Ladies and gentlemen and various pets of the assembled, I give to you the Washington Post Editorial Board on President Obama’s executive action.
He is vowing to go it alone on immigration. On Iran, he is reportedly designing an agreement that he need not bring to Congress. He already has gone that route on climate change with China.
The legal or constitutional case for each is different, but the rationales overlap: Congress is broken, so Mr. Obama must act. Two-thirds of Americans did not vote in the midterms, and the president must represent them, too. He has tried compromise, and the Republicans spurned him.
We will not relitigate that last contention except to note that behind the legislative disappointments of the past six years lies fault on both sides.
Exeunt VARIOUS VILLAGERS, Stage RIGHT.
Six years into this farce where the Republicans met before the President took office and decided to try to destroy him and it’s still Both Sides Do It! It’s the fault of both sides the way serial arson is the fault of both the arsonist and the flammable objects that allow themselves to be immolated. And it always will be, now and forevermore, as the ashes swirl into lurid and provocative shadows dancing in front of the flames of the Republic, or something. Alas, and probably alack as well.
Cry WHY WON’T HE LEAD, and let slip the thinkpieces of bipartisanship fetishism.
japa21
The whole thing starts with “imagine it is 2017 and President Ted Cruz…”
Pretty much destroys everything after that. Difficult to read I was laughing so hard.
Yes, there is a point to be made, but ither than that, it misses the point entirely. And somehow is able to make the “both sides do it” argument without providing a single example to support that statement.
RP
Pop quiz, hotshot: You can read the Post’s editorial today on Obama and his proposed executive order on immigration or smash your face with a brick. Which would you choose? WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE?
Zandar
@japa21: Indeed. The President Ted Cruz pocket dimension where Ted Cruz refuses to enforce the individual mandate and destroy the health care system is completely like where President Obama in reality exercises the same discretion used before on deportations, used by Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43.
Speaking of Bush 43, Team WaPo here would have a point if they hadn’t spent 2002-2008 going “That John Yoo fellow has a point, we should grant Dubya plenary superpowers whenever possible, because 9/11 and EAGLE and FREEDOM.”
SRW1
@japa21:
Whadda ya mean? It’s axiomatic! Don’t need no stinkin ‘example’.
MomSense
Both fucking sides, gah. I am so sick of this.
One side keeps trying to pass legislation that is about as radical as anything Dwight D. Eisenhower did and the other side is trying to destroy our government from within.
Amir Khalid
@japa21:
One would have to truly and deeply hate America to imagine a President Ted Cruz. Even as a rhetorical device.
japa21
@SRW1: Yeah, I know. One of those, “everybody knows it so why do we have to prove it ” type of things. Otherwise known as “The Lazy Model of Journalism” approach. Or, perhaps more properly, “The Journalists as Whores of the 1% Model of Journalism.”
Mike in NC
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, that the WaPo continues its race to beat the Washington Times to the bottom of the Village cesspool.
FlipYrWhig
Exit pursued by a derp.
d58826
@japa21: It’s Jan. 2017 and Pres.. Cruz sends up his list of cabinet appointees. They include Hitler, Pol Pot and Mussolini. The senate democrats object. The WAPO will blame the grid lock on the Democrats. It is ‘both sides do it’ only when the GOP is the primary party to the obstruction.
i
askew
The both sides do it is a bunch of nonsense, but shit or get off the pot already Obama. He’s been talking about doing this immigration EO for almost a year now. There is no reason to delay and at this point he is just pissing of the Latino community because he seems to be toying with them.
japa21
@d58826: Well, of course it is the Dems fault. After all, Cruz was being concialitrory by not including Stalin. Oh wait, the reason he didn’t include Stalin is that Stalin was a liberal commie.
D58826
@japa21: Yep and if Obama had sent up Hitlers name, the GOP would have gone ballistic because of the word ‘socialism’ in the Nazi party’s official name.
Proud Liberal Dem
Both sides. *ugh*. And you’ll never get a good explanation of who on the Democratic side is at fault and how. The Democratic-controlled Senate actually passed a BIPARTISAN bill that the Republican-controlled House has done nothing on (among other things).
NotMax
The bully pulpit has been eclipsed by the bullcrap pulpit.
Lee Rudolph
You left out “pursued by A LOT OF BEARS.”
Well, one can hope.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@RP: How big does the brick have to be? This is really a hell of a choice you’ve laid out here.
Elizabelle
I let my sub to the WaPost lapse, and think my teeth might be whiter.
Frankensteinbeck
Look, say you’re Tom Brokaw. The GOP House has passed any number of bills that would put blacks back in their place by gutting the safety net, while rewarding everyone who works hard and deserves it: Tom Brokaw. These bills are vitally necessary, because racial inequality has become so out of control that affirmative action elevated a black man all the way to president. Democrats refused to pass any of them. Thus, it’s at LEAST as much the Democrats’ as the Republicans’ when nothing gets done.
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck:
I miss the days when I liked and trusted Tom Brokaw the most among newscasters. NBC was my favorite news channel, from Huntley and Brinkley, in the 1960s.
Now we’ve seen his true colors, and NBC News is the worst of the big 3 legacy networks.
They both bleed corporate and privilege.
cahuenga
behind the legislative disappointments of the past six years lies fault on both sides.
I don’t read that as “both sides do it”, and there is no doubt in my mind both side are at fault. Republican’s are at fault, well, for being Republicans, and Democrats are at fault for their lack of coherent policy positions and an unwillingness to fight.
Tone In DC
The Kaplan Post is as useless as I suspected. That rag is so worthless, I’m better off reading the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
Watching him rant about how people needed to learn to live without ‘entitlements’, with a bunch of other talking heads sitting around nodding at his wisdom, was a real eye-opener to me.
Mnemosyne
@d58826:
Congratulations, you win a cigar.
Roger Moore
@askew:
I think that Obama is trying to use the threat of an executive order to force the House to consider the version the Senate passed. There are good reasons to want legislative action rather than an executive order- if nothing else, the executive order could be overturned at the stroke of a pen by the next president- so that the attempt was worthwhile. That hope looks awfully forlorn right now, though, so it’s time to give up on dragging the Republicans along and do what he can.
Bobby Thomson
What happened to your troll, Zandar? I wonder if Anonymous just outed him.
Cacti
Republicans have shut down the government and gotten the credit rating of the United States downgraded by threatening to default on our national debts.
Obama hasn’t apologized to Republicans for Presidenting while black.
Both sides do it.
beth
@Frankensteinbeck: I saw him once talking about how raising the retirement age was a great idea and all the other talking heads sitting at the table agreed. Of course none of them’s done a lick of physical work in decades. That’s how I learned to despise Brokaw.
Elizabelle
@Tone In DC:
One is NEVER better off reading the Times Disgrace. Except: Cheetah Cam!
To distract from the odious Villagers: anybody with cable watching Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey network? Not widely distributed, but it’s fun. Kung fu movies, interviews with his famous friend directors (Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro), more Starsky and Hutch than you care to watch.
Fitfully watching Spielberg’s first feature, “Duel” now. El Rey runs it several times weekly, it would seem. With commercials, alas, but pitched to a younger audience.
Quirky and fun network. Got to be better for your blood pressure than the news channels.
D58826
@cahuenga: The democrats are guilty of an even greater sin – winning the presidency in 2008/2012.
Orangeman to the rescue however
Republican presidents claimed the same ‘Unilateral, unchecked Executive action’ when they were in office and the GOP never had a problem. Of course when it was a GOOPER the behavor wasn’t so crass as ‘Unilateral, unchecked Executive action’ it had the high sounding name of the ‘Unitary Executive’. Such leading legal theorists as John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers all spoke in glowing terms of the concept and the MSM just ignored it.
Elizabelle
@d58826:
If we ever end up with President Cruz, I will be watching from abroad. And telling people I’m Canadian.
Belafon
@cahuenga: You must have missed Ron Fournier’s ode to Obama didn’t work with Republicans to pass Obamacare. If he had, they would have instead passed something like Romneycare, only on the national level. This link is to Krugman’s piling on, which Fournier deserves.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: He may try to annex Canada, like one Austrian born German did.
gene108
The media’s logic in how they report on Republicans is interesting. They are basically stating, if you know someone will be aggressive / perpetrate wrong-doings to you, it is your fault for not being able to defend yourself.
Yeah, Republicans are being assholes, but you should’ve expected that and figured out how to work with them. The fact that your did not is your fault.
As a society, we’ve worked to remove this method of thinking with regards to things like rape, domestic abuse, and work place harassment, but for some reason it has seeped into our political reporting.
jibeaux
The Senate has passed an immigration bill, that — if Boehner would bring it to a vote in the House — would quite possibly pass the House with bipartisan support and become law. This would be how democracy is roughly supposed to function.
It is neither Obama nor the Democrats’ fault that the inmates have Boehner’s balls.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
I for one support the annexation of Canada. We can use all the dirt they’ve displaced from digging up tar sands and build a giant wall along our northern border.
A wall so large that all the cold air Canada sends us every winter will no longer be able to cross our northern border and we will be warm and toasty all year long.
Cacti
@gene108:
The “liberal media” has a pathological need to believe Republicans are a reasonable opposition party, when everything from the Clinton impeachment forward has shown that they are anything but.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: What do you plan to do with the Great Lakes? Cold air is gonna get you, no matter what.
D58826
@Roger Moore: If Orangeman would bring the Senate version of the bill to a vote it would pass with mostly democratic votes but it would pass. Obama has indicated that he would sign the bill.
There are several good reasons why this won’t happen of course. 1. It would give Obama a win. 2. The GOP mouth breathers would go ballistic and might well sue Orangeman. 3. But the main reason it won’t happen is Speaker of the House Cruz will never allow it.
gene108
@jibeaux:
I think the biggest tragedy of our political reporting, I think worse than “both sides do it-ism”, is the fact there is a crap ton of legislation that could pass the Republican controlled House, if Boehner would’ve just let it come to the floor for a vote.
You’d get probably above 75% Democratic support and maybe 10% to 15% Republican support, but the bills still would have passed.
Boehner is basically determined to not bring a bill to the floor that does not have close 100% Republican support and can pass with only Republican votes.
I have no idea why the political media ignores this fact and just accepts it as how the House has always been run.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
This is why I moved to California in 1988 and never went back. The arctic chill from Lake Michigan can’t reach me here.
SatanicPanic
@japa21: yurp, that’s fantasy land shit. These people should be ashamed of themselves for writing something so stupid.
Robert M.
@cahuenga:
You’d have a point if it wasn’t embedded in a paragraph that ends this way:
What’s entirely foreseeable that Republicans will spurn compromise in every area. If you want to know what their version of reforming the tax code looks like, for instance, look at Paul Ryan’s “budgets”, which have been repeatedly passed by the House. If you want to know what the next two years in the Senate will look like, remember that Ted Cruz led the charge to shut down the government last year.
The Post isn’t being entirely unreasonable, but they’re essentially refusing to recognize that there is a large group of Republicans that treats any compromise position endorsed by the President as evidence that they haven’t pushed hard enough or far enough. It’s not merely that they won’t compromise with Democrats in some particular set of areas, it’s that the entire idea of compromise is treated by many Republicans (and most Republican primary voters) as literally treasonous.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
Domestic abuser thinking is a major cultural problem in the US, and dominates conservative arguments. All the media is doing is talking like the Republicans they are.
@Cacti:
That would be because they ARE Republicans, and think Republican policies are reasonable. They also often believe they’re liberal. After all, anything more liberal than themselves is unrealistic idealism.
To both of you, I say: Isn’t this what they act like?
gene108
@Cacti:
I think it is worse than that. I think that in order to get a plumb job covering the White House or Congress, for example, which are very good and prestigious gigs for reporters, you have to have a bit or a lot of a ruthless streak in you for getting promoted above your co-workers.
I think they carry this notion over to political reporting, where doing something to just get ahead is how they view he world works and not worrying if it is right or wrong.
Basically, the big media personalities have the same sociopathic tendencies of C-Level business executives.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Elizabelle: Most broadcasters are in it for the money, and whatever their shtick is, it is just a shtick. Beck, Limbaugh, Alex Jones even. But Brokaw really, truly despises anyone younger than his precious “greatest generation”, and is a full-throttle asshole about it, too.
If there was an Olympic medal for “punching down”, he’d be gold every time. He hates non-whites and non-rich and really isn’t afraid to say so.
Mnemosyne
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
What’s psychologically interesting is that Brokaw himself is not a part of that “Greatest Generation.” So it’s really all a manifestation of his own self-loathing, projected onto everyone around him.
Bobby B.
“I think, going forward, is if __________is on the table this cycle, I think we need a debate on_____ and getting both parties to come to the table____boots on the ground,I think, going forward.”
NotMax
@Elizabelle
As it was originally a made-for-TV movie, it probably plays better on the home screen.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826:
Oh my God, I hate that fucking jerkwad. He used to show up on the Keith Olbermann show and intone exactly this on every issue:
Every. Single. Time. “Keith, I’m concerned.”
I was just wondering what had become of that dipshit.
I think it was one of the last sane things Bob Somerby ever said, that Jonathan Turley had never seen a President he didn’t think deserved to be impeached.
cahuenga
@Robert M.:
You’d have a point if it wasn’t embedded in a paragraph that ends this way…
But this is who they are, it’s a ‘known’. A well known. They play the long game and move en masse. Democrats have been incredibly short sighted, fragmented, and even worse, collaborators.
FYI I’m a Labor and social issue Democrat, a breed quickly approaching the endangered species list. The last thing I could be is a Team Democrat.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Abso-freakin’-lutely. The whole thing is this: “I didn’t go to Vietnam and that makes me feel guilty, so let’s lionize our tough daddies who did the dangerous things we didn’t.” See also McCain, John, presidential campaigns of.
Zandar
@Bobby Thomson: He’s gone, which is one reason why I’m posting again.
D58826
@gene108: Taking a bit from Prof. K’s post about Ron Fournier’s ode to Obama
That a supposedly sentient human being could write that kind of drivel and misstate history is beyond belief. I don’t really think these people are that stupid rather they will simply write any kind of fiction that they can get away with as long as the paycheck keeps coming in. Even the folks that worked at Pravada had some standards. The american media seems to have none
srv
@Zandar: Zandar, I don’t think you appreciate the cogent thought and balance the villagers have always brought to the public square. What more do you want in a Center-Right nation?
This is really the heart of Obama’s problem – that he has to take credit for everything. If he’d just called Obamacare ‘Nixoncare’ and his immigration reform action ‘The Reagan Immigration Compassion Edict’ we’d have a lot less trouble.
But it always has to be about him…
Why do y’all hate Richard and Ron so much if they were all so progressive about stuff? Or am I supposed to take “Obama is just like Reagan” in some other way?
Tone In DC
@Elizabelle:
LULz.
I have checked out El Rey. Gotta like it. It’s great to see those kung fu flicks. Even a few episodes of Starsky and Hutch; the show is sooooo 70s.
Maybe the network will show “The Seven Ups” and the original “Gone in 60 Seconds”.
Elizabelle
Village antidote: head’s up on book tour for Beth Macy’s “Factory Man”. Roanoke reporter; good book on how SW Virginia’s Bassett Furniture stayed local and un-outsourced. Tom Hanks liked the book so much he’s turning the story into an HBO miniseries.
Beth Macy will be in Richmond at The Library of Virginia tomorrow, November 19, noon to 1 p.
I shall be there. Sounds like a good book; got to support real reporting.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108:
If only! I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that they have a toughness-and-sacrifice fetish.
At a basic level, they have contempt for liberals and Democrats because they think it’s too easy: here’s some goodies, where’s my vote? Like all Republicans, they’re a bunch of white people who think they worked hard to get ahead. They have some contempt for religiosity, because that’s a form of pandering too. Easy choices are too easy. Hard choices show character. “Hard choices” by definition means inflicting pain on people. They always want politicians to do that, because it’s gutsy, because self-preservation would dictate otherwise.
For similar reasons, they’re cynics: all politicians suck, trying sucks, why bother. Tell me something I haven’t heard before. That’s why sometimes they fall for idealism, because if _they_ like what they’re hearing, they’re a tough crowd, so other people must like it too. And then when idealism fails, they blame themselves for falling for it, then blame the politician who seduced them. They want to be seduced, then hate that they were seduced, then relish the people who don’t even try to seduce but use ruthless raw power instead. This is also why their sexual politics are super screwed up.
Elizabelle
@Tone In DC:
You got me wondering what was going on in Richmond, ‘cuz I happen to be heading down there this week, and found the Beth Macy/Factory Man appearance.
Via Style Weekly. Maybe it’s in the Disgrace, but didn’t check …
I am indebted to you. Sounds like an hour well spent tomorrow.
Belafon
@srv: I remember how Republicans called it Obamacare, thinking that it would be a bad thing. It’s the same thinking that led to Obamaquester.
RonzoniRigatoni
“Six years into this farce where the Republicans met before the President took office and decided to try to destroy him and it’s still Both Sides Do It!” LOL Go, Zandar! Good seeing you again. ‘sbeen awhile.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: I remember seeing it on TV ages ago, maybe during its first year, and being scared.
Movie was released to theatres in the UK.
I love the landscape too. California, mountains, deserts … the truck stop is now (or was at some time recently) a French restaurant.
I shall move back to Cali one of these years. I feel safer there.
Zifnab25
We were in this place in 1998, with Republicans running House and Senate but Democrats coolly confident that Al Gore could keep the White House in 2000. Remind me again how that worked out?
Rick Scott is starting his second term in Florida. Republicans are running the governor’s mansions throughout the midwest (including the always-pivotal Ohio). Sing me again the sweet song that everything will be fine.
Tone In DC
@Elizabelle:
I mentioned the Times-Dispatch due to their unwaveringly wingnut POV.
Admittedly, even those rock-ribbed conservatives found it hard to stomach Dubya’s last two years in office. The op-ed pages finally turned on him around 2007 or so.
Belafon
@Zifnab25: We’re Democrats confident that Gore could?
Archon
Why risk upsetting Republicans, who knows the scores they might settle when their completely in charge again? I say “when” because the media, especially in the beltway treats Democrats in power as relatively benign occupiers in Washington who will always eventually be driven out of town by those Nietzschean, will to power Republicans.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Build a bigger wall. If it has to be bigger than the Himalayan mountains, than so be it.
srv
@Zifnab25: Don’t Stop Believing, bro.
gogol's wife
@RP:
The brick. Brooks in the NYT is on the same topic. I just walk on by.
pseudonymous in nc
“We will not relitigate–” OH FUCK OFF.
Goblue72
More cold water – http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/delusions-of-the-democrats.html?_r=1&referrer=
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: David Brooks is the most disingenuous pundits out there. I have to switch the channel whenever he is on Snooze Hour.
gene108
@Belafon:
It got McConnell re-elected, when any Democrat should have been able to run on a platform of “my opponent wants to repeal your access to affordable healthcare” and done better than they did.
People like KyNect. They hate Obamacare. Because reasons…
D58826
@Zifnab25: For those concerned about Hillary winning in 2016 I think we can put that one to rest. By the time the GOP completes the trifecta of voter-id laws, purging democratic sounding voters and adjusting the electoral college rules, a democrat will not win the White House for the next 100 years.
Betty Cracker
@Zandar: Well good riddance to that psychotic fuck-stick. Hopefully “gone” = “rolled in broken light bulbs, dipped in raw sewage, dusted with corrosive powder, stuffed into a cannon and fired into a toxic waste dump.”
On another topic, Holy God and Sonny Jeebus, but I hope the “White House advisers” cited in a NYT article Steve M deconstructs here are either influence-free interns who are talking out of their asses or savvy strategists doing a head-fake. Because if there’s really any living soul who works in the White House and still thinks the word “bargain” means something other than “suck my dick” to Republicans, well, let’s just hope the Walmart-brand meth they’re smoking doesn’t make it to the streets, or our holidays will be marred by people holding picnics on the interstates and sticking their tongues in light sockets to see how electricity tastes.
mai naem mobile
@Tone In DC: they started with Katrina. It was okay if you fucked black people with their benign form of voter suppressiom but seeing black people, you know, actually dying in the Super dome and in the water was a little too much even for the beltway media. Especially more since the wingnut governators.in the Deep South wanted to get their hands on that sweet sweet blue state gubmint $$$.
Cacti
@Zifnab25:
Florida hasn’t had a Democratic Governor since 1998.
Kasich, Walker, and Snyder were all in office when Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan all went blue in 2012. I also remember how Chris Christie was supposed to put New Jersey in play for the Rs.
Tell me again how we’re all doomed.
Belafon
@gene108: McConnell having a pulse got him reelected in Kentucky. Obama having dark skin got McConnell reelected in Kentucky. What calling the ACA Obamacare didn’t do was prevent Obama from being reelected in 2012.
Penus
@Tone In DC:
Hey now! (T-D freelancer here)
askew
@Roger Moore:
That time passed 2 years ago. It’s been obvious since 2011 that the GOP had no intention of ever voting on immigration and it was a useful attack against GOP in 2012 but it has lost its usefulness now and it just looks like Obama is stringing Latinos along and doesn’t care about the immigration crisis. There is a certain tone-deafness at play here that I find incredibly frustrating.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: As I wrote over at No More Mister, there’s a difference between making an offer and expecting the offer to be accepted.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I wish I could comment at NMMNB; the commenting system he uses kicks me to the curb so regularly that I gave up, but I read him faithfully.
As for making offers that one knows will be met with a knee to the groin, I don’t see the logic there. Shades of the Grand Bargain, which just demoralized lefties and apparently failed to convince anyone else that Obama and the Democrats were attempting to bargain in good faith if only they could find a reasonable partner.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: The assumption is that the target audience in this was was not the Republicans, but others, either the media or the public. The media is still trying to split the middle, and the public isn’t paying attention.
Another Holocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: *slow clap*
Betty Cracker
@Belafon: Exactly. Let’s dispense with this charade already. There don’t seem to be any benefits to it, and real harms result, such as the embrace of “sequester” cuts as a reasonable solution to a deficit problem — not to mention the acceptance of GOP framing that the deficit problem was the most urgent issue to address in the middle of the worst economic downturn in decades.
Spinwheel
@Zandar:
Incorrect as always.
Zifnab25
@Cacti:
Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin have been hemorrhaging Democratic support for years. You can see this fact in the make-up of state legislatures, which have been trending Republican for years.
And Republicans have a solution to the whole Winner-Take-All electoral college problem:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/09/1159558/-If-Husted-s-Electoral-College-plan-for-Ohio-in-16-was-now-in-place-everywhere-Mitt-would-have-won
His proposal, as noted by Plunderbund, would follow the general lines of the Maine/Nebraska system. The winner of each congressional district using that method is awarded the district’s electoral vote. Whoever wins the statewide vote gets the remaining two electoral votes. With modifications, this method has been used in Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. Only once has one of these two states split its electoral vote; Nebraska gave one to Barack Obama in 2008.
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: As if there were nooooo difference. Fetishize war and everything about it which is probably the last thing most people of that generation would do. They were happy when it was OVER.
War is hell. Why would you fight one for no god-damn reason? A moral (and practical) question Brokaw has spent much of his life seeking to avoid.
There’s obvious poor little rich boy style self-loathing. I never knew if he came from privilege, and maybe he didn’t, but he’s definitely got some sort of daddy complex and that goes hand and hand with despising anyone whose accident of birth was less lucky than his, since he borrows his esteem from who daddy was. Now he’s just this ragey old man, but he’s still a network anchor, not yelling at clouds and guarding nothing more than a suburban lawn. Sad. I remember a time when his neuroses were not his most talked-about trait.
Tree With Water
By my lights, it is less a matter of commission (“leadership”) than it is Obama’s unwillingness to speak plainly in calling out the GOP as the vessel of American fascism (corporate control of governmental function). Every day the republican party is accorded the mantle of being an honorable opposition, it will continue to gain strength. It is the party of rule or ruin, it is the party of suppression. For the president to maintain the charade that it otherwise does a profound disservice to our democracy.
catclub
@d58826:
No love for Franco, and Pinochet.
Betty Cracker
@Zifnab25:
Add Florida to that list. While it’s true we haven’t had a Democratic governor since the late, great Lawton Chiles, this isn’t a hardcore wingnut state (thanks to our decadent coastal enclaves), and yet our state house is stuffed to the rafters with lunatics. Being outmaneuvered, outspent and out-organized on the local level creates a momentum all its own.
Chris T.
@gene108:
It’s Conservation of Stupidity: get the stupidity out of something, and it just roosts somewhere else.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Not entirely. Obama does get points, however grudgingly, from the punditocracy for being “reasonable.” I think Team Obama cares too much about those points, frankly, but IMHO that’s what they’re up to.* They’re not counting on Republican cooperation; they’re counting on Republican intransigence. They just want to get some credit for good faith when the Republicans can’t take yes for an answer.
*N.B. (Probably because it helps them keep the right flank of their own party in line. Again I’ll point to Mark Warner’s signature strategy: getting things done with practicality, not ideology, and being willing to work with Republicans. He almost blew it, of course. But it’s a pretty common way for Democrats to run.)
Bobby Thomson
@Zandar: Cool.
Tone In DC
B-J commentariat are aware of all internet/Virginia newspaper traditions.
Elizabelle, enjoy the Beth Macy function.
I didn’t even mention the Washington Times, cuz that rag is just that foul. Dead fish go zombie and refuse to allow themselves to be wrapped in it.
Keith G
@Betty Cracker:
And yet, the “White House advisers” referenced above may be accurately outlining the strategy of the man who sits behind the Resolute desk.
Head fake? An unused movement.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: If the administration is willing to accept wingnut framing of issues of great consequence, e.g., the deficit is the most pressing problem in the middle of a ginormous recession, Social Security benefits have to be curtailed, etc., just to curry favor with the likes of Tom Friedman, that’s even MORE nauseating than being gullible enough to think Boehner and McConnell are serious about governing. I prefer to think the NYT got ahold of a couple of drunk interns who were just making shit up.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Yes, remember when Obama cut Social Security because all of the “White House advisers” said he was going to do it?
Oh, wait, right, that wasn’t a head fake, that was something he was totally going to do until internet activists stopped him.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: You’re right — he didn’t cut SS. But Democrats put it on the table as a reasonable action to be taken to address an issue that shouldn’t even have been a consideration in the midst of a jobs crisis. That sequester maneuver didn’t pan out too well either.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
You say “reasonable action,” I say “head fake.” I guess it depends on whether or not you think it was a serious offer or if it was proposed with the full knowledge that the Republicans would refuse to cooperate as they had refused to cooperate for the previous three years, so it was risk-free.
Villago Delenda Est
Fuck these people. No quarter for them.
Wipe them out. ALL of them.
Tree With Water
@Mnemosyne: That was no head fake.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: But my point is that it’s not risk-free, even if it was intended as a head-fake (a possibility I raised way up-thread) and even if that particular proposal didn’t come to fruition. The damage is this: Now Democrats are on record tut-tutting about the national debt in the middle of a jobs crisis. Now Democrats are on record saying Social Security must be reined in by cuts to beneficiaries before it implodes.
But the sequester is the best possible example of a head-fake gone awry — Obama has said many times the Democrats proposed it thinking the Republicans wouldn’t be dumb and crazy enough to let cuts happen that way. Well, it turns out they were that dumb and crazy.
brantl
They won’t religitgate it, becuase the assholes don’t know what “re-litigate” means.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
That’s a different argument, though. Keith G seems to be making the old, old argument that Obama has been panting to cut Social Security since the day he came into office, and it was only by luck that the Republicans happened to be too intransigent to do what Obama wanted. You’re arguing about strategy, not intent. Keith G (and now Tree With Water) are claiming intent.
Which, again, is the opposite of Keith G’s claim that Obama has never even tried a head-fake (“an unused movement”). We can argue about whether or not a particular attempt at a head-fake was successful, but it seems counter to reality to claim that Obama has never even tried it.
dance around in your bones
Ya know, the one and only disagreement my best friend from Canada and I have is about the absolute obstruction by the Republicans since the very fucking first day Obama got elected.
She thinks I’m being too black and white, and that there are shades of grey to everything (which I generally tend to agree with) but in THIS case? You have to be blind to not see the obstacles put in Obama’s way. (Remember, she’s Canadian).
I hope Obama signs a gazillion Executive Orders over the next 2 years, because that’s the only damn way he’s gonna get anything done.
I hate to say I hate ANYONE, but the Repubs are testing my loving kindness in a big fucking way. May they all go DIAF or at least secede from the Union and start their own little cruel theocracy :) Then live in it and see how they like it.
Corner Stone
It is the absolute height of 11-D thinking to, at this very moment, still keep trying to say the Grand Bargain was a head fake cloaked in an offer.
A Humble Lurker
@Corner Stone:
And? You make it sound as if that means it wasn’t a head fake.
@askew:
Perhaps you’re right, but this does sound like what some gay folk were saying shortly before the death of DADT.
Corner Stone
@A Humble Lurker: Good Lordt but you’re dumb.
It was not a head fake. And, granting your masturbatory fantasies that 11-D chess exists, what net benefit came from this supooor-genius head fake?