Anyone know who the seven Republicans are:
And when Obama backed a bipartisan commission to find ways to cut the long-term deficit – including reexamining popular entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – a handful of Republican sponsors switched their positions and joined in filibustering it, the president said.
“This failed by seven votes, when seven Republicans who had cosponsored the idea suddenly walked away from their own proposal after I endorsed it,’’ an exasperated Obama told the crowd. “I said, ‘Good idea.’ I turned around, they’re gone. What happened?’’
Dollars to doughnuts that Mean Old Man McCain is one of them.
bcinaz
Republican Bumper Sticker
Vote Republican, We negotiate in bad faith.
Yes, McCain is on the list.
Kryptik
Don’t mention doughnuts, John, unless you’re offering them to McCain in gratitude. Oh, and you forgot the sprinkles.
4tehlulz
Ten bux says Snowe and Collins are among them.
Joe Beese
NPR played the clip of Obama saying that. And his delivery was terrible. His voice got so high and squeaky that it sounded like that of a flustered person asking for help – rather than someone confidently calling the GOP out.
It’s a shame, because it was a fairly good line. And of course his underlying point is absolutely correct.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
Mavericky!
slag
Wasn’t McConnell already called out for this one?
Senyordave
Why isn’t there a Dem group willing to spend money to put ads on television emphasizing things like this?
The Democrats better start winning back the independents or they will get their clock cleaned in Nov.
KDP
I saw this on a blog the other day, but can’t find it now, but from Politifact:
rated as Full Flop for McConnel.
Vote Murray Hill Inc. for Congress
August J. Pollak
One of them is Gregg, who proposed the commission in the first place.
Ash Can
And dollars to donuts Obama knows perfectly well what happened, too. What I like to see about this is the fact that he said this out loud, to a big gathering of voters, in front of a bunch of news reporters, cameras, etc. Combined with Obama’s remarks today and the TPM report mentioned in the other thread about the WH pushing back — successfully — on a bullshit Reuters story, I’m becoming more heartened about the desire and ability of at least the WH to hit back on the constant smears.
schrodinger's cat
McCain is a poor loser, wonder what he would have done if he was in Al Gore’s place in the 2000 race.
PeakVT
The whole concept was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea anyway. Social Security is fine, and lumping that with the other two programs is potentially dangerous. It’s Pete Peterson’s framing, and the Dems should stay entirely clear of it.
Chad N Freude
@Joe Beese: I watched the C-SPAN clip and didn’t get that impression. It sounded to me more like “WTF!?” incredulity.
Fergus Wooster
Um, yes the Rethugs are dicks, and yes McCain was certainly among them, but does anyone think this was a good idea?
Removing SS and Medicare from actual legislative votes and handing them over to an appointed commission? Given that this was a Peterson idea in the first place, I think we know where things would go from there.
Ash Can
@schrodinger’s cat:
He’d be calling Sandra Day O’Connor a #%@& every Sunday on Meet the Press to this day.
Fergus Wooster
@PeakVT:
You beat me to it.
Joey Maloney
O/T – except in the general sense of Republican malfeasance – no one could have predicted this:
Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O’Keefe at a 2006 conference on “Race and Conservatism” that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People’s Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O’Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing…
By O’Keefe’s own account, his racial troubles became acute when he entered the multicultural atmosphere of Rutgers University’s dormitory system. In an online diary that has since been scrubbed from the Web (but not before being captured on Daily Kos), he wrote that he was forced to live on an all-black dormitory floor after refusing to live with the gay roommate he was initially assigned. O’Keefe claimed his next roommate was “an Indian midget … who smelled like shit.” The roommate left, however, and was replaced by “a greek kid.” The new roommate complained to a residential administrator that O’Keefe had called his neighbors “niggers,” prompting the school to expel him from the dorm. He rejected the accusation as a “complete lie,” writing, “I was lead out of the room crying and screaming at him and my situation, no friends, no one one [sic] to talk to, forced to go in front of a black man, Dean Tolbert, to defend myself and help explain that I did not call anyone any names.”
Surpise, surprise, surprise!
SteveinSC
The Obot Commander might actually be coming to the right conclusion, i.e. we’re at Level III. Time to take names and kick ass.
Osprey
@schrodinger’s cat: He would’ve ‘bomb bomb bomb, bomb bombed….Florida!
JPK
OT, but don’t most doughnuts cost about a dollar these days? I should know the answer to this.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The US Senate was designed to be a saucer in which the hot tea of legislation was cooled to room temperature thereby making it easier to drink. It has become a sub-zero freezer where parts of the dismembered corpse of the American Dream are stored so our cannibalistic oligarchs can consume the best bits at their leisure.
CaseyL
Could be a different group of Senators turning on their own legislation, depending on what the legislation deals with, what policy area it addresses.
The thing is, these are deliberate and coordinated acts of legislative sabotage. The GOP stated up front, in front of the gods and everyone, that their sole goal, their single intent, their one and only strategy, is to make Obama “fail.”
I don’t know why anyone is still surprised when they act according to the goal they’ve already set out.
At this point, I don’t even understand why Obama and the Dems bother making polite noises about how they’d love to have the GOP’s input. When they do so – when they keep talking as if the GOP is a legitimate political bloc representing legitimate political interests – they sound like idiots for not being able to see what anyone with three functioning brain cells can see.
So to me the question is, are they just making polite noises, while they figure out how to pass desperately needed legislation without the GOP?
Or do they believe and mean what they say, and therefore don’t really care if desperately needed legislation gets passed? (Because, no matter what happens – even if they lose the next election – they’re still gonna have their pensions and benefits and lucrative employment options.)
I’m very afraid it’s the latter.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: That was false SNL performance incredulity, not real incredulity.
(Tried to edit the other comment, was told I didn’t have permission. Are we on another make-the-commenters’-lives harder kick from the our malevolent software overlords?)
Adam Collyer
As far as I’m concerned, this commission may have been “practical” but it was a terrible idea to begin with. We already have a commission to make economic decisions and cut the deficit. It’s called Congress, and they’re publicly elected. They have committees called the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee, and several subcommittees thereof. Their job is to manage the tax dollars of American citizens. To pawn it off on a “commission” is fundamentally undemocratic. Do your job. If the American people don’t like what you’re doing, then vote them out.
Normally, I’m pragmatic enough to bother my more ideological friends. For some reason this really bothers me. It’s probably the best way of tackling the problem, but it’s so disheartening that would be the case.
ajr22
If Obama played a prank on the republicans and switched his platform to theirs, how long would it take them to denounce their own agenda and re write it?
Osprey
@Joey Maloney: Wow, a privileged loaf of conservative white bread turned out to be a racist tool who couldn’t stand anybody who was wielding a schlong bigger than his pencil eraser package. Now spends his time going after anybody who might help those less privileged than himself.
I guess for him his 2 choices were either the above, or become one of those tattooed/pierced emo goth kids with the black nail polish. He probably thought that would’ve been gay, narrowing his choices down.
Taking a page from the Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathesome:
O’Keefe’s sentence: to be the cream in an upcoming porn flick, “Gay Oreo Cookie Gangbangs”.
Fergus Wooster
This is really a win-win. Odious idea gets shot down, Obama gets to point out Republican hypocrisy and obstructionism.
In my fantasy world, he planned it that way.
Joey Maloney
@Osprey: Which I’m guessing has been his guilty desire all along. Well, it’s not common but once in a while you hear people say that prison was just what they needed at a certain point in their lives.
Evinfuilt
@ajr22:
Well they’ve denounced:
*Medicare reform
*Tort reform
*Cap and Trade
I’m sure a few more Republican ideas have been turned against them this past year by Dems embracing them.
ajr22
Obama should propose that we put in writing something preventing citizens from kicking McCain in the balls. By law McCain will have to come out in support of allowing Citizens to kick him in the balls, and everybody wins.
BGK
I saw the list of non-voting sponsors on Maddow Monday night:
Bennet
Brownback
Crapo
Ensign
Hutchison
Inhofe
McCain
No link as I’m phone-posting for the first time and dunno how to do that yet.
Nellcote
OT Collin Powell has put out a statement in support of Gates & Mullen’s plan to repeal DADT.
Martin
@Ash Can: Come now, she doesn’t wear that much makeup.
Pangloss
Time to bust out the reverse psychology.
“Obama comes out strongly against Health Care Reform”
jl
Maloney: Have some sympathy for this poor O’Keefe. He had to put up with South Asian Indians and even Greeks! Greeks! I assume Grecian Greeks! I believe that they eat roast lamb without mint jelly. The horror!
PeakVT: I agree that this deficit commission is a horrible idea, and therefore hope that Obama adopted it as some kind of political Kabuki. As political Kabuki it might or might not work. but I am weary of it. If I want Kabuki, I will go watch a Kabuki play, since they are much better entertainment.
As you say, social security is relatively fine, and anything wrong with it can be fixed with minor tinkering. Lumping it with the public health insurance programs is the first sign of fraud or incompetence in a fiscal analysis.
Medicaid and Medicare are fiscal problems that could bankrupt the country in the long run. But, hey, you know, over twenty middle and high income countries have shown you can lick that problem with half a dozen different types of health care reform. But that can’t happen in the US because it might make some corporate titans merely super-rich and powerful rather than ultra-hyper-richer and more powerful than God.
And the horrible GW Bush income tax cuts for the rich contribute just as much to our long term fiscal problems as Medicaid and Medicare.
Has anyone seen the GW Bush income tax cuts for the rich included on the agenda for long term deficit reduction? I guess it is hard to get them on the agenda, since they are our overlords ‘due’ as Cheney once said.
The commission is a dangerous frautd. Maybe Obama proposed it just to get the Congressional GOP to vote it down as a political ploy. That is the best interpretation of the proposal.
The current GOP proposal to wage generational warfare on social security and medicare is a nice gift, which I hope the useless Dems find the courage to use against them. Bush explicitly tried this strategy in his campaign to privatize social security, and the oldsters turned him down. Maybe the GOP thinks that with a scary ‘black man’ as President, and if they can frighten oldsters enough, it might work this time. I hope not.
Martin
I just want to say, for the record, if my last name was Crapo, I totally would have taken my mom’s maiden name before I hit the 2nd grade.
cmorenc
@CaseyL
…because what the GOP is counting on is that the independents who can swing elections (and the less ardently committed dems) are paying just enough attention, in just enough of a frustrated, distressed mood to notice that with a substantial congressional majority, the democrats aren’t getting crap done, beyond they and the Obama Administration seemingly being hip-deep in collusion to bail out Wall Street, but not enough attention to detail to truly understand how much leverage and determination the GOP senate delegation has to sabatoge and frustrate any possibility of effective action by Obama or the Dems. To be cynically fair, this lack of understanding is reinforced by their superficial awareness of the ability of Obama’s predecessor, George Bush, to push through all sorts of crap with the thinnest of working margins in the Senate and House. Why can’t the Dems do this? That much is a fair question, even if an accurate answer isn’t a satisfying explaination to many.
SO: to the extent the GOP can find seemingly attractive personalities with superficial independend mavericky streaks like Scott Brown to put up against less stellar democrats who can be painted as arrogant, ineffective representatives of the economically broken status quo…they smell win. They frankly don’t care how much of a trainwreck they cause the nation with their tactics getting to win, the GOP frankly WANTS to permanently trainwreck the federal govenment, except for defense spending and some necessary govenmental infrastructure for interstate commerce.
Napoleon
@ajr22:
That reminds me of that classic Bugs Bunny where he is arguing with Daffy Duck about who is in season and gets Daffy to say that he is in season at which point Daffy gets his beak blown off.
gex
@Senyordave: CBS would find it too controversial and refuse to air it or some similar thing.
gbear
@ajr22:
I like the idea of Obama coming out strongly and publicly against not sticking forks into electical outlets.
dr. bloor
@Joe Beese:
Nothing could sound as flustered and pathetic as this post.
Face
my thawts eggsactly
ksmiami
Then nuke the GOP. Call them out – take away money from the red states and do battle daily. Threaten to take away Fox’s rights to the public airwaves and stir shit up. Who cares about their widdle feelings… I for one love southern bbq served up with a side of saxby chambliss… Tell the effin seniors that we’ve listened to their thoughts on healthcare and since the government should not play a role, we are ending Social Security and Medicare and then use it to teach the 50% of the morons in this country that a muscular, but well-run government is critical to maintaining our leadership and our private sector, Repukes hate good governance, so get rid of them. PLAY HARDBALL EVERY FRIGGIN DAY until they cry uncle.
gex
@Evinfuilt: Yes, but they’ve now succeeded in making their policies be policies implemented/proposed by the “left” party. Which gives them room to keep dragging us towards serfdom.
cmorenc
Some key points bear repetition and emphasis:
– the GOP WANTS to permanently cripple the federal government’s ability to do anything beyond defense/foreign policy and the basic necessities required for smooth functioning of interstate commerce and communications. And while the beast is being crippled, they’re perfectly happy (without suffereing cognitive dissonance) siphon off whatever assets they can to the benefit of their states and constituents, as a means of at the same time helping themselves and helping to further cripple the beast. So hypocracy is actually consistwith core ideological objectives in this sense!
They DON’T CARE that their obstruction is making it impossible for government to work, when a core part of their mission is to CONVINCINGLY PROVE that government doesn’t work, can’t work, even if they have to design and fabricate and force into existence a reality in which these beliefs are seemingly true. And they cannot provide the necessary degree of control to make this come true unless they win control from the democrats by whatever means necessary. Anything they do that might facilitate the ability of the democrats to create effectively working examples of government action are, in this view, fundamentally self-defeating and cannot be allowed to happen. In fact, they are terrified of the prospects of allowing anything like this to happen again…social security (agh!), medicare (urgh!).
mellowjohn
in the 1940 presidential campaing, fdr gave a speech blasting the chief congressional opponents of the new deal, namely congressmen martin, barton, and fish.
he listed the progress made paragraph by paragraph, with each ending “and it was opposed by martin, barton, and fish.”
it was a long list, and after a while the crowd started chanting “MARTIN, BARTON, AND FISH!” along with the president.
it’s time for obama to call these assholes ouf for the assholes they are.
rob!
What a worthless bag of crap John McCain is.
And how perfectly perfect is it there’s a Republican named CRAPO?
John S.
You’re an asshole. You take as much glee in over-analyzing everything Obama does as the fucking wingnuts do.
maus
Sometimes, when you play multidimensional chess, the checkers players still win.
Martin
@gbear: Well, he did get Republicans to oppose keeping your tires properly inflated. It’s really quite stunning how low the GOP will go…
Church Lady
@ksmiami:
It’s a wonder that you don’t work for Reid or Peolosi. Your battle plan rocks!
Ash Can
@rob!:
It evidently scarred him for life, seeing as he turned out to be, well, a Republican.
Notorious P.A.T.
It’s only the 897,214th time in a row bipartisanship has failed. We’re due, I’m telling you.
Cain
No thread on the Q&A with Dems and Obama?
cain
NR
@Notorious P.A.T.: I have to say, it pisses me off quite a bit that Obama is exasperated at finally finding out that Republicans have no interest in working with him. If it really took him a year to figure that out, then he’s not nearly as smart as his supporters like to say he is.
He needs to start listening to us progressives. We knew from the beginning that the Republicans would never respond to his calls for bipartisanship. We knew from the beginning that the stimulus was too small and too heavily skewed toward tax cuts. And on and on. It’d be nice to see Obama acknowledge that for a change.
Dubya Rides Again
OT – But just had to post
http://www.nationalgrocers.org/Newsroom/NewsReleases2009/091409-GWBush%20Press%20Release.pdf
Midnight Marauder
@Joe Beese:
So this is what your D game looks like. Good to know.
Comrade Kevin
@John S.: Take a look at the shit he’s posted over at GOS for more.
gopher2b
I honestly do not understand why they will not make them actually filibuster. If they are not going to do anything, then make them read the dictionary all summer leading up to their elections.
Chad N Freude
Award for typo accuracy!
Delia
What a bunch of crapo. He was doing a comedy routine. And his timing was perfect.
john b
@gopher2b:
because that’s not how the filibuster works these days (and never really worked that way to begin with). in ways that i don’t fully understand, but have been explained here and other places often, fiilibusters are tougher on the majority party than the minority party.
SteveinSC
As far as elements of a strategy to kick the family values, security of the homeland, small government, balanced budget hypocrites crowd in the junk, maybe the Dems threaten to filibuster if the repukes try to bring forward a bill to “make permanent” the bush tax cuts or maybe horse-trade with Cornyn on Moon/Mars if he goes along, him first of course, in some bipartisanship on HCR. Mostly red states get more from the Fed than they provide, so squeeze ’em where it hurts.
Radon Chong
Do we all agree that the budget commission thing was a terrible idea in the first place? And have we not noticed certain patterns in Republican behavior? Maybe Obama just realized that, things being as they are, the best way to kill the idea was for him to be publicly in favor of it. And now Republicans, again, have to explain how what they were very recently for they are now against. This is happening over and over again recently, and it is maddening to people like (probably) you and me, because it looks to us like a series of hippie punches. But what if it’s really like metal fatigue to Republican brains? Every flip-flop is one more bend of the spoon, and eventually, it will break. Eleven dimensional chess? Or maybe I’m stoned.
ajr22
I don’t understand what the big deal is, sure McCain said if the generals felt DADT should be reversed he would agree. However are we really suppose to believe he can remember that statement? I mean he couldn’t even remember how many houses he owned, and the google machine is of no use to him considering he doesn’t know how to use a computer. This must be his base, old people that can’t remember things. What other explanation is there to why people keep watching him suck week after week on sunday mornings.
Church Lady
@Radon Chong: Stoned.
CalD
@KDP:
Looks like you got it. But if you have the bill number and year, you can always look up the text of it at
http://thomas.loc.gov/
and that would include the names of sponsers.
SteveinSC
There is no real interest in bipartisanship from the Republicans. Obstruction means more unhappiness and more Republicans in November. Their one objective is to protect the wealthy and the gains the wealthy have made under Bush in turning this country into a third world banana republic. As I have said before, Ian Fleming had a useful lesson for Obama in hoping for mercy from the political terrorists (i.e. Republicans.)
And the sooner he takes that lesson to heart the better.
gnomedad
@cmorenc:
This. Well put.
rob!
@gopher2b:
There was guy on Fresh Air two weeks ago, who wrote a book about the filibuster. If the GOP actually did it, they wouldn’t lose anything, because it would be like catnip to their teabagging base.
But it would hurt the Dems, because it would literally TIE UP THE SENATE so no other work could get done, as long as the old white men kept talking. Every other piece of business would screech to a halt.
The Senate is fucking insane. I think you could better run a government in Arkham Asylum.
Chad N Freude
@Radon Chong: Every Republican flip-flop erases their previous position from the memory of the MSM and the right-wing commentariat and hence from the memory of the Base(tm) and the Independent Voters(tm).
J. Michael Neal
@gopher2b:
I honestly do not understand why some people have such a hard time understanding multiple posts about Senate rules. If they are not actually going to read what is posted, then, for god’s sake, at least make them stop repeating the same absurd mistakes over and over.
J. Michael Neal
@Radon Chong:
Not really, no. Given the way it was set up, there was no way that the commission would ever have amounted to anything. There would never have been any proposals out of it, because of its voting rules. The commission was to have 18 members, with Congressional Democrats, Congressional Republicans, and the President each getting to appoint 6. In order to issue a report, it would have to be approved by 14 of the 18 members. In other words, for *anything* to come of it, you would have needed to keep every single Democrat on board, plus get 2 GOP votes.
The only purpose it would have served would have been to make Republicans submit their plan to gut Social Security in an official setting. Politically, the idea was full of win: Obama gets to make a big show of taking the deficit seriously, while the Villagers get to watch the GOP have literally nothing. That’s why they all bailed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@J. Michael Neal: Maybe we can add “How the filibuster actually works” to the FAQ. Or maybe John should add:
to the dictionary.
Hiram Taine
@Radon Chong:
Eh, Republicans can hold two mutually exclusive positions at the *same time* with no apparent discomfort at all, compared to that serial flip flopping is stolidly boring consistency.
Remember, Obama is simultaneously a Nazi and a Communist, never mind what Rev Niemoller had to say.
ksmiami
Church lady – don’t know if you were kidding, but p.s.: I am in marketing and I say when a brand is down (the GOP) put it out of its misery. I wish I could work for the so called democratic leadership – I would just go for the jugular the whole time with my cutie smile – saying things Like if you had a business and someone claimed to hate that business, that it could never work, etc… would you hire them???? That “my friends” is the lunacy of government in the hands of the GOP.
Then again, I am pretty merciless so the Washington establishment would never want me…
gopher2b
@J. Michael Neal:
Unlike you, I don’t live on this blog. I have a job (that pays me actual money).
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“He’d be calling Sandra Day O’Connor a #%@& every Sunday on Meet the Press to this day.”
Given how O’Connor felt about the Bush admin before she retired, I think even she’d agree she was a #%@& when she effectively appointed Shrub Augustus POTUS.
Craig Pennington
@Belafon
I do so love the daily ritual of one person asking to bring back the real filibuster and a half-dozen explaining why that’s a non-starter.
Now, there is something that could be done regarding the “needs 60 votes to do anything” filibuster that isn’t being done now: force the Republicans along with Holy Joe and the rest of the Republican-Lite assholes to cast a few actual on-the-record votes against cloture instead of counting the votes behind closed doors. Force them to own their obstructionism. Then blast them for it in public.
That’s what was nice about Obama calling out the seven flip-floppers — they’re on the record; they have to own it. Now every time the Village calls for bipartisanship, the administration has something that they can point to and claim they tried. The sweet part is that it was a shitty Republican idea, so Obama loses nothing by it’s failure and he gets to call them out for being two-faced. He really ought to go hard after McCain on this IMO.
Anywho, sorry for the late reply — I just got home from work.
BillCinSD
@J. Michael Neal: or at some future time when there is a Republican president and then all the republicans and 2 democrats, which is how Bush wrecked America. All the Rs and a few Ds and pretty soon you’re talking distopia