“We should have shut the government down and let 0bama continue to proclaim that he would veto stopgap funding that paid the military. 0 would have taken the blame for that, and would have caved quickly; and once the armed forces were taken care of, there was no reason for us to do anything but raise, not lower, the ante.”
And what your approach to this subject does is to thoroughly jeopardize our chances at victory next year in the Prez elections. What do you think would happen once you would have had the gov’t shut down? Every day the MSM, which in case you haven’t noticed, is not on our side, would have been out there blaming the Pubs for the shutdown, while we would have had little voice to get our point across to the majority of Americans who get their news in soundbites on the evening news. Your mistake is to think that everyone out there thinks just like you do, and they don’t.
There are tons out there that don’t like the gov’t going through constant meltdowns, and who just want the parties to compromise and come up with good solutions to our fiscal problems. Right after this most recent crisis where a compromise was reached and the gov’t didn’t shut down, a poll was taken (granted it was a CNN poll) that gave Obama and the Dems the credit for solving this fiscal crisis, not the Republicans. And it was by a 10 plus point majority.
And tell me, how many times, Mr. American Historian, did the threat of shutting down the gov’t occur, I might add, only in recent history? I’ll do the work for you, there have been 11 shutdowns since 1981, and with the exception of 1995, all have been for less than 3 days. In 1995 one lasted 5 days and the other lasted 21 days. Now, it’s obvious to me that our forefathers never expected a gov’t shutdown to be part of their plans for our form of governing as all the threats and actualities of a shutdown have happened since 1981. I don’t like the idea of a gov’t shutdown. I don’t like threats that can have huge consequences on how our gov’t operates day to day and how it affects our citizenry and/or our military service members. It stinks. It reminds me of the Dems in both Wisconsin and Indiana leaving their states legislatures in order to avoid having votes taken on issues they didn’t like. I see it as dereliction of duty.
If the constant threats coming out of the Pub Party right now to shut down the gov’t or not raise the debt ceiling haven’t already seriously damaged our Party’s image in the minds of the public, the actuality of it happening will end up being blamed on the Pub Party by the MSM and the point pounded in every day by the news media. And all of this chest pounding and threats by the Pubs to use shutdown as a lever to extract more from the Dems won’t work because we don’t have both Houses of Congress (we have 1/2 of one, luckily the majority half), no Senate, and no Presidency.
The Dems can hold out as they have no more to lose than we do because they have the MSM to do their propaganda for them every day of the week. Meanwhile more of the “common” folk would be getting aggravated because the MSM would be scaring them of the dire consequences coming their way, and symbolic moves would be made to make that aggravation all the more obvious. The President can control much of what would be shut down, and who would be affected fiscally, not the Pubs. In the case of not approving the debt increase, whole markets would be affected, it would cost a bundle, no one out there in the world would service our debt w/out charging a heap to do so, interest rates would rise (including on credit cards, which would affect huge swathes of people), and the odds are that we wouldn’t extract that much more from the Dems to justify any shutdown or financial disruption in the first place. I just think you live in LaLaLand as to what will really happen if all you chest thumpers managed to force a gov’t shut down or cause a failure to raise the debt ceiling.
People are financially scared right now, many living from paycheck to paycheck (including our military people), and the last thing they need to hear about is Armegeddon (whether it is true or not, that’s how it will be portrayed in the MSM) and constant threats of disruption to their daily lives. They are under a lot of stress without the additional burden of a dysfunctional gov’t.
My whole point is that we not take the chance of ruining our ability to win the Senate and the Presidency one year and three months from now, by falling on our sword at the present for only minor gains in savings while the Dems still control both the Senate, and the Presidency with its veto power. We are drawing our line in the sand at the wrong time politically because we are so gung ho with our new Tea Party strength that we can’t seem to keep our pants on for the sake of the big picture, which is to capture it all during the next election.
If we don’t capture it all, those Tea Partiers will get nowhere fast in the future in their fiscal responsibility attempts because we still will not have a majority in at least one house of Congress, and perhaps no Presidency. If that happens, I will be the very first to blame people such as yourself who insist on ultimatums now when we don’t have the votes to back them up. Fie on the Party destruction you stand to cause.
The drive-by media is going to demonize us over $400 bn in cuts, $38 bn in cuts, or no cuts at all, so playing to that gallery will never win you any applause, and will simply paralyze us forever.
So you're governed by push polls from CNN. Thanks for granting my indictment. No more need be said about your "principles." But just in case you're educable: That poll is a poll of adults. Sorry, but sensible people care about polls of adults just a hair less than they care about polls of registered voters, which is to say NOT AT ALL. A poll of adults will always skew 15-20 pts in favor of Democrats. That's why CNN takes those kinds of polls to begin with, instead of polls of likely voters. But thanks for making my point that you care more for the opinions of your enemies -- however ill founded -- than you do of your friends; and certainly more than you care for your principles.
We lost the House and Senate because of people like YOU: given no clear alternatives folks stay home. What you're offering is nothing more than "let's be Democrats, because they poll better." That's the Republican party since 1930. We're either done with people like you, or we're done as a Party.
As time goes on, my position is more and more vindicated, and yours continues to erode. We now know the "real" amount of cuts in the $38 bn victory is actually ... $2 bn. That's not even a rounding error. Tell me, why should anybody bother to vote for Republicans "just one more time, and this time we'll really really really do something we promise" in the next cycle?
TWO BILLION. Nice going.
The MSM that makes you cower in the corner isn't going to go away IF we win. Then you'll be paralyzed by the fear that we won't be able to "hang on," if we don't do what they say. I can easily envision you and me having this same exchange in January of 2013 when President Cookie-Cutter announces his dramatic 1.5% cut in the Federal School Lunch Program. Or his phasing out over 50 years of the Great Lakes Environmental Initiative (total savings $20 million/year.) You'll be telling me that Katie Couric, now on a week-in-review segment on the Reelz channel will tear us limb-from-limb if we attempt anything more "hot headed" or "radical." And of course "all of our House members will be up for reelection in just 2 years!" [So of course, have another dose of Democrat-lite.]
Two billion dollars in cuts after a tidal wave election in November. Enjoy your crap sandwich, but spare me your sanctimonious lecturing. You didn't win anything in this deal, and we won't be winning any more elections with this kind of timidity. But far more important than your Party, America lost.
You have an ambitious conservative agenda. Unfortunately, your fear of the Left will guarantee that none of it is ever implemented. Republican Party apparatchiks seem to be blissfully unaware of how seriously their collaboration with the Democrats endangers the country and the Party. We are headed for the fate of the Whigs, because of people like you, and again, for more seriously, the country is headed down the drain.