fiscally.
Apparently, you’ve fallen prey to the notion Fox has been pressing forever that Democrats=liberal. They are the only mainstream party to have liberals but they are few and far between. They have mostly centrists and conservatives who use to be considered Republicans but have largely been pushed out of that party.
You have a flawed understanding of the history of American politics.
More anti-Bush BS. Take a minute and look that all the Democratic primary contenders from last Tuesday are all WHITE OLD GUYS. And all the GOP candidates are MINORITIES. I thought the GOP was the party of old white guys? Stop the bashing, will you?
>Competent vs ideology. Practical vs ideology. What works at the lowest cost vs ideology. And so on.
That would be passing a bill they knew wouldn’t work, just so it would lead to their ideological solution down the road(health care).
How Screwed up is the Republican party? Not as bad as the S.C. Democrat Party.