Last November, after the elections, the House Republicans chose their committee chairmen for the 113th Congress. All nineteen of them were white men. This followed stunning events in the last Congress, like holding a hearing on the availability of contraceptives without inviting any female witnesses. As far as I know, there are no professed Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, or atheists in the Republican House caucus, and Eric Cantor is the only Jew. There are no openly gay House Republicans. There is a stunning lack of diversity in background and belief systems, and the leadership is almost entirely male. Despite this, the House Republicans have broken out in factions. One reason that they have voted to repeal ObamaCare 37 times is that it helps keeps these factions from getting out of control. Whenever the natives get restless, Eric Cantor has another repeal vote to get everyone back on the same page for five minutes. These votes are the equivalent of a zookeeper’s tranquilizer gun.
The House keeps somewhat busy voting for things that will never in a million Sundays become law. Cantor has been moving bills that are intended to “frame” the party as policy-minded and family-friendly, but it’s nothing but a charade meant to feed some lower reptilian part of the electorate’s brain. You’re reading this; you must be a political junkie. Do you know what is in any of Cantor’s bills?
Of course not. Ninety-percent of what the House is doing is nothing more than a colossal waste of time. Even Fox News doesn’t cover it. No one but Cantor even cares about it. Speaker Boehner has totally checked out. Do you know how he plans to act if the Senate passes immigration reform? Does he?
It’s almost as if the House Republicans have had their central nervous system removed. There is no brain activity. Even the think tanks have stopped trying to be even remotely serious. The Heritage Foundation made Jim DeMint their director and promptly put a guy in charge of their immigration reform analysis who posted at racist websites and did his college thesis on how stupid Latinos are. Plus, their data was laughed out of town by Republicans. It’s gotten to the point that Democratic wonks are lamenting that they no longer have anyone honest to debate.
What the GOP is doing makes no sense. They behave as if they can get 100% of what their most radical and deluded members want even though they only technically control one half of Congress and there is a relatively popular and freshly-reelected Democrat in the White House. It doesn’t matter how many times the Speaker points those facts out, he has no ability to get those facts to sink in. They act like President Obama is more intransigent than President Clinton, but the Gingrich-led Congress actively worked to find areas where they could work with Clinton. When Boehner tried to do that, he almost lost his speakership. And Gingrich had a lot more leverage because Bob Dole and Trent Lott were in control of the Senate.
I believe the root problem here is that Republicans told lies for so long that they finally produced a generation of officeholders who actually confuse lies with the truth. They got high on their own supply. No wonder Bob Dole thinks they need to go to a collective rehab.
I cannot stand Avik Roy. I first saw him on Bill Maher. Just like Lanny Davis, scum of the first degree emanates from his character. Is it because I know what he’s saying is full of shit that this trait is beyond easy to detect? Roy has been a dishonest hack since he came to the scene, just like the rest of them. Why do people treat him like he was once a “serious” policy wonk?
The ONLY ones who aren’t dishonest are Andrew Sullivan and David Frum. Though Frum just called it quits. I can’t stand these two either, but I at least can say they’re putting forth honest points. I never, ever, got that from Roy.
Honesty is not a valuable commodity in today’s GOP.
Gold, on the other hand…
What do you mean Frum called it quits? He decided to go back to being a hack for money, or he just quit another job?
I believe his parents died.
Father and father-in-law both just died. Frum is shutting down his Daily Beast blog, at least for the summer.
His final post is interesting: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/03/all-good-things.html
Yes, I read those five points and they made sense. In most of them you could just switch “Conservative” with “Progressive” and they would still make sense. Of course his term,”Conservative reformer”, is an oxymoron.
I loved that bit where he says conservatism was meant to rise the middle class up instead of putting a ceiling on it. Nobody seriously has thought that in how many decades?
I remember a few years ago looking at old Nixon photos and noticing how sloppy he dressed. Then his whole underdog shtick made sense: he really was selling himself as the used car salesman in us all!
At least three decades. Maybe four or five.
They act like President Obama is more intransigent than President Clinton, but the Gingrich-led Congress actively worked to find areas where they could work with Clinton.
Funny thing is, Obama has tried and tried to get Yurtle the Turtle and The Tan Man to work with him. And it’s not like Clinton enacted popular policies. “Welfare reform”? NAFTA? Also, why can’t The Tan Man keep the rest of the clowns in line? Doesn’t he appoint the head of the RCCC?
I agree that there were big problems with a lot of the following bills, but they all passed through a Republican-led House.
I don’t want Obama working to deregulate Wall Street or pass the Iran Liberation Act or some new Anti-Gay measure or enhanced police powers. But he also got lobbying reform and health care portability, and mental health parity. There were at least a few areas where the Republicans were willing to help the president do something that needed to be done. This crop cannot do things like that.
Pretty sure they believe Obama is still an illegitimate president. Through non-existent voting fraud committed by non-existent ACORN aided by a media who has a non-existent love of the left, and powered by a non-existent birth certificate… that’s the only reason Obama got into the office! Donchaknow.
That is not why they believe he is an illegitimate President. The voting fraud witch hunt is transparent projection of their intentions. Most Republicans don’t actually know what ACORN is accused of doing, but react viscerally to the word. Republicans cannot conceive of the fact that a large number, even if not a majority, of white voters voted for a black man for President. It simply does not compute in the racist brain. It is warp-level cognitive dissonance. The few bright Republicans cynically exploit this; the remainder are caught in their cognitive dissonance flailing out rationalizations.
The skilled politicians in the GOP caucus can count, and they know that the numbers are not with them. So they are trying any dishonest scheme to get the numbers with them. For once, it isn’t working.
But the GOP Republicans’ greatest asset is that stopping government in its tracks is seen as a conservative accomplishment. They are not disappointing their base as much as progressives or Democrats believe. For a lot of folks, stopping government is the point and hang the consequences.
but a majority of White voters DID NOT vote for Barack Obama..
in 2008 or 2012.
What they can’t get past is that
both times a MAJORITY of White voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama…
and it didn’t make a fucking difference.
He stomped ELECTORALLY both times.
That is their shock.
What he said was:
If white voters had voted 90+% for the white candidate as black voters did for the black candidate, both McCain and Romney would have won landslides. A large number of white voters, 30 to 40%, is still needed to win nationally, although I concede that will not be true for long.
“What the GOP is doing makes no sense.” — no, what the GOP is doing makes perfect sense. They’ve figured out a way, even as a minority opposition party, to control the government and they’re doing it quite effectively. They’re succeeding in pushing forward their agenda. Granted it’s an agenda of pure nihilism but it’s an agenda just the same. And every day they succeed is one day closer to the end of the Obama administration.
The GOoP has all but stated that this is their goal. And as TarheelD eloquently observes, stopping government in its tracks is seen as a conservative accomplishment which enthuses their base. And as marie2 argues, Repubs and their plutocrat masters aren’t standing still, they are ruining a large number of states while developing the farm team and suppressing Dem voting.
As a result of our sclerotic 18th century constitution, a braindead American political party and movement doesn’t need a long term goal, daily paralysis works fine. Conservatives can paralyze effective gub’mint as a dominant party or as a minority party. Both methods work, especially when their weak and hapless (supposed) political opponents refuse even to describe what Repubs are actually doing. Witness the high comedy of wanting to vote on (corporate friendly) immigration reform (“Don’t make the scary Repubs mad! Who knows what they’ll do!”) before dealing with obstructing nominees who make the executive branch run.
Repubs must be dying of laughter that the Great Repub Gerrymander of 2010 isn’t even on the media radar screen, let alone existing as a Dem talking point. They argue Obama is illegitimate, when it’s Boner’s House of Imbeciles that is actually illegitimate.
Boner the Drunk may know the GOoP is broken, when hung over and sober. But he’s too much a mediocre failed coward to comment on it. But the rest of Team Repub likely thinks things are going great. And since most of them are immune from electoral defeat, why wouldn’t they?
The problem with such a strategy is it runs right into demographic trends that favor Democrats and actual implementation of the ACA, which (if successful) will forever change the way Americans view government. I don’t think this is a well thought out Republican strategy. It’s what’s left when a large fragment of the caucus believes any kind of compromise is capitulation. From that point forward, there’s no way for anyone to win.
Didn’t this happen before? In the 1850s?
Yes!
By far the best parallel to what the GOoP is pulling today. Expansion of slavery then, paralysis of gub’mint now.
Gub’mint-hatin’ “conservatives” will never give in now, just as their forbears, the Southern Slave Power, wouldn’t then….always on the wrong side of history, by definition.
Except the GOP now controls how many states? And they are doing serious damage in many of them.
In DC, they’re merely holding down the fort until the Koch cavalry arrives to ALECize the country. They may still be thwarted but that won’t be known before 2017.
“I believe the root problem here is that Republicans told lies for so long that they finally produced a generation of officeholders who actually confuse lies with the truth. They got high on their own supply.”
Quite right.
They are not pretending to be a party of crackpots.
They ARE a party of crackpots.
Crackpots possessed by demons.
Two related headlines:
“Obama urges national conversation on mental health” 10…9…8… until GOP crazies construe this as an attack on the GOP.
“#GoodbyGOP is Number 1 trend worldwide on Twitter”
I see Erick, son of Erick, has suffered another bout of “Foot in Mouth” disease.