Bill McGurn, an editorialist for the Wall Street Journal and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, opines in today's Journal that Republicans were prepared to vote for the stimulus -- if only the Administration had given a little.
For another, a stimulus package with strong bipartisan support was well within his reach. Even at full strength, the Republicans didn't have the votes to obstruct the stimulus if they had wanted to. And with a little imagination, a White House in search of bipartisan support might have easily picked off Republicans by exploiting differences within the party.So with relatively small changes to the stimulus ("for example, a few more infrastructure projects") McGurn says Rep. Thad McCotter told him, "as many as 30 or 40 in the House might have signed on".
Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter suggests, for example, infrastructure as one area popular with some of his fellow Republicans. Had Democrats added, say, a few more infrastructure projects, perhaps a half-dozen Republicans in the Senate and as many as 30 or 40 in the House might have signed on. But the White House went the other way.
The problem with McGurn's logic is that the administration did wind up giving a little bit. And no Republicans came along for the ride.
First, take the original stimulus bill as passed by the House. This bill contained $275 billion in tax cuts and $544 in government spending. No Republicans voted for it. Fair enough.
As a point of comparison, we can look at the Camp/Cantor Amendment, which would have gutted the bill of all spending provisions but for an extension of unemployment benefits while increasing the tax cut provisions. The bill under the Camp Amendment, as best as I can tell, would have contained $47 billion in spending (the cost of the unemployment benefits) and $363 billion in tax cuts. Out of 178 Republicans in the House, 168 voted for the Camp Amendment.
We can plot these two versions of the bill on a graph:
So what would have happened if a compromise had been reached somewhere between the two poles -- somewhere along the line I have drawn? Presumably, some fraction of the Republicans who voted for the Camp Amendment would have voted for it?
It turns out that we have a way to find out. That is because the House had a second chance to vote on the stimulus, this time in the form of the Conference Report negotiated with the Senate. The Conference Report contained less spending -- $506 billion instead of $544 billion -- and more tax cutting -- $281 billion instead of $275 billion -- than the original bill. In both cases, it moved away from the original bill -- which zero Republicans voted for -- and in the direction of the Camp Amendment -- which 168 voted for. More specifically, the Conference Report moved about 7 percent of the way away from the original House version of the bill and toward the Camp Amendment:
So if the Conference Report moved 7 percent of the way toward the Camp Amendment, a good first guess might have been that 7 percent of the 168 Republicans who voted for the Camp Amendment would have voted for the Conference Report. That would have meant about 12 Republican Representatives. But how many Republicans actually voted for the Conference Report? Zero. Zip. Nada.
Obviously this is a superficial analysis. But if Republicans were looking for a small compromise of the nature that McCotter suggested, they got one -- and none of the 30 or 40 swing votes that McCotter had promised were swayed.
89 comments
*
FIRST!
Sirota Sucks
I can't speak for any Republicans, but as a person who was upset about the style of spending in HR1, I'll say that it was more a matter of what can easily be percieved as a glut of pet projects pushed by House Democrats. I have, also, always seen shovel-ready projects as previously rejected and generally poor places for investment.
I know that many can point out Rahm's beautifully orchestrated bridge-building today and there are plenty of examples of projects that will work out just fine. But there really was very little investigation into where hundreds of billions of these dollars is slated to go.
I'm just saying.
Republicans are betting on us not pulling out of this recession by 2010 which happens to be the mid terms. Unless the accelerated job loss starts a dramatic slow down, they may just get lucky.
Some economists have concluded we will begin to see growth in the 4th quarter. My bet is some of these economists didn't foresee the mess we are in either so I'm not sure who to believe.
In all honesty, House and Senate Democrats must be extremely confident in Obama's plan. They have put all their chips in and supported Obama. The political ramifications for all those up for re-election in 2010 will be tough if his team can't turn this economy around in time.
Democrats choice to fully support Obama and the American people with the possibility of losing the 2010 elections is a clear example of putting country over party.
Any self-respecting right wing ideologue like McGurn reserves the right to rewrite history at any time.
They started out a couple of months ago rewriting the role of the New Deal in reducing the impact of the Great Depression. They now rewrite the timing of their "opposition" to the stimulus bill -- Boehner/Cantor demanded 100% GOP opposition to the bill before they even met with Obama. Any elements of the final bill that actually took into account GOP recommendations in advance of the voting "don't count" as bipartisan because, as Lindsey Graham says, "I know what bipartisan means," or as his loser of a political mentor John McCain says, "it where two parties sit down across the table and negotiate."
All these are tales told by losers and people who have only a loose connection to truthfulness (never mind the test of "truthiness" -- they don't remotely seem to be "truthy" either).
I agree with your overall conclusions, but I don't think the Conference Report vote is a smoking gun by any means. It might be a better analysis to try to find a threshold, if one exists, of "Republican acceptability": a point at which some Republicans would consider the proportion of spending projects to tax cuts to be acceptable.
7% of the way toward the Camp Amendment could have been easily dismissed by the Republicans in Congress as "not enough compromise".
I think what McGurn MEANT to say was that had the Dems had added 30 or 40 EARMARKS for projects in their districts, they could have gotten 30 or 40 Republican votes in the House.
Heck, we buy off the Sunis in Iraq. If Obama wants Republican votes he may have to do the same for them.
The Republicans were never going to compromise. Nate predicted that months ago before the details were even released. They gained nothing politically from going along with the plan. If it works, Obama and the Dems would get the credits regardless. 95% of the whining by Republicans was just political posturing. Yes, the Dems had pet projects in the plan, but so did Republicans (their tax cuts). If Dems had their way completely, there would have been a tax increase on the rich instead.
Obama already admitted his mistake. They compromised in the original plan. The Republicans then cast that as a Democrat only plan and there wasn't much room for more compromise. The next step will be for Republicans searching for any mis-allocation of the funds and roast the Dems for it. I hope in 2 years the public realizes that the only Republican alternative was just an extention of their policies that helped get us in this mess. That or doing nothing. History shows that probably won't happen though.
I think it comes down to inherent differences in how both parties define "compromise" .. The Democrats see it as starting on opposite ends and meeting somewhere in the middle ("middle" in this case meaning representative of their advantage in Congress, so they'd get 60% of what they wanted). The Republicans see it as convincing everyone that they alone are right and getting 100% of what they want (hence why the Cantor amendment was almost all tax cuts, which wasn't a compromising proposal). The Republicans wanted tax cuts, and got just under 40% in tax cuts, but did that bring in one Republican vote? No.
They obviously wanted to use this as a political rallying cry, and I'm guessing even if the bill was 98% tax cuts, they would have still united against it. They aren't against the stimulus, per se, but rather against Democrats. The claim that small changes in the bill would have brought in more Republican votes is willfully ignorant.
For a site subtitled "Politics Done Right" and hanging it's hat on a mathematically rigorous approach as opposed to biased opinions, this post misses the mark. Who's to say the swing of votes would be linear? I can come up with a dozen other points, but Nate, I'm disappointed. Your politics is showing through.
You know Nate, this article is making you look like a partisan hack. Personally, I'm fine with that, since I'm a dirty liberal, but I just wanted to make sure that you're headed the way of Fox News on the opposite end.
Anyways, obviously the Republicans will just sit back and say that a 7% compromise is really no compromise at all, and I'd have to agree with them. There's no way to disprove this argument, so I'm just going to let it be. Of course, it doesn't take a genius to see what that the Republicans are just playing a political game.
In any Government, there's usually the party in power and the opposition. The opposition is called the opposition for a very good reason, since their only choice is to oppose the current party in power. If the Republicans had come together with the Democrats they'd be gaining absolutely nothing. If the stimulus works, the Dems get the credit and the Rep get nothing. If it fails, everyone looks stupid. By opposing the stimulus, the Republicans get to say, "The Dems are the bad ones" if the economy doesn't recover, and it succeeds the Dems will look good, but this was going to happen no matter how the Republicans voted. Plus the Republicans will be able to say 'our plan would have worked too, and fast' without needing to back it up. Furthermore as the minority party, the Republicans knew that the stimulus was going to pass, so they could hedge their political bets without hurting the economy (this applies to the few moderates who would have liked to vote for the stimulus).
If the R's were so close to 30-40 votes for the bill, WHY DIDN'T THEY SAY SO BEFORE? And if they didn't say so, how were the Dems supposed to know? Juris is right. It's total revisionism. And Obama should be able to exploit it fully.
I can't look at Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, or John McCain without wanting to hurl now. After accusing Obama of being willing to lose the war to get elected, it seems they're willing to block any moves to address the crisis that they can't take total credit for.
Looking back at the Bush style of bipartisanship, Obama and the Dems are models of civility. One can only hope that the Republican strategy ends up biting them in their sorry elephantine asses.
Republicans got exactly what they wanted. They wanted the Bill to pass, and they also wanted every other available Republican (Outside those needed to pass it) to vote against it.
Had this bill not passed there would have been hell to pay and the GOP would have been blamed for obstructing the recovery. An eight year old can see this was totally politics for a run up to the 2010 midterms.
The vast majority of Republicans in the house and senate are from very red districts, thus are much more worried about primary challenges from their right rather than general elections from democrats so it was an easy political calculation for most of them.
Based on everything I've heard from economists, most are betting we'll start to see recovery in the second half of this year but we will continue losing jobs until well into next year. The stimulus will work as advertised but it will only lessen the blow and keep the economy from diving to 11-12% unemployment.
Banking and housing are much more important for gauging the turnaround. A good program to deal with the "Troubled Assets" and figuring out how to keep people in their homes will ultimately be more important than the stimulus.
@ liberal_defender_of_freedom
I'm not sure I agree that the congressional Democrats siding with Obama was such a courageous act; Obama is a good 20-30 points more popular than they are, and as long as the president has the bully pulpit (and charisma far exceeding Pelosi, Hoyer, and Reid put together) a pissing match would be a certain loss for the assembled Representatives and Senators.
Regardless, even if the congressional Dems could hope to politically survive a fight with the president, how would they benefit? They would either cave and look weak, or successfully obstruct the president during an economic crisis and precipitate a "throw the bums out" environment (which no one in the majority party wants).
The Democratic Party did the right thing by coalescing behind the President, but let's not pretend that doing so wasn't in the party's immediate political interests.
Why on earth would the Republicans compromise and deprive themselves of the opportunity for all the peacock puffery we've seen these last few weeks? Their bravado in the wake of the first House vote told the whole story.
Maybe they actually believe there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Today had really good posts, very on point. Thanks Nate and Sean!
Matt J. H. I couldn't agree more with your comment. They wanted it to pass, just without any of their help (except some Republican senators who they will publically wank about but shove them plenty of money for their re-election campaign.) Also, I don't see an increase in consumer confidence anytime soon with peole owing twice what their home is currently valued. I agree that keeping people in their homes will be key to recovery.
WV- (because I can't resist) Dissynch. The Republicans are in dissynch with what America wants and needs right now.
I can see a couple of avenues for the next big bill, be it the one on mortgages, health care, or whatever:
1. President Obama, before the bill is actually introduced, tells the GOOPers that they are invited to sit down with him and the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to discuss the bill. That way, when they say "We didn't have any opportunity to have input into the bill", they automatically write their Democratic opponent's campaign commercial; or
2. Introduce the bill without ANY GOOPer input, but make it clear that GOOPer input in wanted and needed. Then when the GOOPers don't have any proposals, and say "We didn't have any opportunity to have input", they automatically write their Democratic opponent's campaign commercial.
If the GOOPers actions on this bill are the same tactics they pull on future bills, those actions will be lose/lose to the GOOPers for the next round, and win/win for the Democrats and the Democratic candidates to sitting GOOPers up for reelection in 2010.
Current GOP will go the way of the Whigs..doomed. They are dishonest despicable, incompetent and filthy.
The moron crescent in Nascar land may still give a GOP shit if they aren't too busy trying to sodomize daughters and sisters but the rest of us will readily endorse the offered change.
Eric Boyd,
I have to defend Nate on this one. I think you are missing the point. Even if it is not linear, the point is not even -one- republican voted when there was a 7% change. (keeping in mind the original proposal already included tax cuts, which the Republicans wanted)
Remember Nate's post is a reply to another editorial. His point is if there were really 30 or 40 votes almost ready to vote yes...with just a little bit more compromise, then you would have likely seen at least 1, 2, or 3 votes with a 7% compromise.
There is NO way there were 30 Republican votes ready to vote yes if the compromise was just a little bit more. The Republicans wanted much more. I think they are spoiled from those years where they had total control and are not use to negotiating.
This was pretty lame. While it's likely true that the Republicans weren't exactly all warm and fuzzy about compromise on the stimulus, it was ridiculous to take two points and draw a line (and Nate, you should know me well enough to know that I don't make it a habit of taking potshots at you) to support that conclusion.
I'm sorry, statistical analysis can't wear hats. This entry smacks of using statistical analysis in order to support a decided-upon conclusion.
outside the beltway & beyond the political elites, the people do not give a whit whether bills are passed with bipartisan support or not - they want action & tangible accomplishments NOW!
3 of 40 Goper senators is nowhere near 'bipartisan', and neither would have been 30 of 180+ representatives.
instead the STIM got held up & watered down to accomodate the few while pissing off the many & shortchanging the opportunity to maximize this one best chance to crash land the economy with minimal further damage or loss of life
everyone knows this bill is too little & they will have to go back begging for more while the 'homeland' burns...
that is your rational progressives in action, settling for the glass half full
CA is gonna shut down; is the entire country headed toward it's knees ???
now is the time for radical populism & aggressive New Deal massive efforts to right the economy
to hell with the obstructionists & damm the half-hearted compromising & negotiating as we watch the Titanic sink below the waves
congressional ratings are up substantially since the election - and NOT due to bipartisanship or compromising, but because the DEM electorate supports an action-oriented majority to deliver real progress imho
you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself...
[oops, do I need to cite that reference ?] Rickie Nelson, 'Garden Party'
There is simply no point in taking Republican lies seriously. There was NEVER going to be any stimulus bill other than PURE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH that they were going to support.
Period.
They made their decision to oppose the stimulus bill BEFORE they met with Obama.
Republicans are addicted to their own rhetoric and utterly divorced from reality. They simply like hearing themselves talk. Rush Limbaugh is the voice of their party and he says "stand firm" against the bill and that's what they did. It's all posturing themselves for 2010.
What happens to the American people as the economy continues in a death spiral is of no concern to theirs.
In there were any true justice in this country scumbags this selfish and evil would be beaten and driven across the land like whipped dogs.
CUGEL
agreed. my complaint is that this bill is so much titled toward GOPer tax cuts & has so little stimulus + infra-structure that it is like trying to fight our way out of the box we are in with one or both hands tied behind our backs.
where is the real big deal stimulus that we know is necessary sooner rather than later ?
the DEMs never even put it on the table or tried to fight for it - instead led by Obama they compromised it away from the start.
oh sure, the rational appeasers claim that without 60 senate votes it 'could never get passed'
how do we know that when it never got put to the test ??? the situation demanded putting forth the best DEM proposal & daring the GOPers to filibuster while the economy sinks further.
would Snowe & Spectre have sat by & allowed that ? would the public have stood for it when even GOP governors like Crist & Swartz back Obama & beg for more stimulus spending [not further tax cuts] ?
IF the GOPers in the senate could prevent cloture, THEN maybe compromise - but why throw in the towel without fighting for a real STIM rather than a half-assed back-baked stim ???
sorry, that was not a good strategy as well as allowing the GOPers to control the MSM meme
hoping they 'learned their lessons well...' but I am not at all convinced they did since they caved so easily up front when even McGurn argues the GOPers could not stop the STIM
now Obama has no way to claim that his real plan could have done more when he never fought for a bigger better STIMULUS without counter-productive GOPer tax cuts
opportunity was squandered - why, for expediency & to save political capital ?? for what, when, why ???
I can call further BS on this theory that republicans would have supported the bill if there was more infrastructure spending.
This amendment:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00033
Which was supposed to "strengthen the infrastructure investments" only got 2 republican votes and failed to get the required 3/5.
I would bet that if you take a closer look at the votes on amendments you would see that the vast majority of republicans only voted yea on ones that either cut taxes or spending.
The problem with bipartisanchip is that is requires movement from both sides. Obama did make moves to the Republican congressional delegations, they did not respond on the stimulus. I think thats sad. The GOP's idea of bipartisanship seems to be 'Do what we want or we won't even do anything at all supportive'. Rather than give and take.
FWIW I am not sure bipartisanship in terms of getting GOP support is all that important on some issues. I don't think the Democratic Party should ever feel beholden to the GOP, if the GOP wants to make a contribution then fine, but they need to understand that the Democrats were elected to control all 3 arms of the process, short of the judiciary.
On the reverse the Democratic Party needs to understand that simply ignoring the Republicans is not politically sensible, and as such Obama's outreach efforts are very smart in my view, whether or not they come to anything.
The republicans gave the dems a blessing in disguise..Obama passes his stimulus bill, looks bipartisan, and they throw public opinion of their party in the trash. I hope GOP senators minus snowe, collins, specter continue driving themselves off a cliff.
Matt JH is right. This is a political game, and the Republicans are hoping that the failure of the stimulus bill will drag down Obama's popularity before 2010. Problem is, Obama is pretty popular, and he did a pretty good job of making the case for the stimulus before the vote. When he went out on the road, responding to Republican critics, you started to see support in the country shift back toward the stimulus. Truth is, whether it works or not, Obama is perfectly capable of outmaneuvering the Republicans on this one and ultimately winning the perception fight. Maybe not in Eric Cantor's district, but certainly in every district that the Republicans would have to win in order to take back the House. The Democrats may have won something of a Pyrrhic victory here by watering down the stimulus bill and still getting zero Republican votes, but in order for them to lose in the long term, voters would have to decide that Obama wasn't negotiating in good faith. I don't see that happening.
Just another lesson in why the radical progressive position was right. Make the stimulus bill just a notch short of socialism. Then the moderates can hack big chunks of it out, but it still is enough to get things going (which the current bill is not) and they will still vote for it.
So moderates are happy cuz they look important and centrist, lefties are happier cuz more actual good stuff goes in the bill, and the country is happier because the bill has a better chance of working.
Score: Radical Progressives 1, Rational Progressives 0.
The GOP is full of it, the dems gave them a lot, look at all the tax cuts.They are playing poker, they are gambling that the ecnonomy will still be a mess in 2010 and they can make big gains.
If they are wrong the party may be doomed to almost 3rd party status. They will be looked upon as obstructionists hoping that america fails.The dems gave a lot that`s the problem they gave up to much in the beginning so the GOP couldn`t make to many demands.
They are sore loser and don`t understand they lost the election and their ideas were rejeted by the country.
No matter what happens by 2012 things should be better and Obama should win in a massive landslide especially if they run Palin. All Obama will have to say are you better off than you were 4 yaers ago!If the answer isn`t yes we are all screwed.
Obama got everything he wanted out of the stimulus package: he got a bill that will help the economy recover more quickly, and he got Republicans to paint themselves as ugly obstructionists more interested in bringing down his government than in fixing problems.
Obama now has the best of both worlds: if the stimulus package works, he can take all the credit and remind people who Republicans opposed it. If it fails, he can say that he tried to do more, but those nasty Republicans are trying to sabotage him.
Obama's approval rating is at 69%; Boehner's approval rating is at 18%. Who won this battle?
How can anyone support a bill that they didn't even have time to read? Has anyone on this site read it? Obama wanted to rush it through so no one had time to read and understand the dribble in it. The public was unable to scrutinize it. The kool-aid drinking, Obama followers won't question him. Thank God the Republicans had the guts to stand up to this.
Whenever a president violates House rules and rushes a bill of this magnitude through, questions should be raised.
Do legislators ever read bills in their entirety?
No, I do not spend my days reading hundreds of pages of legalize enumerating budget markups. The phone book makes more interesting reading than that.
At least they spent more time reading this bill than they did reading the odiously misnamed "Patriot Act".
It seems like the Republican Party is turning into a classic european party with issue-based voting and closed voting within the parliamentary group.
Let me explain this: In Europe, the national party systems consist of more than 2 parties, making coalition building and focussing of each party on a few key issues necessary. There is a lot of homogenity among party members because they choose the party that suits them the most, and they had several parties to choose from, meaning that each politician finds a perfect party that agrees with him on almost every issue. As a consequence, the members of each party all agree on almost everything and voting against the party line is a huge exception.
In America, there is a two-party-system. It's there because you need a big national presence to get into the White House. Small parties don't have a chance. They are useless and can't build their organisation because noone is willing to spend his whole life in political irrelevance to build a new party.
So there are just 2 parties to chose from, and the Democrats are the party that chose to always be a little to the left of the Republicans, or the other way round. Both parties are trying to define the real center of the political spectrum and compete for the place closer to it. However, since the 50 states differ from each other that center is always somewhere else, meaning state parties have to adjust.
As a consequence of having to adjust and having only 2 viable parties, party line voting has not been that important in America. An Arkansas Democrat might be to the right of a Vermont Republican, but he'll still be to the left of an Arkansas Republican.
Lately, the Republicans have begun to behave like a classic party in a multi-party system. They have voluntarily moved away from the center ("going back to the conservative roots") and they have a lot of intra-party-discipline. So now, even someone like Anh Cao (the new Republican Congressman of Louisiana) voted with the party as a representative of a heavily democratic district.
If the Republicans still behaved like the national party they'd have to be to get into power (always being close to the center, just slightly to the right of the Democrats), we would in fact see a small number of Republicans coming out in favor of the Stimulus Bill. But the Republicans are sacrifying electability in favor of ideology.
This is the situation where are 3rd party can actually thrive. It has to be positioned slightly to the right of the Democrats and to the left of the Republicans so they are regarded as electable and potentially successful in a national race. The problem though is that this 3rd party would have to find personnel and build a national organisation. That's only going to happen if the Republicans are perceived to have left the center for good.
The moderates in the Senate, those that crafted the Stimulus Bill compromise, represent the potential place of a 3rd party. And they managed to pull the Democratic Party right into the poltical center. Thus, the question is whether it would have been wise for Republicans to compete with the Democrats, knowing that this bill was as politically viable as it could be. Maybe it would have been useless to come up with something better and so they just conceded this fight.
And...why did Obama want any Republican votes? He didn't need any. In the name of partisanship? Come on. When this thing fails miserably, he wanted to be able to blame Republicans.
If he was confident in this bill, he would have wanted the Dems to take all the credit. If Obama is right, it will be the end of the Republican party. If Obama is wrong, the Republicans will win in 2010.
The failure that the Republicans have achieved is that now any economic recovery is firmly at the feet of the Democratic Party and its President. ANY tick up in the economy between now and November 2010 is attributable (however wrongly) to the governing party. That could have disastrous implications for the GOP over the next 4-8, and maybe even more, years. By not playing the game the Republicans have washed there hands of what happens to the economy. Now I guess if it doesn't recover in that time the GOP can point at every Democrat in the country. But roght now the GOP is takuing a big risk playing that game, given what a mess the economy is in right now.
@markymark
Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe some of these clowns like Barney Frank, with their hands in Freddie and Fannie, caused the situation we're in now. The housing and credit markets caused this economic downturn. Liberals insisted that anyone who wanted to own a house should, regardless of ability to pay. Interest rates were low and house prices skyrocketed. Loans went bad and houses values tumbled. With the help of the media, the Repulicans are all to blame.
On a side note...why is Obama wasting tax payer money and burning fossil fuels by flying all over the country to sign bills and give campaign speeches. He couldn't sign the bill in DC? More liberal hypocrisy.
Nate,
More times than not you use reasonable mathematical analysis to form conclusions. This post is NOT one of those times. A 7% linear movement towards the Camp Amendment should not necessarily signify that 7% of the GOP would vote in favor of the bill.
This would be like saying gas prices are currently at $50/gallon and every person would be satisfied if gas prices were $1/gallon so if gas prices are reduced to $25.50/gallon then 50% of people would be satisfied. The current price does not indicate the bare minimum value of complete dissent. I'm sure you already knew this though.
You're better than this. Please don't damage your integrity with such nonsensical phony statistics.
There's nothing wrong with the math/stats in the article, or the basic argument about using the difference between the two votes as a truth test.
First of all there's plenty of evidence that the Congressional GOP planned in advance to offer no votes for the stimulus. It's their 2010 election plan. It's also the Limbaugh Plan to bring down the Obama presidency and the Congressional Democratic agenda.
In short, ANY reasonable stimulus plan that involved significant relief to those most in distress or that involved mainly spending on infrastructure -- rather than tax breaks for the upper income brackets -- would have been opposed by the Congressional GOP.
Second, it may be true that Nate should not have imposed a proportionality assumption but instead supposed some sort of threshold in tax relief to total relief before the bill would swing significant numbers of GOP members. But with so little input data, any particular threshold would only have been speculative. That the resulting bill got ZERO GOP votes in the House is telling.
I should add that Obama's ability to move three GOP Senators to his side is consistent with Nate's article some weeks ago that the Democrats do not need 60 seats in the the Senate to avoid a GOP filibuster. It's probably true that the result in the Senate did make McConnell wet his pants. Just look at the crybaby-like behavior of Lindsey Graham and John McCain.
This may not be true for all bills, but clearly Obama was working for these moderate GOP crossover votes early on; and it paid off, though obviously giving those three pivotal voters a lot of influence over the content of the final bill
GROG
I am not talking here about actual fault on actual reasons for the current crisis or the current recovery plans, I am talking about political perception. And the truth is that the GOP has guaranteed any credit for economic recovery over the next 2-4 years goes to the Democratic Party.
FWIW I think that an awful lot of people from an awful lot of backgrounds could take responibilty for what has happened. But I think its interestin that the economy was probably never as strong as people made out in the 1990s, and ordinary working people have never had it as easy as the media would have you believe. The only reaons that it seems worse today than it did a year ago is that the banking amnd financial sectors have become involved and credit has stopped. I think any economic gains during the Democratic administration in the 1990s were somewhat superficial at best, accept for reducing the deficit. Many of the jobs that were created where not sustainable. But to wash the GOP from all blame is also faintly ridiclous. When Geroge W Bush said congratulated a voter for working two jobs and made that out to be somehow desirable, and his audience applauded, You get an idea of what has been wrong in the system for a long time. In order to keep up, ordinary people have had to sacrifice hugely. The problem with bonuses for bank bosses isn't a new one. How is it right that some bankers can be on huge bonuses when other peoplein the economy are working 2 or 3 jobs?
markymark,
A true conservative Republican would not want his name attached to this bill. And like I said, it may be the end of the party. It's just refreshing that some politicians are actually standing up for what they believe in, politics aside.
There is no question that Republicans and Dems are to blame for the current situation. It would just be nice to see some intellectual honesty from the President. He constantly hammers home the point the the policies of the Bush admin. have gotten us to this point. He campaigned on the fact that trickle down economics doesn't work, yet his policies so far are pro trickle down. (ie, bank bailouts, auto bailouts.)
There's a lot of hyprocisy on his global warming stance. There's no need to fly his private jet across the country to sign a bill and stay at this resort in Arizona. Government excess is OK but corporate excess is not OK???
Anyone cracking on Nate, get real. The initial claim by McCgum is ridiculous and Nate's only putting up one of a myriad of arguments against it.
At the same time, a brief historical digression for anyone who thinks the lesson from this is to go uber liberal in future bills. Even the most popular president in the last century (at least while in office) - FDR, who had a filibuster proof Dem majority - couldn't get everything he wanted (including an expanded Supreme Court). Why? Because Dems weren't all populists then, just like they aren't all now. He wasted nearly a year on the court bill and ultimately failed when he tried to play his own popularity too hard and wouldn't compromise. Those failures, in turn, caused him to have to rebuild support in his own party, especially conservatives, which led to abandoning significant portions of his agenda in favor of a contraction in government spending in 1937 to appease that wing. That, in turn, put the brakes on the recovery that had been going on in 1934-36 as measured by things like employment, household income, etc. FDR let the ideal become the enemy of the good and in doing so lost both. Clinton did something similar with health care, which played into Newt's hands. The current President has shown repeatedly he's not as focused on ideals as results, something I hope will continue.
Interesting side note - Gallup and Roper were just getting polling off the ground back then, so the average person didn't have geeks like Nate to help us understand which way the wind was blowing and politicians had to rely much more on their own gut feelings.
BTW, all of the FDR court-packing/polling stuff is laid out in a fun read by Burt Solomon in FDR v The Constitution.
Does anyone else find it funny that it says Politics Done Right on FiveThirtyEight? Don't you mean Politics Done Left?
To see why this post is awful, look at the ultimatum game. People act like this all the time, don't be so partisan.
GROG: He campaigned on the fact that trickle down economics doesn't work, yet his policies so far are pro trickle down. (ie, bank bailouts, auto bailouts.)
These are not trickle-down policies. Trickle-down is "give tax cuts to the wealthy and they'll create jobs so that everyone else will benefit too." That's certainly not the policy of this administration or the majority in Congress.
The bank bailout was to keep credit markets functioning. It wasn't intended as a gift to the wealthy; it was intended as a means so that average consumers and businesses wouldn't see their ability to take out loans completely cut off. And the auto bailout was so that workers wouldn't lose their jobs. Trying to prevent the loss of tens or hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs is hardly trickle-down. So there's no inconsistency.
It's just refreshing that some politicians are actually standing up for what they believe in, politics aside.
The problem is when what one believes in conflicts with readily available facts. Republicans keep pushing tax cuts (is there any problem that can't be solved with tax cuts in their view?) even though most economists say tax cuts are not a very efficient way of effecting stimulus. In fact, we tried it under W and most of the benefit was saved, not spent. But they still believe it will work, despite the evidence.
I'm all for standing up for what you believe in, but it's better if there are some facts to back it up.
As for hypocrisy, I'm really tired of Republicans criticizing the stimulus bill as "generational theft" (says McCain) and then having 36 Republicans in the Senate voting for a huge tax cut proposal that would be a far larger generational wealth transfer than anything in the stimulus bill (only Snowe, Collins, Specter, and Voinovich opposed it). So I'm really not sure what they "believe in" except more tax cuts, regardless of the consequences.
After receiving the Republican nomination for President in 1860, Lincoln was implored to reassure Southerners who professed alarm at the course of the Republican campaign.
"There are no such men," Lincoln replied, explaining that this is "the trick by which the South breaks down every honest man."
Nothing has changed in 150 years--except that it is now the Republicans (although still Southerners) who are employing the crocodile tears. There is not one scrap of concern for bipartisanship in the entire Republican Party.
GROG,
I am quite happy anyone opposing the bailout, I have no issue with anyone taking a principled stance. And as I say its possible that in the end that principled stance might pay dividends for the GOP. BUT politically, as a caucus, just going no no no puts all the Republican chips on the bailout not working. I think if the GOP had taken a more thoughtful response, and said well we like these bits, but these bits we don't like, then the GOP would have some wiggle room whatever happened.
After all, the bailout is just a guess on everyones part. Noone right now knows exactly what it will take to fix the huge issues the economy faces, and if they claim they KNOW this is going to work they are lying. Its a start, and it might after a while help, but the Democrats were forced to gamble on this working, because they are in power. What the GOP faield to realise, at least as I see it, is that they did not have to gamble on it failing. They could have found a way to be supportive, and ended up with some of the credit maybe.
The Republicans were never going to compromise. Nate predicted that months ago before the details were even released. They gained nothing politically from going along with the plan. If it works, Obama and the Dems would get the credits regardless.
This makes sense as applied to the Republican leadership. It is absolutely untrue as applied to individual Republican representatives and senators.
In the current milieu, you can forget about "bipartisanship". It can't happen.
As I mentioned before -
1) The current Republican party is very much still the party of Limbaugh, Coulter, Rove, Gingrich, DeLay, and George W. Bush. I could name a hundred, or with enough time, a thousand more such names. I deliberately mentioned examples who either have never held office, or don't hold office right now, yet represent leading "thinkers" or perfect examples.
They are inflexibly committed to a stereotyped right wing ideology, and one part of that right wing ideology is to "completely destroy" opponents. The impact of the ideology is not important; all that matters is to gain power and enforce it. Deception is accepted and admired if used to destroy an opponent. Moderates have long been derided as "RINOs" and purged. By definition they have painted themselves into a corner. They can't compromise. I stand by all of these comments as perfectly reasonable observations.
2) Furthermore, they have the delusion, also accepted as valid by the media and a certain variety of hand-wringing, self-pitying progressive, that they are the "default" party. Their assumption is that if, at any time, Democrat policies do not succeed in creating a utopia before the next election cycle, Republicans will roar back into power. Given this assumption, and given that the impact of their ideology is unimportant to them, it is "logical" for them to proceed by obstructing and obfuscating. Yet I believe that if the economy is still sub-optimal in 2010, the Republicans will benefit from that about as much as they did in 1936.
I agree with the poster who compared the Republicans to the Whigs, except that it's an insult to the Whigs, and that something called a "Republican" party may continue to exist. But if the name survives, it will have to be attached to a very different party.
For all the despicable qualities of, say, the 1870's Democrat party, the Democrats never had to make the kind of radical change Republicans will if a party of that name is to sustainably exist. The Democrats were always pragmatic, flexible, and potentially open to taking the humane side of an issue, relative to the standards of the various times.
A quick thought. The Republican Party has become right now somewhat of an out of touch party, at least at a congressional, federal level. I think plenty of state Republican parties are in a strong position. Now what is not true to say is that it will no longer exist. Its stronger than that, and there is nothing yet to replace it. There is no great movement yet to replace the GOP with say the Reform Party or whatever else. I don't really think the GOP will change much at all on most issues, it will continue to focus an appeal on social conservatives and big money. Rumours of the GOPs demise are greatly exaggerated.
Harold,
I think you're right regarding Limbaugh, Coulter, etc being the face of the GOP. Sadly, the party deffinately lacks leadership. Too many Republicans have led as moderates, including Bush who was not a conservative.
The party needs to get back to it's conservative roots and it will again begin to win elections. McCain's campaign is a perfect example of how moderate Republicans will lose elections.
GROG said
The party needs to get back to it's conservative roots and it will again begin to win elections
---------------------
Which conservative roots are these? The ones that Abraham Lincoln laid down, and TR built on? How many right wing republicans have been succesful in nationwide elections? I would give you Reagan, Gingrich and Dubya, but beyond that the well is running dry. Before Reagan the GOP was a party lead by moderates, with a tolerance of a few right wing nuts like McCarthy and Goldwater. Then at some point in the 60s or 70s the lunatics took over the asylum.
Oh BTW for the sake of political balance I would also point out that very few 'left wing' Democrats have led the nation. Maybe Tip O'Neil, maybe FDR, maybe LBJ (at least on Domestic issues) maybe one or two others in the speakers chair. Point is that its easiest to win elections from the center.
The original propostion is probably bogus, but Nate's linear regression test doesn't address it at all. Not that it was succeptible to mathematical analysis.
He said that more infrastructure projects might have attracted some support from the GoP representatives, not more tax cuts. Well, maybe, but the question then has to be, which infrastructure projects, and who? One man's infrastructural investment is another man's pork sandwich of course.
Either way, Nate seems to have missed the point by 90 degrees.
Nate, you could go back even farther, say by looking at what Senate Democrats wanted when they told Obama early on that his proposal contained too little spending and too many tax cuts. Although there was never a vote on such a proposal, I think it was pretty clear that a bigger package with more spending would have been the initially "Democratic" starting point. So Obama had already given a significant amount of ground to Republicans in the first package he pitched. Obviously, he got no takers then, so why should he expect that further modest compromise would change that?
I've got to say that Nate's fake math on this post seems completely bogus.
Usually Nate makes sense when he does the math, but this is moronic. 7% of the way on a pretend line between those two positions should mean 7% more votes? Really?
Nate's better than this.
GROG: The party needs to get back to it's conservative roots and it will again begin to win elections. McCain's campaign is a perfect example of how moderate Republicans will lose elections.
What are the theoretical or evidentiary supports for either of these assertions?
2008 was going to be a hard year for any Republican to win nationwide. Do most people really think Romney or Huckabee would have done any better than McCain? So the fact that McCain lost is little evidence that moderation is doomed to failure.
Also, McCain largely abandoned a moderate campaign. His caucus essentially forced him to forgo his preferred running mate and pick Palin instead, which turned his campaign into a play-to-the-base strategy and revived the culture wars. Had he run a true moderate campaign, he might still have lost but possibly would have done better.
As for the idea that the solution to Republican problems is to become more conservative, I don't see where their majority is going to come from. On fiscal policy, sure, people don't like paying taxes. But they like their Social Security (if Bush's privatization proposal was unpopular when the economy was doing OK, it's going to be a dead letter now) and they want affordable health care (one has to wonder why Europeans get just as good outcomes as we do but spend only about half as much per capita). If "returning to their conservative roots" means tax cuts, it's hard to see where the unpopular program cuts necessary to make them fiscally responsible are going to come from. Two-thirds of the budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and debt service. Reductions in other discretionary spending would have to be absolutely massive to support significant tax cuts. Plus if Obama is successful in tackling entitlements, it will take away that issue for Republicans to run on.
Nor do I think can Republicans win by reviving the culture wars. Demography is against them: opposition to gay marriage correlates highly with age. These issues are playing to an ever decreasing portion of the electorate.
Historically, it seems to me that few elections are won by parties "returning to their roots." Clinton won in part by mollifying the centrists when he rejected the liberal wing of the party. W won by portraying himself as a "compassionate conservative" (though I fail to see where the compassion went during his 8 years in office). Obama won by proposing a new kind of politics.
Democrats had the same dilemma after Kerry lost. Some people said the problem was that he wasn't liberal enough, and that the party had to be more than "Republican lite." But moving to the extremes only cedes more ground in the center to the opposition unless the public moves with you.
What Republicans need to do to become viable again is propose real solutions to the problems people face today. They need pragmatism, not ideology.
Alexander K.,
Excactly. That is the most specious statistical argument I've ever seen Nate make here. He's better than this.
dsimon,
You make some valid points regarding social issues. The demography does not line up well for conservatives here. I'm talking more about fiscal conservatism. And by returning to their "roots", I mean limited government.
An example...while in control of Congress the Republicans ditched market based reforms in medicare and instead they passed a medicare drug benefit that will leave our children saddled with trillions of dollars in liabilities.
These are the things that have cost the GOP in recent years. Conservatism works, they need not abandon it. (I have a feeling not everyone on this site agrees with that statement.)
If the Republicans had come together with the Democrats they'd be gaining absolutely nothing.
Except what's best for the country.
We have to get away from this gross stupidity of analyzing political decisions in terms of their effects on politicians' careers rather than in terms of real consequences. And if we were to do that, then the two might start coinciding -- we would stop voting for thugs who ban together as a party to support the bad and oppose the good.
And by returning to their "roots", I mean limited government.
Like before FDR?
Conservatism works
Both history and theory show that it does not; as markets grow, their need to be regulated grows. The free market model assumes fungible resources, rational agents, and perfect information. The last assumption is the most flawed -- people cheat. After Bernie Madoff, anyone talking about "limited government" and "free markets" should be thrown in the loony bin.
P.S. The Republican Party has no such "conservative roots". Lincoln didn't run on a free market platform. Neither for that matter did Eisenhower or Nixon. Goldwater was the beginning of the takeover of the Republican Party by hairbrained ideologues. The Republican base -- the wealthy and the upper-middle class -- signed on because enactment of those ideologies favor them. Nixon's Southern Strategy brought on the dumb clucks -- the racists and godbots.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe some of these clowns like Barney Frank, with their hands in Freddie and Fannie, caused the situation we're in now.
Of course it has occurred to us -- it's a standard Republican talking point repeated by ignorant morons -- and from reading your comments, man do you fit in that category. As has been explained here and many other places, you're completely wrong.
GORP: An example...while in control of Congress the Republicans ditched market based reforms in medicare and instead they passed a medicare drug benefit that will leave our children saddled with trillions of dollars in liabilities.
These are the things that have cost the GOP in recent years. Conservatism works, they need not abandon it.
I agree that the prescription drug benefit was irresponsible. (I think the S-CHIP expansion is irresponsible too.) But I don't think that not passing it would have helped McCain or any other Republican get elected.
And I think the "market-based reform" mantra is one aspect of what's wrong with the party: it's ideology, not pragmatism. I'm generally a free market person. But I'm not willing to disregard what I think is clear evidence that the market just doesn't work in some arenas.
Health care is one example. I think it's pretty clear that "the market" doesn't put incentives in the right place for the delivery of good health care. In particular, insurers have the incentive to insure only those people who are healthy (and so need insurance the least) and deny coverage whenever they think they can get away with it. The incentives for doctors are hardly any better. And few "market-based reforms" are going to change those incentives.
Plus the data from Europe and other countries show them getting as good outcomes at far lower cost, and they're far further from a market-based system than we are.
The tendency to go to "the market" as an answer for every problem (along with tax cuts) is ideology, not pragmatism. The invisible hand of the market does many things well. But we don't rely on "the market" to provide universal K-12 education (even conservative proposals include vouchers) or fire protection or police protection. That's why when the issue of health care comes up, just saying "the market" is an insufficient answer.
Again, I think Republicans need to come up with pragmatic solutions. But right now, their leadership is still caught up in ideology. People don't want "limited government" when they're one layoff or one illness away from personal bankruptcy in difficult economic times. If Republicans can't adapt their message to the moment, they're not going to win elections for a long time to come.
Usually Nate makes sense when he does the math, but this is moronic. 7% of the way on a pretend line between those two positions should mean 7% more votes? Really?
It's this sort of criticism that is moronic. Nate wrote "presumably" -- the presumption is McGurn's. Of course Nate doesn't believe that a proportional compromise would have resulted in proportional votes -- he's showing that it didn't. Sheesh. Your criticisms should not be directed at Nate, but and McGurn and his absurd assertions.
Health care is one example.
Market models that don't assign a cost to human suffering and don't even account for the costs of lost productivity are worse than useless. Ideologues are lazy thinkers -- often, like GROG, because they don't have the capability to do any better than that.
jqb,
You seem very tolerant of people who disagree with you. (that was sarcasm in case you missed it)
dsimon,
Thanks for having respectful dialogue. I've enjoyed reading your posts.
You seem very tolerant of people who disagree with you.
I'm not tolerant of stupidity, ignorance, and intellectual dishonesty.
(that was sarcasm in case you missed it)
Unlike you, I am not a cretin.
dsimon,
Thanks for having respectful dialogue.
I guess you missed where he called you "GORP", moron. It's not a dialogue any more an an exchange between a chimpanzee and Einstein would be a dialogue.
P.S. Your first post said "The kool-aid drinking, Obama followers won't question him", you hypocritical asshole. You get no respect because you deserve none.
More tolerance and respect from GROG the asshole:
"Liberals insisted that anyone who wanted to own a house should" ... "More liberal hypocrisy."
Stupid dishonest pieces of shit like you are why this country is in the mess it's in.
GROG,
I am not asking anyone to give up there political stands. I would very much hope that the GOP maintains a sensible form of conservatism. I also genuinely hope that they however do not just become the party of no in opposition. (Frankly with Boehner in charge I am not so sure that can be avoided!) I want a party of ideas to challenge my progressive/liberal assumptions. I don't just want the opposition to say your wrong at every step. Politics should be a case of to and fro, of debate. If the GOP just resorts to stunts like Lyndsay Graham did, or Boehner, then they are going to lose all respect.
I am not asking anyone to give up there political stands.
Even when it's "The kool-aid drinking, Obama followers won't question him ... Liberals insisted that anyone who wanted to own a house should" ... More liberal hypocrisy"? The "political stand" of people like GROG -- and Graham and Boehner -- is indistinguishable from that of Limbaugh and Coulter.
From Howard Dean: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-dean/the-far-rights-all-out-of_b_167628.html
Their opposition is about politics at its worst and their desire to make sure that the new administration and the Congress do not get a "win"
In these rough economic times, we have got to do better than the same old scare tactics and games for political gains. It's time to fix our health care system and it's time for common sense and honesty.
jqb,
"Kool-aid drinkers" refer to people who are followers and don't think for themselves. There are those out there and that is who I was refering to. I was not refering to anyone on this site. Most here are deffinately free thinkers. There are also Bush "kool-aid drinkers" and Palin "kool-aid drinkers". I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.
I do think there is liberal hypocrisy on the left. Sorry if that offends anyone.
markymark,
Point well taken. I also hope the GOP doesn't disagree just for the sake of being on the other side. This was a frustration when Bush was in office, only the other way around. It often seemed like whatever Bush said or did, the left would take the other side.
This gets us nowhere.
I guess you missed where he called you "GORP", moron.
It was a typo. By the way, I doubt that calling someone a moron is a good way of changing people's minds or getting them to look at an issue in a different way even if it doesn't result in changing someone's mind. And I think that's true regardless of how that other person may have addressed others.
I knew that was a typo.
I have often struggled with conservatism/capitolism being pragmatic or ideologic. Our country was founded on conservative principles and I believe it's the greatest country on earth. Capitolism (in my opinion) beat the Nazis and the Russians and has led to wealth beyond our wildest imaginations. Is that ideology or fact?
Again, thanks for the good debate. I'm new to this site, and I'm a big fan. Most are very respectful and thought provoking.
Uh, Grog, the principles America were founded on were the most radical in the world. "Conservative" principles at that time were that man is inherently incapable of self-governance, which is why God appoints monarchs to keep us in line.
@liberal_defender_of_freedom:
Statistically, the party in power needs to do whatever they can to improve the economy. Incumbents loose when the economy does poorly.
It would have been nice if the democrats could have spread responsibility, but they still needed to support the bill even if they couldn't.
So working to hurt the economy is doubly worthwhile for republicans from a political perspective. They get to force through their anti-government ideology and they get to increase the likelihood of backlash against Democrats by retrospective voters.
That said, the midterms may not follow the statistical trends of the past 50 years. If things don't just muddle along poorly, but instead get much worse, our better analogy is FDR. FDR kicked the crap out of Republicans in his first midterms. It seems like the rationale of the voters becomes more like the rationale of voters during a war. The stakes are high and voters become risk averse when looking at non-incumbents.
There is another analogy to FDR, in that Republicans under Hoover had also driven the economy into the ground, so they had lost their credibility. This is very similar to the lack of fiscal discipline and sound economic policy under Bush.
The bottom line. If things get much worse, the Republican obstructionism makes easy argument for Obama. He'll say: #1 The Republicans offer no new or practical solutions. #2 Things wouldn't be so bad if the Republicans hadn't tied Obama's hands.
i.e.
A tax cut does you no good if you aren't earning any money.
Capitolism (in my opinion) beat the Nazis and the Russians and has led to wealth beyond our wildest imaginations. Is that ideology or fact?
I'd say that's pretty much fact. But most Democrats are capitalists. I don't think you'll find a single member of the Democratic caucus who thinks government should own the means of production (the real meaning of "socialism") or set the price of bread.
I think the paucity of political ideas from the current Republican party was demonstrated in the presidential campaign when they tried to portray Obama as a "socialist." But there is very little in Obama's proposals that constitute socialism. Socialism is simply not a 4.6% difference in the top marginal income tax rates--especially when that top rate is the same as under Clinton. If we weren't socialist then, then we can't be socialist if Obama's fiscal proposals are put into effect.
The only quasi-socialist proposal was health care, and even then it's not like health care workers would become government employees. Plus, as I wrote above, I think there's ample evidence that the free market is ill-suited to the effective delivery of health care services. I'll take what works over what conforms to ideological purity, and so I think will most Americans.
One example of where conservatives could make an impact is supporting a gas tax with a concurrent cut in the wage tax to make it revenue-neutral. There are plenty of good reasons to support a gas tax: it would discourage consumption, make alternative fuels more competitive (in a market-based way), make fuel efficient vehicles more desirable, reduce the money we send abroad to countries that don't like us, reduce the need for our military to protect our fuel supplies, help make our foreign policy more flexible, and reduce emissions that harm the environment. The regressive nature of a gas tax would be ameliorated by the cut in the wage tax. I believe such a proposal was put forward recently in The Weekly Standard. But supporting it will require ideological conservatives to get over the idea that every tax is a bad tax. And it doesn't look like they're ready to do that. (Heck, Democrats are finding hard enough to get behind a gas tax too.)
I doubt that calling someone a moron is a good way of changing people's minds or getting them to look at an issue in a different way even if it doesn't result in changing someone's mind.
You're wasting your time if you expect to change the mind of an idiot like GROG who spends a lot more time absorbing the right wing talking points he regurgitates here than he does reading what you write. He's a total hypocrite, complaining about lack of tolerance when he comes to this site and start spewing about liberals drinking koolaid and worshipping Obama and that Barney Frank caused the housing crisis and the rest of that lie about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that the right wingers have invented to try to obscure their culpability, much like the lies about FDR that they have invented to justify their opposition to Obama. It's a moral crime not to call these people out.
. I was not refering to anyone on this site.
That's transparent lie, you fucking coward:
"How can anyone support a bill that they didn't even have time to read? Has anyone on this site read it? Obama wanted to rush it through so no one had time to read and understand the dribble in it. The public was unable to scrutinize it. The kool-aid drinking, Obama followers won't question him. Thank God the Republicans had the guts to stand up to this."
Aside from the idiotic lie that you weren't referring to anyone here, this is a pack of lies -- in fact it's Republican kool-aid talking points that are repeated all over the internet by mindless sheep like you who aren't bright enough to have your own thoughts. Congress had plenty of time to read the initial House and Senate bills; the conference bill, by rules of Congress, contained only items that were in either of the two bills -- members of Congress knew exactly which items were and weren't included.
have often struggled with conservatism/capitolism being pragmatic or ideologic.
Perhaps you would struggle less if you could spell it.
Our country was founded on conservative principles
It was founded on liberal Enlightenment principles.
and I believe it's the greatest country on earth.
What does that mean? Greatest in what way? It's not the greatest in size, population, quality of life, life expectancy, social equity, productivity ... it does have the largest military budget by far, though. America certainly has been great, but most of that greatness is due to those Enlightenment principles; that greatness has declined a lot in the last 8 years.
Capitolism (in my opinion) beat the Nazis and the Russians and has led to wealth beyond our wildest imaginations. Is that ideology or fact?
It's simplistic ideology. Do you suppose that France was not capitalistic? Yet they were vanquished by the Nazis. The Nazis were beat due to a number of factors, including Hitler's mania and bad decisions, as well as FDR turning the U.S. manufacturing capability into an effective war machine -- it was downright socialistic. And of course the military brilliance of the D-Day invasion was instrumental. As for "the Russians" -- it was the Soviet Union, fool, and it failed largely due to internal problems; we didn't beat them, we outlasted them. And I guess you've never even heard of a little place called China, which nearly owns the U.S.
The economic system of the U.S. is capitalistic, and the social system is liberal. Yet I don't hear you talking about how great liberalism is. You precious conservativism has not contributed to our greatness -- it sure didn't beat the Nazis, you ignorant fool.
The only quasi-socialist proposal was health care
This shows how intellectually bankrupt the "conservative" discourse is. First the word "socialist" is turned into a bogeyman, treated as inherently evil regardless of how it is used. Then it is applied will-nilly to things that it does not apply to in any formal sense.
What if we were to call the police, military, and fire fighters "quasi-socialist". Would that make them bad? It would certainly be a far more valid application of the word than to proposed health care solutions.
Single payer health care is not at all "socialist" in the formal sense. The means of production of health care remain entirely in private hands -- in fact, many government-run medical centers that are utilized by people too poor to afford health insurance could probably close. The only involvement of the government is, as the name of the damn program says, to be the single payer. Having a single payer for health services means discounted costs. It means that doctors and hospitals can count on getting paid for their services. But most importantly, it means elimination of the "middleman" of private healh "insurance" that serves no useful purpose whatsoever; all it does is leech huge amounts of money and acts as a gatekeeper, doling out care and treatment modes based not on medical needs but on maximizing the profits of the "insurance" companies, which do not in fact insure anything.
Health and well being play no role in free market models -- they are not assigned a cost and are not considered an asset; you can't sell or trade your health, or buy years of life. Free market models based on "rational agents" do not distinguish between immortal robots and mortal human beings. It is this inapplicability of the model that health "insurance" exploits within a free market economy. The remedy -- short of abandoning such an economy -- is government involvement as single payer or some similar scheme. Which is why every thriving capitalist economy has instituted such a scheme. If we do, we might thrive too.
BobX,
"Uh, Grog, the principles America were founded on were the most radical in the world. "Conservative" principles at that time were that man is inherently incapable of self-governance, which is why God appoints monarchs to keep us in line."
The meaning of "conservatism" has changed over the past couple hundred years. Conservatism is to "conserve" the old ways of thought or ways of doing things.
jqb,
"It's not a dialogue any more an an exchange between a chimpanzee and Einstein would be a dialogue."
Nice sentence.
For example: Kit Bond's pet projects were included for his district, yet he voted NO! Ah, but that is republican principals for ya, eh?
The Republicans had no intention of working with the Democrats in the crafting of a stimulus bill. The GOP had not come to grips with the concept of compromise nor how to behave, absent leadership and a message. The GOP is like of one of the big 3, they have lost market share and do not have a product that few want to buy.
Instead of sitting at the table and working as a deliberative body and looking relevant, they chose to in unison say no, which looked like a middle finger to the President and the country with no upside.
The stimulus bill was going to pass in the Senate and now the GOP is the party of NO. No one believes this was a vote of consciences or principle but of petulance. The latest gambit of some of the GOP Governors saying no, is almost impossible to believe. The Governor of Louisiana looks like a hypocritical fool for talking about fiscal conservatism when his state took 100’s of billions of dollars to rebuild. Hey Bobby can we have that money back!
The GOP lacks direction, leadership or a message that has credibility.
Note to the GOP, mantra of tax’ cuts should go the way of Drill baby Drill and Joe the Plumber. Its time for adult leadership and not holding your breath until you get your way.
Post a Comment