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Will the Republican Party survive the Tea Party?
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fear,
the GOP wants polluted water.
Fear,
the GOP wants polluted air.
Fear,
the GOP wants poisonous food.
Fear,
the GOP wants ally-way abortions.
Fear,
the GOP wants elementary school kids to starve during the school day.
Fear,
the GOP wants oil to rule into eternity!
Fear,
the GOP wants the oceans to die.

and last but not least,,,,

Fear,
the GOP wants the earth to fry under global warming, and the sooner the better!

There, it's all laid out for the dems, and I'm sure they will use all of them, and many more that I have forgotten.


Last edited by nw30 on Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
By Tim Dickinson

October 9, 2013 11:45 AM ET

The day before Congress broke for its August recess, on an afternoon when most of official Washington was tying up loose ends and racing to get out of town, Sen. Ted Cruz was setting the stage for the chaos that has consumed the nation's capital in recent weeks.

The tall Tea Party-backed Texan – the state's junior senator, with less than a year in office – worked his mischief in a windowless Capitol basement, where dozens of the most radical members of the House had gathered for a meeting of the Republican Study Committee. Once a marginal group known for elevating anti-government dogma above party loyalty, the RSC now counts among its members 174 of the 232 House Republicans.

"Father, we thank you," says Rep. Michele Bachmann, opening the meeting. "You are the most important presence in this room." In a pinstriped suit and yellow tie, Cruz sits at the center of a long conference table, flanked by RSC chair Steve Scalise and by the group's most powerful member, former chair Jim Jordan of Ohio – who has routinely marshaled House rebels into battle against leadership. Jordan flashes the visiting senator a conspiratorial smile.

Soft-spoken but passionate, Cruz derides the work of House leadership, who this same week have scheduled a 40th, futile bill to roll back Obamacare. Instead of "symbolic statements" that "won't become law," Cruz says, the time has come to force a real fight – one that Republicans can "actually win." It's imperative to act now, Cruz warns, before the full benefits of Obamacare kick in and Americans get "hooked on the sugar, hooked on the subsidies." His plan: Yoke the defunding of Obamacare to the must-pass budget bill the House will take up in September. The endgame? To force a government shutdown so painful and protracted that Barack Obama would have no choice but to surrender the crown jewel of his presidency. "As scary as a shutdown fight is," Cruz insists, "if we don't stand and defund Obamacare now, we never will."

With those words, Cruz fired the first shot in a civil war that has cleaved Republicans in both chambers of Congress – a struggle that threatens the legitimacy of the Grand Old Party and the stability of the global economy. The fight has little to do with policy, or even ideology. It pits the party's conservative establishment against an extremist insurgency in a battle over strategy, tactics and, ultimately, control of the party. Each side surveys the other with distrust, even contempt. The establishment believes the insurgents' tactics are suicidal; the insurgents believe the establishment lacks the courage of its alleged convictions – while its own members are so convinced of their righteousness that they compare themselves to civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks. The establishment is backed by powerful business concerns with a vested interest in a functioning government. The insurgents are championed by wealthy ideologues who simply seek to tear down government. Both sides are steeled by millions in unregulated, untraceable "dark money."

Having backed the GOP into a shutdown fight that congressional leaders never wanted, the insurgents are winning, and establishment leaders are running scared. America is now careening toward a catastrophic voluntary default on our debt because no one in the Republican Party with the authority to put on the brakes has the guts to apply them, for fear of being toppled from power.

"I've never seen anything like it, and neither has anybody else around here," says the House's eldest statesman, 87-year-old John Dingell, who has represented Michigan since 1955. "It's a grave misfortune for the country."

When Republicans took control of the House in 2011 – fueled by the passion of the Tea Party and the virtually unlimited funding of donors like the Koch brothers – casual observers of American politics saw a House GOP united in the politics of the extreme right. But inside the Capitol, the story was more complicated. The leadership that the Tea Party had vaulted to power – Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor – were members of the GOP's tainted old guard. Although divided by a generation and by an often fierce political rivalry, both Boehner and Cantor abetted the budget-busting "compassionate conservatism" of Karl Rove. Cantor rubber-stamped the "Bridge to Nowhere"; Boehner was a frequent flier on corporate jets. They teamed up to steer the passage of TARP in the face of fierce opposition from grassroots conservatives – a moment that Tea Party leaders cite as the birth of their insurgency.

Cantor, along with GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy, had actively recruited most of the 85 incoming freshmen. "They figured they could ride the Tea Party to a majority, and co-opt all of those people," says Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative think tank AEI. But from the start, leadership misjudged the new arrivals. Many had come to Washington to fight, not fall in line. "You show up in the fall," says Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a self-described Young Turk from Kansas, "and they say, 'Here's what we're going to do, and everybody follow.' And we said, 'We've got a bunch of folks who don't very much like the direction you've been wantin' to go.'"

As leadership struggled to corral the class of 2010, a fellow congressman from Boehner's home state of Ohio seized the advantage. Jordan, the RSC chair, recruited 78 freshmen into his fold. The RSC suddenly comprised a majority of the majority party, and Jordan found himself in a position of tremendous power and leverage, concepts that the wiry but broad-shouldered third-term congressman understood in his bones – he won two NCAA championships wrestling in the 134-pound class.

Boehner never knew what hit him. The speaker would soon suffer two stinging defeats at the hands of Jordan and the RSC. The first came during the 2011 debt-ceiling battle, when Boehner shut out his conference to negotiate with President Obama a $4 trillion "grand bargain" that combined modest tax increases with draconian spending cuts. By any objective standard of Washington deal making, Boehner had extracted extraordinary concessions from a sitting Democratic president.

Believing the old rules of Washington still applied, Boehner was confident that where he led, House Republicans would follow. But Jordan's RSC simply wouldn't abide any deal that raised taxes, and more than 170 members were united against the speaker. If Boehner pressed ahead, the Grand Bargain could only pass with a majority of Democratic votes – a scenario that Cantor feared would spark a mutiny. So he spiked Boehner's deal. "We were preventing the speaker from making a bad mistake for himself and the rest of the leadership team," a former leadership aide tells Rolling Stone.

Jordan's intransigence forced Republican leaders and the president to settle on a smaller, cuts-only package that cost America its AAA credit rating and created the blunt across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. Jordan and more than 60 House radicals opposed even that final deal, but he still claimed victory: "Conservatives stood firm," he gloated. "We [forced] Washington to begin addressing its spending ­driven debt crisis."

Jordan beat Boehner again a year later during the fight over the expiring Bush tax cuts. In December 2012, the speaker introduced a compromise measure to preserve the Bush rates for incomes of less than $1 million. "We're going to have the votes to pass," Cantor declared. Grover Norquist – the keeper of the Republican Party's anti-tax pledge – gave his blessing. But Jordan and his loyalists locked arms against it. "We're the party that says you shouldn't raise taxes," Jordan responded. After Boehner couldn't find the votes, he tearfully recited the serenity prayer before his conference, asking God's strength to accept "the things I cannot change."

With Boehner bowed, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crafted a compromise that sailed through the Senate on a vote of 89 to 8 – an astonishing display of bipartisanship in the chamber of Congress that people used to think of as the broken one. In a public rebuke of his House's right flank, Boehner brought the bill to the floor and joined a minority of Republicans and Nancy Pelosi's majority bloc of Democrats in voting for it. The message was clear: The Capitol was uniting against the destructive House partisans. Jordan fumed at the passage of what he called a "classic Washington deal."

Seeking to restore discipline to his House, Boehner tried to play the tough guy. He kicked four Tea Party troublemakers – including Huelskamp – off their favored committees. "They were fired because they were assholes," says a source close to leadership. But once again, Boehner misread his opponents. Far from backing down, the backbenchers mounted a January coup that came close to toppling Boehner. Huelskamp cast his ballot for Jordan.

Chastened, the speaker was beginning to understand that he needed to stop feuding with his fellow Buckeye. Jordan – a politician with almost zero national profile – has emerged as the commander the House GOP's opposition bloc, says Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning 33-year-old Republican from Michigan. "Jim Jordan is a strong leader," Amash says. "Leadership understands that if his concerns are not addressed, there could be a large group – 40 to 50 – that doesn't stick with leadership on big votes."



read the rest here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-republican-suicide-machine-20131009

Keep it up. Between tin hats and bigotry you are going to give Hillary a bigger margin than you gave Obama!
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2013 10:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Guess I am out of touch. I have never heard a liberal say that conservatives want kids to die or poisonous food.
Have you ever heard a conservative accuse liberals of the things on my list,here or anywhere else?
I am just kidding, I chose those items because Talk Radio has those things as basic themes.
Many folks repeat them.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2013 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NW--you are just so silly:

Quote:
Fear,
the GOP wants polluted water.
Fear,
the GOP wants polluted air.
Fear,
the GOP wants poisonous food.
Fear,
the GOP wants ally-way abortions.
Fear,
the GOP wants elementary school kids to starve during the school day.
Fear,
the GOP wants oil to rule into eternity!
Fear,
the GOP wants the oceans to die.

and last but not least,,,,

Fear,
the GOP wants the earth to fry under global warming, and the sooner the better!

There, it's all laid out for the dems, and I'm sure they will use all of them


In these cases, it is possible to find the votes and the policy planks in the party platform. But most of all, if you look at what happened and caused the Enron meltdown and the financial meltdown, you will find Senator Phil Gramm, implementing orthodox Republican ideology--and wrecking the world economy. You don't get another chance to be so stupid. Some people were paying attention.
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2013 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

[quote="mac"]

In these cases, it is possible to find the votes and the policy planks in the party platform. [quote]

ROFLMAO,,,,,,,,,,,,, I knew you'd buy at least part of it. Classic!!!
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 12:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, so you just post things that aren't true--and the daily feed from the Drudge Report?

Not funny, just pathetic. You take the responsibilities of citizenship so seriously.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Rasmussen Poll is very conservative and usually gives the lowest number for Obama. It has him at 53% approval. Folks think he is showing strong leadership in resisting extortion.
The GOP is making him a hero.
Again.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac, thanks for the great Rolling Stone article. Great hard hitting journalism that tells it like it is. Seems to me the editors at Rolling Stone set the bar quite high, and in my view, it shows in the product.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One of the Teas leaders has let us know that John McCain is a supporter of AlQueda.
Do those who vote in the Teas actually listen to their leaders speeches?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

After finding out through polls that most people think they are creeps for shutting down the Federal government and threatening default over the ACA, the official Tea talking points have returned to the overall threat to the economy posed by the debt. Of course, in a fact based world it is a much harder sell. Their intellectual source for this viewpoint is a 2010 paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, "Growth in a Time of Debt", which claims that when public debt levels get too high (abouit 90% of GDP), economies shrink. First problem--a number of coding errors in their calculations. When corrected, they show growth, not shrinkage of the economy. Second problem--last year the US, which remains the strongest currency in the world, paid 6.2% of government spending on interest. Not enough to be a first order factor--at least in the reality based world. The average outlay for interest since 1973--10.6%. Third problem--the deficit is shrinking rapidly--because of economic growth, not because of the small scale window dressing of the Tea-thugs like the sequester.

The truth is, the 48 truly radical Tea-baggers in the House, and the other 50 or so that they have bullied into silence, have been seeking a confrontation with Obama since they were elected. They don't use the "N" word anymore--they use code words like "socialist", "liar", "oligarch" and "can't lead." Now maybe they have convinced themselves that using such ad hominem attacks, for policies that are indistinguishable in many aspects from those of Bush, have no racial animus. They haven't convinced me. Not for a fat minute.
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