Democratic Party

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The Shrinking GOP Tent

May 10, 2010 in Democratic Party, Election 2010, GOP, Republican Party, Tea Party | 9 comments

Sen. Robert Bennett’s (R-UT) has been defeated at the Utah Republican convention over the weekend. This is the third time in a year, conservatives essentially sent a message to Republicans that one of their elected officials wasn’t conservative enough for the party’s nomination. What happens when what remains are the fringe elements of a once grand old party that are far outside the American mainstream? It seems the Tea Party can’t purge the GOP into oblivion fast enough. Part of me is legitimately quite nervous about such an ignorant, bloody-minded faction like the Tea Party able to amplify their ideas by seizing a major national party’s apparatus and purging those deemed “unpure”. And, meanwhile the Maine Republican party are pushing to the right and two Senate seats that should be shoe-ins for the Republicans are now competitive. The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The GOP is cutting off its nose to spite its face. I think it could end the two-party system in the U.S. and I’m not sure where we go from there.

*Edit*

Some seem to think that Tuesdays results are evidence of Democrats doing their own ideological purge. That would be true if Blanche Lincoln were a liberal senator deemed insufficiently left-wing by the party base. It would also be true for Specter expect for his 30-year career as a member of the GOP.

Steve Benen from the Washington Monthly wraps this up best.

After Crist, Specter, Scozzafava, Bennett, Grayson, and possibly even McCain, we see a Republican Party that’s effectively put a sign on the RNC’s door: “Only hard-right ideologues need apply.”

Hell in Kentucky the RNC backed not one, but two losing candidates. Right-wing Tea Partier Rand Paul demolished the RNC establishment candidate, and Todd Lally beat Jeff Reetz, a Pizza Hut franchise owner and favorite of the House Republican campaign committee.

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What does a coward sound like?

February 4, 2010 in Blanche Lincoln, Conservadems, Democratic Party, Election 2010, Left Wing, Obama Administration | No comments

I think it sounds like Arkansas Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln. The Democratic Senate Conference met with President Obama and she came up with this weak ass narrative;

I visited with a constituent yesterday, good Democrat, small business owner, who was extremely frustrated — extremely frustrated because there was a lack of certainty and predictability from his government for him to be able to run his businesses. He’s — he and his father have worked hard, they’ve built three or four different small businesses, and he fears that there’s no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and have to make a payroll on Friday. He wants results. He wants predictability.

And are we willing as Democrats not only to reach out to Republicans but to push back in our own party for people who want extremes, and look for the common ground that’s going to get us the success that we need not only for our constituents but for our country in this global community, in this global economy? Are we willing as Democrats to also push back on our own party and look for that common ground that we need to work with Republicans and to get the answers?

Blanche Lincoln thinks that totally screwing over the President’s agenda is a good political move. Must be why she is at 33% in the polls for re-election versus 56% for her opponent. Lincoln’s approval rating has sunk to just 27%, with 62% of voters in the state disapproving of her, and she only has the support of half of the states Democrats. When the Democrats are in power and you want to keep them in power then you need to keep them popular. Which means you need to ACTUALLY PASS GOOD LEGISLATION that benefits your constituents. Otherwise, voters will see you as part of the problem, not part of the solution, and every punch that you and your fellow conservadems land on Obama that same punch ricochets right back onto your poll numbers and approval rating. They are self-immolating and don’t know why. They think it’s the liberal left hurting them, when in fact they are hurting themselves. If these people studied 1994 they would know this, it’s elementary politics.

Personally I don’t give two shits whether our politicians know what it’s like to go to work on Monday and meet a payroll on Friday. I do give two shits whether they know what it’s like to go to work on Monday and get a paycheck on Friday that doesn’t allow for you to save for your kids education, or allow you to purchase affordable health care insurance, let alone let you save for your future retirement.

Does she and her fellow conservadems think Democrats just lucked out winning blowouts in 2006 and 2008? Could Bush’s low approval ratings have had anything to do with it, ya think? The economy was doing okay in 2006. But Dems swept the election because the Republican president was despised by the antiwar left, and independents had seen enough of their neocon incompetence as well. If the Dems want to avoid the same thing, their best shot is to get Obama’s approval rating above 60%. You do that by passing health care reform, passing real job creation bills, and do something to regulate banks and go after these credit card companies who seem to enjoy raping the American consumer ever month with 22% interest rates.

Perhaps Blanche Lincoln’s current and future bosses at corporate giant Wal-Mart are telling her how to make payroll, because she doesn’t have the experience to comment for herself.

Though she does have the experience of being a backstabber.

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A New Kind of Politics.

January 25, 2010 in Democratic Party, GOP, Health Care, Obama Administration, Tea Baggers, Wingnuts | No comments

The public elected President Obama on the basis of his persistent invocation of bipartisanship or a “new kind of politics,”. While a President getting elected on promises of bipartisanship, or working with “the other side of the isle” is nothing new, it was foreseeable that Obama had a slim to none chance of success. I do not blame or criticize Republicans for sticking to their principles (tax cuts are the universal elixir), misguided though I believe they are, but the more I think about this the more I agree that Martha Coakley’s defeat in Massachusetts should mark the end of Obama’s efforts to create a new, bipartisan climate in Washington.

Consider last spring’s $787 Billion stimulus bill which was heavily weighted toward tax cuts in an effort to win some Republican support. In the end, the bill received not a single Republican vote.
Consider that he nominated a moderate, pro-prosecution Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, only to see her tagged as a racist over some rather harmless remarks she made about being a “wise Latina”.
Consider that healthcare reform became bogged down in such a compromise-ridden mess to try an woo Senator Olympia Snow, and appease Senator’s Landrieu, Nelson, and Lincoln. Let’s include the fact that President Obama never truly fought hard for a public option to compete with private insurance companies because those in his inner circle knew it would never get passed.

Obama has done precisely what he condemned while campaigning for the presidency: he has played the old Washington game of compromising on basics to win a few votes. Now the idea was to bring along a few Republican senators thought to hold reasonable views, I get that, but NO Republican support was offered by the other side…none…NADA.

Instead we got calls for this becoming Obama’s “waterloo”. Obama’s attempts to find compromise solutions did not stop Republicans from labelling him as a radical – or their nutty tea-party allies from calling him a “socialist” and citing scripture (Psalm 109:8) calling for his death. He’s being called a radical though he’s doing nothing radical, and yet alienating radicals because he’s doing nothing radical. It’s an old paradox: you can’t chase with the hounds and run with the foxes.

The House should pass the Senate Health care bill and fix it later through reconciliation. Put a “W” in the Win column and move on.

Then he needs to pick another fight….. and then FIGHT, and stop going for these half-assed measures by watering down legislation to get any GOP votes. Maybe he is finally starting with his proposing a tax to recoup some of the billions of dollars in bailout money the bankers received, and has referred to bonus payments as “obscene” at a time when many “continue to face real hardship in this recession.”

The White House and the Democratic Party still have time to change course. Surely Obama knows his strategy of reaching out to Republicans was an utter failure. It’s time to try something new.

I hope he is ready for it.

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Senate Democrats get to 60.

December 21, 2009 in Democratic Party, Health Care, Obama Administration | No comments

At 1:19 a.m. (ET), the Senate voted to end the debate on the Manager’s Amendment to health care reform. It needed 60 votes to advance, and it passed, 60 to 40. Every member of the Democratic caucus voted for it, and every Republican voted against it.

So be it. Democrats really shouldn’t have expected any GOP support, and I don’t see why they thought they would. They would never have attracted any GOP support with a pubic option or Medicare buy-in. Republicans probably don’t want to see ANY health insurance reform as a matter of spite just because it is a Democrat administration and they would rather see them fail than pass any legislation, no matter how desperately it is needed. However if I were Obama the pragmatist, what I would have done is press the hell out of the Senate to adopt a number of the GOP’s best ideas: most specifically, allowing private insurance plans to be marketed across state lines, and honest-to-goodness tort reform. This would be both brilliant policy (smart ideas to really bend the cost curve) AND brilliant politics (either the Republicans have to get on board, or they have to reject their own best ideas — a big win for Obama in either case).

This is why I will always consider myself a centrist. I would have listened and brought in some of the opposing side’s best views and ideas and incorporate them into the overall reform plan.

But, no one elected me.

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So what happened?

December 15, 2009 in Democratic Party, Election 2012, Health Care, Joe Lieberman | No comments

Plain and simple, Harry and the Democrats caved to the lobbyists of the most powerful group in DC. When the going got tough, they folded like Chinese laundry. Senate Democrats, led by balless-Harry has decided to drop any type of public option from a newly agreed to healthcare “reform” bill. Instead, they have decided to mix several plans together, including an ability to buy into Medicare for those 55 and older. Following a caucus-wide meeting Monday evening that proposal is now in doubt thanks to Joe “It’s all about me” Lieberman. Harry Reid’s decision to continue to regard Joe Lieberman as an ally, to the point of turning the health care reform bill into nothing but a mandate to buy the kind of crappy, overpriced, no-coverage-when-it-counts insurance that’s on the market now in a vain effort to placate Lieberman, and is going to be very costly for Democrats in 2010 and 2012.

Seems the Democrats are still the party who curled up in a fetal position in the corner, letting themselves be rolled by George W. Bush for eight years.

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Buyers remorse…..ummm NO!

December 14, 2009 in Democratic Party, Left Wing, Obama Administration, Tea Baggers | No comments

On at lot of things Obama has disappointed me, but I still support him, all things considered. He HAS done a lot of good and is a decided improvement over his predecessor (and we all know he’s ten times better than McCain/Palin ever would have been.)

How have the left wing Democrats responded to some of Obama’s actions… or inactions so far?

I read tons of nonsense about Barack Obama being some kind of “failed president” because he hasn’t done everything that the left wants him to do. The left wing is getting kind of ridiculous, and threatening to stay home from the polls in 2010 which is beyond childish. Even little kids act more reasonably than these people are behaving. You know when I was a kid most years I made a list all of the things I wanted for Christmas. It never occurred to me I would get every single thing on the list. Hell, if I got one or two things that were on the list I was cool with that.

These people on the Democratic left are like kids who didn’t get everything on their list so they are throwing away all of the toys that they did get and declaring that they want nothing to do with Christmas.

Barack Obama has not done everything that I want him to do, but I’m actually quite pleased that he has done some of the things that I wanted him to do, because his predecessor certainly didn’t do a DAMN thing at all but screw up this country for the last 8 years. As to the things he hasn’t done; some have been thwarted by Congress or other issues, for some he hasn’t yet had time, and some he doesn’t intend to do at all. So he doesn’t agree with all of my priorities. Fancy that.

I will be critical of Obama and his administration when I disagree with their actions, but I’m certainly not going to dissolve into some massive snit and become the Democratic version of a teabagger.

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“Cringemaking”

November 9, 2009 in Democratic Party, Left Wing, Republican Party, Right Wing, Tea Baggers, Wingnuts | No comments

Cokie Roberts didn’t hold back on those health care protests headlined by actor Jon Voight, who in a speech Thursday said Obama “has had 20 years of subconscious programming by Rev. Wright to damn America.”

Calling Voight’s performance “cringemaking,” Cokie added “exceptionalism isn’t optimism…It makes you feel just very uncomfortable. And that is not where the future of any party is.”

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Cokie seems to have cottoned to the fact that conservative fear mongering should have no place in the Republican party, at least to some extent, but she is a charter member of the inside-the-beltway crowd and her ilk are in the process of discovering that the Tea-bagging creature they helped  spawn has grown up and out of their control.

Sorry, Cokie, the time for the Beltway gang to be cringing was way before Sarah Palin became a household name, maybe back when you all clucked about stains on a blue dress.

There is no Republican leader who will stand up against this movement and survive politically.  They were all in attendance at the event..lined up like obedient schoolboys behind the podium waiting their turn to speak to the throngs of tea-baggers who carried signs about the “Kenyan in the White House”.

Who attended?  Minority Leader John Boehner, Republican Whip Eric Cantor and Conference Chairman Mike Pence all spoke.  Conservative Rep (and party right-wing howler monkey) Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) all were in attendance as were Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

I wonder if they approve of the signs in the crowd.  I crowd they support…a movement they have embraced.

Holocaust

This tells me that lowering the cost of health insurance so people can afford to buy health insurance coverage is like sending them to the gas chamber.

What the hell does that even mean?

“But..but the Democrats did it toooo!!!”

Conservatives point out that the anti-war left and Democrats did the same thing when Bush was in the White House, but this is not true.  The looney Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia.) was the only one I could find that attended and supported any anti-war rally’s.  None of the Democratic party’s congressional leadership attended the 100,000 + anti war rally in September of 2005.  When Code Pink wackos barged into and interrupted Congressional hearings into AG Alberto Gonzales, Democratic Chairman Conyers had them thrown out of the chamber.  Something these wingnut tea-baggers don’t understand is that Democrats in Congress funded the troops, at the levels President Bush sought and sometimes with more money than he even requested for Afghanistan and for veterans. In this sense, Democratic congressional leaders didn’t listen to either MoveOn.org or Code Pink, nor did not align themselves to embrace their movement in the way that the GOP has embraced the tea-baggers. If they did, funding for military operations in Iraq would have been cut off long ago (2006).  The anti-war crowd has been almost as critical and practiced its unnerving, in-your-face protests towards all of the Democratic leaders in the House including picketing and camping out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home.

I think Democrats realize that when you become too shrill (i.e. Sheehan) or too offensive (i.e. Code Pink), you wind up doing more harm to a cause than good, and that rule applies on either the left or the right.  The thing is the conservatives in the GOP, in supporting this anti-government movement, has yet to learn this lesson, and their support of the tea bagger movement is evident of this.

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Conservative Democrats are Hypocrites.

October 22, 2009 in Democratic Party, Health Care, Hypocrisy | No comments

Why would Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana stand in the way of passing health care reform?

She told reporters, “I’m not for a government-run, national, taxpayer-subsidized plan, and never will be.”

H/T

That is, except for Medicare, which is a taxpayer-subsidized national plan that Landrieu supports.

And Medicaid, which is also a taxpayer-subsidized national plan that Landrieu supports.

And the V.A. system, which is also a taxpayer-subsidized national plan that Landrieu supports.

And S-CHIP, which is also a taxpayer-subsidized national plan that Landrieu supports.

And the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, which is also a taxpayer-subsidized national plan that Landrieu supports — and takes personal advantage of.

Yes, except for all the “government-run, national, taxpayer-subsidized plans” Landrieu already favors, she’s not for them and she never will be.

Good to know.

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