How Obama reacted to the shut down really showed a lot of people just what the Dems are all about.
Posted on 11/19/2014 7:25:21 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Watch for a shift in their perspective, which is already underway.
Conventional wisdom is malleable, and it appears that conventional wisdom on the wisdom of shutting down the government is shifting, at least within the Republican party. While the old CW was that it was a terrible idea that Republicans suffered for, and it would be foolish to do it again, the new CW seems to be, "Hey, didn't we shut down the government and win the next election?"
The other day, influential conservative journalist Byron York began pushing this line, writing that the 2013 shutdown "so deeply damaged GOP prospects that Republicans exceeded expectations in 2014, winning control of the Senate in spectacular fashion and making unexpected gains in the House." And now, as Dave Weigel reports, Republicans are taking it up:
In [conservative] circles, it's clear that the president can be stared down on immigration. And it's clear that a fight, even if it led to shutdown, would be either rewarded or forgotten by voters when they returned to the polling booths in November 2016. The reality of the Affordable Care Act had, after all, ended up winning elections for them in 2014. Why wouldn't the reality of Obama's new blunders elect the Republicans of 2016?
It's all deeply frustrating to Democrats. Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly, whose district's contractors and federal employees recoiled at the shutdown, had subsequently watched his state reelect its Republican congressmen and nearly knock off its popular Democratic senator. There clearly was no shutdown hangover for Republicans.
"From their point of view, frankly, while it had a temporary impact on their polling numbers, they fully recovered from that and paid no price at all on Nov. 4," said Connolly as he headed into a vote. "Politicians are all Pavlovian at a very elemental level. What's rewarded, what's punished. They look at that, and they think it seems to have been rewarded. It certainly wasn't punished."
This is entirely true. Approval of the Republican party took a nose dive in the wake of the shutdown, and though it is still viewed negatively by most Americans, that didn't stop Republicans from having a great election day. Because as at least some within the GOP understand, you can create chaos and crisis, and large numbers of voters will conclude not that Republicans are bent on creating chaos and crisis but that "Washington" is broken, and the way to fix it is to elect the people who aren't in the president's party. That in this case that happened to be precisely the people who broke it escaped many voters. The fact that the electorate skewed so heavily Republican in an election with the lowest turnout since 1942 also helped them escape the consequences of their behavior.
One of the things that interests me here is Weigel's observation, which I've heard from others before, that conservatives believe "that the president can be stared down on immigration." The fact that they've lost these showdowns again and again doesn't seem to register. They simultaneously believe that Barack Obama is a tyrant in the grip of a mad obsession to destroy America, and that he's a wimp who will back down if they show some spine.
If that's what you think, a shutdown becomes a win-win scenario. If you threaten to shut the government down and Obama relents, then you've won. If he doesn't relent and the government does shut down, you'll win anyway, because that's what happened before.
It now looks like Obama is going to announce his new immigration policy this week, at which point Republicans will freak out. And we may be seeing the front end of an evolution in their thinking, not just from "Shutting down the government would be bad for us" to "We could shut down the government and be just fine," but from there all the way to "Shutting down the government would be genius." Just you wait.
Spelling error
I was hoping for this. Circumstances can change opinions.
I mean, at this point, what is it doing when it is up and running?
I feel the gop party is misreading the polls. They see polls like majority believe gop is blamed for shutdown and they automatically view this as a negative. They should view it as a positive
Other than the military and a few other jobs, that can shut it down for good.
Popular to whom ? Given that Gillespie overwhelmingly carried the bulk of the state and there's enough Dem chicanery in NoVA to alter the outcome, Warner could hardly be described as "popular."
How Obama reacted to the shut down really showed a lot of people just what the Dems are all about.
Shut down the parks again, with zero authority, so I can swipe one of them signs.
But the author is a lib who continually blames the shutdown and the "broken" congress on Rs.
Cruz's strategy will work - straight up bills to fund components one at a time w/ nothing at all in them to object to. Fly thru the house w/ overwhelming votes and likely bipartisan, fly thru the senate w/ overwhelming votes and likely bipartisan... let 0bama veto that and see who gets blamed HA HA HA HA LOLOLOL !
IIRC, 87% of the EPA staff was deemed not essential in the last shutdown.
Pubs need to change the way the budget is passed. Pass individual spending bills for various functions of gov’t - EPA, Defense, IRS, Justice, etc., FREE of amendments & specific to the area being funded. For the first one, pick an area of government with bipartisan & public support - Parks & Recreation or the like. Leave the tough spending bills for last.
Then let Obama veto it, insisting on an omnibus spending bill.
Ignore him. Move on to the next bill & pass it. Again an Obama veto.
Soon a case can be made to the voters that Obama is obstructionist, refusing to pass bills for even popular programs. His popularity will plummet as his base sees him specifically veto their favorite programs.
OTOH, if Obama chooses to sign individual spending bills, then he will be left either signing tough spending reductions/restrictions in later bills such as funding for EPA, IRS, Justice, & all his favorite social programs, OR leave them UNFUNDED until such time that he is willing to climb off his high horse & compromise.
If the Pubs intend on repeating the usual budget process, with pork aplenty & chock full of cronyism & bad compromise, then Pubs are doomed in 2016 as they represent nothing different than the Rats, they keep on using the same failed tactics, they have no solutions & by their actions/inactions this country continues to rapidly decline.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Everytime I see anything about the Gillespie-Warner race, I have to bring up the real reason for the loss.
SARVIS - he took Democrat money, ran a campaign specifically to pull voters from the Republican campaign, and did it the was he was told by Democrat operatives.
Sarvis is a scummy loss of a human being who threw the race for his buyers because he is a bought man.
Anyone voting for Sarvis not knowing he’s a Democrat plant (as a Libertarian) has to be an idiot. If anything, I believe very few Sarvis votes (in this race) would’ve gone to Gillespie. This time, he may have inadvertently taken votes from Warner. The opposite, of course, was the case this time last year in the Governor’s race (though I also believe had McDonnell not engaged in misconduct, he would not have damaged the GOP brand as he did, enabling the execrable McAwful to pull off a plurality win).
Well, Libertarian voters are usually major idiots, so........I am not at all confident in your assertion that Sarvis didn't cost us (again).
But fraud is the real villain in this race, just a little less fraud in NOVA and Gillespie wins, irregardless of Sarvis.
Speaking of fraud, we have another statewide race to worry about. They just got done stealing IL Treasurer (from a RINO dog, but still, not cool, the rat is a real creep) with late counting and now I hear there is gonna be a recount in NM for Land Commissioner.
Republican Aubrey Dunn Jr. (Sr. was a dem State Senator) unseated rat incumbent Ray Powell by a very narrow margin. This was GOP's only other statewide win in NM other than the reelections of Governor Martinez and Sec of State Duran (just a 4 point winner). State Auditor Hector Balderas (D) easily did a musical chairs move in the AG spot (left open by King Jr.), rats held his current office by 8 points (Robert Aragon the losing candidate for the GOP). And Republican Rick Lopez failed to unseat the rat Treasurer by 4 or 5 points.
The Democrat Party thought that Sarvis was taking away votes from Gillespie, and funded him heavily in that belief.
Who am I to call them wrong?
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