im12run Loc: west usa

Looks like another 4 years of republicans and democrats never passing anything important and keeping everything at a stalemate unless of course it doesn't make any sense like our new right to bear arms . Or anything taking away other freedoms from the people..Then it goes right through. that reminds me,''Worlds Dumbest'' tv show is starting...sorry I brought it up.gotta go

Danilo Loc: Las Vegas

I think you have the next four years sized up pretty well. After reading a couple threads on General Chit Chat this afternoon I realized we have our own Congress right here on the "Hog".
At the end of the day, no one's mind was changed a bit.
Funny.

Brian46 Loc: Standish,Maine

yup,hit the nail on the head!!!! :thumbup:

Curtis_Lowe Loc: Georgia

But don't worry we will be at least another 4 Trillion Dollars in debt!

john vance Loc: Granbury,Texas

That's the truth, Oh well, all one can do is hope.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

TIMOTHY EGAN January 24, 2013, 9:00 pm99 Comments
The Tomorrow Majority
By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.
TAGS:

LIBERALISM (US POLITICS), OBAMA, BARACK, POLLS AND PUBLIC OPINION, REPUBLICAN PARTY
Oh, the horror: a gay bar mentioned in the same sentence as Selma and Seneca Falls, a call to fix a gasping planet, a stirring defense of health care for the elderly and citizenship for 11 million people living in the American shadows. And now, women in combat. What’s become of this country?

“One thing is clear from the president’s speech: the era of liberalism is back,” said the perpetually puckered Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

“Unapologetically liberal,” was the takeaway quote in a video sent out this week by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.

Liberal, liberal, liberal! The wedge label is the last weapon of people who are out of step with their era. Rove and company are betting that “liberal” still has the power to scare. But did you notice that these opponents of President Obama’s Inauguration Day aria didn’t take issue with the substance of what he said? Are they for a legal system that excludes gays from rights that other citizens share? Do they favor global warming? Do they intend to deport the millions of immigrants without papers, and further alienate the fastest-growing block of voters?

A larger question for those who want to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” is whether a majority of Americans now favor all the things that Obama alluded to on the first full day of his second term. In fact, they do. The electoral realignment is happening so quickly it looks like an Alaskan river thawing before our eyes. In opposition, Republicans speak for a fast-fading past, or a permanent winter.

And that sneaky, Machiavellian Obama: he made them do it. He’s trying to “just shove us into the dustbin of history,” said House Speaker John Boehner this week. No shoving was required — the Republicans climbed right into the dustbin and put the lid on to keep out the light.

McConnell believes Obama’s words in the 57th Inaugural Address were “unabashedly far-left of center.” Maybe in 1956 that was true. Or 1981. But not in 2013. Obama’s framework is the new center. Call him a liberal. But if you forget the label, and poll on the substance of his remarks, you find a broad, fresh coalition siding with the president on all the major issues he highlighted.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the country is more “liberal.” But it does mean, at the least, that the center has moved, and Republicans have not.

On climate change, a Pew poll at the height of last’s fall’s election found strong bipartisan support for taking steps against many of the effects of global warming. There was a significant increase in those who say the storms, fires, droughts, record-high-temperatures and ice-melting of the last decade or so are human-caused. Only 12 percent — and here’s where the talk radio and Fox wing of the Republican party are glaringly out of step — believe it’s some kind of hoax.

Gay marriage support has surged so quickly, and across the board, that only an aging cohort of Republicans is still against it. Among young people, those 18 to 29, it’s no contest: 73 percent favor it, according to Gallup last November.

Immigration reform is another loser for Republicans. An Associated Press survey released this week had 62 percent in favor of allowing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. The Republican Party cannot survive without Hispanic support, and this poll recognized that: 53 percent of G.O.P. members now favor the “liberal” solution — amnesty! — up an astonishing 22 points in just two years.

On and on, from protecting Medicare and Social Security against voucher plans like those advocated by Representative Paul Ryan, to increasing taxes on the wealthy, a big majority prevails. Guns? About 9 in 10 Americans favor criminal background checks for gun buyers, which is the one idea that seems most likely to pass, despite opposition from leading Republicans.

If the era of liberalism is back, as McConnell said in deriding Obama’s speech, it has metastasized and taken on a new form. It’s nonwhite, young and urban. It’s college-educated women. It’s West Coast and East Coast, the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and, soon, Arizona. It’s the upper Midwest, and the Philadelphia exurbs. In the South, it’s Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe Georgia to follow within a decade.

Of course, the Democrats can always overreach. Arrogance breeds hubris. What do not have majority support are huge new government spending programs. And Obama, in his speech, did not call for such things. (His health care law is the product of Mitt Romney and the Heritage Foundation, and relies on free enterprise “exchanges” rather than a government takeover, despite what critics say.)

But Obama did defend the two great government programs that work and must be shored up: Social Security and Medicare. “These things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us,” Obama said. “They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” If those words are the distillation of liberalism, bring on the chisels and scratch them into marble.

So, who is out of step? Who is to the far side of the center? In 1958, just four percent of those polled by Gallup were in favor of allowing blacks and whites to marry each other. That figure now is 86 percent. The Republicans of 2013 can stand still, like those Eisenhower-era opponents of interracial marriage. But they cannot call their opposition to gay marriage, climate change measures, immigration reform and raising taxes on the wealthy mainstream positions.

Looking at the coming battles in Washington, Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, spoke more political truth in one sentence than Boehner and McConnell have in four years of speeches. “The public is not behind us,” he said, “and that’s a real problem for our party.”

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

THOMAS B. EDSALL January 23, 2013, 9:53 pm228 Comments
Can Republicans Change Their Spots?
By THOMAS B. EDSALL

Tom Edsall on politics inside and outside of Washington.
TAGS:

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2012, REPUBLICAN PARTY, TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
If the Republican Party were a profit-seeking corporation, the current management would be tossed.

A post-election study conducted Dec. 12 by Resurgent Republic, a conservative think tank, concluded that the market for right-wing ideologues is just not there anymore:

Republicans have run out of persuadable white voters. For the fifth time in the past six presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. Trying to win a national election by gaining a larger and larger share of a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate is a losing political proposition.

Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, released findings on Jan. 16 from a Democracy Corp survey that echoed that conclusion:

The Republican Party brand has steeply eroded since Election Day. Half of all voters (51 percent) now give the Party a negative rating and a third rate the party very negatively (under 25 on our 100-point scale).

Even more threatening to conservatives, according to Greenberg, “Strong majorities of voters view the Republican Party’s positions on critical economic and social issues as extreme.”

If you’re a Republican, the evidence on the party’s near-term prospects is pretty grim:


On a host of issues, the Republican Party is perceived as out of the mainstream:


Democracy Corps
Republicans traditionally defer to rank, but in 2016 the party will need a presidential candidate who understands his (or her) party’s ideological and demographic liabilities and can pull it out of a nosedive — no small task. The last candidate to manage this feat? Bill Clinton.

An item that should go on the top of the priority list: dump the party’s super PACs and the men and women who run them, including Karl Rove.

The monied wing of the Republican Party suffers from what political scientists call a “resource curse” — the same “paradox of plenty” that blocks the advancement of oil-rich countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Too much cash flowing from big donors to super PACs and tax-exempt organizations is the Republican curse.

In the 2012 election, major Republican-leaning independent expenditure committees, including Restore Our Future and American Crossroads, spent $579 million, more than three times the $168 million spent by pro-Democratic groups like Priorities USA and the Service Employees International Union.

Despite losing, a network of favored Republican consultants and contractors emerged from the election richer than before: Mentzer Media Services, Inc. collected fees of $141 million; Crossroads Media LLC, $90.8 million; Target Enterprises, $15.2 million; Arena Communications, $12.8 million. For the Republican operatives running these companies, 2012 was hardly a defeat. It was a business bonanza.

William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, wasn’t happy after last year’s presidential election and not just because of the results:

Reading about some conservative organizations and Republican campaigns these days, one is reminded of Eric Hoffer’s remark, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” It may be that major parts of American conservatism have become such a racket that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary. A reinvigoration of the Republican Party also seems desirable, based on a new generation of leaders, perhaps coming ​— ​as did Ike and Reagan​ — ​from outside the normal channels.

Three presidential campaigns earlier, Kristol and David Brooks (who was then a senior editor for The Weekly Standard) were convinced that the McCain 2000 campaign for president offered a “refounding.” Kristol and Brooks wrote:

The two great Republican general-election victories of the recent past grew out of intraparty insurrections. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, fresh from challenging a sitting Republican president in 1976, ran against a party establishment represented in various ways by Howard Baker, George Bush, and John Connally. A decade later, Newt Gingrich led an insurrection, first against the Bush budget deal and then against Bob Michel and the Republican congressional establishment, which culminated in the Republican landslide of 1994. Now we are witnessing a third insurrection. John McCain is taking on the Republican establishment. In New Hampshire, he crushed it.

In practice, the McCain insurgency in 2000 was short-lived, posing a serious threat to George W. Bush for less than three weeks — from the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 1, 2000, to the South Carolina contest on Feb. 19. The brief life of the McCain campaign suggests that future reform efforts will face intense hostility.

I asked Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia how parties can change direction after defeat. Sabato responded by e-mail:

The hardest thing for a party to do is to make painful choices that require a break-up within the old coalition in order to create a new, more competitive coalition. Usually, only repeated losses —being hit over the head with a two-by-four — will motivate a party to try something truly different.

After the disastrous 1964 presidential bid of Barry Goldwater, Sabato pointed out, Richard Nixon and others

grasped that the old moderate-liberal Republican establishment was history. J.F.K. and L.B.J. had converted African-Americans almost wholly, and white liberals too, with the New Frontier-Great Society and civil rights. What was left? Homeless Southern conservatives, who gravitated toward the G.O.P. and pushed out of power the congressional and gubernatorial moderates. The liberal G.O.P. wing had to die to make way for a much larger trove of conservative Southern votes.

At the moment, reactionary forces have a death grip on the Republican Party, and their power has been cemented by the party’s institutionalization of closed primaries and caucuses (neither independents nor Democrats can participate) in more than half the states.

Republican opponents of change also hold on to the hope that the American economy will be mired in a period of slow growth, damaging to whichever party is in power. The premise of this strategy is that hard-pressed voters will turn on the Democrats.

The rate of growth since the 2007-8 collapse has been about half the average rate in past post-recession periods. Take a look at this chart from the Congressional Budget Office:


Still, for Republicans to gamble on a listless economy is inherently risky. Jan Hatzius, chief economist for global investment research at Goldman Sachs, argues that in economic terms, “2013 might feel a little friendlier than 2012,” picking up steam after the Obama administration and Congress resolve their fiscal and budgetary disputes.

Favorable reports on housing and employment last week boosted the stock market as well as Obama’s approval ratings, which on Jan. 17 stood at 52 percent, among his highest since early 2009.

The major factor encouraging Republican inertia is that the party’s setbacks have not reached the crisis stage; it still controls the House 233 to 200 (there are two current vacancies).

That majority rests on the weak reed of gerrymandering, however, and on the high concentration of Democratic voters in urban areas. Democratic House candidates actually won the popular vote by one million more votes than Republicans, 56 million to 55 million.

In North Carolina, Bloomberg news found that Democrats won 2.22 million votes to 2.14 million cast for Republican candidates, but Republicans won 9 of the state’s 13 House seats. Similarly, in Pennsylvania, Democrats won 2.7 million votes to the Republicans’ 2.6 million, but Democrats ended up with only 5 of the state’s 18 districts.

The fast-approaching budget and sequestration fights have created a dilemma for Republican House leaders. If the party backs its conservative wing and allows the country to go into default later this year or submits to the draconian cuts mandated by sequestration, Republicans in swing districts could turn the House over to Democrats in 2014. If Republicans go in the opposite direction and compromise, significant numbers of House members will face primary challenges from the right.

With more and more Republicans aware that their party is on the ropes, how will its core constituencies respond, especially the Christian right and the Tea Party, which appear likely to lose power in an intra-party realignment? Will they passively accept diminished influence or will they lash out against their fellow Republicans?

If the conservative movement continues on its downward trajectory, the American business community, which has the most to lose from Republican failure, will be the key force arguing for moderation.

The problem that faces business leaders pressing for reform is not just the normal reluctance of a political party to change. Instead, it is the fact that much of the Republican electorate, as presently constructed, is profoundly committed — morally and ideologically — to “traditional values.” You’re asking groups of people to change who were brought together by their resistance to change. Their opposition to change is why they are Republicans.

The right coalition includes a subset of conservatives determined to preserve white hegemony. Add to that social conservatives who oppose both the women’s rights and gay rights movements, and the religiously observant who are dead set against burgeoning secularism and what they see as the erosion of faith in public life.

These voters see the breakneck speed with which big business alters familiar patterns of life — innovation, but also joblessness, foreclosure and broken communities — as laying waste to much they hold dear. Business — that is, capitalism — drives a “perennial gale of creative destruction,” as the economist Joseph Schumpeter famously put it. This gale, by definition, is anti-conservative.

Survey data reveals the profound resistance on the right to cultural disruption. Poll after poll shows that Republicans believe politicians should stand firmly against compromising core principles, by much higher margins than either Democrats or independents.

An indirect but important reflection of partisan attitudes to change is visible in the higher percentage of Republicans, 58 percent, who believe in creationism – defined in this survey as the belief that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years – than Democrats, 41 percent, and independents, 39 percent.

In effect, for many cultural and social conservatives, being a Republican is not just an allegiance to one of two major political parties but a deeply held belief system, an ideology with a strong religious core.

The Tea Party and the Christian Coalition exist in an inevitably fraught alliance with high finance, the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

The center-right coalition, in fact, needs more than new management. Over time, its leadership and candidates face the task of breaking up irreconcilable factions and merging the most viable parts with new constituencies, including suburbanites angry over rising tax burdens and increasingly affluent Hispanic and Asian voters.

Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at M.I.T. who studies the evolution of American parties, responded by email to my query about partisan restructuring. Republicans, he said,

need to figure out what the settled parts of American politics are these days — settled matters that they, in their heart of hearts would like to change, but which they agree not to change. That probably includes a much more tolerant society and a dedication to a certain level of social insurance as an obligation embraced by the federal government. The Tea Party leaders won’t be able to do that, unless they change their spots thoroughly.

The success of the Republican Party in rural areas, exurbs and in the South has come at a cost. Socially conservative voters will resist changing their spots. When, and if, Republican leaders determine that the demands of these voters for “massive resistance” to abortion, contraception and immigration are futile, they will have to decide whether to cut them loose. No matter what happens, social conservatives are unlikely to become Democrats. It may not be too long before they find themselves with a choice of their own: withdraw from party politics or hold their noses and stick with the Republicans.

Curtis_Lowe Loc: Georgia

isn't wonderfull, all we have to do is not be concerned about what something cost, or what the conseqence is of the good feeling positions and you get lots of people to support you. Wow makes me feel warm all over. The young people will not understand how thier opportunities dwindled to next to nothing, not sure thier education gives them the proper context.
At some point don't we have to pay the bill for "protecting" everything.
Has the Democratic party offered any solution to the death spiral that is California or several of our once great cities like Chicago or Detroit?
How much more can we afford to borrow? 5 Trillion over the nex four years. It was not very long ago that would have been unthinkable, now it is almost a certainty, is there a consequence to going to $20 T or beyond in the next 4 yours of spending to kickstart Green {you read save a gasping planet here} or paying kids to go to college instead of learn the value of money!

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Curtis Lowe.....

The article is about the imminent death of the Republican Party. Did you read it?

BTW, it's 'next, and 'their'.

Still can't tell what your last collection of run-ons mean, but it needs a question mark.

It was not very long ago that would have been unthinkable, now it is almost a certainty, is there a consequence to going to $20 T or beyond in the next 4 yours of spending to kickstart Green {you read save a gasping planet here} or paying kids to go to college instead of learn the value of money!

Curtis_Lowe Loc: Georgia

Thanks for the edits and reading. I should be working instead of attempthing to post.
I am not infavor of all the social change, but that should not be the concern of those that truly care.
It is the fiscal destruction that is just beyond where they keep kicking the can. We do not have the finacial wherewithall to support all the wonderful things that we WANT to do. The GAO spelled it out just last week, betcha did not read that in the CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS they were too busy swooning over the ONE!
We simply cannot afford to borrow a $1T a year it wont work.
I guess I did not read the post critically, have to work, my taxes went up along with everyone else that pays SS.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Thank you for the civilized reply.

On your concern, I remember that Clinton budgeted to pay off the debt within ten years. It was during the bush years that the repubs broke the pattern, ignoring your concerns, denying that deficits mattered, then started two frivolous wars--and mismanaged them--without paying for them.

Obama inherited their mess, and is blamed personally for the debt.

On my concern, I think the Republican Party is dying. There may continue to be A Republican Party, but not the SAME party.

Without the skulduggery just beginning now, they wouldn't have a chance.

I won't miss them.

They are incompetent, dishonest, and immoral.

Cheers, and thanks again...

Tom

Curtis_Lowe Loc: Georgia

Tom,

I have done some reaearch in to Gov finances and that Congress and President Clinton, benifiting from the DotCom bubble did indead have a good run at budgeting in a real positive way. President Clinton worked with a Repulican controlled Congress to give and take but generally for the overall good.
He stated that BIG Government was over and reduced what some refer to hand outs not hand ups.
President Bush did indeed inherit this good economy and a Republican Congress but soon was faced with what people claimed at the time was a terible calamidy {sp} remember the attacks of Sept 11, 2001? The Airlines were grounded and commercie was delt a substaintial blow.
I don't think it is approprete {I do so depend on spellcheck} to refer to the action in Iraq or Afganistan as frivolous. Also we decided to start to rebuild the foreign services and change almost everything about how the many departments of Governement that are intended to protect us and learn about threats. We spent an enormous about of money doing that, no dobt some of it wasted as is the govenments way.

By the way the budgets during the Clinton years were not slated to Pay off the Debt in 10 years I don't beleive, but we had 911 so see above.

Now the Congress changed from R controlled to D controlled in the last two years of the President Bush's second term, if you look that is when Federal Spending took a second turn UP {second in being after wheat happend in 911} President Bush signed the 1st Dem budget after getting it reduced somewhat, but the 2nd Dem budget waited until President Obama was signed into office for it to get signed, but this is often called a Bush Budget.

Since then we have not had a Budget The Democratic Senate does not want to go on record [they want to not have voted on the overspending it is easier to get re-elected if your oponent does not have these votes to beat you up with]

We are suppose to have budgets, it has been grossly irresponcible for the Congress to not have a budget for these years. The house has passed budgets but not the Senate. If you know how this process works, when we have had divided govenement in the past, both chambers pass a budget and it goes to a joint committee and the genrally split the differnece.

The Senate claimed that they could not becasue of the Republicans int he Senate would not allow them to, this is a lie and they finnaly got called on this early last year, budgetary issues do not need 60 votes.

you can rail at the Social Issues Gay weddings, or women getting equal pay etc etc, but we are settings ourselves up for catastrophe by the spending trajectory we are on.
We are going to ruin the value of the Dollar. This will hurt the poor the most, that is what is so Ironic!
Cheers

Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.

:thumbup: Right on. But they will never get it.Four more years and deeper in the hole. I guess they will still blame Bush after obummer takes us down down down. But now he wont even care. Hes a lame duck.

gmcase Loc: Galt's Gulch

Hal, you are right except regarding him being a lame duck. He's a rodent.

Scubie Loc: Brunswick Georgia

The day they take our guns we all had better pack our camera's and move to Costa Rica, I hear it is nice.....lots of great organic food and wine....The people are great and love our money....