Shutdowns, Government Defaults, Defunct Grand Bargains, Debt Ceilings, Citizens United, People like Cruz/Rubio getting elected, zero compromise. Now they send that letter to Iran.
What happened to the Republican Party? They werent always like this.
They've never been this crazy, unless you wanna dial it back to 1920-something.
You know it's bad when Republicans (who are still voting that way) are too embarrassed to identify as one when being polled and so they pollute the "Independent" stat.
Almost 27 myself, and my understanding is thus:
Gingrich is basically the father of this current flavor of strong arm/no compromise politics, and abusing procedure to try to get his way anyway he can. Gingrich is also as far back as I can go in personal experience without resorting to history books.
Judicially, starting with the Bush v Gore case, this is about as actively far right as I think the supreme court has been since before FDR.
And I think Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater both could be described like Rubio and Cruz in being crazy conservative republicans, and I'm sure other crazies were around that never made history books, so I'm guessing people like Cruz/Rubio showing up isn't that unique. Though you could say that Reagan made the whole party become Goldwater, and now Cruz/Rubio is going right of that, which would be new.
Yup, I'd say you're correct regarding the Newtster. It was really he that shaped the Republican Party into what it is today. He's the one who decided that the Republicans would never agree to compromise on anything, and get everything from Clinton while producing nothing in return. As bad as Reagan was, at least he was able to work with Democrats and pass things Republicans didn't like.
That sounds a bit too much like selective memory. There were, after all, liberal-leaning policies approved during the W. years, no? I do recall benji mentioning quite a few of them often. Were they forced through thanks to a democratic majority in both houses?
(also wtf happened to benji?)
Appears far more likely that whatever gave rise to the Tea Party is the gift that keeps on giving as far as the current intransigence is concerned.... aaaand a quick wiki check shows that, outside of some early outings in 2005 and 2007, the movement picked up steam in 2009.
Welp.
Seems more like a RuPaul thing that got co-opted tbh.
David Boren(D) former senator from Oklahoma and current Oklahoma University President senate exit statement May 14, 1994:
and this is still the case 20 years later but much worse. The 1990s seems to have been the turning point.
There's not enough time on the planet.
EDIT: Earlier post I made regarding W. Bush-era legislation and its disgusting progressive bipartisaness:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=154304570&postcount=840
The idea that Cruz/Rubio hew closer to the text of
The Conscience of a Conservative (which utterly fuses the American liberal tradition with conservatism and an active foreign policy...thus what most people consider American "conservatism" these days) than Reagan or its "author" is crazy. Goldwater infamously was an opponent of the religious "right" and considered them the death of the Republican Party. The book doesn't even discuss the social issues that would become emphasized in
Buchanan's "Culture War" speech. (Other than supporting a Constitutional Amendment that would allow school prayer.) If the GOP published it as the platform now you'd have people claiming they were literal anarchists wanting to eliminate the state. People like Cruz and Rubio and W. Bush may love Goldwater's rhetoric, but they'd never dare support or enact his ideas. A Paul or Amash is about it.
So is the idea that Joe McCarthy was a "crazy conservative" because he was at the popular forefront of one of the hundreds of Red Scares. (He also had nothing to do with HUAC.) McCarthy was considered a "moderate" in his era, to the right of LaFollette but well to the left of Taft. Anti-Communism was a bipartisan phenomena and there's evidence that McCarthy's claim was concocted to help his re-election after he had been battered politically for opposing the torture of German soldiers for confessions.
"No compromise" is hardly something "new" to politics. Republicans from 1930-1990 HAD to compromise because they were in the minority, the only way to achieve anything in their agenda was to "get on board" and alter legislation or to pick off enough Democrats to pass their agenda. (Like the Reagan Tax Cuts or Reagan Amnesty for example.) "Grand Bargains" died all the time. Back before he went to prison,
the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee was chased down the street by old people.
Government shutdowns aren't new either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govern...d_States#List_of_U.S._government_funding_gaps
Nor are defaults, the United States has defaulted at least twice. (Perhaps coincidentally the last time was right before that Budget Act of 1974.)
If the Supreme Court upholding freedom of the press is some kind of crazy right-wing shit, than I want more hits of that good stuff. (And if the Court in general since 2000 has been "actively far right" then I have no idea what terms even mean anymore.)
The Johnson Treatment existed years before Newt Gingrich was anybody important.
Anecdotally, I do remember that Republican hopes were craaaazy-high after that 1994 election. Both on TV and among Republican family/friends, I remember them being convinced that Clinton was doomed to Jimmy Carter's fate of one flukey term, that they'd keep the House, that the Senate would be theirs, etc etc. They were looking forward to a wide, appealing field of candidates for '96 - surely someone would arise from that crowd and win, right? - and then that second term happened.
Remember, Clinton had been elected in the Perot Election, and prior to him, no Democrat had been re-elected since Truman. (LBJ became President less than a year before the 1964 election, I don't really think it counts.)
And Perot was running again. The conventional political wisdom would hold both Clinton's election and a GOP Congress as outliers. Because the political wisdom is always stuck in the current moment.
Three straight Presidents have been elected to a second consecutive term. The last and only other time this happened was 1800-1820. And the next election resulted in an Electoral College mess with the House deciding the Presidency. Yet, I think it's fair to say that most everyone gives good odds to Hillary winning in 2016 and 2020.
Since 1993 no Vice President has ascended to the Presidency by any means. From 1923-1988 five Vice Presidents won an election for the Presidency (Calvin Coolidge, Harry S Truman, LBJ, Nixon, HW Bush). From 1788-1923, only three Vice Presidents did (John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Teddy Roosevelt). Nixon's the only person to serve as Vice President and ever win two elections for the Presidency. (And even he had to lose one first.)
The last two Vice Presidents have been chosen more for their experience (and in particular their foreign policy advising) than their rising political star to "continue the legacy" or some such. Gore shows the perils of a Vice President trying to stand with a sitting administration while pursuing their own political agenda.
You'd think the "Obama and Hillary absolutely each other" meme would have died when Obama made Hillary the Secretary of State. I don't get how these people come up with these things.
Team of Rivals.
Don't you remember how Obama was assembling his cabinet just like Lincoln out of hated political enemies?
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/05/obama-proposes/
"I will tell you, though, that my goal is to have the best possible government, and that means me winning," Obama said, per ABC News’ Sunlen Miller. "And so, I am very practical minded. I’m a practical-minded guy. And, you know, one of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln."
Obama then referred to "a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin called ‘Team of Rivals,’ in which [she] talked about [how] Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet because whatever, you know, personal feelings there were, the issue was, ‘How can we get this country through this time of crisis?’"
...
Another former rival, Edwin Stanton — who once called Lincoln a "long armed ape" — became secretary of war.
"That has to be the approach that one takes," Obama said, "whether it’s vice president or cabinet, whoever. And by the way that does not exclude Republicans either. You know my attitude is that whoever is the best person for the job is the person I want. … You know, if I really thought that John McCain was the absolute best person for the Department of the Homeland Security, I would put him in there."
An audience member yelled out: "No!"
"No, I would, if I thought that he was the best," Obama said. "Now, I’m not saying I do. I’m just saying that’s got to be the approach that you take because part of the change that I’m looking for is to make sure that we’re reminded of what we have in common as Americans."
Andrew Sullivan proposed the Team of Rivals idea earlier this month when pitching a unity ticket with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., as vice president.
So … Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., as secretary of state? (Sorry, Sen. Kerry.) Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., as commerce secretary? Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., as attorney general?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/18/obama-clinton-team-of-rivals
But, instead of relying on this group, Lincoln picked those who disliked him most, his rivals for his presidential run. Noting that the "three other contenders for the nomination were household names", he went on to court William Henry Seward (a "celebrated senator from New York"), Salmon P Chase (senator, governor, founder of Republican Party) and Edward Bates (elder statesman). All were invited to the convention, and employed in his team. His philosophy mixed the need to keep them on the inside pissing out, with a genuine conviction that politics could be put aside to ensure the best people were able to serve.
What might this approach mean for Obama? For Seward, Chase and Bates read Clinton, Biden and Richardson. With Biden already recruited, it means Clinton gets the position at state, a move which seems more clever the longer you look at it. But, taken a stage further, it also suggests Larry Summers at the Treasury - a big beast, intellectually and personally - rather than a functionary like Tim Geitner or Sheila Baer. And it surely gives more credence to the idea of a Richardson, or even a Kerry, in some other job, even if Clinton takes the big post. A government of all the talents, if you will.
Oh wow, John Edwards as attorney general, a man can dream, a man can dream...
