The media and most of the Democratic Party have never acknowledged that the modern GOP is bent on overturning the model of American governance created by the Founders and replacing it with a white, Christian autocracy. They see Trump as their best way of getting there.
Trump’s longest serving chief of staff called him a fascist and 77M+ Americans did not care. The media and the Democrats didn’t have to tell them about January 6th. These things are self evident.
While I am sure millions allowed themselves to be spun by FBI false flag narratives and whatever other right wing propaganda, tens of millions of sane, rational Americans chose this.
The least efficient piece of the federal government is the House…
My Republican congressman ran on a platform of curbing executive power. He is still saying it is important to him, but doing basically nothing about it.
So Congressional Republicans are saying that they will negotiate a compromise with Democrats to include X dollars of tax cuts and Y dollars of spending on SNAP and Medicaid, and then it’s okay if Trump doesn’t spend any money on SNAP or Medicaid. I’m not too impressed by the Democratic leadership, but I don’t think even they would agree to a deal that Trump can ignore.
Here I think we have to say that the GOP made its bed before Trump arrived, it's just that some of them didn't believe anyone would actually lie down in it. The GOP was facing a crisis in the late 1980s-early 1990s: the long-term electoral math didn't look that great for them. They would need to do one of two things: embrace some form of cultural liberalism and fiscal conservatism that appealed strongly to the majority-white suburbs and figure that rural voters would come along for the ride regardless or embrace much sharper cultural conservatism that would build a multiracial coalition. They edged in the direction of the second only to find that their white base simply wouldn't accept a lot of what came with that approach, so they decided to go a third way through Gingrich and his people: gerrymander on an unprecedented scale to lock in not just House seats but also state legislatures while obstructing everything the Democrats wanted to do at the state level and the federal level. Karl Rove backed by Koch money basically acted as the Bismarck of that strategy, and the Democrats largely slept through it all. Rove's moves created districts that made the Tea Party not just possible but inevitable--safe districts meant that primaries suddenly became a battleground between old-guard Republicans and far-right extremists. When Obama got elected, Obama paid even less attention to the national map but he also frightened the Tea Party base; the 2007-08 recession intensified their anger.
What all this added up to was a GOP that had crossed a Rubicon--they had to start imagining some form of seizing the federal state and locking it down, and they had to imagine a political movement that would be as energized as the Democrats and as likely to turn out in the maximum numbers. They thought themselves into a space where losing meant their own destruction, they believed themselves to be up against an existential threat, and because they did, they made that belief come true, in some sense. That's the space that Trump nestled into, and that's where we're at. The GOP in Congress has gone silent because they know there's no way back for them. They hold power forever or else.
I think that the Republican party went off the rails with Reagan, when the party embraced tax cuts for the rich that were suppose to trickle down, but didn’t. That meant that the party had to either give up on the idea of tax cuts for the top 1% or try to figure out how to be viable while only representing the interests of 1% of the population. The MAGA crowd mostly thinks (fairly accurately) that they have been repeatedly conned by Republican politicians, but haven’t figured out that Trump is also a con man.
Well remember that the last candidate who rejected that idea was voted out — George HW Bush for raising taxes. His son didn’t make the same mistake — in fact he went further by eliminating the estate tax and lowering capital gains taxes.
The MAGA crowd has a huge tea party libertarian base. They believe in ideas like abolishing income taxes entirely, a flat tax rate for everyone, etc. Others don’t care about the tax cuts because they believe Democrats are killing babies with abortion so they vote red every time.
On April 29, 2009, Obama commented on the Tea Party protests during a townhall meeting in Arnold, Missouri: "Let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're going to stabilize Social Security. Claire McCaskill and I are working diligently to do basically a thorough audit of federal spending. But let's not play games and pretend that the reason is because of the recovery act, because that's just a fraction of the overall problem that we've got. We are going to have to tighten our belts, but we're going to have to do it in an intelligent way. And we've got to make sure that the people who are helped are working American families, and we're not suddenly saying that the way to do this is to eliminate programs that help ordinary people and give more tax cuts to the wealthy. We tried that formula for eight years. It did not work. And I don't intend to go back to it."
On April 15, 2010, Obama noted the passage of 25 different tax cuts over the past year, including tax cuts for 95% of working Americans. He then remarked, "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you. That's what you'd think.
On September 20, 2010, at a townhall discussion sponsored by CNBC, Obama said healthy skepticism about government and spending was good, but it was not enough to just say,
"Get control of spending", and he challenged the Tea Party movement to get specific about how they would cut government debt and spending: "And so the challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically what would you do. It's not enough just to say, get control of spending.”
“I think it's important for you to say, I'm willing to cut veterans' benefits, or I'm willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, or I'm willing to see these taxes go up. What you can't do—which is what I've been hearing a lot from the other side—is say we're going to control government spending, we're going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts, and that magically somehow things are going to work.”
This is not a scared man. Stop making up fantasies.
After the 2010 midterms, Obama said the Democratic Party took “a shellacking at the polls.” Do you really think the president of the United States could go years without commenting on the biggest issues of the day i.e. Tea Party, 2010 electoral losses, etc.
They got enormous power. With Congress razor thin, the GOP just can't ram thru legislation. In the House, it takes convincing only a few members to kill legislation. Then they have the filibuster, tying the Senate into knots and forcing compromise. We're not hearing the Dems eliminating the filibuster anymore. Wonder why : )
I have read that the Democrats are keeping somewhat quiet to let the man explode his administration. I wonder if the Republicans are following the same plan. Like what some military opine; to not interrupt your adversary when he is making a mistake.
It be will very difficult this time around for republicans* to blame democrats* for a government shutdown while Mump is aggressively and disrespectfully purging federal workers en mass anyway. A temporary government shutdown could be used as a tool to stop a permanent gov shutdown.
*I’m intentionally not using capital letters with party names right now.*
Dan, all of this can only work for them if they don't face free and fair elections again. Every step of the way, you've resisted acknowledging what was going on until it became an absolutely unavoidable fact. A few days ago you wrote that for the rest of your life democracy would be in peril. It's time, Dan. Let's admit that this is the only way it could work out for them, so that we can work to prevent it from happening.
The media and most of the Democratic Party have never acknowledged that the modern GOP is bent on overturning the model of American governance created by the Founders and replacing it with a white, Christian autocracy. They see Trump as their best way of getting there.
Trump’s longest serving chief of staff called him a fascist and 77M+ Americans did not care. The media and the Democrats didn’t have to tell them about January 6th. These things are self evident.
While I am sure millions allowed themselves to be spun by FBI false flag narratives and whatever other right wing propaganda, tens of millions of sane, rational Americans chose this.
The least efficient piece of the federal government is the House…
My Republican congressman ran on a platform of curbing executive power. He is still saying it is important to him, but doing basically nothing about it.
So Congressional Republicans are saying that they will negotiate a compromise with Democrats to include X dollars of tax cuts and Y dollars of spending on SNAP and Medicaid, and then it’s okay if Trump doesn’t spend any money on SNAP or Medicaid. I’m not too impressed by the Democratic leadership, but I don’t think even they would agree to a deal that Trump can ignore.
Here I think we have to say that the GOP made its bed before Trump arrived, it's just that some of them didn't believe anyone would actually lie down in it. The GOP was facing a crisis in the late 1980s-early 1990s: the long-term electoral math didn't look that great for them. They would need to do one of two things: embrace some form of cultural liberalism and fiscal conservatism that appealed strongly to the majority-white suburbs and figure that rural voters would come along for the ride regardless or embrace much sharper cultural conservatism that would build a multiracial coalition. They edged in the direction of the second only to find that their white base simply wouldn't accept a lot of what came with that approach, so they decided to go a third way through Gingrich and his people: gerrymander on an unprecedented scale to lock in not just House seats but also state legislatures while obstructing everything the Democrats wanted to do at the state level and the federal level. Karl Rove backed by Koch money basically acted as the Bismarck of that strategy, and the Democrats largely slept through it all. Rove's moves created districts that made the Tea Party not just possible but inevitable--safe districts meant that primaries suddenly became a battleground between old-guard Republicans and far-right extremists. When Obama got elected, Obama paid even less attention to the national map but he also frightened the Tea Party base; the 2007-08 recession intensified their anger.
What all this added up to was a GOP that had crossed a Rubicon--they had to start imagining some form of seizing the federal state and locking it down, and they had to imagine a political movement that would be as energized as the Democrats and as likely to turn out in the maximum numbers. They thought themselves into a space where losing meant their own destruction, they believed themselves to be up against an existential threat, and because they did, they made that belief come true, in some sense. That's the space that Trump nestled into, and that's where we're at. The GOP in Congress has gone silent because they know there's no way back for them. They hold power forever or else.
I think that the Republican party went off the rails with Reagan, when the party embraced tax cuts for the rich that were suppose to trickle down, but didn’t. That meant that the party had to either give up on the idea of tax cuts for the top 1% or try to figure out how to be viable while only representing the interests of 1% of the population. The MAGA crowd mostly thinks (fairly accurately) that they have been repeatedly conned by Republican politicians, but haven’t figured out that Trump is also a con man.
Well remember that the last candidate who rejected that idea was voted out — George HW Bush for raising taxes. His son didn’t make the same mistake — in fact he went further by eliminating the estate tax and lowering capital gains taxes.
The MAGA crowd has a huge tea party libertarian base. They believe in ideas like abolishing income taxes entirely, a flat tax rate for everyone, etc. Others don’t care about the tax cuts because they believe Democrats are killing babies with abortion so they vote red every time.
On April 29, 2009, Obama commented on the Tea Party protests during a townhall meeting in Arnold, Missouri: "Let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're going to stabilize Social Security. Claire McCaskill and I are working diligently to do basically a thorough audit of federal spending. But let's not play games and pretend that the reason is because of the recovery act, because that's just a fraction of the overall problem that we've got. We are going to have to tighten our belts, but we're going to have to do it in an intelligent way. And we've got to make sure that the people who are helped are working American families, and we're not suddenly saying that the way to do this is to eliminate programs that help ordinary people and give more tax cuts to the wealthy. We tried that formula for eight years. It did not work. And I don't intend to go back to it."
On April 15, 2010, Obama noted the passage of 25 different tax cuts over the past year, including tax cuts for 95% of working Americans. He then remarked, "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you. That's what you'd think.
On September 20, 2010, at a townhall discussion sponsored by CNBC, Obama said healthy skepticism about government and spending was good, but it was not enough to just say,
"Get control of spending", and he challenged the Tea Party movement to get specific about how they would cut government debt and spending: "And so the challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically what would you do. It's not enough just to say, get control of spending.”
“I think it's important for you to say, I'm willing to cut veterans' benefits, or I'm willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, or I'm willing to see these taxes go up. What you can't do—which is what I've been hearing a lot from the other side—is say we're going to control government spending, we're going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts, and that magically somehow things are going to work.”
This is not a scared man. Stop making up fantasies.
After the 2010 midterms, Obama said the Democratic Party took “a shellacking at the polls.” Do you really think the president of the United States could go years without commenting on the biggest issues of the day i.e. Tea Party, 2010 electoral losses, etc.
They have made their bed but we have to lie in it.
Both parties are shockingly predictable. Has this always been the case?
Democrats have almost no power.
They got enormous power. With Congress razor thin, the GOP just can't ram thru legislation. In the House, it takes convincing only a few members to kill legislation. Then they have the filibuster, tying the Senate into knots and forcing compromise. We're not hearing the Dems eliminating the filibuster anymore. Wonder why : )
I have read that the Democrats are keeping somewhat quiet to let the man explode his administration. I wonder if the Republicans are following the same plan. Like what some military opine; to not interrupt your adversary when he is making a mistake.
I don’t see the Democrats keeping quiet. I think they are just not getting much attention in the media.
Don't know about that. Except for one channel, the media is ripping the GOP nonstop.
What leverage or Kompromat dies Trump have over GOP senators and house members, please?
Or, is just their just their power lust that makes them kiss his 💋A55💋?
*does
If at least they all just agreed not to refer to themselves as ‘leaders’ any more, even that little change would make me gain 1% more respect for them
It be will very difficult this time around for republicans* to blame democrats* for a government shutdown while Mump is aggressively and disrespectfully purging federal workers en mass anyway. A temporary government shutdown could be used as a tool to stop a permanent gov shutdown.
*I’m intentionally not using capital letters with party names right now.*
Dan, all of this can only work for them if they don't face free and fair elections again. Every step of the way, you've resisted acknowledging what was going on until it became an absolutely unavoidable fact. A few days ago you wrote that for the rest of your life democracy would be in peril. It's time, Dan. Let's admit that this is the only way it could work out for them, so that we can work to prevent it from happening.