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.
All this is cyclical, but I wonder how the GOP is ever going to cycle out of this. Even if they win some seats in the fall and in 2012, what are they going to do with that power that won’t get them booted post-haste?
The conservative media is another story altogether.
Seems to be the case for both parties. Dem party bigwigs attacking Obie. The time from election to major screw up for both parties seems to be getting shorter and shorter each time. It took Bush ~1 year after being elected, same for Obie. Probably will be the same when a Repub is elected PotUS in ’12…
It is so screwed up I am no longer in it.
The mismanagement, corruption, and incompetency of BushCo was so extreme that any administration following his was doomed to failure. Obama was just unlucky enough to win over McSane. Imagine if no tax/no regulation/no ideas like McSane/Palin had been our reality?
Obama needs to head left where sanity resides. He’s been too co-opted by the politics of the idiot right.
The key quote in the article:
During the row over health care, the right demanded smaller deficits but refused to countenance any cuts in medical spending on the elderly. Cutting back military spending is denounced as surrender to the enemy. Tax rises of any kind (even allowing the unaffordable Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled) are evil.
This lack of coherence extends beyond the deficit. Do Republicans favour state bail-outs for banks or not? If they are against them, as they protest, why are they doing everything they can to sabotage a financial-reform bill that will make them less likely? Is the party of “drill, baby, drill” in favour of tighter regulation of oil companies or not? If not, why is it berating Mr Obama for events a mile beneath the ocean? Many of America’s most prominent business leaders are privately as disappointed by the right as they are by the statist Mr Obama.
At this point I’m so thoroughly disappointed by Obama and the Democrats (http://salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/10/lincoln/index.html and http://commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/13-8) I say let the party of “No” win and really run the country into the ground.
Here we go again with the liberals trying to define the Republican party. This was their tactic in the last election where they were able to get the candidate they wanted, McCain, and they defined the Republican positions in the bias media. It is not going to happen this time. A resurgent conservative movement in the country is going to set the adgenda themselves and throw the liberal out of control.
@robin194
I think you mean reactionary movement because I see very few real conservatives in the Republican party. Neo-cons don’t count.
#5–Phydeau==you say: “I say let the party of “No” win and really run the country into the ground.” /// I suppose any hole can be dug deeper if that is your meaning–but absent the obvious, the whole is already deep enough the side walls may still collapse on itself.
Despair is not really to be advocated for. No. The fight to regain sanity, aka sound tax policy to support the middle and working classes, as well as reregulating industries currently running amuck under the Republican Banner is needed asap.
News this morning is financial reregulation is uncharacteristically getting tougher, not weaker, as it moves thru the legislative process.
If you are going to give up, do so by becoming uninvolved rather than advocating for the worst position.
#6 Uh, robin, you might want to do a little research on who The Economist really is. (Hint: not liberals).
But come to think of it, to people living in the Fauxzone, anyone to the right of Atilla the Hun is a screaming liberal.
lol, resurgent conservative movement. Yeah, they’re resurging all over each other.
The D’s are cowards and closet conservatives, the R’s are scary wackos. What a time to be living in the US. 🙁
#8 Yes bobbo, I’m just feeling grumpy today. Hopefully it’ll pass.
Uncle Dave will be crying in his beer this November. After the pounding the Democrats will take, I wonder how he will keep a straight face with his constant spins.
Understand in fact that both parties engage in the very same activity but call out only one for doing it as if the other one was completely innocent.
Winning the shill of the day award we have #6–robin==who throws honesty out the window by complaining: “Here we go again with the liberals trying to define the Republican party.”
What a dope.
robin1943, I’m going out on a limb here but I’m betting you didn’t read the article?
Reid is toast, http://tinyurl.com/23ax5v5 Dems will also get killed in SC senate race.
Obie I will only have one major decision to make come Jan ’13. Retire to Chicago or, Hawaii…
It is not the original article I am talking about it is Uncle Dave’s interpretation with the choice of title and excerpts he used. The point is the liberals distortion of the news to define the Republican party that is the issue. They all want to move the party to a “center” “moderate” position. Well that is not going to get the Dems out of power.
Robin goes for a two-fer.
Robin==I challenge you. List at least one distortion Unc Dave made.
Thats hard to do when all most editors do here is lift directly from the source material.
Again–you are a dope. Prove me wrong by posting your list of distortions.
The Republicans need to own-up to what they did — multiple gigantic deregulation disasters; bungled wars; massive structural deficits; a trashed military; erosion of our civil liberties; broad corruption; attack on the middle class; crumbling infrastructure; etc. etc.
They can provide solutions and leadership until they become honest with themselves and the American public.
oops:
They _can NOT_ provide solutions and leadership until they become honest with themselves and the American public.
Greg–yea, verily. And yet the Repugs think the only thing wrong with no tax and no regulation policies is that they weren’t fully embraced.
Imagine a toy company advertising for a toy designer. Candidate one, the Republican, says he doesn’t believe in toys and they should be outlawed in favor of more bible reading. Any yet, the Republicans still get hired to do their self devouring thing.
Stupid Hoomans to hire people who expressly state they don’t want to do the job.
bobbo,
You’ll never see it. The growing conservative movement is not just “old intolerant, gun-toting, immigrant-bashing, mainly southern right which sees any form of co-operation as treachery, even blasphemy”. They are people who are against the policies that the current government are pursuing and want to see it change.
Have you ever notice that when a liberal disagrees conservative it is personal, gun toting, racist, redneck; but when a conservative disagrees with a liberal it is about policy, big spending, big government. You don’t hear conservative bashing liberal as pot smoking, free love stoners. I may be dope to you, but let’s wait and see what happens in November. The hope and change I want to see if for this country and my childern, not the hope and change this current government is giving to government control and the unions.
NO alternatives to higher deficit? How about voting NO on the stimulus?
bobbo,
The title of the original article was “What’s wrong with America’s Right”. Uncle Dave changes that into “How screwed up is the Republican Party”
My original point is that Democrats have used the media to define the Republican Party. The Democrats want to move the Republican Party to the center/moderate position as they know they can do better against center/moderate candidates like in the last election. Therefore, they want to paint the whole Republican Party as right wing extremist.
I don’t think the move to the right has hurt the Republican Party. Look at the gains in special elections, polls and how scared some Democrats are about reelection. If what we have today in the Republican Party is civil war then I say bring it on.
MikeN said, “NO alternatives to higher deficit? How about voting NO on the stimulus?”
Don’t start talking common sense. It just confuses an enrages libs.
#23–robin==stop it!!!! You are killing me. Yes, we need less taxes and less regulation. History is so instructive.
#24–Anon==good Republican. No New Taxes!!! No social spending!!!! No stimulus.
Are you “in fact” so well grounded in economic theory and practice that you KNOW what would have happened if the banks had not been bailed out? Are you? And assuming not, aren’t you just crowing your own stupidity?
I certainly have no expertise in the dismal science. I wish the bail out had not been required, had been==WILL BE, done better, and mostly just shocked that such supposedly necessary deficit spending to save our economy was doubled by the pork added in by both sides.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
See what I mean MikeN. Instant lib Ad Hom attack. As usual, libs can’t help themselves when faced with reality. It must be genetic.
Anon–so your expertise in macro economics comes down to what bumpersticker? FYI–asking for one’s credentials to form an opinion is not an ad hominem attack, but I’m sure your answer/non-answer will certainly deserve one.
Hah, hah.
Funny you say the Republicans are screwed up when the Dems preferred candidate loses to a totally unknown guy who runs no campaign at all. He just shows up with a check for $10000 filing fee, then gets one hundred thousand Democrats to vote for him around the state over their own reasonable candidate.
And notice, calling someone stupid morphs into “asking about credentials”. ROFLMAO at lib duplicity. SO predictable.
“For most of the past half-century, conservative America has been a wellspring of new ideas—especially about slimming government.”
BULL! BULL! BULL! That’s what THEY would claim, but in reality, unlike the Dems who tax and spend, the Reps _borrow_ and spend. There’s hardly a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, both totally captured by moneyed interests rather than the people they are supposed to represent.
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/National-Debt-GDP.gif
They want to move the Republicans to the center to defeat them easier, or they want to paint them as extremists?
Which is it Robin?
If the Republicans weren’t directionless obstructionists they wouldn’t have such a PR problem.