Just got a press release from the self-proclaimed “pioneer [of] political direct mail”, who boasts that he “has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” (The Nation magazine), one of the “conservatives of the century” (The Washington Times), and one of 2008’s “top 25 influencers” among Republicans””:
Manassas, Virginia – “Voters have given Republicans one more chance to get it right,” Richard A. Viguerie said today. “They are on probation, and if they mess up again, they won’t get another chance.”
__
“The last time the Republicans were in charge, they became the party of big spending, Big Government, and Big Business. They abandoned the philosophy of Ronald Reagan and cozied up to lobbyists and special interests. And they paid a price at the polls.
__
“This year, the Democrats under President Obama and Speaker Pelosi drove millions of voters right back into the arms of the Republicans. But if Republicans return to their bad habits – if they start working for K Street instead of Main Street – they will pay a terrible price. Tea Party voters and conservatives will turn them out in the 2012 primaries.
__
“People will say: Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and the Republican Party is dead,” Viguerie said.
The upcoming, ongoing battles between the common Republican careerists and the wackaloon true believers are going to make the internecine sniping between Obots and firebaggers look like a… garden fete.
I’m just a little giddy that my beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts has stayed solidly Democratic. Incumbent Governor Patrick held off Charley Baker, aka “Mitt Romney with a functioning neocortex”, and Barney Frank defeated our own version of “Joe Miller Lite”. The local newsbots are already babbling about “the end of the Scott Brown effect” — Cosmo Boy is now reduced to another quirky swamp yankee anomaly, not the much-ballyhooed John-the-Baptist foretelling a new regime of Masshole Republicanism. I wonder what the 2011 version of those Watergate-era “Don’t Blame Us, We Voted for McGovern” bumperstickers will be?
Michael Goetz
Sing it sister! Our beloved Commonwealth is just about the only place the Dems did exceptionally well. Hear those footsteps behind you, Brown? We’re coming for you.
Spaghetti Lee
I’d love to see a flat-out civil war between plutocrats and wingnuts, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen. First of all, they ain’t that different, and second of all, no one falls in line like a wingnut. All you’ve gotta do is scream “Scary black socialist!” and snap! Instant cohesion.
For me, the biggest disappointment is the Midwest. I hope we bounce back from insanity when we realize the Republicans have nothing to offer us.
KG
yes, yes, it will be fun.
Comrade Luke
You are truly delusional. Every one of the tea party fuckers is going to vote 100% party line.
What’s the matter with everyone? It’s as plain as the nose on your face.
James K. Polk, Esq.
The countdown to the Paliopocalypse has begun.
Make sure to tell your friends and family that you love them!
gene108
I wonder if Vigurie realizes the Tea Party and other “grassroots” Republican activism was heavily funded by corporate interests, who don’t give a rats ass about what he wants other than how he can be used to further their interests.
*********************************************
On a side note, what really should be interesting is to see what’s going to happen, when the Republicans have to vote to raise the debt ceiling or risk defaulting on our national debt.
Part of me really wants the true-believers like Viguries to get their way and the Republicans don’t raise the debt ceiling, since those sort of spending bills have to originate in the House and we start defaulting on our debt.
Watching the corporations, who threw millions into backing Republicans this year, the Koch brothers, et. al. having to eat what little will be left in their investment portfolio as the world shit cans the dollar and U.S. investments will give me grim satisfaction about the shit those guys tried stirring up over the past two years.
asiangrrlMN
Fool me once? Seriously? W. was in office for eight long years. God, people are stupid. That’s two terms. He ran the country into the ditch. The current GOP doubled-down on the W. plan, and now, they are expected to govern differently? FUCK THAT SHIT!
Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.
Lowkey
@Comrade Luke: The reason that I see any positive eventuality on the horizon is that the road for the 2012 GOP nod is going to be a bloodbath. The country-club Republicans fired their first broadside yesterday, for crying out loud. Wait until the Tea Party vanguard has cast their first contentious votes.
gene108
Just want to point out how totally ineffectual Tim Kaine’s been as head of the DNC. Dean, for whatever his flaws, was a great DNC chair and really made sure the Democrats were able to field candidates all over the country, which many Democratic party operatives just wanted to cede to the Republicans.
The reality is without an effective part machine, I don’t see the Democrats undoing the damage done in this election in 2012. They need to be able to field candidates and come up with a unifying message, who can flip some House seats in 2012, which I don’t see happening under Kaine’s leadership.
Suffern ACE
@Comrade Luke: I’m still trying to figure out what the Republicans want to do that the Tea party doesn’t want them to do and vice versa. The Republicans aren’t going to be passing Medicare Part D2 because that might make Obama more popular. If there is a need to go to war, they will gladly spend like crazy and the Tea Party isn’t going to whine about that spending. They will try to gut regulation. Republicans are not going to sign on to treaties because they never do, and honestly, if free trade with Panama and Korea is that big of deal, it can wait until people simmer down.
jwb
@Comrade Luke: I mostly agree, but the teatards are ripe for takeover by a teatardist leader if one should appear. So, for instance, if Palin were smarter and not so interested in money, she’s in the position that she could go rogue on the establishment and seize the movement. It’s possible that someone like DeMint or Bachmann could as well. But as long as the establishment keeps anyone from occupying that leadership position, yes, the teatards will act as obedient sheeple.
middlewest
Godammit Emmer is closing in on Dayton. I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
asiangrrlMN
@middlewest: No shit. I am compulsively watching the returns. It’s like a fucking train wreck. I can’t turn away.
max
The upcoming, ongoing battles between the common Republican careerists and the wackaloon true believers are going to make the internecine sniping between Obots and firebaggers look like a… garden fete.
But it looks an awful lot like the establishment Republicans were the ones who made most of the gains. The Tea Party claimed victory but it doesn’t look to me like they were actually the ones that delivered. It looks like old people showed up at the polls and Democrats didn’t. So for all the bluster it looks like the Tea Party is kind of a spent force.
That said, I can totally see the Tea Party splitting off and going third party in 2012, but it would have to be behind somebody like Beck or Palin.
max
[‘We live in interesting times.’]
bemused
@asiangrrlMN:
I’m clinging to hope on Dayton and Oberstar. Ten minutes ago, on the MNSoS site, the results for Duluth and Hermantown were all precincts voting for for D and O. The outer Iron Range results, towns and townships, still aren’t posted and the Range is strong DFL or should be if everyone hasn’t lost their minds here too.
middlewest
I started watching the movie Agora tonight. But I couldn’t finish it because watching the Roman empire die hit too close to home.
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: I did the rollover widget at the NY Times and at this point the outstanding counties didn’t seem to me to be overly large or predominantly red. I’m hoping that’s enough for Dayton to hold. It does look like it’s headed to a recount, however, as does Oberstar’s race.
James E. Powell
The tea party is and always has been a wholly artificial, wholly manufactured thing. The are right-wing Republicans. They are the hard core ignorant bigots who loved George W. Bush till the bitter end. Their act over the last two years has been a sideshow fully funded by the corporate ruling class.
After crashing the economy, our rulers needed some one else to be on the TV screaming at the Democrats and that foreigner president of theirs. Our rulers no longer need them, so they will stop sending the checks, the tea parties will be a memory by December 1.
The tea party members will not mind being abandoned. They have no real policy goals. They don’t know anything about policy at all. They just wanted to put that n—- president in his place. Now that they have done that, they can crawl back under their rocks.
KC
Um, I don’t see a civil war happening. The Republicans are going to vote . . . Republican in the House. Whatever “battles” are going to happen are not going to last very long. In fact, I think the Republicans are going to be pretty effective at dividing the Democratic Senate and further demoralizing the Democratic base.
With luck, I’ll be wrong. But I doubt it.
Spaghetti Lee
Dayton’s still winning. Quinn is too, and if Rick Scott loses in a recount, that would go a long way to improving my mood.
I know no one’s talking about the House anymore, but the GOP is currently stalled at 233 votes, a 55-seat gain. I think it’s a stretch for them to reach 240. A lot of the races that haven’t been officially “called” yet (MI-9, KY-6, GA-2, NY-25, VA-11, and the Southern AZ districts) have democrats winning. Oberstar and Bean are losing right now, by about 600 votes combine. I guess it’s worth noting that even in the most favorable political environment imaginable, the GOP will still fall 10-15 seats short of the Dems high-water mark. I think that’s gotta be a little cause for hope.
The Grand Panjandrum
So you’ve got: Corporate v. Social Conservative v. Teabagger? I know some overlap exists but that is a pretty disparate group and I don’t see how they keep from imploding. I suspect within a few days of the the new Congress the Teabaggers will get the message that they are being ignored. That should make things interesting.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: Yeah. That’s about all I can hope for right now, I guess.
jwb
@James E. Powell: “Now that they have done that, they can crawl back under their rocks.”
Will they do what the corporate overlords want them to? That’s the question. I suspect you are right (though I don’t think they’ll be gone till March and they will take some new form next August when the riots start). But it’s not actually clear to me that they will in fact do what their overlords want, and I suspect it will take a bit more work than simply cutting off the money.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Luke:
And in exchange, they’re going to demand that the corporate Republicans vote for their weirdo issues, so you can fully expect people like John Boehner going on “Meet the Press” to enthusiastically explain why the House just passed a bill demanding that Obama show his long-form birth certificate.
The corporate Republicans think they can ride the tiger and get the teahadists to do their bidding, but history shows that they are very, very wrong. Once the crazy reaches critical mass, it’s the corporate Repubs who have to do the bidding of the crazy and not the other way around.
middlewest
@asiangrrlMN: Well, if nothing else, a married gay man and a left-wing Muslim won the vote in MN today. Minneapolis is cool like that.
The Grand Panjandrum
Oy. Evan Bayh speaketh.
He is clearly a Very Serious Person.
Martin
@max:
They made those gains by appealing to the absolutist voters. They’re beholden to the tea partiers now.
The GOP really is in a bit of a bind. They’re deeply unpopular. They are wholly in denial about that. Voters brought the unpopular party into the majority, which will have quite interesting repercussions. All of those registered voters that didn’t vote are going to be pretty motivated in 2012. I don’t see how the GOP avoids a government shutdown. Guys like Rand Paul and Jim DeMint are going to insist the House do it. It’s going to suck like 1998 again, but it’s going to be epic when we roll into 2012.
I just hope that Obama navigates this correctly. I’m very nervous about that. He can’t do what Clinton did. He’s got his legislative record for 2012. Give up the bipartisanship. He’ll get two things to sign after January – the 2012 budget and the 2013 budget, and that’s pretty much it. He’s got to fight hard for the things that have already been signed and he’ll do fine.
Gwiwer
I suspect we are very, very close to peak wingnut. This thrills me as much as it terrifies me.
gene108
@KC: It doesn’t take much to demoralize the Democratic base. The Democratic base has been demoralized since LBJ and / or Robert Kennedy was assassinated, in my opinion.
The variations changed, from Southerners dissatisfied with integration to liberals dissatisfied with Jimmy Carter and eventually Bill Clinton and Al Gore and now Obama.
I don’t see that changing.
The only thing that unified Democrats was the fact George Bush, Jr. was such an awful President that something had to be done to limit the damage he did to this country, in the first six years of his Administration.
wonkie
Reagan was just as much of a Wall Street suck up as evey other Rethuglican. And the teastards are too stupid to tell if a Rethug pol is on their side or not.
It looks like my state Washington will not shame ourselves by sending a thug to the Senate although the final count is not yet in so I am not crowing and have not yet uncrossed my fingers.
Villago Delenda Est
Huh?
The shitty grade Z movie star was ALWAYS about enabling crony capitalism, kleptocrats, and the corporations.
ALWAYS.
Viguerie is one of the perpetrators of the corrosive myth of Ronald Reagan not being a stooge for the usual gang of corporatist parasites.
KC
Peak wingnut will be neat to watch. How crazy are otherwise sane people going to get? What nutty thing is Obama going to be accused of now, and how large will the significant minority of people who will believe it be? It seems like the crazier Republicans get, the more people support them.
Honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do if I were Obama.
MBunge
@gene108: The reality is without an effective part machine, I don’t see the Democrats undoing the damage done in this election in 2012.
In the worst political environment imaginable, the Democrats came out of it in better shape than the GOP was going into the election. The Republicans will try and redistrict a few more Dems out of the way, but this is probably the new floor for the party. The Dems will have to win fewer seats to retake the House in 2012 than the GOP had to win this time and it’s practically certain that at least a handful of flawed Republican winners this year will lose to a Democrat in two years. Considering the tea party influence that cost the GOP at least 2 Senate seats is only going to grow, things don’t look that bad on that front either.
The loss of governorships and statehouses is going to sting, especially when it comes to redistricting.
Mike
asiangrrlMN
@middlewest: As did my rep. Wait, who’s the married gay man?
jwb
@Martin: Guys like Rand Paul and Jim DeMint have no say in the House. Just saying.
FreeAtLast
I am envying my neighbors in MA and CT for holding on to all their house seats. NY is so close geographically – but we were pretty pathetic losing 5 Dem seats. I think the sane people in this country are all living in New England, the West Coast and MN. You MN guys can be pretty proud as well.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, I can’t believe no one has linked to the song.
bemused
@KC:
It is weird that people go for the crazy. It’s like battered spouses. The more they get beat up, the more they love them.
middlewest
@asiangrrlMN: Scott Dibble, Minneapolis’ state senator. Married his partner during the Ellen/Portia period in California. Not that Minnesota recognizes it or anything, but it’s still real goddamit.
asiangrrlMN
@FreeAtLast: Um. No, we cannot. Not yet. Not as long as Tom FUCKING Emmer is thisfuckingclose to Mark Dayton.
@middlewest: Now that makes me smile a little.
jwb
@gene108: That’s because the base wants its free pony as well. Everyone wants their pony but nobody wants to pay for it and nobody wants to work for it. Sometimes I think we are all as impatient as our CEOs chasing their next quarterly statement.
Allan
I was just watching Sharron Angle explain how her disastrous loss to Harry Reid in Nevada was proof that the Tea Party is really Main Street USA. Get this girl a gig on Fox!
She also continued that awkward habit of hers of saying out loud in public what politicians are only supposed to say behind the scenes when no press is around by explaining what a great thing it was that 80% of her gigantic haul of $$$ came from out of state, and what a message that sent.
Spaghetti Lee
@FreeAtLast:
Props to Iowa, too. After I finish college here in Missourah, I think Eastern Iowa might be a nice place to settle down.
Martin
@jwb: Sure they will. They’re firebrands and they’ll help motivate voters to put pressure on House members.
Senators are much more visible than House members, and they’ll go on the Sunday shows and talk about how desperately they want to reject the Obama spending plan, but they’re not in the majority in the Senate and call on the House to do it. They won’t give a fuck if it makes Boehners life miserable.
KC
@bemused:
So true. That said, I know quite a few people who just did not vote or voted Republican simply because they did not know what Obama was doing or had accomplished. I kept hearing about the bailouts, Geitner, and socialism. As I said in another post, I can’t help but to think that some better messaging and a little more connection with people by Obama would have mitigated the losses at least modestly. A little less Wall Street influence may have helped too. Again, oh well.
Martin
@Spaghetti Lee: They ousted all of the judges that ruled on gay marriage there. Iowa’s not bad, but it’s not great either.
jwb
@Martin: Yes, and it will work as well for the Goopers as it did for the Dems. Boehner is the one who will be giving the marching orders and it’s more likely that they will make Boehner’s life miserable by bringing the Senate to a grinding halt than by pressuring back benchers.
Spaghetti Lee
@jwb:
Does that nullify the ruling itself?
PeakVT
@FreeAtLast: New England isn’t 100% sane – here in VT the Dem candidate is just barely winning the governor’s race. And next door in NH, it was a bloodbath tonight. Maybe Spaghetti Lee will explain that state’s results to me now.
FreeAtLast
@Spaghetti Lee:
OK. I’ll give you Eastern Iowa.
AB
@FreeAtLast: ahh nevermind, edited this because I made a mistake.
I was going to say, 5 seats in NY weren’t so bad for seats we probably shouldn’t have picked up anyway.
ruemara
MMMmmm, I’d like to say yay to this, Madame, but you’ll pardon me if I wait for a bit of hair tugging before I call cat fight. Republicans are Tea Party Patriots and pretending they are somehow disparate is dangerous. Every last one of those “I’ve never been involved in politics before but once we elected a Soshulizt…” twatensquatches always turns out to have a background organizing for the GOP. Americans have the memory of particularly seriously ADHD finches I’m afraid the bloodletting for local governments and states will have to kill people via neglect first. And I’m sure, no matter what foul plans they have, Republicans will protect the old and evil that are their base. Younger folks who sit shit out, like say, this election, well, put your best altar boy costumes on…they do like to mess with the young.
FreeAtLast
@PeakVT: I’m eager to hear the explanation ‘cuz I never did understand NH.
gene108
@The Grand Panjandrum: I don’t disagree with Bayh. I think the liberal wing of the Democratic Party was so itching for “payback” and wanting a liberal Revolution to counter the “Reagan revolution”, they may have over estimated how badly Americans want what they want.
If push came to shove, even the people at the vanguard of maintaining the “Reagan revolution”, weren’t able to pass their agenda and realized their agenda wasn’t very popular, which is why Bush, Jr. ran as a “compassionate conservative” in 2000 and privatizing Social Security wasn’t acted on in any manner by Congress.
Obama really came out hard swinging to push a very ambitious agenda and did succeed where others had failed, but I think he threatened some entrenched interests in the process, who stirred things up to make sure they can still keep getting what they want. Couple with the shitty state of the economy and you end up with a perfect storm that came back to bite Democrats.
I don’t think there was any way to work with Republicans, which someone like Bayh believed was still possible because Republicans decided to be lock step in uniformity in their opposition and when people did have a moment of self-reflection and say “gee, maybe we should move more to the left”, boss Limbaugh was there to make sure they knew there place.
I think maybe a less aggressive approach to passing legislation may have gotten the entrenched interests to not be so aggressive in their opposition to Obama and the Democrats, which would’ve created a buffer between the grassroots crazies and moneyed corporate interests, so you didn’t spend the summer of 2009 with non-stop coverage of people comparing Obama, Pelosi and Reid to Hitler, Stalin, et. al. and limited the money corporations poured into the 2010 election to defeat Democrats.
Hell, in my district, NJ-03, John Runyan didn’t do squat to campaign. He mostly self-financed his campaign, but when Adler started running some effective ads against Runyan back in August and September, the national Republican Party and a bunch of outfits, I never heard of before around started throwing money into ads for Runyan and attacking Adler.
I don’t think some of the corporate money would’ve flowed into these groups to backing Runyan would’ve materialized, if Democrats had a less ambitious agenda that dramatically altered the status quo businesses have to deal with.
Personally, what baffles me is how the hell did stuff like the Clean Air Act pass in 1990, because you had a Republican President and Democrats didn’t have nearly the majority they have now in the Senate. Boy, how times have changed.
Thoroughly Pizzled
In other news, Bush still a moron.
Suffern ACE
@Martin: I don’t know about how unpopular they are. My co-worker left today to vote and he said he couldn’t decide who to vote for. His wife wanted him to vote democrat because she is a teacher and she thought that the stimulus package helped save her job. He wanted to vote republican because Governor Christie made tough decisions. I think that “Republicans make the tough decisions” (that don’t hurt them) is what keeps people voting for them. Obama, for what its worth, is still Mr. Moderator who wants to talk about how complicated things are. But heck, my co-worker would vote against his wife’s job for a final decision to appear to be made.
I’m waiting for the tough decision overreach (I had to make the tough decision that we can only afford water on Tuesdays and it will no longer be free of sewage).
bemused
@Martin:
I, for one, will very much enjoy watching them make his life miserable and anticipating more drinking and crying scenes. Gotta have some fun in the next couple of hideous years.
Spaghetti Lee
@PeakVT:
Is that snark? I can’t tell.
NH’s reverted to what it was pre-2006, except they’ve got the Dem Shaheen instead of Gregg and Sununu. I don’t know…the state’s very white, got a libertarian streak, and is an old Rockefeller Republican state. Add that all up and it’s victory for the Rs.
Spaghetti Lee
@FreeAtLast:
Yeah, I ain’t living in no East Nebraska.
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
I’m sorry, but that’s just fucked up. He was willing to put his own wife’s job on the line just so he could feel like something got done?
That is one selfish sonofabitch. IGMFY right in your very own household.
gene108
@wonkie: But the hagiography conservatives have built up around Reagan gives the base something to rally around.
Reagan negotiated with other countries, wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons, compromised with Democrats and raised payroll taxes to make sure Social Security stayed solvent.
Conservatives realize Reagan gave them an opening into the mainstream, they otherwise were lacking under Nixon and Ford and didn’t turn around and bite them in the in the ass, even though he was more liberal than the true right-wing believers would have wanted.
What will be interesting is if this lame duck session of Congress will have the motivation to repeal DADT, since the armed services report conservative Democrats wanted to come out will be out in December and what the hell do these guys have to lose anyway? They’ve already lost.
Of course I don’t see how it would get around a GOP filibuster in the Senate, because there’s no reason for any GOP Senator to break ranks now.
Spaghetti Lee
@gene108:
I think with a less aggressive attempt to pass legislation, you’d have no legislation. Pelosi fought like hell for every last vote on a pretty moderate health bill, when he-who-must-not-be-named was telling her to dial it back.
Martin
@Suffern ACE: They poll around 30%. They’re quite unpopular – substantially less popular than Obama.
Suck It Up!
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
I would call bush a classist before I would call him a racist.
KC
@Suffern ACE:
Seems like Dems are always waiting for overreach. It happens, but it takes an awful long time usually. Frankly, I think what happens with Republicans depends on Obama upping his game and reconnecting with the American people. He got his ass handed to him tonight and I can only hope this is something he was expecting and has a plan for. If not, well . . .
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Democrats got slaughtered tonight. It wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but it was pretty bad. I worry about the fact that this was probably the third “throw the bums out” election in a decade.
At the same time, I can’t get torn up about it. I recognize that most of my political viewpoints are anti-status quo, and that it’s the nature of those beliefs that most people will disagree with me. To the extent that Democrats have become more progressive, they should become familiar with the fact that the term “progressive majority” or “progressive consensus” is an oxymoron. If you think California, or Massachusetts, or any of the so-called “progressive” states actually are, think again. They may have a more progressive status quo, but that’s about it.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/06/hbc-90003050
NobodySpecial
@gene108:
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA
You mean like negotiating away the public option in return for the drug companies’ okay on the health care bill?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The moneyed corporate interests ARE the grassroots crazies, just they don’t get out in front of a microphone with a rifle and a Confederate flag t-shirt.
Get. Fucking. Real.
The corporations will NEVER trust the Dems as much as they do the GOP, because they’re not in their pocket nearly as much. Therefore, the Chamber of Commerce will continue to fund the GOP forever and ever amen. Ignoring that reality will lead you to do stupid things.
gene108
@Spaghetti Lee: I don’t know. sCHIP expanded coverage to an otherwise uncovered population. Medicare, for what its worth, did the same.
I don’t know, if you’d how close we’d have gotten to universal coverage compared to the current bill, but I think coverage could’ve been expanded and the less popular practices of the insurance industry – refusing coverage for pre-existing conditions and rescission – may have been curtailed or banned, without a comprehensive health care reform bill.
*****************************
I’ve been told by many people that businesses aren’t spending the cash they’ve horded because they were frightful about new regulations Obama and the Democrats were going to propose and wanted to make sure the Democrats lost, so they couldn’t propose new legislation.
Now that there seems to be gridlock in Washington for the next two years, will they start investing and expanding their business activities to boost the economy?
It’ll be interesting to see how much of the regulatory uncertainty kept businesses from expanding this year was real and how much was bullshit because they weren’t getting what they wanted.
piratedan
yeah all that is gonna play realy well with the likes of what the Republicans were saying BEFORE the election….
Pence and Boehner – NO Compromise
Rep. Issa – Subpeona the President, I’m sure we can find something to convict him of….
Now in charge of the Energy Committee – Mr. BP Apology Joe Barton
heard on MSNBC during the election coverage – Ms Blackburn TB Congresswoman – I’m sure we’ll have to attack discretionary spending….when pressed on what discretionary spending, she wouldn’t elaborate, when asked if the Defense Department was included she replied, “Oh no, not that”. Pressed again for which programs she would cut, no comment was forthcoming….
yeah, I’m sure THESE people are gonna step up and offer us a comprehensive jobs program that will get America working again, instead they insist that they want to tackle spending, just as soon as they get those top 2% tax cuts extended!
Johnathon Alter still pushing the “bipartisan thing” as if now that the Republicans have the house they’re gonna grow up and do something and the Maddow countered that if this obstruction thingy won them 70 friggen seats in the House and damn near the Senate why in the hell should they stop now? Hell they’ve managed to avoid the blame for debacles that should rest in the lap of the last administration, what the hell, go for broke, might as well insinuate that Obama and Bin Laden are related and burn the whole house down around us and go thru the corpses for loose change.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
Nope. They’ll use that money to give bonuses to their executives while telling the rank-and-file that they’re forced, simply forced to institute layoffs because of Obama. And then they’ll pocket that money, too.
JGabriel
Josh Marshall:
This supports Anne’s thesis about GOP in-fighting, and, yeah, I think it will probably happen to some extent, but did Palin really lose the Senate for the GOP?
Much as I’d like to credit Sarah Palin for that, I don’t really think she was that influential.
Yes, Palin was a factor in them losing Delaware, no argument there. But Angle’s main primary opponent was Sue “Chicken for Checkups” Lowden, who was just as crazy and would have done no better against Reid. And that’s where it stands: the GOP never had any electable candidates to run against Reid, which meant they never had an electable 51st GOP Senator, no matter what Palin did.
Ultimately, the same goes for pretty much every teabagger Senate candidate who lost: the GOP didn’t have an electable alternative. The only other exception is Murkowski, who looks likely to win and caucus with the them anyway.
The only Senate race Palin can be partially blamed (partial because O’Donnell has to take some blame too) for losing is Delaware. And that wasn’t enough to put the GOP over the top anyway.
.
asiangrrlMN
I gotta crash. Here’s hoping I don’t wake up to Governor Tom Fucking Emmer. Keep the faith, guys and gals. Night.
NobodySpecial
@gene108:
Almost zero.
Nearly 100%. Between the banks socking away the money and not lending it and the businesses slashing their own throats to put the money in their own trust funds, that’s why the expansion didn’t happen.
gene108
@NobodySpecial: Wall Street backed Obama over McCain in 2008, in terms of campaign contributions. I don’t see them backing Democrats again, because of Fin Reg and whatever perceived hostility they felt Democrats had towards them.
As far as HCR goes, every business that offers or now has to offer benefits to its employees, has been effected. The scope of HCR isn’t just limited to pharmaceuticals and insurance companies, but to employers large and small, with regards to what types of plans they can offer, how making changes will effect what they can offer with new plans and other reporting requirements, like amounts of certain benefit package payments and other disbursements on an employees W-2.
I think some people don’t appreciate the sheer size and scope of how radically Obama and the Democrats changed the landscape with regards to health care in this country and how it does effect other industries outside of those directly working in health care.
JGabriel
@gene108:
(waves hand in the air) Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer to that one!
None of it. They didn’t expand because they didn’t have customers for the increased output. Because there was a fucking recession.
All of it.
.
gene108
I know some folks, who firmly believe businesses didn’t expand, after they reorganized and became profitable again in 2009 because they wanted to make sure Obama and the Democrats lose, since they are so anti-business.
I think people really underestimate the anti-Democrat hostility businesses have right now.
I can understand some of it because Fin Reg and HCR were so sweeping that businesses do need to figure out what they can and cannot do, but I do agree some of it is just posturing to get people to overlook the fact the economy is weak and as much as businesses want to expand, they don’t have demand for their products and all the tax cuts in the world aren’t going to help them out of this mess.
PeakVT
@Spaghetti Lee: No, I just thought you were from the state.
JGabriel
@gene108:
All of it was posturing, gene108. If a business can make more money by expanding, then they will — no matter what regulatory uncertainties, real or imagined, they have. Because they are in business to make money, and the competition is too intense to just leave money lying on the table until their uncertainties shake out.
There’s nothing complicated here, dude. This is Macro-economics 101.
.
NobodySpecial
@gene108: I know some folks who firmly believe that aliens come from the galactic center in spaceships and kidnap lone Arkansans in fields to anally probe them, too. Doesn’t make them credible.
The truth was, the richest and biggest businesses weren’t the ones badly hurt by the financial collapse and were the first to recover their losses. Plus, you’re talking out of both sides when you claim that Dems should have soft-pedaled to separate businesses from the Tea Party nonsense, and then claim that people underestimate the anti-Democrat hostility from businesses. That hostility was evident right after Obama took office, before FinReg or ACA were even put into committee.
FreeAtLast
I just took a look at Nate Silver’s blog and he has extrapolated wins in both the CO and WA Senate races, based on which precincts are yet to be counted. That would give the Dems 53 seats! That is better than almost anyone hoped.
piratedan
@gene – The Dems aren’t anti-business, they’re pro-consumer. If businesses don’t engage in business practices that exploit their labor forces delibrately attempt to confuse or mislead consumers then they should have nothing to fear, right? If you follow the rules, you got nothing to worry about. If they spent half the money they invested on the elections in simply providing the services that their businesses profess to, there would be more people working. Cripes, just think of the money that all of these businesses spent on the elections in these freaking attack ads that could have been applied to perhaps developing or delivering a better product instead.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@gene108:
I’m sure businesses hated the pure food and drug act, civil rights legislation, etc too. I do think one of the things Democrats underrate is the degree to which the 80s/Reagan-era worship of business still sticks around. I’m not asking for people to become communist DFHs, just maybe concede that the profit motives of businesses may not be an unalloyed good and occasionally be bad for their consumers/employees….
JGabriel
@FreeAtLast:
By one seat? Nate predicted 51-52 seats for the Dems, down from 53 a week ago. It’s pretty much in line with what most people were expecting, much less hoping.
Yes, it could have been worse, by one or two seats. However, if, like me, you’re a glass half-empty kind of guy, that’s just another way of saying, it could have been worse, but not by much.
.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Oh, and can I just say fuck you and good riddance, Evan Bayh?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03bayh.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
He has the gall to tell the President to triangulate and seize the center, after he walked away from a Senate seat he likely could have held, and holding on to campaign cash he donated to zero other Democrats.
Nick
@gene108:
I’ve heard business owners flat out say this
That’s why I expect a million jobs to be created within the next few months
JGabriel
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
I am.
Every time I hear some teabagger bitch about not wanting us to become sociaIist like those Europeans, I think, “You don’t want us to have full health coverage and four week vacations? Why the hell not? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
.
FreeAtLast
@JGabriel:
But that would completely remove the possibility of the Repubs winning the Senate by persuading Lieberman, Nelson, Baucus etc. to switch parties. There’s no way they can get 4 party switchers.
Suck It Up!
via Josh Marshall:
Suck It Up!
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Yeah fuck him. Seriously.
Darkrose
For anyone who’s awake in CA, the Sec of State’s website is accessible at the moment.
Bad news on 19, 21 and 24, and the Attorney General’s race is still neck and neck. But Boxer handily beat Demon Sheep Lady, and Jerry proved to Meg that you can’t buy the Governor’s Mansion on eBay.
And in CA-5, I wonder why the GOP bothers to run anyone against Doris Matsui.
Lysana
@Darkrose:
As a proud resident of CA-12, I ask the same about Jackie Speier.
JGabriel
FreeAtLast:
Granted, that may have been a possibility at 50 seats, but not at 51. At 51, even Lieberman would have stayed with the Democrats, if only to caucus with a (bare) majority, rather than one side in am equally divided Senate.
In that scenario, switching sides only pays off if you can give the side you switch to a clear majority. And the Dems were never really in danger of dropping down to 50.
.
FreeAtLast
@Darkrose:
Thanks for the link. I see that Prop 23 failed, despite all the money poured into it by the Koch gang. You have to hand it to the citizens of CA. They resisted multiple super-well-funded campaigns by evil forces.
JGabriel
@FreeAtLast:
Dude, you’re changing arguments mid-stream. You said 53 seats was more than anyone could hope for, where the fact is, given the statement above, it was the minimum anyone could have hoped for — because anything less could have left the Senate make-up still in play.
.
Calouste
@JGabriel:
4 weeks vacation is the bare minimum in Europe, i.e. you’re talking about the free market extremists (by European standards) in the UK. Germany has at least 6 weeks, and they had that when they were outgrowing the US in the 70s and 80s.
Triassic Sands
Oh, bullshit. Complete and total bullshit. Of course they’ll get another chance, and another, and another. They promise the free lunch, and nothing is more attractive to Americans than getting something for nothing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: Noted principled liberal and Obama-scold Arianna Huffington is featuring a post from Mark Penn, who is also urging Obama to ‘reclaim the center’, or some such nonsense. I didn’t read it and I’m not going to, but I’d love to know what evidence these gutless, incompetent dolts have (other than a few Broder columns about “overreaching” and some polls of low info voters who read them) of this horrible leftward drift.
R-Jud
@JGabriel:
I live in England. Yesterday I cut my foot and went to the emergency room to have it stitched up. The nurse brought me tea while I was waiting for the doctor to turn up. Nobody asked me for ID, or to write a check, or anything else like that.
I’ve been living here five years and it almost brings me to tears every time. I don’t get why so many Americans think this is evil. The additional tax burden exists, sure, but it’s far less than I ever paid in premiums.
drunken hausfrau
Possible bumper sticker ideas:
Don’t blame us, we voted for sanity.
Don’t blame us, we drink coffee.
Don’t blame us, we don’t watch Fox News.
Don’t blame us, we aren’t funded by foreign corporations.
Don’t blame us, we voted for Prop 19.
drunken hausfrau
@R-Jud:
We live in England, too — this is our fourth year. I may never return…
And I have had exceptional healthcare here, too. And not just in the UK, my husband hurt himself skiing in Austria — and they did an absolutely amazing job of fixing him up! He was back on the slopes in 3 days, and the cost was minimal. (we had to pay because, obviously, we aren’t paying Austrian taxes… but still – the cost surprised us because we were expecting a four figure bill, and it was less than 400 euros, all in!)
But I am very sad that our state of Wisconsin has gone red, again. Maybe Obama can appoint Russ to a judgeship?
Lesley
I was feeling really bad about the election but now I’m feeling more positive. The Koch-funded teabaggers were bound to be elected sooner or later and now they’re in & there’s nothing to do but wait for them to fail. This is, of course, guaranteed.
morzer
Well, for a bumper sticker I suggest:
Miss us yet?
drunken hausfrau
Ok, excuse this late comment (again, I live across the pond and the time difference makes it hard to keep up with you all in real time).
But Klavan’s comment in the LA Times about Toy Story 3 = the Republican victory?!?! That is some serious crazy. Is his first name really Kliff? It sounds like a Kliff Klavan+7 idea, when Cheers was serving moonshine!
R-Jud
@drunken hausfrau:
I won’t say I’ll never return– I think my great-grandparents, who risked life and limb to escape Mussolini’s goons, would haunt me– but it’s not going to happen for a few years yet.
My US-based business partner is pressuring me to move back to the USA in 2011. I’d like to have another kid, though, and the thought of being denied coverage of a pregnancy (due to having had a c-section previously) makes staying with the NHS very attractive.
Also, it’s just easier to be a freelancer and to hire folks when you don’t have to navigate the insurance system. You might say that I have more… freedom.
balconesfault
I want to take this opportunity to thank a small handful of Democratic Senators for making sure that no climate change legislation will be passed for another long long time.
Thank God that the EPA didn’t wait on those ass-heels.
GregB
Well hopefully the GOP will get down to the business of spending millions of dollars on pointless investigations, repealing the right of sick children to get insurance, repeal the minimum wage, fanning war against Iran and Yemen, spending billions on a new Berlin wall against Mexico, passing stiff penalties for women who have abortions, smashing the unions and outsourcing the any remaining good paying jobs to their Chinese corporate masters and formulate a final solution in dealing with those icky gays.
balconesfault
@R-Jud:
I consider it one of the biggest failures of American journalism that after all those months of healthcare debate, almost nobody seemed to understand that even before HCR passed, we were spending more tax money per capita on health coverage than any other nation except Switzerland (when you consider all the places tax money gets spent on healthcare, including not only Medicare and Medicaid but military and VA and government employee benefits from federal down to school district and tax deductions, etc).
We do this, and we still need to spend trillions on insurance and copays and deductables. And until HCR completely phases in, we’ll still leave somewhere around 10-15% of our population uncovered.
And yet nobody seems to know this basic fact – and yet they all claim to be informed.
R-Jud
@balconesfault:
“Informed” as in: “America is the best country in the world, and that’s all I need to know.”
chopper
@JGabriel:
palin’s endorsement was also a big factor in fiorina’s primary win. not that another gooper would have automatically beat boxer, but fiorina turned out to be a horrible candidate too (just not certifiable like angle and o’donnell).
seems like palin has the anti-midas touch this election. while i don’t think she lost the senate, that isn’t a bad meme to use to drive a wedge in the GOP.
gene108
@Nick: I don’t know, if a million jobs will be created. Businesses may not want to piss of Republicans, because Republicans may get pissy that businesses didn’t play ball with their quest to regain complete control of government, by helping pull the economy out of the toilet by 2012.
Someone posted on this website PhRMA sacked their President at Boehner’s or McConnell’s request because they struck a deal with President Obama to promote HCR.
I do think the stock market will go up because there will be gridlock and the Bush tax cuts will be extended.
@NobodySpecial: Business are not right-wing, with regards to social issues and other things that set off political righties. They didn’t really run around protesting the stimulus bill, for example. Wall Street in 2008 felt Obama and Democrats would’ve been better than Republicans for them.
What I’m talking about with regards to Bayh’s comment is pontificating in hindsight. I for one wish Democrats did more, but after talking with people, who voted for Obama in 2008 and generally lean Democratic, who were disappointed with the Democrats aggressive attempts to remake regulations because of the sweeping changes those regulations have caused, I think there may have been another way forward and I can see where Bayh’s coming from.
@piratedan: Talking to people who work at banks, here is an example of why lobbying and spending money on campaigns is cost effective: Banks made a boatload of money off of overdraft fees, up to maybe 25% of their revenue from talking to some people, which they can no longer charge consumers.
It is cost effective for an industry to spend $1 billion on lobbying and campaigns, if you are going to lose whatever times that, because laws have changed.
asiangrrlMN
@JGabriel: Heartily co-sign. It kills me that people are fighting against better healthcare for a fraction of the price and a livable life.
Lukeness
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, Viguerie was making similar noises about Reagan in 1982, claiming that Republicans were dead because Reagan was only paying lip service to the conservative Christian base. Viguerie is only interested in raising money for Viguerie.
piratedan
@gene108 – you may be absolutely right, because they sure aren’t making any money lending money to small businesses at the moment. The thing is, banking is supposed to be a “safe” slow growth business, modest returns on modest investments.
The problem with the financial sector is that they’re infected by Gordon Gecko wannabees who for some reason think that they all have to get rich quick and show huge profit margins…which is the exact same crap that led us into the housing and banking crisis. Same sort of “philisophical” shift took place in Insurance…no one wants to be patient and do the old slow and steady, now its all “I have to have my retirement salted away before I’m 40 and in order to do that, I have to screw over everybody else and break a bunch of rules”
Persia
@FreeAtLast: There is no explanation for NH. They’re just nuts. Mostly they’re libertarians-lite who will run whichever way the wind blows as long as Social Security isn’t directly threatened.
The Bobs
The upcoming, ongoing battles between the common Republican careerists and the wackaloon true believers are going to make the internecine sniping between Obots and firebaggers look like a… garden fete.
Bull. The true believers will roll over so fast no one will even notice. Also, 90% of the people that voted for them won’t care. The Tea Party will disappear until the Democrats have the government again.
Hell, it has probably already happened.
NobodySpecial
@gene108:
Businesses aren’t right wing? Tell it to Koch. Or Sciafe. Or Fiorina or Whitman, for that matter. For every semi-liberal like Buffett you can point to on the left, I can show you five to ten on the right. Truth is, with many of them, you don’t see what their social positions are because no one asks them about it.
b-psycho
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
I’m just waiting for people to finally finish that half-thought with “…and don’t replace them”.
gene108
@NobodySpecial:
Look Mellon Bank, I seriously doubt, had a litmus test for CEO’s based on their views on abortion, for example. Mellon-Scaife may have his views to promote, but business is business.
For whatever reason liberals aren’t busting their butts trying to become billionaires, whereas people who want to get filthy rich tend to be conservative. They want tax cuts and don’t care about the “little people” needing social services like public education, roads, airports, etc. to survive.
I don’t know why this is, but it seems to be the nature of the beast between conservatives and liberals, with regards to being filthy rich and other priorities. Who knows, maybe its the nature of the beast and you can’t trying to make as much money as humanly possible and still be liberal and fret about the “little people”.
John Bird
I think they mean “adopted”?