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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Dick Armey’s Prediction

Open Thread: Dick Armey’s Prediction

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gop terrorists everyone back in the little car danziger
(Jeff Danziger’s website)

Last weekend, NYMag published an interview with Repub Dick Armey, who was the House majority leader during the 1995/96 shutdown. Nobody ever accused Dick Armey of being a Great Mind, but apparently he was capable of learning from experience:

… Take me back to 1995. Why did Republican leadership think a government shutdown would be an effective tactic?
We had reason to believe we might be able to pull it off. Remember, we had had a lot of success that year. We were riding pretty high after the 100 days, and we felt that we were going to bring the Democrats to heel on our budget numbers. Newt insisted that presidents get blamed for shutdowns and that therefore we ought to develop a strategy that would take us to a shutdown. My position was that Republicans get blamed for shutdowns, because it’s incongruous to the public to think that the Democrats — who they perceive as people who love the government — would shut down the government. But Newt was just certain that he would outwit Clinton…

So how will it end?
I will predict this: When they agree on a spending bill, it will speak not at all to Obamacare and it will be at budgetary numbers higher than the sequestration level. And so in the end, the Republican conference will lose ground on the budget, they will lose ground on health care, they will lose ground politically, and they’ll be in a worse position than where Boehner had them going into this process. And they’ll all blame Boehner, bless his heart.

My emphases.

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    Armey may not be a great mind, but he is at minimum a competent politician. Any idiot might get elected once, but you need a certain low cunning to win eight reëlection campaigns.

  4. 4.

    WereBear

    I now see Republicans as those relatives who establish themselves as “the person we always talk about” because of their troubles and addictions and need for 4 AM bail money.

    They have children they dump on Mom and bills they dump on Dad and relationships that start low and end even lower.

    You gotta cut them off. They’ll never change.

  5. 5.

    Jay C

    Jeez Louise! Talk about overthinking an issue…

    My position was that Republicans get blamed for shutdowns, because it’s incongruous to the public to think that the Democrats — who they perceive as people who love the government — would shut down the government.

    Does it never occur to assclowns like Dick Armey that maybe – just MAYBE – “Republicans get blamed for shutdowns” because they f*ck*ng cause them????

    Or is that too difficult a concept for (even a GOP) politician to grasp???

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    I wonder: if this is how Republican speakers can expect to get shafted by their own caucus, who would be dumb enough to want the gig after Böhner?

  9. 9.

    Cermet

    President Obama and the democrats won big time. The spillover will be minor by the next election cycle and there is no way the thugs will repeat this mistake – pity. Still, the ACA got needed cover, took no hits, is more secure than before because even the thugs and their clowns now say it is a fact.

    In one way, Cruz was the big loser – he got more teabagger support which will help him in the primaries but kill his chances in a general election.

    The kock-sucker brothers lost some, too – they now see that their pet teabaggers are a threat to their profits. Still, they’ll support the rabble in the hope the EPA can be damaged (their greatest enemy if the CO2 regs hold in the inferior court – that will be the most critical fight facing AGW.

    All in all, a good day for the President – even the thugs realize he is not someone you push too far – President Obama is both strong willed and extremely smart.

  10. 10.

    Poopyman

    @Jay C: To a politician, the blame goes to whomever you can get the media to assign it to. Nothing more, nothing less.

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    Wing nut friend texted me a Faux News story on Bill Effing Ayers. Faux News; ‘Dissemble, Distort, Deflect’. If it didn’t exist, the Rethugs would have to invent it.

  12. 12.

    Randy P

    @Jay C: And their voters. Despite the spectacle of Republicans campaigning on shutdown, Republicans promising a shutdown for months, released Republican strategy advising them to cause a shutdown, Republicans grinning and laughing when they got their shutdown, Republicans bragging to the folks back home about the shutdown…

    … we all know Fox News fans who will tell you with a straight face that Obama forced them to shut down by not negotiating.

  15. 15.

    JPL

    The democratic members need to mention the shut down often. Many federal workers, just like private sector employees, work pay check, to pay check. It was a long two weeks trying to pay bills without a pay check.

  16. 16.

    C.V. Danes

    Republican conference will lose ground on the budget, they will lose ground on health care, they will lose ground politically, and they’ll be in a worse position than where Boehner had them going into this process.

    And if the Dems can keep this in the minds of the electorate for the next year, maybe they’ll even pay a price at the polls, too.

  17. 17.

    James B Franks

    The President is the big winner, Congress can never realistically threaten to default again.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    I am going to be happy that President Obama and the Democrats prevailed, that our government is reopened.

    I do not care what mediawhores and inferior political minds have to say on the subject.

    I am keeping the small businesses around Yosemite and the Blue Ridge Parkway and other government-run installations in mind.

    Several will not have survived this nonsense as well as the wealthy congresscritters and think tank grifters have.

  22. 22.

    MattF

    Interesting that Armey’s last prediction, that Boehner would be blamed, is not happening. Interesting, since if there’s any single individual failure to blame it’s Orange John– and not, e.g., the Very Junior Senator from Texas. Nor the librul media, nor those skewed polls, nor the National Park Service, nor whatev.

  23. 23.

    EconWatcher

    For all the unbelievably stupid things the TEA Party guys said in public, can you imagine what they were saying in all those closed door meetings? Boehner is no rocket scientist, but he also doesn’t strike me as stupid; what was he thinking while locked in a room with these howling cretins?

  25. 25.

    Gypsy Howell

    Obama really is one lucky guy. Can you imagine the fate of the ACA if the media jackals had spent the last two weeks tearing into the health.gov rollout clusterfuck?

  26. 26.

    cmorenc

    @Amir Khalid:

    I wonder: if this is how Republican speakers can expect to get shafted by their own caucus, who would be dumb enough to want the gig after Böhner?

    It will either be:
    1) Someone with brillantly ruthless political infighting skills, including acquisition of some form of ability to make “offers they cannot refuse” over nearly every member of his caucus, for fear of being stripped of any meaningful committee assignments or ability to accomplish even the most trivially small bit of constituent service.
    OR
    2) Someone willing to be the complete toady-tool figurehead for the handful of real power-brokers behind them in order to ride around in the shiny car…um nominally weild the gavel. Who might that be? Um….now I can’t POSSIBLY think of anyone willing to do that, most especially no one from Ohio.

  27. 27.

    cmorenc

    @EconWatcher:

    For all the unbelievably stupid things the TEA Party guys said in public, can you imagine what they were saying in all those closed door meetings?

    That’s not hard at all to accurately guess: go over to RedState.com and look at the Eric son of Eric’s most recent diary on the end of the shutdown, and the member comments to that diary.

  28. 28.

    bjacques

    A thoughtful conservative speaks.

    The Tea Party brings the lunacy to a lot of issues, not just Obamacare and the deficit. I can’t but help wonder whether Dreher would have had his, um, “road to Damascus” moment if the TP’s antics had had a less immediate and obvious impact on the economy (and every conservative’s investments).

  29. 29.

    Suffern ACE

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: ok. I know what it is like to be addicted to something that I knew would kill me. But gosh, it takes a long time for cigarette smoking to manifest itself physically. Why on earth would someone think this fake heroin would be worthwhile?

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Suffern ACE:

    Why on earth would someone think this fake heroin would be worthwhile?

    You need to come down to my neck of the woods and observe what some of the meth heads look like. As bad as the “skank” and her beau ;ooled in Breaking Bad, it is even worse in person.The thing you have to remember is these people aren’t thinking.

  33. 33.

    Anya

    @Baud: It must be the “luck of the Irish” thing I’ve been hearing about.

    @MattF: Why does the MSM has so much sympathy for Boehner? How can someone so ineffective as a leader continue to screw up time and again and yet no one points that out?

  39. 39.

    gelfling545

    @Robert Sneddon: Among the portion of my family of Irish descent “bless his heart” added to a statement means that someone, usually someone rather pathetic and bumbling, has either done something unexpectedly good or is trying his best despite his obvious limitations.

  41. 41.

    kindness

    So from reading those quotes from Armey I would say that ‘some’ Republicans are still unclear on the concept of compromise.

  42. 42.

    catclub

    Was he wrong on the worst part – that the sequester would get rolled back?

    And instead the sequester is still in place.

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