GOP Making a Comeback?

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Yes, I certainly hope it makes them explode into a thousand pieces.

 

Right, and the Liberals have never gone after the Blue Dog Democrats by telling them they'd better support the President, or else.

 

Yes, KJ, we will. But liberals are NOT the Democratic Party. As a grassroots movement, we will go after Republicans and Democrats alike, depending on the issue. Liberals aren't going to blindly follow one party over the cliff, and you will discover that many of us will vote Republican if we like that candidate's stand on the issues. We notice that you mananged to lose the 23rd district in New York state by running off your own candidate because she was too "liberal." The tea potters even bussed in some guy who didn't even live in the district. It's no wonder the Republicans lost it.

 

Chandos, that's some fine hair you're splitting there. I mean, most Americans today associate liberal with Democrats and conservative with Republicans. Some may admit that the independants probably have to fall in there somewhere, but most will probably say most independants are also moderates, neither wholely liberal nor conservative.

Of course, it gets really confusing when you consider social vs fiscal policies...

 

You're not actually suggesting that the Republican and Democratic parties are equally bad at self-cannibalizing, are you? Because, well, it's extremely easy to demonstrate otherwise.

One word: RINO

 

Not really. Consider the Green Party. It is much like to liberals as the Libertarian Party is to Libertarians.

In fact, it was Newt who called his own party "a bunch of cannibals."

It's little wonder they keep making the same mistakes over again....

 

Really? When you say "vote Republican as long as you like the candidate's stand on the issues" I interpret that as meaning as long as he's not a Conservative. Heck, I'd vote Democrat if the Republican was the more liberal of the two. I'm a Conservative first and foremost.


And Hoffman still managed to get 40% of the vote, even after Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat. The 5-6% of the vote that Scozzafava managed to get even after dropping out of the race could've easily turned a Democratic victory into a Conservative victory.

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http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/20...attack-dem-senator-baucus-on-health-care.html

Quote from the article:

 

Woah, who is dying because of a lack of service? Are you implying that if you get sick you bemoan the fact that you are a U.S. citizen and you wish you lived in Venezula for they have better doctors, hospitals, etc?

To me that is preposterous. What they have is a system in which the government pays for the health care, whereas in the United States it can be private insurance that pays for it or Medicare for the elderly.

This entire health care debate isn't about the state of health care it is about the state of health care insurance and who is going to pay the bill. People who like the current system are primarily concerned that if the government becomes a single payer, they will NOT get the service they want and are currently willing to pay for. Then to make it worse they are also concerned that their taxes will go up to pay for everyone else to get "free care". That is what the debate is about, not people dying in the streets.

 

Yeah, really. I voted for RR. But you may not consider him a "real" conservative, since some liberals (like myself) and a good number of Democrats voted for him as well. Did you ever hear the term "Reagan Democrats?" And as a matter of point, it was liberal and progressive groups who gave Republican Ron Paul a voice when he refused to go along with the Republican Party line. You may not know that he was also a guest on MSNBC and the Daily Show.

That's also a fairly useless link you provided as well, except that there are links on the page to take you to the real deal. ABC is wrong if they believe that these are "Democratic groups." Many liberals and progressives will vote outside the Democratic Party and the group that I'm a member of, MoveOn, will probably follow suit along with our counterparts at Progressive Change and DfA. All those groups are issue based and not party based. I would respectfully suggest that you explore those links a bit to find out what they are about.

To be honest, the Democratic Party is just not liberal or progressive enough. There are some good liberals in the party, but not enough of them. I will often vote for a Green Party member if one is running locally, and in the 2008 election I was able to vote for just one that was on the ballot.

I could be persauaded almost anyday to vote for a Libertarian, rather than one of the corporate sponsored lackeys in the Republican Party who try to pass themselves off as "conservatives." But my point in all this, is that grassroots groups are really independent groups, although they lean more towards the party that comes closest to the issues they represent. If you notice many members of the "Tea Pot Party" claim that they are not a Republican organization either.

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Snook - Those are all valid points from your side of the debate. But on our side, it really is about people dying from a lack of care.

 

KJ: Ah, you are making that utterly ludicrous claim. Point to a Dem equivalent of the hilarious occurrence in NY-23, plzkthx.

Just for starters.

...

Depending which studies you look at, 20-80k yearly. Although that's 'lack of insurance', specifically.

 

There probably isn't an example on the Democrat side that I know of. You consider that a good thing? As far as I'm concerned, what happened in NY-23 is a good thing for the Republican party. There was no primary for this special election, and the people of NY-23 sent a message to the Republican Party that they disagreed with their choice of candidate.

 

That Steele guy sounds like an absolute moron. The GOP should be embracing these moderates - it's the moderates who are going to win you the elections, not some radical nutcase. One of the great joys of democratic systems is that the middle is where everything should be at, the extremes on both sides should balance each other out into a nothingness. What the hell happened these past few years over there, I couldn't say, but if the GOP wants any sort of future they need to distance themselves from people like Steele and this Hoffman guy and aim for middle America. Seriously, it's simple numbers, in any two party system. The party who can get the average Joe Blog, who sits in the middle of the political spectrum, is the party who will control government.


And KJ, how can a party ripping itself apart be a good thing for them? Would you really want someone running a country who cannot even get their own backyard in order? Do the following two phrases strike any chords?

"United we stand, divided we fall."

"One for all, and all for one"

 

Roku
yes, Steele is an idiot, and an opportunist. He's supposed to be chief of the tribe, but instead prefers to go by the wind, and that nowadays comes down from the Rush Limbaugh/Beck/Cristol/Palin wing - the nutty/unscrupulous vocal minority. They don't do much, but you hear them all over the place.

KJ,
but look what they voted for: Purging moderates for the sake of ideological purity. Limbaugh has bee at it again with the RINO's. There are a couple people in the GOP who just appear to love that. Personally, I doubt it will do the GOP any good.

Very pointed take:

It makes one shudder to see what their policies will look like: Less Taxes! No deficit! Reagonomics forever! Greater Aircraft Carriers! Get the government out of everything (but Iraq and Afghanistan unless complete victory is achieved)! Drown it in the bathtub already!

These people don't want the middle. It's abhorrent. They are right. The others are wrong. Always. And never mind facts. That means compromise, because any compromise is abandoning 'principle'. They are zealous, true believers. The centrists or moderate Republicans are traitors to the cause, they are RINOs. They need to be purged from the GOP rolls.

I think that the WSJ's Thomas Frank has it quite right when he describes the confused ignoramuses in Beck's wake.

 

Whether or not it's a 'good thing' is irrelevant to the point, which is simply that the GOP and the crazy righties are a lot more serious about ideological litmus tests--and purges--than the Dems and lefties are. Partially because the crazy lefties are much less influential than the crazy righties. There is no left-wing equivalent to Limbaugh/O'Reilly/Coulter/et al, at least in terms of power. The Dems don't care what, say, Olbermann has to say, and feel perfectly comfortable prohibiting their congressmen from appearing on The Daily Show.

Although come to that, I'm glad you think it's a good thing for your party and I hope lots of your fellows share that view. The longer the GOP eats its own entrails, the better off the nation will be*.

The nation would be even better off if, say, the David Frums became vastly more influential in the GOP, but as I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon 'weakened, divided, utterly insane' GOP is the best we can hope for.

*I refer anyone who disagrees to the Bush years. The only redeeming feature of American conservatism is fiscal conservatism, and when handed the keys to government the GOP couldn't even manage that. So **** them. **** them to hell.

 

A stirring video, but I can't help but think that this guy is playing a little fast and loose with his statistics. I believe his quote was "Two people of identical weight, size, etc. and the the one without health insurance is 40% more likely to die." Well, I'm sure he is correct and he can find a homeless drunk and an urban gang member who are match my statistics and they are both far more likely to die than I am. I think there may be far more important characteristics then health insurance that determines that mortality discrepency. I know when I read my local paper, I don't see any articles or obituaries that read. "John Doe died because he was in a car accident and the hospital refused to treat him due to a lack of insurance"

 

Well, yeah. They do that already - on every news channel on the planet. But the analysis runs deeper than what you do, they tend to compare not just all mid-terms over the past 100 years, but they look specifically at past years that are most similar to the current one. For example, there is also more turnover in the House and Senate when the economy is doing poorly compared to it doing well.

But taken as a whole, I agree with what you are saying. The Dems will lose seats, although I doubt they will lose their majority in either the House or Senate. Gauging the magnitude of the losses by historical standards seems as good a method as any.

But a landslide means very different things for the differnet parties. For example, in the unlikely even that the Dems only lose one or two seats, that would be hearlded as a huge victory for them, based on historical data.

That is true - the Scozzafava vote total exceed the difference between the other two candidates. However, that kind of proves the point... that there is major infighting within the party.

Well of course they are more likely to die than you are. You have health insurance, and chances are they don't. [/sarcarsm]

 

Of course you won't. But I bet you can find lots of insurance ads. The corporate media is exactly that. And now, "another word from our sponsors...."

 

I kinda like Grayson. He gives those loud mouths on the other side some of their own medicine, and he's totally unrepentant about it. Good. About time D's stand their ground and stop being baited by the R's.

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I wish him well. He has the right ideas and he is bright, and remorseless, just like here, where he savages Republican Congressman Broun on the GOP's 'defund ACORN bill' and bills of attainder. He is apparently a capable lawyer, and from a conservative angle it ought to speak in his favour that he clerked for Justice Scalia.

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"Auf einen groben Klotz gehört ein grober Keil", as the saying goes, which (very) roughly translates to To beat a brute, you need to use brute force, too.

 

It's simple, it resolves internal disputes. The Republican party is divided right now, on issues if not on candidates. The RNC tried to press a candidate that the people didn't agree with, essentially trying to force the people to "play ball". The people didn't, and the RNC got a black eye for it. Hopefully, they'll learn to listen to their constituents. If not, there really may be a party split.

Maybe you should look at it the other way. Remember, in a party split, the other half doesn't just disappear. Whether you look at the Tea Party as the purification or as the cast-off, it will help American politics in general to differentiate between the extremists and the realistic conservatives.

 

You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts.

Unless you're going to seriously argue that the 47 million uninsured are, um, all gangsters and stuff?

Why yes, Harvard Medical Journal contributors do know more about conducting a study than Snook does. Shocking, that.

ETA: Now, let's go back to 'GOP making a comeback'?

The GOP has totally screwed itself. And I'll tell you why: 8% approval rating with 18-29 year-olds. That's an entire generation of potential voters lost thanks to the Bush years. Good going, guys. In the short term there may be a resurgence. In the long term, well, it's looking like the roles of the past thirty years will be reversed for the next thirty.

Incidentally, that approval rating is lowest of any age cohort and a compelling argument that my cohort is the best in the nation. Suckers.