These are two of two dozen or so featured stories at Post Politics. Never mind that McConnell would filibuster a declaration making Tuesday Motherhood and Apple Pie day, the important question is whether he and Reid can get along.
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Linda Featheringill
If it is true that Harry can’t get along with Mitch, that speaks well for Harry. Good man!
mai naem
The story before was how Reid didn’t get along with Boehner. Long before that was how Reid didn’t think much of Obama. Now it’s McConnell. Maybe, it comes down to Reid being fed up with the GOP and their tactics.
dmsilev
I note that our lens into the mind of the wingnut, the NewsMax ad bar, is currently running a story with the headline “McConnell to Democrats: Take ‘Yes’ for an Answer”. Now of course the exact definition of ‘yes’ matters which is why there isn’t a deal yet, but it’s increasingly obvious that the Republicans are backed into a corner and are thinking about raising the white flag.
raven
Wonders never cease. An interesting interview with Bill Ayers on Mornin Joe. No Joe but Mika and Halperin.
Schlemizel
I’m sure if they would all just join hands and sing Kumbaya everything would work out just before the last commercial break, thats how it happens on TV.
The meteor can’t get here soon enough
Punchy
I imagine it’s hard to find common ground with a guy who denies the existence of scientific principles and bases all his actions on their acceptance by his Big Sky Buddy.
fuddmain
Reid should be given a Nobel Peace Prize for not punching Yertle in the face.
Ash Can
Never mind about what I said recently about whether our pundits were learning. It’s obvious that they just need to grow the goddamed hell up.
dmsilev
@mai naem: There was sort of an abortive attempt to push a “schism between White House and Senate Democrats” narrative a week or so ago, but it failed due to the lack of even vaguely convincing evidence. McConnell, for better or for worse, is a real leader of his caucus. Most of them listen to him. Boehner, not so much. That last is the main dynamic in this whole mess.
Ash Can
PS: Great choice of a title by dpm.
MikeJ
@dmsilev:
Easily replaced with “robotic Democrats follow orders without question and refuse to think for themselves.” Anything a Democrat does is fodder for a headline about how awful Democrats are.
Botsplainer
Slightly OT, but inasmuch as Larry Klayman spoke at yesterday’s Klavern at the Memorial, it is helpful to talk about him beyond his political life of milking the rubes by conducting fake grand juries which indict Obama and then trying him by a jury of not his peers.
He also seems to like stiffing spouses and touching his kids:
http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/8/2012/2012-ohio-3354.pdf
Multiple occasions of gross misconduct, and contentious, constant litigation grinding up an attorney fee over $450,000.00.
Yes, wingers, THAT is your standard-bearer.
PaulW
1) in the Beltway it is ALWAYS about who you know and how often you invite them to your Green Room for the Sunday talk shows.
2) any narrative to scare up the fear and anger sells.
Belafon
@Punchy: You probably could have stopped at not accepting scientific principles. I know plenty of people who believe in God and believe in doing his will, but that doesn’t impair their ability to think rationally.
Zifnab25
Both sides! Both sides do it! Both si-e-i-e-ides!
Ash Can
@Botsplainer: I’m amazed that this guy isn’t behind bars.
JPL
@Botsplainer: Sarah’s really palling around with child abusers..
Anya
Some in the media (sadly, most) look at every political story through the lens of their high school experience.
Chris T.
“OutRrage”, noun: a powerful feeling of resentment or anger aroused by something perceived as an injury, insult, or injustice, with that anger directed towards Democrats even though Republicans are 100% responsible for it.
beth
@dmsilev: My favorite Newsmax headline today is about Margaret Thatcher being worried about the US under Obama. From all I’ve found, she suffered strokes in 2002 which caused her doctors to advise her not to speak in public anymore and were widely considered to have started the Alzheimers. In 2003 her husband died but she had to be told this fact over and over since she couldn’t remember. And in spite of all this, she was worried about foreign policy in 2008. They’ll say anything won’t they?
TAPX486
There has been a lot of speculation about the damage being done to the GOP by the phony shutdown/debt limit crisis. Specifically whither the House could flip in 2014. I think there is a real life test of how much damage is actually being done and that is the special election in NJ for the Senate. If Booker destroys the GOP tea partier then maybe the GOP is starting to suffer real damage. If however he loses or just squeaks in, then the tea partiers will take that as a sign that they are winning and the public backs them It will prove to them that the polls have a liberal bias and can be ignored.
Elizabelle
@beth:
Ronald Reagan was worried about Obama too.
Botsplainer
@Ash Can:
The attorney fees that he ground up on his ex are in an amount that is nothing short of staggering. It is nearly impossible to do unless one litigant is a total nutbucket who files new motions weekly, makes them long and insists on a lot of hearings. You would also have to have a judge who allows everybody a full opportunity to vomit every stray mental fart in lengthy hearings, who never shuts down a litigant by saying “shut up, that’s fucking stupid. Open your mouth again, and I’m holding you in contempt.”
AxelFoley
@Belafon:
Exactly. Too many on the left are just as biased as those they laugh at on the right.
Elizabelle
@TAPX486:
Yeah, but we got the Virginia governor’s race coming up this fall. (As well as Chris Christie’s race in NJ.)
And I think the damage from the shutdown will be long-lasting. This is government by extortion. This is the Tea Party’s/GOP’s Katrina. Anyone reachable will remember that, come 2014.
Whether it flips the House, I cannot say, but it could be helpful.
Xantar
Well, doncha know, the Senate is all about
comedycomity!Patrick
@beth:
One of countless reasons that Obama was elected was because of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy between 2000-2008. The hope of the US and the world was that Obama was going to change that. Thatcher apparently wanted to keep the wars on Iraq/Afghanistan going forever and then attack Iran.
It is amusing that these people get airtime, when they are the same people that are screaming about too much government waste etc. Do they really think these dumb wars are free?
TAPX486
@Elizabelle: It looks like the shutdown may have cooked Cooh’s goose based on the latest polls.
Christie is an odd one. He will probably win big with a lot of D’s voting for him because he is a ‘moderate’. In reality he is almost as conservative as Cruz just with a better personality. The GOP has moved the definition of ‘moderate’ so far to the right that Calvin Coolidge would be considered a RINO
Cassidy
@AxelFoley: False equivalence. The right used their belief in the divine to intimidate, subjugate, and destroy. The left points and laughs. While the latter may be galling and insulting, you won’t find left leaning atheists using their positions to harm the lives of others.
Betty Cracker
@TAPX486: The fact that Christie is judged the pol with the better personality is an indicator of just how far off the rails the modern GOP is…
LAC
@Anya: That is Chris Cilliza to a tee. Every time I have the misfortune of seeing him on a show, the theme to “Entertainment Tonight” runs through my head. “Tonight, we are on the set of “The Senate” where rumors are flying about trouble between its leads! Mary Hart will be finding out if the rumors are true!” Asshat…
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
Did you read the description of his legal wrangling? He sounds like he was a total asshole about it:
IOW, he was deliberately dragging the litigation out in an attempt to bankrupt his ex and force her to capitulate. It’s a sadly common tactic, and it’s good to see that the court was willing to penalize him for it.
TAPX486
@Betty Cracker: Truly sad state of affairs.
gene108
@TAPX486:
Christie was smart enough to figure out how to buy of Democratic Party bosses in NJ early on, so there’s not been a lot of open hostility towards him from the opposition, i.e. Democrats.
Therefore there’s not much light being shed on his right-wing nuttery.
And the Democratic legislature pretty much allows Christie to keep his right-wing beliefs in-tact, while not facing the repercussions other Republican governors with Republican legisaltures are facing, because they are actually acting on their beliefs, such as Corbett in PA.
Christie will be a very dangerous candidate for President. Unlike Romney, he’s screwed up the Obamacare implementation in NJ, he’s staunchly anti-abortion and there’s nothing he has to walk back that strays from Republican orthodoxy.
He’s still wildly popular in NJ and the Philly suburbs and can turn NJ and PA red giving the Republicans a real shot at winning the Presidency in 2016.
Patrick
@gene108:
I will never forget when he took a state helicopter to go watch his sons little league game. I’m assuming we might see some ads on that.
And don’t forget that the the tea baggers hate him for his cooperation with Obama after Sandy hit.
And there is also Christie’s defense of a Muslim judge in NJ.
I’m assuming that the tea baggers have learned their lesson from the 2012 primaries,
Botsplainer
@Roger Moore:
Jaw-dropping.
Bill E Pilgrim
This whole “Tip O’Neill would have just /made a call/had a drink/given in/ and these Republicans wouldn’t have been such hardliners, the notion that it’s some character flaw on the part of Democrats like Obama or Reid that caused the Republicans to take the country hostage, has become so constant it needs a shorthand way to refer to it.
I hereby propose: Heavy Tipping.
Variations being “Oh he’s a heavy Tipper” (he’s always babbling about how this is the Democrats’ fault) or “Peggy Noonan is the biggest Tipper around, from way back” and so on.
MattF
@Anya: You beat me to it. I think, also, that regarding Cruz and Palin as the Republican prom King and Queen explains a lot.
Shakezula
It beats working. Next, neck tie analysis!
Thoughtcrime
@JPL:
And Larry’s palling around with terrorists.
Betty Cracker
@Bill E Pilgrim: Chris Matthews has got to be one of the worst offenders. I always thought he was a worthless fecker (he did so much to burnish Bush’s codpiece back in the day). He has his moments of clarity, like calling out tea party racism, etc., but I’m not sure anyone bangs the Tip and Gip drum harder. Of course, Matthews is doing that to pimp his book rather than explicitly call out the Democrats, but it’s still more annoying than a cloud of hyperactive mosquitoes.
pat
I saw that newsmax headline about Thatcher.
Isn’t she ..um… dead?
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker: Matthews has been blathering on the O’Neil/Reagan thing since before he had a book to sell on the subject. He was an aide of some sort for O’Neil (speechwriter, I think), and he’s basically looking back to his formative years in politics as some imagined Golden Age. The book is a symptom of the disease, not the underlying cause.
dmsilev
@pat: Even dead, she’s more coherent than either Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz.
pat
@dmsilev:
As I recall, there was some dancing in the streets on the occasion of her passing, which elicited a few tsk-tsks.
I could look at the story to find out how old it is, but I’m not really that interested.
IM
Thatcher? Ding-Dong the witch is dead.
IowaOldLady
I so sincerely don’t care if Boener and Reid get along. I didn’t get along with some of my co-workers either, and the boss still expected us to do our jobs.
SFAW
@dmsilev:
Kind of a low bar, ain’t that? I mean, the chipmunk that my cat ate last week was probably more coherent than Palin or Cruz. Plus, the chipmunk had the added benefit(s) of:
A) Not being a grifter
B) Not being a raging asshole who will work only with those who went to Harvard or Yale undergrad
C) Not being a seditious bastard/bastardette
D) Actually being something of value in the food chain. Literally
Ripley
Honestly don’t think the U.S. would ever elect someone of Christie’s, um, ample girth as president. He’ll get the psycho vote like any R would, but the level of internalized revulsion at his size will put everyone else off. Dude’s heart has to be the size and texture of a canned ham too, so there’s the longevity factor to consider as well. Don’t see it happening. We’re a feckless nation; the evidence mounts daily.
SFAW
@Ripley:
Oh, I don’t know. If the Treasonous Old Party gets its way re: the debt ceiling, I think we’ll be well and truly fecked.
Anya
@LAC: More like the Gossip Girl. They would be pathetic losers if they weren’t harming the country.
@MattF: Totally. Now that they’ve joined forces, hopefully they’ll speed up the destruction of the GOP.
mai naem
@Betty Cracker: Christie worries me a little as a Republican candidate but I wonder if he’s got the personality to last through a long presidential campaign. One F.U or bullying kind of response to a regular person at some townhall setting is not going to go over well with a lot of people. The Repubs might just be desperate enough in 2016 to ignore his supposed moderate stances to win the primary.
Didn’t click on the Newsmax headline but I am assuming that they mean Thatcher worried about Obama while she was alive. Does Newsmax realize Thatcher had dementia her last few years?
Frankensteinbeck
@Bill E Pilgrim:
My impression is that the news media is packed with Reagan Democrats. They’re the people who think they’re liberals, but always vote Republican. Reagan showed them that the way you help the poor is by gutting the safety net and forcing them to get a job. The way you help those poor black people living in their crime-infested ghettos is to prosecute drug crimes harder. The way you keep the country safe is to strut like a cowboy. Also everything would be great if the rich paid less taxes and could do anything that they want. They miss Reagan and the way the country was united when there were enough white people to reelect Reagan by an almost unanimous electoral majority. Oh, and did I mention that almost all of the important news media types are white males who started getting rich in the 80s?
EDIT – In fact, I think they’re close to the only Reagan Democrats, which is probably why they talk about that group being huge and important.
Betty Cracker
@mai naem: I think the business class is certainly in favor of presenting a moderate face to win, but the crazies they’ve spent so long cultivating appear to take the opposite lesson: They think they need to go full metal wingnut to win nationally.
Sometimes I’m tempted to hope they actually do go with a genuine wingnut instead of someone like McCain or Romney trying badly to play the part, but then again, I don’t want anyone like Rick Santorum or Rand Paul to have a greater than zero chance at the Oval Office. And significantly swathes of this country are crazy enough that anyone with an R after his name (and it will be a “he,” of course) could win.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think there were actually a lot of Reagan Democrats. My mom, who is a lifelong Democrat, voted for Reagan in 1984, and there must have been a lot of others for him to win as big as he did. My gut feeling is that many of the people who stuck with the Republicans after Reagan rather than coming to their senses were people who were uptight about race. They weren’t cross burning Klansmen, but they were the kind of people who were nervous around minorities, always thought they were trying to mooch off the public, and felt vaguely bad about feeling that way because they were worried about being racists. Reagan put a happy face on that kind of mild racism and let people feel their beliefs were justified.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
I think you’re correct, and the difference between our opinions is semantics. The original Reagan Democrats were just like you describe, and there were a lot of them. They either gave it up or became officially Republican. I believe there are very few people left who think they’re liberals but will grab any excuse to vote Republican, and who think their conservative positions are actually liberal. Most of those are rich, insulated egotists, the kind you mainly find on TV news.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
In a lot of ways, I think a more moderate Republican playing wingnut is better for the Democrats. The fake wingnuts will always have to make his nuttiness obvious to secure his right flank, which interferes with any attempt to tack to the center for the general election. A genuine wingnut can keep the crazies happy with his identity alone, making it much easier to play the moderate in public. That’s what made W dangerous as a politician; he could keep the wingnuts in line with minimum effort and play the compassionate conservative for public consumption. I’d much rather see a McCain or Romney who has to choose a genuinely crazy person for VP just to keep the wingnuts happy.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
OK, I can accept that. I might suggest that there’s an extra reason for media types to behave the way you describe. If they actually register with a party and routinely vote for that party’s candidates, then they have to look at themselves as partisan. But if they register as independents and always vote for one party, they can pretend that they’re deciding individual cases based on the issues. Even better is if they’re registered for one party and vote for the other, since that proves that they’re truly independent minded and are willing to buck the party orthodoxy when it’s wrong.
Villago Delenda Est
@beth:
A truly classic rhetorical question.
Mino
Joe Biden is at Camp David and Reid may have paid someone to tear out the phone lines.
catclub
@Patrick: “I’m assuming that the tea baggers have learned their lesson from the 2012 primaries,”
Important if true!