If you follow the GOP mouthpieces on Twitter, the running meme has been that conservatives — because of their stubborn, unrealistic expectations — harmed the Party, who without them may have been able to win certain concessions from Obama, who as we all know is a post-partisan, pragmatic fellow eager to compromise, just not when he’s being held hostage by wacko bird demands that, say, Congress have to live under its own law, and that UNIVERSAL waivers delay implementation of ObamaCare, whose roll-out has been a disaster of epic proportions.
I’m posting an open question to these types — who continue to tell us it in unwise to pick fights we “cant win” (even with 68% of the American public against ObamaCare, and the embarrassing failure of its web portals) — and it it this: if we only fight battles we know we can win, how is that a “fight” at all? It’s a WWE match. Entertainment. Theater. Fixed and preordained.
Further, I posed this question to the same types on Twitter: if the Congress agrees to Obama’s demands, caving to his threat to default (and to do so, he would have to once again defy the Constitution, particularly the 14th Amendment, just as the Treasury would have to defy its own incipient act), that means that all the Executive has to do, going forward, is threaten default should he be denied funding increases — without Congressional oversight (he can spend on bureaucracies, whose regulations have the force of law) to check him — giving the Executive de facto control over the power of the purse.
If this is the case — and it’s not something we can “fight smart” at this time — then how is it we can still pretend we live in a constitutional republic?
And why don’t they seem to care that this is exactly the state of affairs?
I believe the moment Boehner agreed to accept the left’s framing of a potential “default” the fight was over. And many in the GOP joined him in promoting the idea that a “default” was actually possible — without explaining that for it to be possible, Obama and Lew would have to defy the 14th Amendment and intentionally sabotage the full faith and credit of the US. That is, that “default” could only happen if the President ordered it, and in doing so he would be violating the Constitution and risking the economic destruction of the US and many world markets.
But that was evidently too difficult an argument to make, so they adopted the left’s “default” talking point, then joined them in suggesting that TEA Party conservatives — Ted Cruz in particular — are responsible for the current state of affairs, as if it were Cruz and Lee, et al., who helped build up a $17 Trillion debt, and are allowing Obama to increase that by demanding a debt ceiling increase, usurping Congress’s power in the process.
This is understandably acceptable to progressives, who despise the Constitution and its checks on an all-powerful centralized government; but what is the reason the establishment GOP and its mouthpieces accept this turn of events?
The answer is one of two things: either they are cowardly, insular, DC-centric hacks who are more interested in the games of politics than in the foundational documents establishing rule of law, protecting our liberty and sovereignty, and laying out our principles of governance; or else they see in this “fundamental transformation” future opportunities to use such powers for themselves.
Either way, it’s cynical and unseemly, particularly as they then try to use conservatives as scapegoats for their own capitulation, which they self-servingly paint as nuanced and “smart.” As if, had Ted Cruz and the crazed teabaggers who gave them the House not interfered, this time they were REALLY going to stand up to Obama, and maybe even extract from him more cuts to the rate of expanded spending — in exchange, of course, for more “taxes on the rich,” another 1.1 Trillion in spending availability, and an end to much of the sequester.
Which is evidently what passes for 3-D chess in today’s GOP establishment.
This government does not represent we, the people. It represents DC and all its ancillary insiders and parasites.
That’s the truth, painful though it is to hear.
But fuck it: I get marginalized for running my mouth anyway, so what are they gonna do next, have me shot?
And when we’re all standing among the smoldering ruins, the GOP will stand up tall, and proudly say, “The Democrats may have destroyed this nation, but we stood up to them, and demanded that they destroy it 5% slower!”
What a great bunch, that GOP.
“either they are cowardly, insular, DC-centric hacks who are more interested in the games of politics than in the foundational documents establishing rule of law, protecting our liberty and sovereignty, and laying out our principles of governance; or else they see in this “fundamental transformation” future opportunities to use such powers for themselves.”
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, so yes, both.
” . . . but what is the reason the establishment GOP and its mouthpieces accept this turn of events?”
I turn to the House’s handling of the various depredations inherent in the Fast and Furious political crimes, the IRS political crimes, the Benghazi political crimes, unconstitutional Executive appointments and so on for an indication of deed as opposed to word. And the deeds are? Functionally nonexistent: show without effect, an outcome practically impossible to achieve without active intervention to conceal the truth of these matters.
Since when does the leadership/public face of a party run around talking about how damaged said party is? To paraphrase Casey Stengel, do any of these people know how to play this game? Or are they actively throwing it?
Yep. It looks like the latter, save for the few who aren’t playing the game at all.
“so what are they gonna do next, have me shot?”
Well, yes, eventually.
Limbaugh just now avers “. . . because they have been tricked into believing people will hate them if they do [stand up against the Democrat tyranny]”. I think he’s wrong or still making excuses in the face of an active collusion: the GOP stands for the Democrat tyranny.
Oversight theater. Add it to security theater and shutdown theater.
I have no doubt that if the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised as demanded RIGHT! THIS! MINUTE! we’ll even be treated to default theater.
Maybe we need to show them some counterrevolution theater.
Maybe we need to show them some counterrevolution theater.
Not for nothing was Dr. Hanson pondering Tyrtaeus’ exhortations of steadfast unity to the Spartan neoi [Tyrt. 6D und 7D].
Some things — like the hoplite phalanx for one — only work when we stand together.
“Leonidas requires that you stand. I require only that you kneel.” — Xerxes in 300
And the implicit question Xerxes elides? “What do you require?”
“That you, Xerxes, kiss my ass.”
As Winston Smith learned, it is not enough to obey, you must love him.
If teh bestest and teh brightest of GOP-centric political and pundit classes think that the way to win is to do nothing,* just get out of the way and let the American people find out just how bad life under the statists can get,** then I propose we put them to the test:
by voting them into the minority, where they get to do just that –nothing.
*also known as winning by losing
**remember how well that worked out from ’06 to ’08? So well that we elected the first post-American president!
Once Again… Republican Peter King Blasts Ted Cruz Over Shutdown (Video)
This government does not represent we, the people. It represents DC and all its ancillary insiders and parasites. That’s the truth, painful though it is to hear.
Yup.
Nothing’s going to change it until the whole thing collapses, and it will; it’s just a matter of time. Like I mentioned to ThomasD in the other thread – prepare your own progeny for the coming crash so that they’ll know how to deal with it.
I have no kids myself, just nieces and nephews. But I do feel for you guys who do. They’re the ones who will have to deal with this directly.
if we only fight battles we know we can win, how is that a “fight” at all?
It’s not.
When you’re at war, you fight the battles you HAVE TO win, and then you fight as hard as you can.
We launched the Normandy invasion because it was a battle we HAD TO win. Nobody said, “hey, here’s this huge opening in the Axis forces: let’s sashay right through it,” because there never was a huge opening to take, and there was never going to be.
Normandy had to succeed, and the only way it could succeed was to muster huge forces and then take heavy losses at the outset. Everyone in that invasion knew that victory would not be had except at a high cost, and perhaps not even then.
But they had to do it. Had to. If they’d shrunk from the difficulty of the battle and the terrible cost, they’d never have turned the tide against Hitler.
“Fighting smart” is what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that’s turning out exactly as well as fighting smart against Liberal Fascism.
We’re going to have to quarantine everything inside I-495 just to save ourselves.
Nothing’s going to change it . . .
Indeed. Only something is going to change it, and only the people of America are sufficiently something to take that stand. They must choose: be something? Or nothing?
Harmed the party. Feel harmed? Good. We’re dog traingers and we’re changing tactics, mouthpieces, put your ears on. You are our bitches not the other way around. We explain things to you, not you to us. You pooed the carpet. We’re holding you roughly by the scruff and holding your nose to the poo and explicating sternly we’re quite cross and not having it. That technique is contrasted with scolding whispers from a distance until we notice your ears drop. See the difference?
That is, that “default” could only happen if the President ordered it, and in doing so he would be violating the Constitution and risking the economic destruction of the US and many world markets.
Who doubts that he would go right ahead and pull the trigger anyway?
But I don’t think they’re basing their actions on the knowledge that we have an ideological sociopath in office who is unconstrained by law and consequence. They are very much buying into the Left’s narrative, as you said, and they’re either cynical or cowardly or both.
Listening to Ann Coulter on Glenn Beck yesterday filled me with despair, because as good as she is at describing the perfidy of the Left — and despite her enthusiasm for Cruz and Lee — she also buys the Establican premise that “fighting smart” is our only option, and that the greatest political sin a candidate can commit is to embarrass the party by causing the Left to clutch its pearls.
We are SO screwed.
“:. . . because they have been tricked into believing people will hate them if they do [stand up against the Democrat tyranny] “
Some really are stupid or gullible enough to fall for the trick; others just use the Left’s mockery as cover for what they want to do anyway.
Limbaugh DOES point out that nobody ever says to the Dems that if they do X, they’ll chase the independents into the arms of the GOP.
It’s a good counter-argument to deploy against our own naysayers (I’m looking at YOU, ace), because doy. Sauce for the goose and all that.
Ann Coulter is a menace on same order as the moron Bill O’Reilly. By their blithering bushels of misplaced self-confidence we know them.
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. — Justice Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Court, in his dissent to Silveira v. Lockyer*
* Silveira held that Second Amendment Rights were not an individual right, and was later overturned by the SCOTUS District of Colombia v Heller (2008) and McDonald v Chicago (2010) decisions
There will be no argument available…”the next time” regarding raising the debt limit. What exactly is the point of a limit that you slip every few months?
For what will queen Hillary not negotiate? There is no balance of power. Congressional elections have no consequences. Imperialism rules the day….
Ann is was and ever will be about Ann and Ann’s views. I tired of her prattle years ago.
Regarding this latest development: we knew this was going to happen. If the tent hadn’t folded then Obama would just turn up the heat until the GOP yelped “Thank you, sir! May I have another?”
Just because we lost this battle (and that remains to be seen regardless of all the prognosticators who are I-told-you-so-ing out there), it doesn’t mean we’ve lost the war. There are 300+ days until the mid-term elections. More than enough time to flank the traitors and oust them.
I submit that the intentions of Ted Cruz, et al, were to focus the attentions of the public on the return to limited government. Those yellow bellies that sided with the statists have been flushed out. Now it’s a matter of picking them off.
I denounce leigh for using the phrase “picking them off,” racist and violent nature of the imagery the phrase creates.
I denounce myself for denouncing leigh, due to my lack of tolerance and the fact that I’m a small government constitutional originalist radical.
Racist!
Anarchist!
It’s so funny how most of the old bloggers absolutely ignore me on Twitter. I mean, with determination and conviction.
It’s like I’m their very own Ted Cruz.
And not the good kind of “anarcho-communist”, where the anarchy still has EBT cards.
And a Twitter account on the old Ophone.
Jeff, don’t worry about them. The pioneers take the arrows and they’ll be telling everyone “Jeff G? Him and me, we go way back!” while we, your trusty Outlaws never left.
No, but it does mean that the war, and everything that goes with it in terms of waste and suffering, is going to go on that much longer.
In order to get at the Democrats, we have to first fight our way through the Republicans.
Peasant collectives always have full access to Twitter, leigh. It’s in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I’m pretty sure.
I was going to try to post something relevant or inciteful, but y’all make me feel like a chimp with a box of dull crayons, so I’ll just sit here and grin.
Right now, if I had to choose between anarchy and our current form of government, I’m all for anarchy. At least with anarchy, I can be reasonably sure I’ll be left alone once in a while.
ernst, isn’t it amazing the GOP has all the spine of an invertebrate except when it comes to dealing with those damn radical constitutionalists?
We’re going to have to quarantine everything inside I-495 just to save ourselves.
I spent at least a year-and-a-half playing Fallout 3 over and over again. There was just something soothing about playing a game set in a semi-radioactive wasteland where Washington, DC once stood.
We can only dream.
Rush made the point today that, by refusing to pass a budget through the Senate and forcing the government to operate on a continuing resolution based upon the last (Democrat, naturally) budget law to be enacted, the President and the Majority Leader already have de facto control over the purse. So it’s to their advantage to refuse to negotiate with the hostage takers they’ve held hostage since 2011, isn’t it?
By pretending silly, duh.
And why not? They pretend to believe the stuff they proclaim on the campaign trail isn’t just some bullshit they have to spread around, and we pretend that we don’t know we’re being lied to when we support them with our votes.
Because lesser evil. Or is it greater good this time? Which campaign cycle is it anyways?
Kind of like how Obama will talk to anybody without pre-conditions –except for the Republicans of course. He’ll only negotiate with them after they’ve agreed to give him everything he wants.
In both instances, you see who they (i.e. Obama and the Establishment GOP) consider to be their real enemy.
Tallis: Jeremiah Lamentations
I thought that was just me. Glad someone else here games to share in that vision.
Maybe if I think of Harry Reed being from Nevada, I can finally get into playing Fallout: New Vegas.
“If you follow the GOP mouthpieces on Twitter, the running meme has been that conservatives — because of their stubborn, unrealistic expectations — harmed the Party, ”
Motherfucker we have not yet BEGUN to harm the shit out of your party. No votes from us, no money from us, no support of any kind from us, while democrats continue to accuse you of whatever pops into their head because you are dumb enough to let it stick, will be what us harming your party looks like.
Leaving you party to die in the ditch it dug is what harming your party will look like. Calling you out publicly on your crap is what harming your party will look like.
And we WILL harm your party.
palaeomerus says October 16, 2013 at 8:20 pm
“If you follow the GOP mouthpieces on Twitter, the running meme has been that conservatives — because of their stubborn, unrealistic expectations — harmed the Party, ”
Motherfucker we have not yet BEGUN to harm the shit out of your party. No votes from us, no money from us, no support of any kind from us, while democrats continue to accuse you of whatever pops into their head because you are dumb enough to let it stick, will be what us harming your party looks like.
Leaving you party to die in the ditch it dug is what harming your party will look like. Calling you out publicly on your crap is what harming your party will look like.
And we WILL harm your party.
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51556#comments
I’m past all that. It all just rings hollow now. We have no representation in Washington.
We taking this to the streets or what?
Why is everyone so upset?
Boehner did great, right? The Republicans stood up! They “oppose” Obamacare! They practically won!
Wow!
Oh wait, reality… never mind.
Why would we want to do that when the Democrats have the country on a trajectory all but guaranteed to bring the streets to us?
Ernst Schreiber says October 17, 2013 at 8:30 am
We taking this to the streets or what?
Why would we want to do that when the Democrats have the country on a trajectory all but guaranteed to bring the streets to us?
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51556#comments
I want to get a jump on the head bashing.