Republican Strategy

[midcan5]

Excellent analysis of current republican party.


'The Williamsburg Accord in January 2013 set the Republican strategy for Obama’s second term'


'You’ve probably never heard of the so-called “Williamsburg Accord” agreement that came out of the Republican retreat in early 2013. I’ll let Jonathan Chait tell the story, from an excellent New York magazine article (my emphasis and some reparagraphing everywhere):'


http://americablog.com/2013/10/republicans-wanted-shutdown-along-dems-already-lost-negotiations.html


"The first element of the strategy is a kind of legislative strike. Initially, House Republicans decided to boycott all direct negotiations with President Obama, and then subsequently extended that boycott to negotiations with the Democratic Senate. (Senate Democrats have spent months pleading with House Republicans to negotiate with them, to no avail.) This kind of refusal to even enter negotiations is highly unusual. The way to make sense of it is that Republicans have planned since January to force Obama to accede to large chunks of the Republican agenda, without Republicans having to offer any policy concessions of their own."


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/house-gops-legislative-strike.html


http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/2013/10/evolution-is-not-straight-line-march.html

[jillian]

Excellent analysis of current republican party.


'The Williamsburg Accord in January 2013 set the Republican strategy for Obama’s second term'


'You’ve probably never heard of the so-called “Williamsburg Accord” agreement that came out of the Republican retreat in early 2013. I’ll let Jonathan Chait tell the story, from an excellent New York magazine article (my emphasis and some reparagraphing everywhere):'


http://americablog.com/2013/10/republicans-wanted-shutdown-along-dems-already-lost-negotiations.html


"The first element of the strategy is a kind of legislative strike. Initially, House Republicans decided to boycott all direct negotiations with President Obama, and then subsequently extended that boycott to negotiations with the Democratic Senate. (Senate Democrats have spent months pleading with House Republicans to negotiate with them, to no avail.) This kind of refusal to even enter negotiations is highly unusual. The way to make sense of it is that Republicans have planned since January to force Obama to accede to large chunks of the Republican agenda, without Republicans having to offer any policy concessions of their own."


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/house-gops-legislative-strike.html


http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/2013/10/evolution-is-not-straight-line-march.html

that sounds about right.... which is why i keep saying it's extortion.

[Mainecoons]

Interesting that this conspiracy of yours never made it into your own MSM.

You don't think these fringe sites might be BSing you gullible leftists, do you?

Nah.

:grin:

[jillian]

Interesting that this conspiracy of yours never made it into your own MSM.

You don't think these fringe sites might be BSing you gullible leftists, do you?

Nah.

:grin:

no conspiracies... it's what they've said...

don't you listen when your party speaks? or do they not report that in the rightwing blogosphere?

[Mainecoons]

Care to address my point? Can you cite some mainstream references that support your conspiracy theories?

[jillian]

Kentucky GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were caught discussing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eziI4h3J0Eg&feature=youtu.be) on Wednesday night Republican messaging strategy during a hot mic moment in a Senate office building.After a CNN news hit, Paul came over to a “wired up” McConnell, who was sitting in front of a camera for his own interview. During the brief exchange, Paul suggested that Republicans would sound more reasonable if they struck a conciliatory tone on government funding than Democrats, who maintain that they won’t alter Obamacare as a condition of reopening the government.


*snip*

Paul suggested that after attempts to defund Obamacare in the spending bill failed in the Senate, it’s time to make Republicans appear more reasonable than Democrats.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-government-shutdown-97795.html#ixzz2gkqQRvtl

note the word "appear"

[Alyosha]

Kentucky GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were caught discussing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eziI4h3J0Eg&feature=youtu.be) on Wednesday night Republican messaging strategy during a hot mic moment in a Senate office building.After a CNN news hit, Paul came over to a “wired up” McConnell, who was sitting in front of a camera for his own interview. During the brief exchange, Paul suggested that Republicans would sound more reasonable if they struck a conciliatory tone on government funding than Democrats, who maintain that they won’t alter Obamacare as a condition of reopening the government.


*snip*

Paul suggested that after attempts to defund Obamacare in the spending bill failed in the Senate, it’s time to make Republicans appear more reasonable than Democrats.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-government-shutdown-97795.html#ixzz2gkqQRvtl

note the word "appear"



What part of that conversation is not true, what part of it is not normal political discussions? The Democratic "AHA!" on this one was so laughable.

But, Oooooooooohhhhhh during the Obama-Medvedev hot mic that was "no biggie".

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-nuclear-summit-obama-medvedev-idUSBRE82P0JI20120326

"This is my last election ... After my election I have more flexibility," Obama said, expressing confidence that he would win a second term.



I swear, people look for boogeymen.

[Mainecoons]

That isn't the topic and has nothing to do with it Jillian. This is Mr. Paul counseling conciliation. Isn't that what you want?

Care to stop diverting and answer my question now?

Why wouldn't the MSM, who are obviously highly sympathetic (putting it very mildly) to the Democrats out this Williamsburg "conspiracy" of yours all over the place when it happened?

Why is it only some of your fringe nutters, to use your favorite word, who have the scoop?

I think you've shown us here exactly why your views are so extreme and largely ignorant. You share this same problem with Nic, you get your information from fringe sources who exaggerate and make stuff up. It would be like one of us relying on Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity or Savage, or InfoWars, for all of our information.

Why don't you try broadening your reading and spending less time with your fellow nutters? Who knows, you might even outgrow your partisan immaturity.

[Alyosha]

I don't care where people get information from if it's accurate. Ad hominem circumstantial is a logical fallacy.

[Mainecoons]

I agree. I think you will find that fringe sites, right or left, rarely meet your criteria for accurate information. Instead, they seem to specialize in hyperbole and conspiracy theories.

Like this thread.

BTW, the Republican Congress was installed by an electorate that did not agree with their predecessors. They were not elected to go along to get along.

If the electorate no longer wants that, the Democrats will take the House back next year and hold the Senate.

[Chris]

Excellent analysis of current republican party.


'The Williamsburg Accord in January 2013 set the Republican strategy for Obama’s second term'


'You’ve probably never heard of the so-called “Williamsburg Accord” agreement that came out of the Republican retreat in early 2013. I’ll let Jonathan Chait tell the story, from an excellent New York magazine article (my emphasis and some reparagraphing everywhere):'


http://americablog.com/2013/10/republicans-wanted-shutdown-along-dems-already-lost-negotiations.html


"The first element of the strategy is a kind of legislative strike. Initially, House Republicans decided to boycott all direct negotiations with President Obama, and then subsequently extended that boycott to negotiations with the Democratic Senate. (Senate Democrats have spent months pleading with House Republicans to negotiate with them, to no avail.) This kind of refusal to even enter negotiations is highly unusual. The way to make sense of it is that Republicans have planned since January to force Obama to accede to large chunks of the Republican agenda, without Republicans having to offer any policy concessions of their own."


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/house-gops-legislative-strike.html


http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/2013/10/evolution-is-not-straight-line-march.html


You had to read another who told you what Jonathan Chait said to figure this out?

BTW, where's the analysis? You mean the opinionated interpretation that takes a strategy to defeat Obama's policies and turn it into something about achieving their own policies? I see no Rep strategy other than to be the party of no. You don't need to read someone who read someone who's opinion is merely a projection of his views to figure this out.

[Chris]

that sounds about right.... which is why i keep saying it's extortion.



Think you have the wrong word there. How could what midcan posted of what another said of what Chait said of what Reps are doing possibly be called extortion? Just trying to be inflammatory?

[Chris]

Kentucky GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul were caught discussing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eziI4h3J0Eg&feature=youtu.be) on Wednesday night Republican messaging strategy during a hot mic moment in a Senate office building.After a CNN news hit, Paul came over to a “wired up” McConnell, who was sitting in front of a camera for his own interview. During the brief exchange, Paul suggested that Republicans would sound more reasonable if they struck a conciliatory tone on government funding than Democrats, who maintain that they won’t alter Obamacare as a condition of reopening the government.


*snip*

Paul suggested that after attempts to defund Obamacare in the spending bill failed in the Senate, it’s time to make Republicans appear more reasonable than Democrats.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul-government-shutdown-97795.html#ixzz2gkqQRvtl

note the word "appear"



Has nothing to do with the point of the topic. Yet another thread distracted.

[midcan5]

Conspiracy? Huh! This is simply the tactics of the republican party out of power, the same tools were used when Clinton was elected. It is a curious irony of the right wing that out of power they are at their finest. Finest in the sense of fighting the opponent. In power they are failures as Reagan and the Bushs demonstrated so clearly. Conservatives cannot govern, they can only complain. Remember that no country was ever founded by conservatives nor ever will be. An excellent piece on why republicans can't govern is below another example of republican tactics.

"This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life." William E. Connolly See http://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com/2011/06/republican-pincer-machine.html

"The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush's incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president's principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character flaws are certainly real enough). And the orgy of bribery and special-interest dispensation in Congress is not the result of Tom DeLay's ruthlessness, as impressive a bully as he was. This conservative presidency and Congress imploded, not despite their conservatism, but because of it." Alan Wolfe "Why Conservatives Can't Govern" by Alan Wolfe (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0607.wolfe.html)

[Chris]

It's the same tools Dems use when Reps are in power.

The job of the opposition is to oppose.

[Peter1469]

Yes, when the GOP was in power, they spent like drunken democrats. I have no problem with them now deciding on fiscal responsibility.

[nic34]

It's the same tools Dems use when Reps are in power.

The job of the opposition is to oppose.

If the other guys do it, it's ok to do the same. Sure. There's a republi-crat comment if I ever heard one.

The job of the opposition is to offer an alternative, not just oppose.

[Chris]

If the other guys do it, it's ok to do the same. Sure. There's a republi-crat comment if I ever heard one.

The job of the opposition is to offer an alternative, not just oppose.

The government was designed for opposition. Opposition serves as a check on and thus limits what government can do.

[Chris]

Here's another view on that same strategy.


Obamanomics, RIP (http://spectator.org/archives/2013/10/01/obamanomics-rip/)


AN OLD SAYING sometimes attributed to Mark Twain goes: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” And so it is with the current view that government spending stimulates the economy. It doesn’t. Government stimulus spending, paid for by running up the federal credit card, is why we have the never-ending Great Recession, though the left keeps fantasizing that spending “saved us from a second great depression.”

Now for the good news: The spending spree is over and Barack Obama is a lame duck. He is legislatively paralyzed. The signature achievement of his first term, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is under steady fire, and his job approval rating continues to slip. But the best evidence of his shrinking agenda is the trend in federal spending. It’s falling, and not at a trickle. Think Niagara (figure 1).

http://i.snag.gy/BGFYX.jpg

Washington is experiencing one of the biggest fiscal retrenchments in modern history, and almost no one is paying attention. In the wake of the Bush-Pelosi-Obama spending splurge from 2008-11, federal spending has fallen by 3.1 percentage points of GDP. In the second quarter of 2009, according to National Income Products Account data, federal spending hit 26.5 percent of GDP, thanks to the Obama stimulus and the Bush recession. As of the second quarter of 2013, just as the sequester was beginning to take effect, federal spending as a share of GDP is down to 23.5 percent and, barring some unforeseen emergency, is on track to fall to around 23 percent by the end of this year. The turning point in spending from the binge years of 2009 and 2010 came when the Republicans took control of the House in 2011.

...

More there about how Keynesian economics have failed, but I'll leave you to follow the link and read it.

[midcan5]

"In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning." http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Shutdown_Blues

[TheInternet]

"In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning." http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Shutdown_Blues

I agree that this congress sucks. But, its because some of you voted for the Dems.

LOL at "a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it"

[midcan5]

Excellent piece on who controls the republican party and the minds of its followers today. Wealthy ideological think tanks on the right.

"Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.... It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government." http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html




Consider too the comment from one conservative republican in the house that they did not even know what they would get out their radical shutdown. Again an example of a lack of responsible thought. Followers instead of leaders.


"[P]eople like the Republican in the House who said he and his colleagues “have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is."" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/opinion/collins-frankenstein-goes-to-congress.html

[Chris]

Excellent piece on who controls the republican party and the minds of its followers today. Wealthy ideological think tanks on the right.

"Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.... It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government." http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html




Consider too the comment from one conservative republican in the house that they did not even know what they would get out their radical shutdown. Again an example of a lack of responsible thought. Followers instead of leaders.


"[P]eople like the Republican in the House who said he and his colleagues “have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is."" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/opinion/collins-frankenstein-goes-to-congress.html


The rich control the Dems as well. It's been show many a time on this forum how through crony capitalism Obama's policies are sucking the wealth out of the middle class and draining into the pockets of the rich.

Reps are no better.

http://i.snag.gy/fWri8.jpg

I don't expect partisans to get this.

[Alyosha]

The rich control the Dems as well. It's been show many a time on this forum how through crony capitalism Obama's policies are sucking the wealth out of the middle class and draining into the pockets of the rich.

Reps are no better.
I don't expect partisans to get this.

They never do.

http://gulagbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/osor201211041949gb.jpg