This election season has had the BEST stories.
Yeah, I know there is no real love lost for Boehner, but this is a scream!
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/john-beohner-ted-cruz-lucifer-222570
Boehner Calls Cruz 'Lucifer in the Flesh'
- Thread starter Bann
- Start date
This election season has had the BEST stories.
Yeah, I know there is no real love lost for Boehner, but this is a scream!
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/john-beohner-ted-cruz-lucifer-222570
Boehner is a drunk uncle. You know, the guy who never did anything of note in his life, but now that he's in his dotage wants to sit around on the porch telling everyone else what to do while lamenting that they don't make Falstaff beer anymore.
This_person
Well-Known Member
Agree. No conservative voter is looking for John's opinion to inform our own.
Nor is any lefty, so once John gets the first word out of his mouth the conversation is already too long.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Speaker of the house of Representatives of the us and a isn't an enormous accomplishment?
Tilted
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Well... and perhaps in addition... he did manage to pull back on the reins just enough to prevent Republicans from driving the party to the point of near complete irrelevance, when it comes to its power to determine public policy, despite much of the base of the party wanting to drive it to that point - indeed, despite much of that base demanding that it do so and insisting that failing to do so represented total capitulation to the Democrats.
He kept the party from committing political suicide as many within the party seemed set on doing. Though, after this current election cycle, historians may well regard his efforts on that front as having accomplished little more than delaying the inevitable.
I'm not a fan of Speaker Boehner, btw. But he gets a bad rap for giving in on some things when he (and the party, if it was paying attention) really had no political choice but to. Heck, he gets a bad rap for giving in and accepting victory when Democrats were, in effect, the ones that were capitulating to the reasonable demands of Republicans (e.g. when it came to some budget battles). Sometimes Republicans actually won the fight - Democrats in essence said, we'll give you what you want on the budget - and yet Speaker Boehner and Republicans were criticized for voting to accept their victory because they didn't hold out and demand concessions on other unrelated stuff (which they had no chance of ever getting). He, and the party, for the most part resisted to the greatest extent that was politically plausible over the course of his speakership. Yet, he's portrayed as having gone along with whatever the President and Democrats wanted. There's been some head-shake-worthy lack of awareness - really, I think it could be called delusion - when it comes to Speaker Boehner and Republicans in the House under his leadership.
Tilted
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Back To Mr. Cruz: It's amazing that with his complete lack of charisma (is there such a thing as anti-charisma, similar to anti-matter?) and various other problems with him as candidate, he was left as one of the three remaining candidates running for the Republican nomination. That in itself says a lot about how messed up this race has been and, in my view, how much trouble Republicans are in going forward.
Wishful thinking. The Republicans are in no more trouble than the Dems, going forward with a Socialist who want to double the debtand a corrupt woman under investigation .
In fact neither party is guaranteed to win this election.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Well... and perhaps in addition... he did manage to pull back on the reins just enough to prevent Republicans from driving the party to the point of near complete irrelevance, when it comes to its power to determine public policy, despite much of the base of the party wanting to drive it to that point - indeed, despite much of that base demanding that it do so and insisting that failing to do so represented total capitulation to the Democrats.
He kept the party from committing political suicide as many within the party seemed set on doing. Though, after this current election cycle, historians may well regard his efforts on that front as having accomplished little more than delaying the inevitable.
I'm not a fan of Speaker Boehner, btw. But he gets a bad rap for giving in on some things when he (and the party, if it was paying attention) really had no political choice but to. Heck, he gets a bad rap for giving in and accepting victory when Democrats were, in effect, the ones that were capitulating to the reasonable demands of Republicans (e.g. when it came to some budget battles). Sometimes Republicans actually won the fight - Democrats in essence said, we'll give you what you want on the budget - and yet Speaker Boehner and Republicans were criticized for voting to accept their victory because they didn't hold out and demand concessions on other unrelated stuff (which they had no chance of ever getting). He, and the party, for the most part resisted to the greatest extent that was politically plausible over the course of his speakership. Yet, he's portrayed as having gone along with whatever the President and Democrats wanted. There's been some head-shake-worthy lack of awareness - really, I think it could be called delusion - when it comes to Speaker Boehner and Republicans in the House under his leadership.
Beohner was handed the job solely because a lot of people were simply incredulous at the ACA. That's all he had to do, one way or another, stop it. He ended up not even being seen as against it let alone actually in favor of ending it.
You can say he simply couldn't do it and that's fine. But that does not change the fact that that is the only reason he got into power and it still sticks in the craw of a lot of people who still have not come to terms with it being a remotely good idea let alone still the law of the land. If anything, I'd argue the coming apart of the GOP is based solely on that. People are asking themselves 'why support a party that will not do the ONE thing we want done?"
Larry Gude
Strung Out
He's the candidate of god. No small thing. It's worth keeping in mind that he started this trek back at Liberty college with a PILE of dough far greater than the number of supporters would tend to suggest. He was gonna be in it for awhile.
Tilted
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That was a big part of why Republicans took control of the House in 2010, yes. But the idea that they would be able to dismantle ObamaCare was a fiction. It was a lie told to portions of the electorate to help more Republicans get elected. Some of us were pointing that out at the time. So either people weren't voting Republicans in thinking that they'd actually be able to do it (which is surely true of some voters) or they are voting Republicans in based on believing and incredible lie - the sort of lie that no one should have been foolish enough to believe (which is also surely true of some voters). In the latter case, those voters got what they deserved.
Speaker Boehner and other Republicans did about as much as they could to try to dismantle ObamaCare without substantially hurting themselves (and eroding their political power to make any difference) going forward (and doing so still without having dismantled ObamaCare). The disconnect, I don't think, wasn't between Republican voters wanting the party to destroy itself to make a point about ObamaCare (without actually getting rid of it) and Republicans in Congress not wanting the party to destroy itself. The disconnect was between Republican voters not realizing that the party would be destroying itself if it did certain things and not realizing that it still wouldn't have worked (i.e. ObamaCare still wouldn't have been repealed) and Republicans in Congress - at least many of them - realizing that that would be the case. The issue was mass delusion on the part of Republican supporters. They just didn't understand what was going on and what was possible. I believe, had they, most of them would not object to what Republican leadership did - fight to the extent possible but then relent before committing suicide for the party. I think many Republican voters actually thought that Republicans could have forced Democrats to go along with dismantling ObamaCare (or otherwise dismantle it on their own). They were just wrong on that. So Speaker Boehner's (and other Republicans') great sin was in only indulging that delusion for so long, it was in eventually confronting reality as opposed to continuing to play act and pander to delusion in perpetuity.
If Republican voters don't want to support him and other Republicans because of that - because, at some point, they decided to stop pandering to those voters' group delusion - then okay. But let's be aware enough to understand that that's what the situation was. Republican voters are upset that their elected officials weren't able to do the impossible, and more to the point they are upset that their elected officials wouldn't continue to pretend to be trying to do the impossible even though continuing to pretend to be trying to would have hurt them - those voters and their interests - in other ways.
Tilted
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One of the effects of Mr. Trump being in the race and employing the strategy that he did so consistently and so energetically was, I think, to leave Mr. Cruz as the main remaining candidate in the field. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your perspective I suppose. But I think things would have played out much differently - when it comes to who was in the race at the end, or further along - had this race not been defined by the Trump phenomenon. That's kind of a no duh observation, I know. But in thinking about the possibilities I think it's human nature to kind of lose sight of such dynamics.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
No. It was THE reason. The nation was animated and agitated. The ACA was passed on a purely partisan line and still needed some shady deals to make it happen. It offended a lot of people. Had it not passed or passed with some GOP support, Boehner isn't Speaker in January of '11. People were pissed everywhere. Boehner had two choices, find a way to get it done or don't take the job.
Of course, the GOP, as a whole, wanted nothing better than to have the ACA so, it's easy to understand why it stayed but he COULD have found a way up to and including doing nothing until the Senate and the President caved.
"I was sent here to stop the ACA, period. It was passed on a purely partisan basis and should be seem as totally inappropriate for something of this size to be this partisan and I can be voted out in two years but I ONLY have this job to stop it. Period."
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Trump or no Trump, my point is Cruz was going to be in for the long haul. Him v. Jeb, say, or Rubio, a LOT of Trump supporters would have gone to Cruz as the anti establishment guy.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
There is our disagreement. In my view, it's just the opposite; on an issue this big, this hot, the risk, as we're seeing today, in my view, was in not 'risking' then. Their judgement was that it was too risky and that people would get over it, forget about it, move on, and here we are. It's one thing when we're talking about the left getting spun up. It has so many factions, one of them is always spun up. Of course they can wait most groups out; they're not,individually, big enough. On the right, when middle aged folks get up out of the easy chair, they're not kidding and they're not going to let it go and they're not going to move on.
The GOP faces an existential threat to it's future in this election and it is of their own making and one issue makes that so, the ACA. What on earth is the point of supporting it, most will conclude, if, when the moment calls for it, it does nothing?
One of the few heartening things we see in this election was when the race went to South Carolina and Dubbya was gonna walk out and save face for Jeb. My fear was that so many people were still in denial and still didn't get just how left governing Dubbya was that Jeb would be resurrected and business as usual would obtain. I think from this that way more people than I'd thought truly see George W. Bush for what he is and was; a big gummint kinda guy, period and that is NOT what he told us he was when he ran in 2000. Jeb didn't get a boost or even a reprieve. Complete disinterest in what Dubbya had to say ended it for Jeb.
Couple that to the ACA thing and the reason the GOP is in so much trouble is people don't see any point in it and that started with coming to terms with Bush's 8 years, 6 with a GOP congress.
Tilted
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There are a lot of reasons whey the GOP is in so much trouble going forward. In some ways we agree about them, in some ways I'm sure we disagree. Part of the problem is what happened in state races in 2010, as a result of which Republicans were pretty much able to set themselves up to keep control of the House for the next decade. That left a situation where most of the elected Republicans only had to care about what their base wanted, not about what their broader constituencies wanted - they didn't have to care about, indeed they'd be punished for caring about, what was good for the party in general. They had to win primaries not generals. Anyway, I've talked about that dynamic before and I could talk about it for days so I'll leave it at that for now.
Part of the problem is that they've just not been politically savvy. Democrats have consistently politically outmaneuvered them, put them in boxes that represented no win situations - to a great extent by leveraging the issue that I referred to in the last paragraph. There are plenty of other reasons as well.
But turning back to what we were talking about here... What do you think Republicans could have done, after Speaker Boehner became speaker, to get rid of ObamaCare? They could have refused to pass that general government funding until the cows came home (and left again and grew old and died and their offspring grew old and died and cows as a species evolved into fish) and Democrats would never have agreed to a repeal of ObamaCare or any substantial dismantling of it. The Democrats had the political advantage at that point. The longer Republicans refused to pass ordinary government funding, the stronger the Democrats would have been come the next election. The Democrats had laid the political ground work. They had given Republicans what they supposedly wanted when it came to that government funding - they said, okay, here, you get your spending levels, we won't even try to negotiate you closer to the levels we want, you win. Republicans would have been blamed for shutting down the government - 10 days, 100 days, until the next election. However long it was, it would have been Republicans fault. And Democrats would have been quite content to let Republicans hang themselves politically. With each passing day they would have been counting House seats and Senate seats and state legislature seats and governorships that they would have been picking up. And all the while they'd have been no closer to being willing to agree to dismantle ObamaCare.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
It would have taken someone who was committed to it. Someone willing to go make the case day after day after day. You are correct about the political advantage but that is precisely the battlefield; politics.
It would require a Speaker who went out every single day and said the same thing; "I was sent here for one reason; to defeat the ACA. It is my duty to see to it as long as I am here and I am perfectly willing to be voted out if the people change their minds but, as things stand, the ONLY reason I am Speaker is because most American's are outraged at the blatantly partisan way it was passed. They want it repealed. On an issue this big, you can't do that and expect legitimacy. This is how our system works. The court said the thing was legal and it was up to us to change it if we didn't like it. Well, here I am and here I stay until it is gone."
philibusters
New Member
Granted Ted Cruz wasn't the speak of the house, but he attempted to do that. As I am government employee I remember the Federal Government shutdown which lasted two weeks. Ted Cruz aggressively advocated the shutdown based in large part on defunding Obamacare and the Republicans were getting killed in the public opinion.
There was a government shutdown in large part to defund Obamacare lead in part by Ted Cruz. Cruz as you would expect given his self-righteous persona, advocated hard and really tried to sell the idea of defunding Obama, but the public never really got behind the Republicans.
It sounds like Ted Cruz should be your candidate Larry because he did what you wanted the Republicans to do... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_shutdown_of_2013
Ultimately I think while certain segments of the population hate Obamacare it is not as unpopular as you think it is. For example it was passed in 2010 and Obama won election fairly comfortably in 2012. If the public was truly as upset about Obamacare as you think they are, Obama would not have been able to win re-election.
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Larry Gude
Strung Out
Ted Cruz did that as a set piece for his campaign.
And Ted Cruz just might be the last person I'd vote for. Behind Bernie, Hillary, Trump, Kasich, Dr. Carson, Carly, Jeb, Marco, Paul...
philibusters
New Member
But he shutdown the government and went all in to defund Obamacare. Yes I am sure he knew he was going to be running for President in 2016, but he still took bold action when other Republicans were not willing to.