I’m not a fan of the Freedom Caucus, but let me get this straight: Paul Ryan writes a health care bill that only 17% of voters support (with 56% opposing), that is projected to cause 24 million people to lose health care, that calls from constituents oppose 35-to-1….and it’s all the fault of the Freedom Caucus that the piece of shit didn’t become law?
Paul Ryan, like conservatism itself, can never fail, he can only be failed.
Goku
At some point you have to call the GOP a cult
Hunter Gathers
Is it possible to become a Lame Duck less 100 days into your first term?
So, so much Winning.
germy
cain
@germy:
I’m trying to eat breakfast here!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Of course, the FreeDumb Caucus opposed the bill because it did not harm as many people as they wanted, so I’m not crying a river here for them.
aimai
@germy: Patton Oswalt is rather amazing.
Baud
@germy: No way Ayn Rand would have done that for free.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
The reason they get the blame is that TrumpCare didn’t hurt enough people faster. The HFC holds an effective veto over any legislation due to Ryan (and Boehner before him) sticking to the child molester’s rule of GOP legislation being passed with only Republican votes.
TrumpCare was too nice for them. Not enough pain.
trollhattan
@germy:
Oh man….
Trying to decide which characters in the WH most closely resemble Veep’s Patton Oswalt and Jonah.
Big Ole Hound
The GOP are all taking a dump on each other but with Pelosi’s guile maybe a bunch will come over to the Dem’s side a defeat the “Heritage” assholes.
amk
Per grey lady, moderate repubs, who were NO, were more in numbers than the teabagger caucus.
Steve in the ATL
@germy: Good lord. The wife and I had brunch at the Brown Palace in Denver this morning and now I want to puke it all up.
Doug!
@amk:
That too.
dr. bloor
Well, yeah.
cain
@dr. bloor:
Don’t worry, those bag of dicks are going to be the cause of many of other upcoming shenanigans. Between them and the tangelo train wreck, we are going to be in for a rocky road. Not the delicious kind either. Cant’ wait to see what drama comes out of the debt ceiling stuff.
NR
From Twitter:
Number of golf trips Trump has taken as president: 11
Number of town halls/speeches he did about Trumpcare: 0
Hobbes83
Ryan doesn’t make it to the end of the year as speaker of the House.
dr. bloor
@cain: Oh, absolutely. I’d go so far as to use “credit” rather than “blame.” Useful idiots can be useful for all sorts of reasons.
Anonymous At Work
If I were Paul Ryan, I’d call the bluff. Name myself to my choice of committees, step down as Speaker and name the Freedom Caucus leaders as my successors.
David Spikes
Mick Mulvaney-Washington is just much more rotten than we could have imagined. And you can’t expect us to change things in just 65 days.
This the same Mulvaney who as a member of the Freedom Caucus has prevented any substantive legislation since
2012.
The #1 requirement for Trump jobs-liking lying not just a little but absolutely loving it.
OT-Trumpers claim he’s working/conferencing while at golf courses-should be pretty easy to check who else is there. Apparently his “conference” today was with the club pro and a random member of the club who happened to walk by. sheeeeesh!!!
smintheus
Not quite straight. It wasn’t a health care bill because it wasn’t about health care. It was a tax cut camouflaged as a health care bill.
wag
you know a bill must really suck when it polls below the Cleek lower limits of GOP support.
cain
@Anonymous At Work: If I were Paul Ryan, I’d call the bluff. Name myself to my choice of committees, step down as Speaker and name the Freedom Caucus leaders as my successors.
cain
@NR:
To raise the numbers, you need to remove the ‘care’ portion and then you’ll get much better numbers!
EriktheRed
All hope is not lost, according to the leader of the Teabag Caucus:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mark-meadows-still-good-chance-of-obamacare-repeal
cain
@smintheus:
That’s pretty much all the Republican party knows how to do these days. They really don’t know how to govern. Wait till the debt ceiling and taxing stuff shows up. They’re going to have to be forced to increase taxes on the rest of us while lowering the taxes on the 1%. That’s pretty much all their tax policy is going to be. They have no artful subtlety whatsoever.
Mike E
@Baud: only when the Eagle flew?!
NR
@cain: Well, higher numbers at least.
smintheus
@cain: Yep, the GOP remade itself in the ’80s in the image of corporate raiders and vulture capitalists. They’re now tribal raiders and vulture bag men, using old-fashioned bigots as their frontmen to class up the operation.
patrick II
What Paul Ryan thought republicans would hear: “Blah, Blah, Blah, tax cuts.”
What the republicans heard at town halls and on the phones, loudly: “Don’t take away my Obamacare.”
Ryan couldn’t hear the latter because that permanant smirk on his face interferes with his hearing.
Anonymous At Work
@cain: If Ryan tries to keep riding the train, he’ll be blamed for every failure, every problem, every bad optic, regardless and especially those that are Trump’s fault. His caucus has no unifying vision, no secondary leadership, and no one else waiting in the wings. The Freedom Caucus has no positive agenda and no ability to create, only deny or destroy. The White House has no ability or personnel to craft policy, not even bad policy or weak legislation. Ryan’s cards aren’t great but he knows that they are better than the ones held by everyone else. Call the bluff and force Trump and the Freedom Caucus to take the reins.
cain
@Anonymous At Work: They do have a unifying vision – tax cuts.. it is just that one portions wants extreme tax cuts because they will never be kicked out of their seats.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@aimai: Except when he goes on one of his PC Mafia Threatens Comedy jags. Then he turns into another precious a-hole like Bill Maher because heaven forfend comics be criticized for telling rape and transphobic jokes. But yes, on skewering the GOP he’s pretty consistently great.
cain
Breaking – trending on twtter: United refused to let a 10 year old girl board a plane.. apparently spandex is not an approved travel clothing.
Anonymous At Work
@cain: They can’t admit to it, though, and will be split on crafting a disingenuous bill versus openly handing a trillion dollars to the Top 400 Families. Everything they want to cut, spending-wise, is popular. Ryan’s their best flim-flam artist and he knows it. Ryan’s bluff is: You can’t do anything without me and I’ll make you back me over Trump.
cain
@Anonymous At Work: Fair enough.
D58826
As a followup from the ‘what should the d’s do about ACA going forward’ on an earlier thread, here is a link to a VOX piece from Friday:By stitching together bits and pieces of Trump’s rhetoric with various improvement proposals offered over the years by the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign, Democrats can and should devise an affordable replacement scheme that moves the country closer to the single-payer system they mostly agree would be theoretically superior
D58826
@cain: Well maybe (and it’s aBIG maybe, for an adult but a 10 year old. GADZOOKS
Sunny Raines
Here’s evidence life is both bizarre and unpredictable. Progressives can thank the batshit insane, vile disgusting immoral right wing extremists in Congress for:
1) killing Obama’s “grand bargain” to cut Social Security and Medicare
2) getting rid of the deplorable John Boehner
3) killing horrific AHCA as replacement for ACA
True the wingnut extremist accomplished these feats for all the wrong reasons, but they accomplished them none the less. Really weird
WaterGirl
Hmm, when I add the 17% who supported the piece of shit bill and 56% who opposed it, and then subtract that number from 100, I see that 27% of the people in this country were too stupid or disengaged to the point that they had no opinion about something that would likely have a huge impact on their lives. Life or death impact, possibly.
I would say they are too stupid to live, but I am certain that one of my sisters was in that 27% and the other sister was in the 17%. Seriously, sometimes I wonder how it’s possible that we grew up in the same household and only 2-5 years apart in age.
Kent
Ryan is by reputation the leading Repub policy wonk.
Can anyone name a SINGLE policy of any kind that he has shepherded from concept into law? A single one? Is there some law somewhere that has his name on it as a principal sponsor or co-sponsor? Has he ever accomplished anything in his entire career besides grandstand?
Because I sure can’t think of any.
Talk about grading on a curve
Turgidson
@WaterGirl:
Bummer. My brother was a Bernie fan (but not an OrBuster, due to SCOTUS if nothing else) which led to numerous spirited discussions, but we’ve been trading Sad Paul Ryan pics and jokes and he texted me a picture of the beer he was drinking and said it was infused with Paulie Boy’s tears. Much better political relationship to deal with.
Kent
@Big Ole Hound:
NEVER EVER gonna happen. The speaker controls the agenda not the minority party. For that to have any actual effect would require that McConnell follow along in the Senate and rein in the firebrands like Ted Cruz who would go ape shit over a Dem + “red dog” alliance in the house (or whatever you call Republican moderates)
cain
@D58826: Watching this United/Girls thing turn sideways in real time… the missteps.. oh man, and it is continuing to grow. The inexplicable reason for United to deny 2 girls because they are wearing spandex makes no sense. I realize they are flying on a ‘staff ticket’ and that has a different dress code than a regular passenger… I doubt that should extend to children especially when spandex and yoga pants are accepted attire in any flight/school.
Frank Wilhoit
“…it’s all the fault of the Freedom[sic] Caucus that the piece of shit didn’t become law?”
Well, the word “fault” is value-laden, but they were the ones who blocked it. If they had voted with the Republicans, it would have passed.
You see what I did there? The Coercion Caucus are a third party. They are still using the Republican Party name, partly from inertia, partly because dishonesty and confusion are all what they are about; but they are a third party.
The Democrats are the largest party in the House, followed by the (regular) Republicans. The Coercion Caucus are a splinter, but they are larger than the difference between the two large parties, which means they can always determine the outcome. From a parliamentary standpoint, this is about the most toxic situation that can be imagined.
SFAW
@Baud:
She woulda, if she thought PermaSmirk was a serial killer.
SFAW
@Frank Wilhoit:
Only because the mainstream [sic] Rethuglican Party is almost as fucked-in-the-head and evil as the Freedumb Caucus. If there were any moderates to speak of, and if the last N* idiot Rethug Speakers did not worship at the “Hastert Rule” altar, then some semi-decent legislation might get passed.
But, as the saying goes, you “legislate” [sic] with the crazy/stupid/evil motherfuckers you have, not the rational persons you wish you had.
* Where “N” is a large positive integer. And fuck you, Newt, for your part in all this. Yeah, I remember GOPAC, you evil fuck.
J R in WV
@cain:
Regarding United and their mistreatment of their passengers:
They are leaving correct attire decisions up to their thousands of gate agents, some of whom are no doubt christianist fascists, who are bound by their “morals” to make terrible decisions about women. And no decisions whatsoever about men who may actually constitute a threat.
Our last encounter with United involved a ticket counter staffer who forced us to walk the entire length of Washington National terminal, both ways, after arriving from Paris overnight. Because they wouldn’t accept the ticket voucher we had been given when our flight was canceled at Dulles and they put us on a cab to National.
We were treated well at the other end of the terminal, got major vouchers for dinner that night while we waited to depart for home sweet home WV. But won’t ever willingly deal with United ever again. A real shame, Continental was a good outfit to do business with, until they were swallowed up by United and forced to turn into United agents.