Today in the Great Grey Lady [no longer of] 43rd St. former assistant GOP Crazytown basketball player-coach Eric Cantor decided to pose as one of the great compromisers in his eulogy to his former nominal GM, John Boehner.
The putzitude? Well, here’s a sample:
During President Obama’s first two years in office, his party controlled the House and for a time had a supermajority in the Senate. Almost entirely on their own they enacted a nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank financial regulations. Not for the first or last time, alternative suggestions from Republicans were dismissed out of hand. [Emphasis added]
As it was, so it will ever be: Cantor is here revealed as a truly excellent putz.
Where to begin. Obamacare is, of course, itself a Republican suggestion, (though, of course, those guilty of that predestined heresy have since scrabbled to deny thrice what once they proudly trumpeted). The stimulus was constructed — mistakenly in my view — to accommodate the core Republican act of magical thinking, that tax cuts are the chief (nay, sole!) engine of growth. More than one third of the total came in tax reductions. And on the regulatory side of things? Fine…and to quote the mustache of understanding, suck on that. It’s not as if we haven’t had plenty of reminders over the last couple of weeks why robust regulatory regimes might be a good idea.
And then there was this:
Following that, the American people elected Republicans to the majority in the House. And Mr. Obama’s liberal platform ground to a halt.
Yes, Eric — the sequester was a contingent win for your side. We do need to reverse that. But I’ll take the rest, from the successful roll out of Obamacare to the Iran deal to the climate initiatives (and the clean power regs) and so on and on.
And one more thing: the idea of Eric Cantor and John Boehner as the last great legislative engineers being cast aside by the barbarians in their own ranks? Seriously: you broke it, you bought it.
Anyone got the over/under on how long before the ravening mob gets their next prize?
Image Gerard van Hontorst, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1622. For the (very loose) connection to this story…see this.
TaMara (BHF)
Oh thank god.
Steeplejack (phone)
@TaMara (BHF):
Hey, nobody said being a front-pager would be easy, sister.
RSA
@TaMara (BHF): Tom’s not the cavalry—you were.
rikyrah
Eric Cantor…..
go somewhere and sit down…and STFU
katie5
Tom, is there a problem with Virtually Speaking? The posting of new content in the past few weeks has been sporadic.
Keith G
Well, at least something (Pope & the Dope) got Donald off of the top story for a bit. Also, I haven’t seen any “HRC campaign in crises” headlines for a few days.
Francis can work miracles.
& Go Buckeye!
Chris
Any Republican suggestion accepted by Obama would instantly have become tainted by his Kenyonesian Islamarxist black nationalist radical Alinskyite liberal fascist feminazi politically correct involvement, and the Republicans would promptly have stopped supporting it.
So, yeah. We just saved them the time and effort.
scav
Suddenly recasting the recent past as one of a triumphant, principled, heroic, successful stand against the so oft-cited Obamaslaught? That may actually finally be a contradiction too far for the ravening hordes that have been whipped up with red meat for so very long (and bled dry by invoking the rising apocalypse). The pointy-edged flip side of “Both Sides Do It” is “They’re ALL Crooks”.
Cervantes
Cantor:
No thanks to you traitors.
debbie
Cantor has demonstrated that the establishment GOP still hasn’t learned anything. I can’t imagine what the RWNJs will have to do to get them to realize they made a real mistake in trying to shut down Obama.
Felonius Monk
Eric Cantor and John Boehner —- two arch-conservatives beaten to death, not by the opposition, but by their own team. May they not rest in peace, but just STFU! Amen.
Keith G
@Keith G: Cool, I leave the s off Buckeyes and WP will not let me back in to edit.
Where is Frank when I need him?
Davis X. Machina
The GOP hard-liners — using the Freedom Caucus as a proxy — in the House are too few to actually take over, and too many to just ignore.
It’s Goldilocks-in-reverse…
(FWIW, the Freedom Caucus is half the size of the Congressional Progressive Caucus…)
Brachiator
Golly, gee! Could the Republicans be girding their loins for a shut down of the government?
I listened to some radio talk show hosts and interviewed guests (not all the worst of the wingnuts) claim either that Obama was a terrible president or the worst president ever, with no one bothering to offer any examples or explanation.
I’m also reading about a core group of House Republicans who see themselves as kingmakers (from The Hill). This should make the selection of the next speaker loads of fun.
Why do all these clowns insist that they are the sole protectors of freedom or liberty?
Van Buren
I am old and my memory grows dim, so can someone remind me of all the times Bush & co reached across the aisle to solicit Democratic input on legislation; or even stopped short of dismissing Democratic suggestions out of hand?
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Are you asking about the politics of it or the psychology?
Chris
@Van Buren:
As I recall, not only were they not interested in Democratic support, but even when they had a ton of Democratic support for their questionable projects (e.g. the Iraq War), they still chose to behave as if they didn’t have it and accuse the Democrats of treasonously colluding with the enemy through their opposition to the Iraq War.
Cervantes
In an old issue of the NYT Magazine, circa 1900, you will find the following:
I will leave it at that.
dmsilev
While your main point is good, I’d like to push back against the parenthetical aside that Obamacare is based on Republican ideas. It isn’t, really. Yes, it was largely based on the Massachusetts model, but you can thank a veto-proof legislature for pushing that through despite what Romney wanted. Yes, he went along with a lot of it in the end, but it wasn’t like he had much choice. Also, key parts of Obamacare such as the Medicaid expansion have absolutely no genesis in any GOP think-tank.
benw
@Cervantes: So Cantor is admitting that Obama and the Democrats had to do everything by themselves to keep the country out of the toilet? Thanks, Cantor!
shell
I.E., “Do what we want or go fuck yourself, Obamy”
And did Cantor agree with McConnell’s priority to make Obama a one term president?
Corner Stone
Ok, that may be the absolute dumbest movie plot I have ever seen in The Vow with Channing Tatum.
Basically his wife is in a crash and may not remember she’s married to him. He then has to fight to earn her love again.
Excuse me? Doesn’t he just wave his hand down his bod and say, “Hey there.”
It’s like if I woke up in a hospital and non-famous non-wealthy Salma Hayek told me she was my wife. I’d be like, “Oh, yeah?…OH YEAH!!!”
different-church-lady
I’m taking the deep under, as in a Bob Livingston-esque new guy doesn’t even take the speakership before he’s strung up by his ankles.
J R in WV
The Republican voters threw that jack-ass out, why would he think the rest of us give a hot damn what he thinks of President Obama after all the monsterous things he said about the President back when he could have been bipartisan himself?!
What a jerk !!
I got a new laptop a while ago, and while I like the keyboard, I can’t type on it well yet.
Plus Mrs J got a virus last week – 10 days ago – and now I have it too. Misery and the backache. Cough all night, can’t sleep normally, imagine it now! Yuck! So look for me come 3 am…
germy shoemangler
Key & Peele address the outrage that is OBAMACARE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf7iltPq3IM
“You are NOT putting big government into MY body!”
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: Thank you.
Roger Moore
Yes, but fucking themselves and the horses they rode in on was not a very practical suggestion.
Chris
@efgoldman:
I believe in thoroughness.
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
Ayersian fist-bumping terrorist, ayatollah-loving, corrupt Rezkoite, just to name three others at random.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
Gay.
Van Buren
@efgoldman: Pot smoking community organizer?
Cervantes
@J R in WV:
Very sorry to hear about your respective illnesses.
Get well.
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
Michael Moore and others claimed that the Affordable Care Act was in part based on a Heritage Foundation model. This is a yoooge oversimplification: both plans contained a “mandate” requiring people to carry insurance coverage, but similarities pretty much end here.
gene108
@debbie:
Stop voting.
As long as the RWNJ’s show up every damn election and vote Republican, losing a chump like Cantor or someone like Boehner is a small price to pay to have control of the Senate and House, as well as most state governments.
Mitch McConnell will probably bite a turtle’s head off on the floor of the Senate, if he thought it’d help appeal to the RWNJ’s, so he could keep his job as majority leader. If some people have to get hurt for Mitch to keep his dream job, well who gives a fuck.
Mitch’ll do whatever it takes to see himself majority leader, even if it means letting the RWNJ’s shut down government again or default on the debt, as long as that is what it take to keep the RWNJ’s enthused and voting.
Now the Wall Street types, who backed Obama in 2008, but felt betrayed, when he called them “Fat Cats” in 2009 and went all in on Republicans in 2010 because of Dodd-Frank…they maybe having second thoughts, because a debt default is going to destroy the global financial markets in ways we cannot possibly begin to imagine…
Chris
@Cervantes:
Okay, you got me. I don’t know what that one means.
Cervantes
@dmsilev:
Scott Lemieux, whose writing many of you know, addressed this misperception quite thoroughly last year.
Mike in NC
When not busy being a putz, Eric Cantor has been known to dabble in being a schmuck.
piratedan
I think it’s incredinly awesome that we continue to see the liberal media giving these guys the forum to reach millions of people with their own parallel reality…
Obamacare… working… could be better but the GOP has no interest in making it better and are still kicking and screaming about it…
The Stimulus… worked, and the hypocritical bastards even had their photo ops as the cash dropped into their districts to help the locals… disingenuous bastards
Foreign Policy… working… Bin Laden, a dead man, as are various #2 position holders of Al Queda, still attempting to sort the mess left over from the political vacuum that is sweeping the Middle East, be it Arab nationalism or Muslim fundamentalism and nobody wants us there to “help”.
So in short, Eric Cantor can go and eat a bag of unsalted non-kosher dicks.
TS
And so the rewrite of history – by the GOP continues apace, with 100% assistance from the media. No-one should be surprised.
Cervantes
@Chris:
You missed nothing.
Debbie
@gene108:
Actually, I think McConnell’s their next target.
raven
@efgoldman: And Auburn still blows. There is going to be hell to pay in Knoxville as the Vols collapse. . . again!
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
Many turtles are.
gene108
@Van Buren:
Sarbanes-Oxley was bi-partisan.
McCain-Feingold, for whatever good or bad it did, was bi-partisan.
The 2003 tax cuts passed the Senate on Dick Cheney’s tie breaking vote, i.e. there was bi-partisan opposition to that wasteful round of tax cuts.
No Child Left Behind played up to Democratic desires to expand the Department of Education and in some ways could be considered bi-partisan, in a sort of “hahaha…I tricked you” manner in how it was implemented, but nonetheless it was not outright hostile to Democratic goals.
Same with Medicare Part D, which played on Democrats desire to expand healthcare in any way shape or form, but had also had the “hahahaha…I tricked you” streak in it.
The Republicans, post-Obama have taken obstruction to another level.
Compromise, in order to govern, is now seen as a betrayal of Republican values.
Gian
@Van Buren:
No Child Left Behind, and the TSA
(IIRC the Flight Attendants Union wanted the TSA to improve on the then more widespread secondary screening selection process consisting of “is she hot?”)
Gian
– as a note how did you resist going with the obvious “Cantor Sings”?
gene108
@Debbie:
Outside of Cruz, I do not see the Republican Senators wanting to stick a shiv in McConnell.
Edit: McConnell held them together for their record run of filibusters, which ground government down to a halt. By doing this the Republicans got Americans discouraged enough that people, who turned out to vote, with such enthusiasm in 2008, stated home in 2010 and again in 2014. This strategy eventually paid off for Senate Republicans in 2014.
McConnell held them together for their record run of filibusters to grind government down to a halt, and people angry and discouraged at government and Obama, which eventually paid off for said Senators in 2014.Boehner, on the other hand, just happened to be Johny-on-the-spot, when the 2010 election gave Republicans control of the House. House members didn’t really owe him anything.
Same cannot be said of Senate Republicans and their relationship with McConnell.
Knight of Nothing
@Cervantes: this.
You left out that McConnell, Cantor, et al had a meeting in January 2009 BEFORE Obama was inaugurated, in order to plan how to block every single initiative proposed by democrats. It was bad faith from the very beginning.
mm
Nobody pushes back on this meme that the Democrats had a supermajority in the Senate.
The Republicans through lawsuits held up Al Franken’s swearing in for months after he beat Norm Coleman. Once Sen. Franken was sworn in it wasn’t very long before Ted Kennedy died and Scott Brown (R) was appointed.
The Republicans started their procedural slowdown on day 1 and even 60 votes doesn’t speed up the cloture process.
Also I’d like to trumpet to the heavens that if Volkswagen can program their cars to fool testing equipment, voting machine manufacturers can program their machines to fix elections.
Sorry for going off topic but we really need paper ballots that can be OCR’d and hand counted if necessary. We also need a big counter on the wall of every voting location that shows the number of people casting ballots so that there can’t be more votes cast for a candidate in a precinct than there were voters that day. I’m tired of ballot boxes being “found” late in the count which just happen to put a Republican over the top.
sukabi
@Cervantes: they should be giving Obama and the D’s a hearty Thank You Very Much for that…. Slow recovery sure, but at least there is a recovery instead of the ashes the R’s would have brought had they gotten their way.
Cervantes
@mm:
Good points.
As for:
Democrat Paul Kirk was appointed in 2009. Brown won the special election in 2010, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley.
gf120581
@mm: Scott Brown wasn’t appointed. He won a special election in early 2010. For several months, there was an appointed Democrat in his seat (Paul Kirk) and for that time, the Dems did have a supermajority. It just wasn’t for very long.
Knight of Nothing
@shell: yes indeed. Assholes.
gene108
@mm:
The Senate, in early 2009, had probably 57 Democratic, plus Independents caucusing with Democrats, in the Senate.
Franken had not been sworn in, but in early 2009 Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with brain cancer. He did have a seat, which was not vacant until his death, but he was in no shape to participate in many votes, so they were down a vote there. When Kennedy did pass away and a Democrat interim-Senator was appointed to take his place, they ended up effectively adding one to their vote count.
Total Democrats now at 58.
The Democrats picked up another vote that spring, when Alren Specter switched parties. Total Democrats now 59.
Then that summer Al Franken won his lawsuit with Norm Coleman and got sworn in. Democrats at 60.
It didn’t last long.
As you pointed out Brown won Kennedy’s seat.
And the Democrats were back to 59.
sukabi
@piratedan: need to quit, even sarcastically, calling the media ‘liberal’. They aren’t. They’ve become nothing but 95% propaganda for the R machine.
Elizabelle
Eric Cantor may be a putz, but Beyonce is pretty sharp.
Caught more than half of her Global Citizen concert on MSNBC. Loved the message of female empowerment.
Before that, only song I knew was the “ring on it”. Now a Beyonce fan.
Elizabelle
@sukabi: Yes!
And the tell is when they call the radicals who forced Boehner out — they call them conservatives.
Whereas Boehner is kind of conservative, honestly. He is an Ohio conservative. But since he will work with the Demoncrats (while dissing them in public, but still) he is a liberal. And a “traitor”, to the Values Voters.
The NY Times has gone crazy in the last few months on their political coverage.
These are not conservatives. They are radicals and anarchists.
Descriptions matter. The NY Times needs to be honest, lest they remind us of Judith Miller and all the other crap stuff in the very recent past.
gene108
@Cervantes:
It can’t be emphasized enough how much the ACA is not a Republican plan at all.
I know liberals are frustrated with not getting more, but the key points of it had nothing to do with Republican ideas.
On the other hand, something very popular with liberals, proposed by Democrats in 2009 (which I think was ill timed*) was a cap-and-trade plan for CO2 emissions.
Cap-and-trade is a Republican idea, from way back when they actually thought they should bother to govern. Now they totally reject their own effective innovative approach to regulating pollution, in a way that is “market friendly” and avoids top down government regulations.
* I say ill-timed because business were falling down a cliff of economic ruin, without knowing how they were going to land – in one piece or in broken and non-functional as an entity – and the last thing they needed was to be hit with a new set of regulations, like CO2 emission rules. Having them absorb the ACA was a big enough hit to already stressed out businesses. The CO2 rules, I think, were a step too far too fast and turned a lot of businesses away from Democrats, by 2010, when they and looked to Democrats to be the “adults in the room”, in 2008. And the loss of business money hurt, because of the CU decision and businesses were now able to spend millions directly influencing local and state races.
Cervantes
@gene108:
I agree.
The idea is from the ’60s, developed by a number of LBJ-era civil servants in the agency that later became the EPA.
The first trial implementation came during the Carter Administration, enabled by the 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act.
Marc McKenzie
During President Obama’s first two years in office, his party controlled the House and for a time had a supermajority in the Senate.
Huh. Funny enough, I keep seeing this written in comments here, at Kos, Crooks and Liars, and other “progressive sites. So if Cantor’s a putz for saying this (and no, Obama did not have a “supermajority”), then are those who keep spewing it out on our side of the fence putzes too?
Just asking.
Faux News
@efgoldman: Benghazi?
Baud
@Marc McKenzie:
Um…hell yes. Easily and by a large margin.
Cervantes
@Marc McKenzie:
Of course, he did — for a short while.
Are you thinking of a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, which requires a minimum of 60 votes? The Democrats had that for a short while, from when Paul Kirk was appointed to replace EMK to when Scott Brown was sworn in to replace Kirk.
During that period, Congress was in session for about seventy days — and that’s how long the Democrats, as a party, had a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.
Here’s what Cantor wrote:
That “for a time” is doing a lot of work.
Shantanu Saha
@Mike in NC:
But he ended his congressional career as a schlemiel.
revrick
Re: the Christmas display putz (the ‘u’ sounds like the oo in book). When I first moved to the Lehigh Valley in PA, as we were planning for Advent and Christmas, a member asked if he could set up a putz in the foyer. I almost snorted out my coffee.
I soon learned it was a custom begun by the Moravians who settled in the area. Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem has an elaborate room-size putz that includes a narration of the scenes.The goal is to visually retell the Christmas story (including claimed prophetic Hebrew antecedents) using figurines and natural .materials.
catclub
@efgoldman: Black panthers, ACORN, planned parenthood.
catclub
@Cervantes:
Also, that filibuster proof majority included Joe Lieberman and Mary Landrieu as two of the more reliable edge members.
about 5 others who were not on board for much of anything progressive. Taft Hartley was not about to be repealed.
Chris
@Shantanu Saha:
He’s a putz. He’s always been a putz. And the only thing that’s going to change is, he’s going to become an even bigger putz.
Cervantes
@catclub:
Yes, which is why I referred to it as a supermajority that “the Democrats, as a party, had.”
divF
@efgoldman:
Social Justice Warrior ?
Renie
alittle OT but does anyone follow dick nixon on twitter? he predicted walker going down, boehner resigning and is now saying valerie jarrett is the one behind the clinton email links.
comments, anyone?
SFAW
@efgoldman:
He forgot Poland!
Oh, wait – wrong President.
Never mind.
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
Anarchists? Or nihilists? (I know, I know, why not both?)
But no matter your answer, they are still treasonous motherfuckers.
SFAW
@Renie:
What are the “clinton email links”? I expect it has something to do with Benghaziiiiii!!!!!, and I guess Hitlery’s e-mail server in particular, but I haven’t been following that for a couple of weeks.
Renie
@SFAW: they found more Clinton emails she didn’t give them herself but they were about personnel issues between her and Petraeus. MSM is using this as another pile on for her. but how this was leaked to the press is the issue also
SFAW
@Renie:
Thanks. Saw a snippet about that, didn’t read the article.
kuvasz
Don’t be surprised if the new Speaker of the House is controlled by a group of faction leaders, viz., the House Republicans becoming parliamentarians inside their own party. The real power is going to be in the hands of those faction leaders, not the Speaker.
Joe Miller
Cantor has always been a fucking liar. I remember he appeared on Jon Stewart’s show sometime in 2010 and claimed, with a straight face, that Obama had already doubled the national debt! Shockingly, Jon didn’t call Cantor on this astonishing falsehood. Cantor is a complete lying scumbag, and I’m glad he got his ass kicked out of Congress.
low-tech cyclist
Yes, Eric, you’re still a putz.
1) Both Dodd-Frank and the stimulus bill needed GOP votes in the Senate to pass.
2) In addition to compromising in advance by making tax cuts >1/3 of the stimulus (as Tom notes), Dems lopped $100 billion off the stimulus to win Susan Collins’ vote.
3) While Obamacare may have passed entirely with Dem votes, Obama spent several months working with the Gang of Six, trying to see if GOP Sens. Grassley, Snowe, and Enzi would propose any Dem concessions that would win their votes. Their input was deeply desired by the Administration, but they ultimately decided they didn’t want any ACA, period.
So screw Eric Cantor and the horse he rode in on.
Wonder if Politifact will bother rating this one. Because it’s an off-the-scale lie.
Lurking Canadian
I’m sure I’m not the only person who saw Obama address the Republican House caucus back in 2009. He was pleading with them to bring him something he could use on the ACA. “Tear it up and start again” is not really a suggestion he could incorporate, but that’s all they were providing him.
Zinsky
Tom – great post! Good factual counterpoint to the fantasy land that is RepublicanWorld. I still have conservative friends who assert, without any proof, what a failure Obamacare is. When I point out how millions of people who suffered without health care now have it, they either say that’s a lie or assert that is a bad thing. It’s maddening! By the way, are you also a guest contributor over at digby’s place?
low-tech cyclist
Exactly. In a way, they really started this 28 years ago, when the GOP decided to ditch the Fairness Doctrine, which led directly to the rise of right-wing talk radio.
And there are a thousand right-wing talk radio ranters out there now, all trying to out-angry each other, and bringing their audiences along with them. Rupe Murdoch may be able to control Fox News, but wingnut radio is outside of anyone’s control. And I’m convinced it’s fueling the revolt against the GOP establishment, because that certainly isn’t Murdoch’s idea.
Davis X. Machina
@Joe Miller:
It would have been shocking if he did. Stewart’s interviewing of politicians was…shall we say, uneven.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SFAW: Dead thread, but…
The Teabaggers aren’t radicals or anarchists or nihilists, IMO.
They’re Reactionaries. It’s a shame that a nearly perfect word like that doesn’t get used for them. I cringe when I hear traditionally derogatory leftist terms (radicals, anarchists) applied to them. I think that’s why they just love, really love the term “conservative”.
“We just want things to be the way they used to be!” – they say.
What they really want, based on their actions, is Feudalism Now!.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.