"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith.
Michael Steele makes the pathetic claim that the Republicans - The Party of No - did not attempt to obstruct the Obama administration, and that they really, really, wanted to co-operate with the regime.
Yeah, sure Micheal. That's why the GOP decided they liked the health care bill when it was Bob Dole's idea, or something akin to Romney-care, but once a Democrat put it out there for a vote, suddenly it was "Socialism" and the Republicans all voted against it. Spare me.
They have spent the last two years obstructing Obama at every turn. To attempt to argue the opposite now is simply pathetic.
I can understand that some people might be disappointed that Obama has not done more, and that some may hate what he has done, especially with his healthcare reforms.
But I still find myself puzzled when I read things like this.
An Associated Press poll published today showed a quarter of those surveyed who had backed Obama in the 2008 White House election were considering voting Republican.
What alternatives have the Republicans offered over the past two years which would make anyone seriously consider voting for them? Their only policy has been to say no to everything which Obama has proposed, and, when they have got specific on policy, it has mostly been to sustain tax breaks for the rich.
[Obama] attacked the Republicans for exploiting the economic crisis, counting on voters "forgetting who caused the mess in the first place." He had been trying to solve the economic mess, but "it doesn't happen as quick as we want".
If the Republicans are hoping that voter amnesia might help them come November, the depressing news from this poll suggests that this tactic might just be working for them.
They are preaching essentially the same nonsense they were spouting two years ago, and yet 25% of voters are considering giving them another chance? That makes no sense to me.
Likely voters in battleground districts see extremists as having a more dominant influence over the Democratic Party than they do over the GOP.
This result comes from The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll, which found that 44 percent of likely voters say the Democratic Party is more dominated by its extreme elements, whereas 37 percent say it’s the Republican Party that is more dominated by extremists.
The revelations in a survey of 10 toss-up congressional districts across the country point to problems for Democrats, who are trying to motivate a disillusioned base and appeal to independents moving to the GOP ahead of the Nov. 2 election.
More than one in every five Democrats (22 percent) in The Hill’s survey said their party was more dominated than the GOP by extreme views. The equivalent figure among Republicans is 11 percent.
At a time when the GOP are fielding candidates like Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Rand Paul - candidates whose views are so extreme that they refuse to be interviewed by anyone other than Fox News - I find it incomprehensible that people would view the Democrats as the extremists.
“That’s real trouble for Democrats,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank.
“All the press coverage has been about how these Tea Party candidates are fringe ideologues, and there have been high-profile examples of them proving the point,” he added. “Yet, still at this moment, you have independents saying, ‘I think the Democrats are a little more extreme than the Republicans.' "
At a time when the Republican party are fielding candidates from the lunatic fringe, I can't even begin to understand how this label is being applied to the Democrats.
Clinton turns on the Republicans and Fox News and the campaign of anger and hate which they are fomenting. And he puts a heckler down pretty neatly as well.
At a fundraiser in Manchester, NH, today, Vice President Biden urged Democrats to "remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This President has done an incredible job. He’s kept his promises."
The remarks, made to roughly 200 top Democratic activists and donors, recall comments President Obama made last week to “griping and groaning Democrats…Folks: wake up. This is not some academic exercise. As Joe Biden put it, Don’t compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative.”
It should go without saying that even the most disgruntled Democrat supporter can listen to the insanity coming from the right and appreciate that an Obama administration is better than the alternative, but is that seriously what they are proposing should be the limit of public participation in the democratic process? Turn up every four years and vote and then remember that it could always be worse, as the Republicans could be in power?
The campaign slogan wasn't "Shut up, it could be worse" if I remember correctly. It was something altogether more positive and involved the plural personal pronoun, "We".
It seems rather harsh to now be told that we should all assume spectator status unless what we have to say is sufficiently positive.
Cenk Uygur points out that the US is now so far to the right that Ronald Reagan could no longer be elected by the present day Republican party.
Consider what Reagan did whilst in office and imagine if Obama did any of that today - and what would happen if he did:
-Gave Amnesty to Illegal Immigrants -Negotiated with Terrorists (Traded Arms for Hostages with Iran) -Raised Taxes -Negotiated with the "Evil Empire" without Pre-conditions -Made a Decision to "Cut and Run" From Lebanon After Our Troops Were Attacked
The bottom line is that, no matter what the reason, Obama seems to be in some important ways significantly to the right of Reagan on the political spectrum. If Reagan ordered the execution of US citizens abroad, he might have been impeached. If Obama tried to give undocumented immigrants blanket amnesty the way Reagan did, he might be impeached.
And the political line has moved so far that if Reagan tried to run as a Republican now he would be the laughing stock of the party. Rush Limbaugh would tear him to shreds and Bill Kristol would say he is Neville Chamberlain. He would be run out of town as a tax-raising, amnesty giving, terrorist negotiating, cut and run no-good lib who hates the troops.
And anyone who claims otherwise is being absurd. As Reagan once said, "Facts are stubborn things."
The US has gone so far to the right that it would no longer elect Ronald Reagan. Oh, they hold him up as their great hero.... But if anyone today behaved as Reagan did, that person would be pilloried by the right wingers as a leftist failure.
They may label Obama as a socialist-Marxist-Nazi, but the truth of the matter is that the extremists in the US are on the right of the political spectrum, and the present day Republican party would be unrecognisable to the man they claim to adore.
Her evasive testimony exacerbated grave concerns we had about her long-standing hostility towards the Second Amendment. As a result, the NRA strongly opposed her confirmation and made it clear at the time that we would be scoring this important vote.
The vote on Elena Kagan's confirmation to the Court, along with the previous year's confirmation vote on Sonia Sotomayor, are critical for the future of the Second Amendment. After careful consideration, the NRA-PVF announced today that it will not be endorsing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for re-election in the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Nevada.
"The NRA's relationship with Sen. Reid has been long-standing and productive and - unlike for Sharron Angle - they've put their money where their mouth is this cycle. Along with their financial support, the declaration of NRA head Wayne LaPierre that Sen. Reid is 'a true champion of the Second Amendment' and that 'no one has been a stronger advocate for responsible gun ownership than him' shows beyond a doubt that the NRA believes Sen. Reid to be a strong advocate for Nevadans' Second Amendment rights in the US Senate."
The NRA have also made it clear that they will not be endorsing Sharron Angle.
Maybe Angle is simply too extreme even for the NRA.
Because they can't say she doesn't believe in Second Amendment rights. Indeed, her problem is that she is threatening to employ "Second Amendment remedies" if she isn't elected.
She's a crazy person, engaging in crazy talk. And it would appear that her Second Amendment position is too extreme even for the NRA.
UPDATE:
It now transpires that 66% of the people who voted for Angle now regret their decision.
The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity.
During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”
I have heard some people say that Obama, especially when it comes to national security, is continuing to embrace some of the policies which George W. Bush controversially put into place, but I have honestly not yet come across anyone who would argue that Obama is "like George Bush". That would be a crazy notion, but it's not one which many on the left are putting forward.
I think it rather healthy that the left hold Obama to a higher standard. That we do not, on the whole, see ourselves as his defenders. Rather, it appears to me, that we applaud him when we agree with his policies and point out those places where we are not in agreement. That's a good thing, not that Gibbs sees it that way.
The lack of appreciation or recognition for what Obama has accomplished has left Gibbs and others in furious disbelief.
Perhaps one day the White House can work itself up to express this sort of sputtering rage against the Right, or the Wall Street thieves who destroyed the American economy, or the permanent factions that control Washington. Until then, we'll have to satisfy ourselves with White House explanations that the Real Culprits are not (of course) them, but the Professional Left, that is simultaneously totally irrelevant and ruining everything.
The left agrees when Obama does something they like and disagree when he doesn't. That, to me, makes perfect sense.
I understand, on some level, what Gibbs is saying. Washington is hard and compromises have to be made. And it is true that Obama has made advancements in areas like healthcare which were only achieved after a bloody fight with the Republicans. And I, and others on the left, applauded him for managing to bring about the change which he did.
But, likewise, the healthcare bill still lacks a public option. So, obviously, many on the left were disappointed with that. However, it is still possible to applaud Obama's achievement whilst wishing for more.
Indeed, that is the very way that social advancements are achieved. Women's rights, black rights, gay rights have always been established incrementally. They are never handed down wrapped in a big ribbon.
And the fact that people want more does not automatically mean that they do not appreciate Obama's efforts or where he has managed to get them to.
They simply want to go further. And that's no bad thing. Indeed, that wish for "change" is one that Obama rode all the way to the White House.
UPDATE:
The point Olbermann makes here is not very different from the point I was trying to make, except - as always - he makes it much more eloquently.
The authoritarian mindset of the right wing base demands fealty, even when undeserved. Their brains will turn themselves into logic pretzels to rationalize away anything that undermines that loyalty. The left, however, has no such need to compartmentalize and rationalize. We can appreciate the job that Obama has done and yet still wish it to be more progressive simultaneously.
After Obama was elected, the Republicans started a new mantra, exclaiming to all who would listen that "the US is a centre right country". This struck me as an odd thing for the losers of an election to claim, almost as if they were saying that, even though the voters had just rejected them, the Democrats really should govern as if the Republicans had just won.
And, for a while, Obama spoke of bipartisanship and tried to get the Republicans to engage with his administration and find a common way forward. But the party of No did what they always do and tried to block Obama every inch of the way.
However, all that is set to change as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has laid out his new vision of how a bipartisan compromise could be reached:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that he hopes that President Obama becomes a born-again moderate after the midterm elections and that a new, more balanced Congress brings with it some bipartisan comity.
But the Kentucky Republican made it very clear that any future bipartisanship needs to be defined by his ideological terms.
"What I hope we are going to have after November is more balance, more balance, which would give us the opportunity to do things together that simply were missing when you have this kind of disparity," McConnell said. "But, I'm not going to be very interested in doing things left of center. It is going to have to be center right. I think the president is a flexible man. I'm hoping he will become a born-again moderate."
Moderation, as far as McConnell is concerned is centre right as opposed to extreme right. And the party that lost the election imagines it is being perfectly reasonable by insisting that it's policies, which the public rejected, should be the only ones pursued by the Obama administration. That's what they mean when they talk of bipartisanship.
So when Republicans win we should see extreme right wing policies; and when they lose they will settle for centre right wing policies. But leftist policies are simply a no-no.
That's a very good example of why it is simply impossible to deal with the Republicans. Even when they lose they insist that everyone behave as if they won.
Despite all the talk from the Republicans regarding their plans to crush the Democrats and take back the House come November, Obama's White House have let it be known that there is no need for the Democrats to panic as the Republicans are not going to take back the House.
But it's the reasoning they give that I just love. They say the Republicans can't win because they are simply too crazy.
Good party messages are organic, and they are not announced. Fortunately for Democrats, theirs just sort of came along, thanks to the Tea Party movement, which has invited into politics hecklers and cranks and fairly fringe candidates who are currently hurting the Republican Party in several key states. Oh, but the Tea Party is an organic movement of conservative men and women who will feel insulted if the Democrats cast them as crazy and lumps them together with Republicans, right? Nah. These people are perpetually offended by the Democratic Party.
The Democratic strategy in a nutshell is small enough to fit in one but has the protein of a good, tasty nut. The Republicans want to be mayors of crazy-town. They've embraced a fringe and proto-racist isolationist and ignorant conservative populism that has no solutions for fixing anything and the collective intelligence of a wine flask. This IS offensive and over the top, and the more Democrats repeat it, and the more dumb things some Republican candidates do, the more generally conservative voters who might be thinking of sending a message to Democrats by voting for a Republican will be reminded that the replacement party is even more loony than the party that can't tie its shoes.
Here, a Democratic memo lays out the problem that the Tea Party movement presents for the Republicans.
The Tea Party has presented three problems for Republicans. The most glaring problem is where the Tea Party candidate has defeated the moderate (and more electable) Republican candidate. Second, Republican candidates are being forced to take unpopular extreme positions to satisfy the ideological base to avoid defeat in their primaries. Third, we are seeing numerous Tea Party candidates run as third party candidates which is splitting the Republican vote...
Palin and the Tea Party protesters have taken many of these candidates into such extremist waters that they are virtually unelectable.
The Republican leadership have been caught between a rock and a hard place. They had lost many supporters after Bush's dreadful time in office and the Tea Party protesters represented the runt of the party. But it was literally all they were left with. So they were too cowardly to turn against them.
Now, these lunatics are trying to push the party ever further to the right. It means that no reasonable candidate can get past the primaries. The Tea Party protesters are going to be a death knell for the Republicans.
Judge Susan Bolton granted a preliminary injunction which prevents implementation of two main elements of the legislation: the requirement that police determine the immigration status of people they arrest or question should they suspect them of being illegal, and the part of the new law that would make it a state crime for a foreigner to be in Arizona without registration papers.
The injunction will hold, Bolton said, until the courts have considered a lawsuit against Arizona by the federal government that seeks permanently to block the new law on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.
The temporary and partial reprieve marks success, in the short term at least, of attempts by the Obama administration to maintain federal control of immigration policy, against efforts by states, led by Arizona, to take the matter into their own hands. Several states have expressed support for Arizona's legislation that was due to come into effect today.
This will be the cue for right wing commentators everywhere to go bat shit crazy.
Come November, this particular moment of happiness is going to smack him again. For now, he just doesn’t realize that this injunction he thinks is in his favor isn’t going to work out as he would have liked. That hasn’t stopped the left from celebrating, but they won’t be happy for long.
The strangest thing about right wingers is that they always imagine that their prejudices are universally felt and that electoral disaster will befall any regime which dares to oppose them.
It's this same mindset which allows the Tea Party protesters to imagine that an election which produced Obama was somehow an aberration and that the country must instantly be experiencing buyers remorse, which is why they take to the streets demanding "their" country back.
It's why for weeks after the election we were constantly being told that the United States was "a centre right country" and the Democrats might have won, but they must govern as if the Republicans had won.
Of course the opposite applies to the Republicans according to right wing "logic", as they must be pushed ever further to the right.
Our job this year as conservatives is to put some distance between us and the left. In doing so, it is our job to push the Senate Republican to the right. Every inch counts when dealing with 100 senators and 40 or 50 Republicans.
Every inch.
You see, you can be too left wing in "a centre right country", but there appears to be no such thing as too right wing.
Obama is notching up his third big victory. But The New York Times appears to think that he has pushed things as far as he can:
If passage of the financial regulatory overhaul on Thursday proves anything about President Obama, it is this: He knows how to push big bills through a balky Congress.
But Mr. Obama’s legislative success poses a paradox: while he may be winning on Capitol Hill, he is losing with voters at a time of economic distress, and soon may be forced to scale back his ambitions.
The financial regulatory bill is the final piece of a legislative hat trick that also included the stimulus bill and the landmark new health care law. Over the last 18 months, Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have made considerable inroads in passing what could be the most ambitious agenda in decades.
Mr. Obama has done what he promised when he ran for office in 2008: he has used government as an instrument to try to narrow the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. He has injected $787 billion in tax dollars into the economy, provided health coverage to 32 million uninsured and now, reordered the relationship among Washington, Wall Street, investors and consumers.
But as he has done so, the political context has changed around him.
The problem, as far as NYT are concerned is unemployment and the way the Republicans are able to argue that government is the problem rather than the solution. I am puzzled when I read this logic.
Only the government could have delivered near universal health care and only big government could have reformed the financial sector. Why is Obama's success in doing what he set out to do somehow the proof that the Republicans are right and big government doesn't work?
I actually admire the fact that Obama is not being driven by the polls and is doing what he promised that he would do.
“You know, sometimes these pundits, they can’t figure me out,” the president said last week, campaigning in Kansas City, Mo., for the Democratic Senate candidate there. “They say, ‘Well, why is he doing that?’ That doesn’t poll well. Well, I’ve got my own pollsters, I know it doesn’t poll well. But it’s the right thing to do for America.”
The NYT compare this comment to George W. Bush's insistence that he was not going to be persuaded by the polls to abandon his unpopular war in Iraq. However, there is a major difference between these two presidents. Bush did not campaign promising to invade Iraq, unlike Obama who is simply doing the things which he promised to do if he were elected.
And people are right to be worried and upset over rising unemployment, and they have the right to be upset that Obama hasn't done enough to turn the situation around, but I don't accept the NYT's logic that concern over unemployment means that Obama should not have reformed healthcare and the financial system.
And I feel like screaming when I read the NYT saying this:
Part of the problem for Mr. Obama is that he came to Washington vowing to change the partisan tone in the capital, something he has thus far been unable to do.
Yet, for Thursday’s final Senate vote on the bill, 60 to 39, just three Republicans joined 57 Democrats to support reform. In the House, only three Republicans voted for the bill when it passed that chamber in June, 237 to 192.
Republican opponents would have you believe that lack of bipartisanship was evidence of the bill’s unworthiness, but the margin of victory was really about partisan politics and not the bill’s content.
As was the case with last year’s economic stimulus and this year’s health care overhaul, Republican opposition to the bill was primarily an attempt to drag down Mr. Obama by killing any legislative accomplishment.
The Republicans don't seem to accept that their policies and their ideologies were completely rejected by the public.
And the New York Times are being faint hearted to argue that public anger over unemployment means that Obama should abandon the things he was elected to achieve.
The Republican "no" to all things Obama is so knee jerk and automatic that it should reflect badly on them and no-one else.
He certainly should not adjust his course at this point in time to accommodate them.
Chuck Todd repeats the old Republican line concerning when does Obama stop blaming Bush for his problems. Pelosi answers him: "When those problems go away".
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."
"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."
The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."
"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."
Professor of Law Richard Hasen popped up on Fox News earlier to tell them that their coverage of the Joe Sestak affair has been "breathless" and that the whole thing will blow over in less than a week.
I don't know why, but I can't see Hasen being invited back on to Fox any time soon.
They are the three words which most American presidents go to any length to avoid saying; "I was wrong." And yet, yesterday, Obama uttered them.
He strode into the East Room to mount a robust defense of his handling of the largest oil spill in American history, reassuring the nation that he was in charge and would do “whatever is necessary” to stop and clean up the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But by the time he walked out an hour later, he had balanced that with a fairly unusual presidential self-critique.
He was wrong, he said, to assume that oil companies were prepared for the worst as he tried to expand offshore drilling. His team did not move with “sufficient urgency” to reform regulation of the industry. In dealing with BP, his administration “should have pushed them sooner” to provide images of the leak, and “it took too long for us” to measure the size of the spill.
“In case you’re wondering who’s responsible, I take responsibility,” Mr. Obama said as he concluded the news conference. “It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away or the way I’d like it to happen. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make mistakes. But there shouldn’t be any confusion here. The federal government is fully engaged, and I’m fully engaged.”
The Republicans are, of course, attempting to equate this with Katrina, which strikes me as simply nonsensical.
Their argument, that the private sector is always better than government intervention, was certainly evident by the Bush government's non-response to a national emergency. It was almost as if the Bush administration wanted to prove how useless government could be.
But, in this case, BP is a private sector company. So, what happened to the private sector being better than the government in sorting out this kind of mess?
Obama is apologising for ever having accepted this ludicrous argument in the first place. For ever believing that BP would do what it should do. For taking the kind of hands off approach which Republicans always demand of the government.
To call this "his Katrina" is to reverse the argument which the Republicans always make: that big government should stay out of the way and allow the private sector free reign.
The premise of Noonan's moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand.
And she makes this claim whilst ending her column with this statement:
[W]hen you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.
There it is again, this claim that government are useless and only the private sector can act quickly enough in emergency situations. Except it is a private company which has been in charge of this operation for the past thirty days.
I happen to agree with Zurawik here. There was something terribly ugly about the anger Boehner displayed during his now infamous, "Hell, no you can't!" moment.
The Republicans have spent a lot of time recently attempting to distance themselves from the specific deaths threats and the general anger of the tea party protesters. But, anyone who has watched the way they have behaved as the healthcare battle ensued would have to conclude that they bore a very large responsibility for the air becoming as toxic as it has.
They have never wanted to have an honest debate on this subject and have argued against a bill which never really existed, certainly not in the "death panel" way they described it.
And they now seek to distance themselves from a public anger which has been fuelled by the lies which they propagated. That doesn't seem credible to me.
New Rule: You can't use the statement "there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year" as a threat if there was no cooperation in the first half of the year. Here's a word the president should take out of his teleprompter: bipartisanship. People only care about that in theory, not in practice. The best thing that's happened this year is when President Obama finally realized this and said, "Kiss my black ass, we're going it alone, George W. Bush style."
[...]
But even before the Democrats got to take a single victory lap they were already being warned not to get used to the feeling, and not to get drunk with power. I disagree. All you Democrats: do a shot, and then do another. Get drunk on this feeling of not backing down and doing what you came to Washington to do.
Democrats should not listen to the people who are now saying they shouldn't attempt anything else big for a while because health care was such a bruising battle. Wrong -- because I learned something watching the lying bullies of the Right lose this one: when they're losing, they squeal like a pig.
[...]
The Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile.
[...]
Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th -- and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?" Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how's that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?
My problem with the Democrats is that they often come across as spineless. And Maher's larger point is correct. The Democrats were elected to carry out a Democratic agenda. Being "bipartisan" is simply a way of acting as if the Republicans were never kicked out of office.
Issa: Well, it's certainly one that we expected. We expected to lose. What we didn't expect, quite candidly, was to be shut out of the process from the very beginning.
Dick Morris, Fox News commentator, November 4: “A deathblow to ObamaCare.”
– Fred Barnes, Fox News commentator, January 20: “The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.”
– Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, January 26: “That’s why Obamacare is dead.”
– Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Minority Whip, February 24: “Speaker Pelosi doesn’t have the votes in the House. . . . It is futile for for them to continue to try and push something on the American people that frankly won’t result in better health care.”
– Cantor, March 5: “Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the votes needed to pass a health-care bill in the House of Representatives.”
– Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Minority Leader, March 14: “If she had 216 votes, this bill would be long gone. They tried to pass it in September, October, November, December, January, February. Guess what? They don’t have the votes.”
– Boehner, March 17: Health care reform will pass “over my dead body.”
– Cantor, March 19: “[T]here’s no way they can pass this bill.”
So, it's quite false for the Republicans to pretend, as Isaa does here, that they expected to lose and that they were excluded from the process. Debbie Wasserman Schultz does well to nail Issa on this lie:
Schultz: That is just a brazenly false statement. From the very beginning...
Issa: Is that like you lied?
Schultz: No, it's a brazenly false (crosstalk). With all due respect there are two hundred amendments that were offered and accepted by Republicans, offered by Republicans and accepted by Democrats and incorporated into this bill. This is a bill that is bipartisan in content, unfortunately not bipartisan in the outcome of the votes. We gave every opportunity over and over again and the American people saw a President in Obama extend his hand and saw Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid ask Republicans repeatedly to sit down with the rest of the negotiating table and we were repeatedly rejected.
The problem at the core of the Republican attitude to all of this has not changed. They lied about what was actually in the bill by talking about death panels and other nonsense; and, now that their great plan has come to naught, they lie about why they failed to stop the bill by claiming that they were "shut out from the process".
It's a lie that should not be allowed to stand.
Even David Frum, in what I am sure will become an often quoted column, pointed out that the Republicans engineered their own disaster by listening to "the most radical voices in the party and the movement" and that listening to these very people "led us to abject and irreversible defeat."
Issa is merely mouthing the latest Republican lie. That the Republicans did not hope to defeat the bill through simple obstructionism, but that they were locked out of the process.
They were dishonest throughout the debate, and it appears as if they are going to continue to be dishonest after it.
It's seldom that I am sad not to have full access to Fox News, but the clips Fox have released of Glenn Beck's interview with Eric Massa make me wish I could have seen the entire thing.
Beck is an expert at playing the "little man against the world" card, but he appears to have been outdone in this instance by Massa's victimhood.
Massa had come on Fox to out-Beck Glenn Beck. Armed with the very same weapons — a deep sense of victimhood, outrage at the powers that be and remarkable personal candor — the Representative delivered a dizzying confessional.
[..]
Beck, who is used to controlling the gravitational force of victimhood around him, kept interrupting to point out that he was a bigger target of even greater forces than Massa. "I have two unauthorized biographies coming out against me in the spring," Beck said at one point. Minutes later, Beck went even further. "Do you realize my family is at stake?" he said. "You've got a little scandal with your children in college. I've got one for all time now, because I am not going to resign. I'm not going to back down. I have come to a place where I believe at some point the system will destroy me."
But Beck could not compete with the oddity of the sympathy card Massa kept pulling. He appeared frustrated that Massa wasn't revealing any more sinister plots afoot in the nation's capital, and he got visibly annoyed when Massa tried to take some measure of responsibility for his actions and attempted to walk back some of his more heated rhetoric against White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
And to make things worse, when Massa turned from discussing his own woes to the machinations of Washington, he offered ideas that have no place in Fox News's tightly regulated framework. Massa suggested that Beck and other Americans demand "campaign finance reform" to curb the corruption on Capitol Hill. Beck, who has called such proposals a "huge mistake," put his hand over his mouth, as if he were holding back an upset stomach. Massa, who has opposed Obama's health reform because it is not liberal enough, told Beck that he should stop calling people names like "socialist" and "communist." "You can be a progressive and be a fiscal conservative," Massa then explained, as Beck lost control of his own program.
To listen to Beck, the man who earned $25 million last year, tell us that he only suffers the abuse he does in order to leave behind "a better America", must be music to the ears of his supporters, but it's simply bunkum to anyone else.
You can watch what Fox have released here. It's TV gold watching Beck's puzzlement as Massa plays the victim and steals Beck's clothing, whilst refusing to deliver the Democratic heads on a plate which Beck thought he had been promised. And to watch Beck sit silent as Massa condemns those who engage in name calling - Socialist, Marxist, the kind of terms Beck often throws around - is simply hysterical.
Beck rarely invites opposition on to his show. It's quite clear why.
At the end of the hour with Massa, accused of 'groping' his staffers, Beck declared to the camera, 'America, I'm gonna shoot straight with you. I think I've wasted your time. I have wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that.'
Stewart: "It appears that Glenn Beck has come up with his new sign off phrase. His 'Good Night and Good Luck.' Every show he can now end with: 'I think I've wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that. See you tomorrow.'"
He is going to push for reconciliation, and this is the nearest he can be expected to come to promising that.
Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of sixty votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and both Bush tax cuts – all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.
He's going to go for it.
It's not perfect, and I wish he had included a public option, but it's a huge step forward.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
