steveinbsas
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SaraSara said:
He is neither rational or dispassionate.
Whatever happened to the Obama sycophants?
- Thread starter steveinbsas
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He is neither rational or dispassionate.
StevePalermo
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SaraSara said:
Like those shouting racist and homophobic abuse at congressmen and spitting on them. Such lovely people. We all have strong opinions but the Republicans seem to be encouraging these nutjobs.
Here's a very interesting piece by David Frum, a Conservative Republican and former economic speechwriter for George W. Bush. (He was the one who coined the phrase: "Axis of evil".)
Waterloo
March 21st, 2010 at 4:59 pm by DAVID FRUM
Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.
It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:
(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.
(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.
So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:
A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.
Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.
Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.
Waterloo
March 21st, 2010 at 4:59 pm by DAVID FRUM
Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.
It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. But:
(1) It’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November – by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.
(2) So what? Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now.
So far, I think a lot of conservatives will agree with me. Now comes the hard lesson:
A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.
Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.
Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law.
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.
Ries said:
I'd like to see the source for that.
SaraSara said:
If you determine a good president by how hated he is, then Bush was the best president you ever had.
SaraSara said:
What's interesting about it? He is just another idiot who thinks this is a Republican vs Democrat issue. Puppet to the left or puppet to the right, which one do you prefer bankrupting your country?
StevePalermo said:
Those lovely people are still at it:
"Overhaul foes target lawmakers
At least 10 House Democrats report death threats or incidents of harassment or vandalism at district offices following last weekend's contentious vote."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Obama must indeed be a great President, judging by the kind of people who hate him: Birthers, Born-Agains, and Tea-Partiers, not to mention for-profit haters such as Rush Limbaugh. (David Frum's clear, well-written column got that right.)
You still don't get it SaraSara. Even liberals dislike him because he is a fraud. People were so fed up with Bush that they wanted to buy all his promises. But now they are realizing what a fraud he is. After over a year in office he hasn't kept a single of his campaign promises. Could it be any worse?
It's an exaggeration to say that Obama is a fraud. There's no doubt that he's a centrist. During the campaign many idealistic lefties in the Dem party, and of course plenty disingenuous spinster righties on Fox, projected him as a much bigger progressive than he actually is. But anyone who has followed his career closely knows that he has always tried to position himself in the center rather than the progressive wing of the party. There have been no surprises in the way he has governed in his first year.
Obama's only mistake so far was that he naively believed that Republicans were working against him in good faith. He tried to reach out to them in the same way that Charlie Brown always tried to kick the football when Lucy teed it up for him. I think only in the past couple of weeks, after he witnessed first hand the utter depravity of the Republican approach to health care reform, has Obama come to realize that Republicans will never engage in post-partisan cooperation, that they are radicalizing to the extreme with each passing moment, and that a frighteningly high percentage of right wingers would rather see Obama dead than agree to low cost health care for working Americans. It really has gotten that bad.
There are a lot of haters in the world, and they're coming out of the woodwork as we speak.
Obama's only mistake so far was that he naively believed that Republicans were working against him in good faith. He tried to reach out to them in the same way that Charlie Brown always tried to kick the football when Lucy teed it up for him. I think only in the past couple of weeks, after he witnessed first hand the utter depravity of the Republican approach to health care reform, has Obama come to realize that Republicans will never engage in post-partisan cooperation, that they are radicalizing to the extreme with each passing moment, and that a frighteningly high percentage of right wingers would rather see Obama dead than agree to low cost health care for working Americans. It really has gotten that bad.
There are a lot of haters in the world, and they're coming out of the woodwork as we speak.
The intensity of hatred toward Obama is frightening. I can't help thinking that part of it is racially motivated, that many people at heart see him as an "uppity nigger". The level of animosity, and the increased verbal and now physical violence, makes me fear for Obama's safety.
It was funny to hear McCain say that Democrats should expect no cooperation from Republicans for the rest of this year. So, what else is new? .......
It was funny to hear McCain say that Democrats should expect no cooperation from Republicans for the rest of this year. So, what else is new? .......
On the subject of David Frum check this out. He was fired today for his comments about health reform. Wonder if the President of AEI spit in Frum's face when he delivered the bad news ... or maybe he'll just vandalize Frum's office when he's on vacation... Must have been an unpleasant lunch in any case.