When the going gets tough, the tough surrender, call for comity, prop up Romney and Huntsman, and come together for the kind of full-throated attack on conservatives and classical liberals that they can never seem to muster against Democrats and socialists:
Members of Congress in both parties don’t believe the controversial Medicare reforms drafted by the House Republican Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan will be a part of an eventual agreement to raise the debt ceiling, according to the results of this week’s National Journal Congressional Insiders Poll. Democratic Members were near unanimous in saying that the Ryan proposal wouldn’t make the cut, but a solid majority of Republicans concurred.
Skeptics within the GOP ranks simply didn’t think Democrats in Congress would ever give in on this point. “The Democrats will never give up this issue ahead of the ’12 elections and the Ryan plan will never be enacted while Barack Obama is president,” said one Republican Congressional Insider. Echoed another, “The Democrats won’t bargain away their No. 1 campaign issue, especially with all indications pointing to a stagnant economic recovery.”
And one Republican acknowledged that the Democratic opposition to the Ryan plan is probably unshakable. “It’s an honest, proven solution but Democrats are too far out on their demonization limb to allow it,” said one GOP Congressional Insider.
At the same time, another suggested that the proposal was becoming a political liability for the party. “Our vulnerable members are already pushing back,” said a GOP Congressional Insider. “The only one who can explain the plan is Paul Ryan.”
— Which is precisely why we should be voting out all the fuckers who can’t explain how to get us out of this fiscal nightmare, replacing them with unwashed, un-“schooled” mouthbreathers who seem to be able to do it just fine — and who, unlike, say, John Boehner, won’t squirt a few tears and whimper because the mean ol’ Dems aren’t the same kind of Dems he’s used to, and they simply will not do the whole “let’s compromise toward bigger government!” thing he’s learned is the way “business” gets down in DC.
Turns out these are leftist ideologues, and they can smell what he is: a go-along, get along non-fighter striking a pose for his party; and like all good patsies, they know they can bully him around.
But hey. Don’t even think about a massive, grass-roots, third-party uprising. No. We need to change the establishment GOP from within. And the good news is, with a lot of hard work and some hits and misses, that should only take, say, 10-12 election cycles.
The bad news? America has about 1-2 election cycles left before it is fundamentally “transformed” into the opposite of its founding. Just as the left has always wanted.
Just like on abortion, entitlement programs, etc, etc, etc.
All of these items that the GOP refuses to fight on simply because “the Democrats won’t give in”.
You know what I wonder? What subjects will the Dems refuse to fight on because the GOP won’t give in?
I honestly can’t think of any.
Democrats wouldn’t “give in” on slavery either and the 1850s showed punting just to all get along was not a viable tactic or strategy. I know that was way over a hundred years ago and so we can’t even know what they were
saying meaningintending.Bordo, you answered your own question. There isn’t a subject the GOP won’t give in on.
In the interest of “bipartisanship” and “collegialism”. And so David Brooks and Peggy Noonan won’t tut-tut at them.
Republican Socialists. It’s time to associate those two words everywhere, every time. It’s a way to ram home to their Republican socialist constituents — who are damn well going to have theirs, dammit — that a pile by another name is still a pile.
(Of course, this almost certainly plays a part (linked from Drudge), which is made notable by its last paragraph even if nothing else, which I doubt.
Sanitized annual PR release here, for your security and edification.
I’m afraid we lost the message years ago.)
Posh, JHo.
We have plenty of time.
So unhelpful. Visigoth.
I’ve often found people who “won’t give in” just haven’t been presented with the right argument.
It’s pretty convenient that the folks polled are anonymous. Who knows whether they’re in the House or Senate?
And the Senate’s already proven that no matter what goes on in the House, they’re not going to go along with it; nor will Obama sign it. So in this instance I’d have to disagree that this points to GOP timidity on the whole.
There are members that haven’t agreed with Ryan from the start. Some out of timidity, it’s true. But others because they believe it to be unable to pass by the Senate, and still others think it doesn’t go far enough. Unfortunately, there isn’t time to wrangle over it before the debt ceiling vote will have to take place, so there’ll either have to be a compromise measure or some other spending reductions traded for the debt ceiling vote.
Which, I don’t like either, being a fan of the Ryan plan myself. But I think many folks believe that ultimately this will be an issue for, and solved as a result of, the 2012 Presidential election.
That’s timidity too.
I should have been more specific McGeehee, I was trying to draw a distiction between timidity driven by fear of electoral consequences and concern that measures would never pass the Senate.
But I see your point.
I suspect we may be over thinking this one a bit.
I think that’s absolutely right. How that shakes out and what happens next are important questions, but they sort of separate from the fate of the Ryan plan over the next 18 months. I’m not seeing surrender so much as recognition of how long the game is going to go.
That’s cover for not pushing the fight, Pablo. In my opinion. They bought into the loss in NY as a referendum on Medicare reform. And they don’t want to have to go out and explain it, because they don’t want to be frozen, identified individually, and attacked by the left and the media.
Further, if you know you are being polled, and that poll results will be made public (and yet you remain anonymous), you are sending the signal that the GOP is not behind the Ryan plan, though they pretend they are in full support.
It’s a meta-game that’s being played.
Whose the fucking idiot who tied the Ryan budget reduction plan to raising the debt ceiling? That’s what I want to know.
If that’s what they do, then by all means, let’s give them holy hell. They should be running on it, and using the fact that they’ll never get it past a Dem Senate and Dem President as reason to get rid of those two things. That would be the proper use of the truth of the situation.