Do Republicans benefit more in 2012 if the economy gets better, or if the economy takes a steep and painful dive? Um, no reason. Just wondering.
***Update***
I think that we all know the answer. Now if I was John Boehner and if I cared about beating the President more than literally any other concern, out of one side of my mouth I’d insist over and over that Obama controls the legislative agenda. Out of the other side I’d (quietly) make sure nothing passes that might help the country in any way.
At least that’s on the legislative side. On the government oversight side Darrell Issa will issue subpoenas nonstop like some sort of deranged FOX News reality show. Peak wingnut may very well arrive in the next two years, if only because Issa is like a caricature of Dan Burton drawn by Timothy McVeigh.
erlking
Trick question–everything always favors the Republicans. You know that.
toujoursdan
Because of resource depletion and the coming energy crisis, I think the long term prognosis for the economy is bad.
And sadly, I think that will lead to a rise of extremist and scapegoat based politics.
Violet
@erlking:
Ding, ding, ding! Winner!
schrodinger's cat
It depends whether Democrats just rollover and play dead or fight back.
kd bart
National Media:
Bad economy= Obama’s fault.
Good economy= Republicans came to the rescue in 2010
JRon
@kd bart: what kd bart said.
Bad economy will be much easier to achieve, so I suspect they’ll go for that, and start the blaming now.
Also, since the GOP won’t be able to actually pass anything, we’re going to see two years of non-stop House subpoenas. Because they have to look like they’re doing SOMETHING all that time.
…and why do my (admittedly rare) comments always go into moderation?
Lev
If things stumble along and don’t get much better= Obama’s fault.
If GOP shuts down the government/forces a debt default that puts the economy into a downward spiral = GOP’s fault.
If employment improves and were at ~8% by November 2012 = Obama gets credit.
chopper
as they say in latin, cui bono? republicanus!
yes, with an emphasis on the ‘anus’.
Ross Hershberger
Fear is the GOP’s greatest weapon. If things improve, less fear. Therefore the worse the economy is the more influence the GOP will have over their goldfish brained base who can’t remember that they caused this mess in the first place.
But if the economy improves, yes, they will take credit for that too.
Sly
“Do Republicans benefit more in 2012 if the economy gets better and Democrats do nothing to take credit, or if the economy takes a steep and painful dive and Democrats do not doggedly blame it on Republican intransigence?”
Adding the missing elements. Politics is not a vacuum.
Though it will something more in line with Column B.
CaffinatedOne
I’d say that ‘bad economy’ would benefit them quite a bit more. republicans are masters of redirecting blame, creating narratives, and creating scapegoats. That works much better if there’s a strong undercurrent of anxiety to tap.
A good economy makes it harder to do that and given that we tend to associate economic performance with the president, whether that be for credit or blame, having it improve would almost certainly benefit Obama and they know that.
Martin
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, it depends a great deal on who wins the public relations battle. It favors Dems – House members are usually pretty invisible, and the visible ones on the right are pretty insane. Boehner has no charisma – he’s just an orange Reid.
Really, the question is whether Obama runs on what he’s done, or angles to do more. If he wants to do more, that’s going to blow up on him. He should be out there selling what’s already gotten done.
cleek
here are The Rules
bobbo
Repubs are incentivized to screw us economically, because the next election is for President, and the President and his party get blame/credit for state of economy. That’s why I think we are in for more major suck economy-wise. Just like the Repubs were incentivized to make the stimulus as small as possible, thereby slowing the recovery.
Doesn’t it just make you sick to your stomach?
Culture of Truth
Painful dive.
That way, they can say look, we only control the House, not the Senate or WH, and Obama and those other mean Dems stopped us from doing what we really wanted to do, like repeal health care and cut all that out of control spending and repealing regulations and stuff.
Then they can run Mitt Romney or some other loon and capture the Oval Office which is what they really want anyway.
gbear
They’ve already said that their ONLY goal is to make sure Obama serves just one term, so I’d say the answer is: Bombs away!
Bokonon
It all depends on who the big money decides to favor in the next election cycle.
This time, they clearly POURED money into the GOP’s coffers and media ad buys.
If the GOP doesn’t deliver, and spends the next two years doing stuff like pursuing culture wars and impeachment? Who knows.
The Grand Panjandrum
Will Speaker Boehner and his gang of Teahadis be able to break away from all the investigations of ACORN and other voter fraud scandals long enough to actually govern? That is the question, isn’t it?
Elizabelle
I have not clicked on the Washington Post once since yesterday morning.
Not once.
(Caveat: did pull up Steven Pearlstein’s column RSS feed this morning, but WaPost is off my bookmarks and I am avoiding it otherwise.)
Steven Pearlstein, Eugene Robinson and EJ Dionne are wonderful people on a sunken ship.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Lev: How will unemployment ever get that low? No stimulus will get passed with this upcoming Congress, and business is certainly not going to start hiring more people out of the goodness in their black hearts.
Right now, the best case I see is unemployment staying right where it is. I expect that it will actually get worse over the next two years.
Also, expect political ads against Obama and the Dems to be a constant part of our lives from now on. You thought you’d get a respite just because the election is over? 2012 is but two years away, why waste any time by not using the unlimited piles of cash they have to set the message now? Our corporate masters want fascism, and by god they’ll get it.
DougJ
Steep and painful dive.
Southern Beale
So does this mean we’re all going Galt?
Citizen Alan
@Sly:
I was going to make a pithy remark, but Sly’s comment was much better and more accurate than anything I could say.
Anyway, my prediction is that the Repukes try to tank the economy. Their primary electoral strategy appears to be “Make everyone scared shitless” and it’s worked very well for them over the last ten years. In fact, the only two elections that went against them were 2006 and 2008, in which the Repukes inadvertently made everyone scared shitless of them — in 2006, they showed they were too fucking incompetent to keep entire cities from drowning, and in 2008, they nominated a senile warmongering loon who refused to acknowledge that we were on the brink of a global economic meltdown. Fear is the only thing Repukes have had to offer for as long as I’ve been alive.
Ross Hershberger
I think it matters WHO the economy is ‘bad’ for. We’re assuming that all boats rise and fall together. It’s been proven that megayachts have the ability to remain buoyant while the millions of dinghies around them founder.
If the economy hits the fat cat GOP backers in the wallet it will be a different game than if it’s the proles who take the worst hit. The GOP can convince most of the rank and file that they’re the only salvation from the disaster they caused.
If they mess up the billionaires’ game it will be a different story.
4tehlulz
@Southern Beale: We’ll all be made to go Galt by the end of March.
On the bright side, my curiosity about how high the TED spread will be when the world economy breaks would be satisfied.
daveNYC
We’re already there.
fasteddie9318
There. Is. No. Peak. Wingnut.
Part of me thinks this only ends with a partition of the country. Peaceful this time, hopefully.
curious
republican priorities
1. re-election
2. the economy
they’ll jigger with 2 as much or as little as it takes to achieve 1.
ChrisS
Nothing gets done, blame for the economy is on the democrats for not passing bigger and badder tax cuts. Media wonders aloud, daily, way democrats don’t get the message. US
Warshipoil tanker is attacked in theGulf of TonkinPersian Gulf by Iranian extremists. Harry Reid promises to work with Boehner and Obama to ensure that justice will be meted out. Remaining Blue Dog dems work with GOP counterparts to sponsor a massive tax cut to reinvigorate America. It passes. Unemployment hits 14%. Social Security is said to be on life support and all options are on the table. Then we get to find out who the GOP is going to run against for Obama in 2012. Evan Bayh announces primary challenge.fasteddie9318
@Bokonon:
That is delivering as far as our corporate overlords are concerned. They’ve got a sweet, sweet ride going right now, but they need more bread and circuses for the moron-Americans and the GOP is happy to provide.
Poopyman
@DougJ at the top: Peak Wingnut is asymptotic. It can be approached but never reached. And I think we’re pretty much on an asymptotic curve right now, sadly.
geg6
@Citizen Alan:
This.
And, no matter what, the Repukes will benefit. Because that’s how our MSM’s corporate overlords want it to be.
john b
@Elizabelle:
ej dionne over ezra? really?
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
private businesses have actually been hiring recently. it’s state and local gov’ts who have been laying people off because of budget shortfalls because of higher demand for services and less tax revenue.
arguingwithsignposts
@curious:
FTFY
fasteddie9318
@curious:
You mean wrecking the economy, right? They and their employers get richer when things are in the shitter.
Culture of Truth
I was going to say what Ross said — they can keep the economy going as it is. Crappy for most, but the rich in 2010 are doing rather well.
BR
I think it’s fairly likely we’re going to see some fireworks on wall street regarding the toxic assets that are still on their books. (It seems likely by sometime early/mid 2011.) At that point, Washington will freak out. GOPers will try to bail out the banks, as will corporate Dems, but Obama, if he knows what’s good for him, won’t, and Ron Paul taking control of oversight of the Fed will probably hamstring it as well. So we’ll probably see a downturn in the economy that will be seen as being because of Wall Street / banks. The question will be what side will Dems and Obama be on.
Tim F.
@Ross Hershberger: Billionaire, at least the asshole ones like Richard Scaife and the Koches, only have to do better than the proles to feel good. It’s a relative measure, not an absolute thing.
When the palm trees on Easter Island were mostly gone and everyone else was back in the stone age, the last family that cut the last trees down no doubt lived like kings.
Parrotlover77
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but they are still funamentally greedy bastards and need employees to take over the world. Businesses may favor Republican rule, despite it not necessarily being in their best interest, but they rarely would turn down hiring people for Republican permanent majority reasons, when they could make more money. The wildcard here is how efficient they will be at outsourcing in the next two years. That’s something that will slow job creation while not sacrificing profits. However, it’s just not practical everywhere.
geg6
Guess I’ll spend the next 2 years listening to this on an endless loop. It’s how I got through the last years of W and it’s power to keep me pissed will be needed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg7YjwZzNz0
Emerald
I apologize to you all.
Crazy Issa is my congresscritter.
It’s a heavy burdern to bear.
But I apologize to you all, in advance of Teh Crazy truly taking hold, as it will in but a few months.
MattR
@Parrotlover77: But the question is what is gonna change in the economy over the next 2 years that will lead those businesses to start hiring people when they have not been hiring over the past 2 years? I don’t think that they were not hiring recently just to screw over Obama. As you said, if there was money to be made they would do what it takes to make it.
Chuck Butcher
The budget is going to be really interesting, really. The deficit is going to be completely out of control because this Pres won’t veto an extension of BushCo tax cuts for all and the [R] will not cut war spending and everything else is small change. Slashes to non-military spending will kill this economy dead and that’s headed our way. This time I think they’re serious about shutting the Fed govt down.
Violet
@Parrotlover77:
They don’t need American employees. They’ve been proving that for quite some time. No reason for them to change now.
gbear
@Chuck Butcher:
Do you have a link for that?
The Grand Panjandrum
@Tim F.: Doesn’t it make sense that IF the GOP is serious about cutting spending the first order of business would be to repeal Medicare Part D? It was passed by a GOP lead House AND signed by a GOP Prez. What better way to show Real America just how Serious they are?
Paris
Boner is ideologically opposed to anything that would help the country so its not like he has to ponder this question. They’ll cut spending, trot down to K street, and auction off anything left of any value.
Redshift
I wish there was some way we could set up an alternate economic universe to demonstrate the effects of Rand Paul’s “the economy will do great if we just get government out of the way” ideology. I must be a liberal because I’m not willing to see lots of people get hurt in the real world just to teach that lesson.
Chuck Butcher
@gbear:
Why?
In an either let them expire for all or give to all choice in this economy what would YOU do? Do you think the Democrats will have learned useful lessons from yesterday?
Redshift
@The Grand Panjandrum: Hah, that’s funny! Yes, if they were serious about cutting spending, that’s exactly what they would do. QED
MattR
@The Grand Panjandrum: That would definitely prove to the Teabaggers that the new GOP was out to fix the mistakes the old GOP made when they lost their way.
For some cheerful news, Kye Allums will be the first transgendered person to play Division I basketball this year when he plays for the George Washington University women’s team.
Scamp Dog
@CaffinatedOne: Yeah, it would be nice if we developed a narrative, too.
How about this: We have unemployed construction workers and companies, who aren’t building anything, and so aren’t paying taxes, and will bid low in the hope of getting work. We can borrow money at historically low rates, so we should be getting them back to work building the infrastructure we need when we can get it cheap. To top it off, the newly employed will pay back some of the expense in taxes, so we’re getting this stuff really cheap.
If we wait until the economy recovers, we have to outbid the private sector. Then we get to pay higher prices, borrow at higher rates, and private industry can’t build as much as they would otherwise.
I think it’s a good story, but it probably takes too much thinking for our media twits to follow it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
What everybody else said.
The Dems will never get credit in the media for anything good that happens so long as a single Republican is in DC (tourists on the Mall count too), and of course the Dems are to blame for everything bad..
..so long as they control the WH and the Senate..so long as they control the WH or the Senate..so long as they control a few hotdog carts on the sidewalk at K street.
Elie
@Martin:
I agree Martin
And he should be selling it with vigor and emotion
I previously supported Obama’s cool, in control demeanor. I dont think, however, that we like to be led that cooly so I hope he has another tack.. his hands off style (though of course, the media works that image and makes it harder), has to be changed to some degree. If nothing else, he needs some fights to get his base fired up. Obviously a bunch of that base, for various reasons, did not bring it home and were indifferent. I may disagree with their emotions and take on things, but I can’t ignore the impact that had on this election. Hopefully, he and his team won’t ignore it either…Hopefully the republicans will be dumb enough to reprise 1994 and shutting down the government type hysterics but they may be more savy this time…
liberty60
@Sly:
EXACTLY.
For every strategy, there is a counter strategy; they win only if we don’t counter with something better.
Today I feel hopeful, since looking at how the grassroots progressives beat the Koch brothers and Valero Oil here in CA, by defeating Prop 23, and how Jerry Brown beat Meg Whitman, shows me that we CAN win, by being honest with voters about who we are and what we stand for.
Redshift
@Chuck Butcher: Let them all expire. Political optics is the only reason not to. They didn’t do a damn thing to help the economy, and letting them expire won’t do a damn thing to hurt it. In my fantasy world which politicians inconveniently refuse to inhabit, the country would also thereby learn that “of course we must not raise anyone’s taxes when the economy is bad” which everyone now “knows” to be true, is actually conservative BS.
elmo
@ChrisS:
I’m heading off to find a therapist, and I’m sending you the bill.
4tehlulz
Fed in “Fuck it, I’m going deep.” mode:
Paris
Peak wing nut would be helped along if Miller wins in Alaska. I would rather that a Palin pal lose, but given the choice between Miller and Murkowski, I prefer Miller. He’s stupid enough to not be able to disguise the corruption endemic to Alaska and his stupidity can’t help but hurt the TP brand.
Violet
@Tim F.:
True to a certain extent, but they’re no longer just comparing themselves to other Americans and maybe a few people in soshulist, commie Europe. Now there are very rich people in China and India and some in Brazil too. Other countries are coming along as well.
It’s one thing to be able to control the political narrative in the US, but when that’s your home and that’s where the bulk of your currency and influence is, but the action is no longer there, well, that’s a little different. If the US economy stays in the toilet and those other economies are booming, then they’ll want to invest in those places (probably already have). But they won’t begin to have the influence they have here.
Does that make them far enough ahead of the proles to keep them happy? How’s that going to work?
MattR
@liberty60: So then the more interesting question to me is “Do Republicans benefit more in 2012 if the economy gets better and Democrats take steps to take credit, or if the economy takes a steep and painful dive and Democrats doggedly blame it on Republican intransigence?”
Redshift
@Elie: I think it’s important not to buy into the notion that the enthusiasm gap was “dispirited Dems.” Nate and others have presented evidence that the majority of the gap was that Republicans were very energized, not that Dems were discouraged.
This is why changing that gap was so hard — it’s much harder to get people who don’t regularly vote in non-presidential elections to come out and vote than it is to convince “dispirited” regular voters. But that’s what we had to do, unless something happened to undercut the energy of the GOP base.
fasteddie9318
@4tehlulz:
Woohoo! Print more money and make it rain, bitchez! Since they got the teahadis elected and fiscal remedies to the economic situation are off the table, they’ve got free rein to keep printing dollars and stuffing them into the g-strings of every banker they can find, each of whom can then sink those dollars into real investments before inflation finally kicks in and fucks the rest of us out of what little we have left.
Michael
1. I’ll look happily at the upcoming footage of all those services at Fundevangelical mega-churches (after the next GOP Presidential win) so I can enjoy the sight of all the wingnuts smiling as they sing songs of praise to their made-up continuation of the bronze-age goatherd death cult, palms outstretched. The reason why it makes me happy? It means that they’re going to be sending all their boys into wars in the name of ‘Murka and Jesus – and those boys are going to suffer badly.
2. I’m going to start taking some language classes – improving my lousy French, learning Chinese, Japanese and Swahili, all to better communicate with the occupation troops we’ll be living under after the next GOP presidency. If we’re lucky, my grandkids will regain enough of a franchise to be able to elect local officials when they’re middle aged.
3. When legitimately aggrieved brown people set off a nuclear IED in lower Manhattan during that last GOP Presidency, I hope the Wall Street elite feels and hears their skin crackle from the heat just before the end.
fasteddie9318
@MattR:
We’re as likely to strike oil on Mars in the next two years as we are to see the Democrats successfully pull off either of the above.
jwb
Unemployment will spike after the state’s cut their budgets, and I say odds favor riots in the street next summer. How the pols respond to that will determine who’s successful in 2012. It’s going to be interesting because the economy is starting to eat its own, meaning that the corporate overlords are going to have to target each other. When they start taking out each other, that’s when realignment happens.
jwb
@fasteddie9318: Partitions of this sort are never peaceful, and this one wouldn’t be either. Too much money at stake.
jwb
@Emerald: If you want to be helpful, you and everyone you know who is sympathetic with the Dems should be calling his office every day, telling him to shut the fuck up and mind his district’s business.
curious
@arguingwithsignposts, @fasteddie9318: you’re both right. if they’re in office, they will find a way to stay rich regardless of what happens to the rest of the country. i liked Ross Hershberger’s yacht-dinghy analogy.
bemused
@geg6:
I’d like to go to a nearby bar when it’s mostly full of local low information yahoos and punch that song in to play over and over again for a few hours straight but the playlist is probably all CW.
MattR
@fasteddie9318: Well yeah. But asking what is better for the Republicans assuming no credible opposition is kinda boring, even if it is closer to reality.
@liberty60: I think you mean 73% as we know that at least 27% of any population is crazy.
liberty60
@MattR:
Lets face it, there will always be hard core partisans who will stay in the GOP camp come hell or high water;
What we are chasing are the other 98% of voters who just want paved roads, clean drinking water, and a job.
As to the question, a bad economy may or may not help Republicans, but it sure as hell won’t help the Dems. We saw that last night, where the voters who hate Wall Street voted Republican, either out of stupidity or blind anger.
debit
I plan on going all in on becoming a Teabagger. I’m going to call and write every R I can reasonably contact and ask why I don’t have my country back and why haven’t they exposed Obama as a secret Muslim illegal president yet. I plan on getting a rifle so I can proudly carry it to any and all R rallies and events in my area. Second Amendment rights, bitches!
Nied
Both Yglesias and Atrios have good posts about the levers of power that Obama still has over the economy (and how he’s pretty much ignored them up to this point). I think due to his background the President was focused on legislative mattersso far, and to be fair that focus has been pretty damned successful.* I think he’s going to spend the next two years discovering just how powerful he is beyond getting stuff passed through congress. There’s quite a bit he can do on the diplomatic side to boost exports and bring about fairer exchange ratios. There’s plenty he can do through Freddy and Fannie and the Treasury to help with foreclosures (something he’s eschewed for trying to find a legislative solution) . Believe it or not there’s actually a lot of jaw boning he can do with the FOMC to keep them from chickening out on QE2. All the while the Republicans will continue to look like the buffoons they are while they investigate how two guys in berets in Philly somehow scared everyone into voting for Obama, or how he won’t show his birth certificate, only his certificate of birth. Their leadership is scared to death of a government shutdown (either by not passing a budget or by forced default) because they know it will destroy them, and the forces who back them have more to lose than gain from one. Something else to keep in mind is that this new class of republicans has an IQ to sense of entitlement ratio that make the Republicans from 06 look like school children. I honestly don’t think it will be too long before quite a few of them get caught with a couple $100 bills in their freezer, or something even more entertaining. Do you seriously think that Republicans are going to have a good year in 2012 when Rick Scott or Rand Paul are the poster boys for some epic graft scandal, and Obama is riding high on approval of his mortgage buy-out program, and continued quantitative easing?
*Yes yes, he didn’t get the Public Option/Fed Audit/pony program passed, but it’s hard to argue he hasn’t had some enormous successes.
blondie
This election reaffirms for me what 8 years under W pretty much persuaded me of … our country has a lot more assholes than you’d like to think.
I used to think the count held steady at around 20%, but it seems to have swelled to 30-40% for this election. Look to your left. Look to your right. One of the three of you is an asshole.
Yeah, yeah, I’m clinging bitterly to my ideals and my liberalism.
While I’d like to think that my fellow Americans believe everybody should have the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I must reluctantly conclude there is a substantial minority who don’t believe that at all. Who believe, instead, that non-white, non-men, non-straight, non-wealthy really are … lesser.
I am also tired of Democrats backpeddling in response to Republican attacks.
The stimulus? You bet we passed a stimulus! Our economy was gasping its last breaths. This country was going under. Remember? We needed to do everything we could to stimulate our economy, which, as you will recall, was almost killed by Bush carelessness over the financial industry and tax cuts for the rich.
Obamacare? We need Obamacare and more! It protects us all. Do you really want to deny a safety net to our sick citizens? Then you get to be the person who tells the cancer patient that she will receive treatment only until her money is all gone, then she gets to die on the street.
C’mon Dems. Quit backing away from the progress we have made. Own it. Show how it’s good and will lead to a better future.
debit
@blondie: See, you’re approaching from the standpoint of the sane and compassionate. The sad fact is that the crazy and fuck you I got mine faction is louder and really motivated. I used to think that people would eventually stop being selfish assholes, but I’ve pretty much given up on it.
The Dangerman
There won’t be shit done for 2 years, so if the economy improves, it won’t be because of the Republicans. Of course, they will take credit for any improvement and assign blame for any failure…
…and it doesn’t matter. Obama will win in 2012. What Republican is a viable national candidate?
Romney? Mormon problem.
Palin? Stupid problem.
Gingrich? Evil fuck problem.
Barbour? Fat fuck problem.
Pawlenty? Please.
Thune? Please, please.
They don’t have shit for a candidate in 2012.
The Dangerman
@fasteddie9318:
Works for me; we’ll take the cities where shit gets done and where smart people live.
They can have the flyover states and watch their agrarian economy tank.
catclub
@fasteddie9318:
If partition is peaceful, then you do not get the houses of the people moving from one side to the other at firesale/raw theft
prices. If there is violence and panic, then you do.
Seems too easy to predict.
catclub
@The Dangerman:
“What Republican is a viable national candidate?”
Let’s rephrase that to: “What Republican backed by an extra 2 billion in outside spending is NOT a viable national candidate?”
CaffinatedOne
@ Scamp Dog
I agree that we need a theme and narrative, but think we’d want to go larger than that and actually push policy to enact it (even if we have to watch R’s block everything). Some sort of “Renewing America” thing, with a few simple bullets:
1) Getting America back to work
2) Reducing our dependence on fossil fuels
3) Rebuilding our worn infrastructure/investing in our future
4) Getting America’s finances in order
Get *all* of the Democrats on board with it and make them commit to sticking to the message. Put that out, push and trumpet legislation/policy to make it happen and constantly refer back to the guiding document as the blueprint for what we want to do. Keep the theme and message simple and repeat it over and over.
The Dangerman
@catclub:
Reasonable point, but, at the end of the day, there’s only so much lipstick 2B can buy for that pig.
Also, the nomination process for the Right is full-on fucked (see O’Donnell, Angle, et al). There’s a reasonable chance Palin could take Iowa and South Carolina and just about shut the door on any viable candidate. And unless there is rioting in the streets, Palin has NO chance, no matter how much money is behind her, in the General.
alwhite
“Peak wingnut”
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
How many times have we seen “peak wingnut” in the last 18 years?
catclub
@The Dangerman:
I agree with you on the benefits of an extra $2B in the presidential election.
I think that, instead, we have seen the effect of outside money on the smaller races, where name recognition is very low, and it was pretty big. All those first time GOP candidates knocking off long time Dem reps
Ruckus
@cleek:
The Rules
Nice.
And as the theorems seem to be holding so far, I’d say you are correct to call these rules
Chuck Butcher
HCR, Stimulus, ad nauseum sucked as proposed thanks to political fear and sucked even worse thanks to the Senate. That said, running away from and letting the other side control the debate during the debate and after passage was nothing other than cowardice about something that was better than nothing. Democrats got to pay for that yesterday.
You cannot set out to do large things and pretend they aren’t large and not sell them. You will get to pay for that kind of behavior. Most people are not comfortable with change at a personal level so you’d better show them why and that you care – a lot. You need to do that from the start, all the way through, and after.
Well, the thugs get to run the House for awhile – we’ll see how that goes.
Triassic Sands
It occurs to me that if things don’t go well for the Republicans between now and 2012, voters may indeed throw the bums out. The problem will be if they don’t turn to Democrats (why would they?), but instead respond by electing many, many more Tea Baggers.
Just because the Tea Party is the right wing of the Republican Party today, doesn’t mean that a real split can’t develop. In 2012, Republicans won’t be able to say the voters hadn’t given them a chance (yet another chance). But Tea Baggers will be able to claim that voters didn’t put them in power, because they weren’t a majority in either house (or even close).
It’s hard to imagine anyone believing that Republicans are going to solve anything between now and 2012. I’m sure their plan is just to blame Obama and Democrats. But hard core Tea Baggers aren’t going to want to go down with the Republican ship. Like the best of rats, they’ll be perfectly willing to jump overboard and that could mean a lot of third party races in 2012 — including for the presidency.
In a three way race in Alaska (with a write-in no less) the Democrat ran a distant third. I could see that happening in many states in 2012. People are justifiably happy that many of the worst of the Baggers lost yesterday, but rising from the dead, or less onerously, defeat, isn’t that hard in the US.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter.
James
Obama needs to use his chief ace in the hole – going straight to the American voters – directly. He can use the media by having “Fireside Chats’ and Presidential addresses whenever the Republicans decide to stop the wheels. He needs to call them what they are and do it publicly, every single time. The democrat cancer is that the democrats are nice and expect everyone to play nice.