Posted on 05/02/2016 9:25:32 AM PDT by VRWCmember
Republicans, I’m told, were elected to Congress by the people, and yet they’ve done absolutely nothing. This indictment has now mutated into “Republicans gave President Obama everything he wanted,” i.e., the GOP and Obama were basically colluding against the American voter this whole time.
Republicans have been dreadful on plenty of fronts — the quality of their advocacy, the spine they show making arguments and the lack of innovation and malleability in the focus of their policies, to name a very few — but resistance to Obama’s legislative agenda was definitely not one of them. If Republicans had capitulated in the way the average angry populist claims, Obama would not have needed to enact some of the most consequential abuses of executive power since World War II.
Some of this anger is propelled by false expectations and wishful thinking about how government works — which is to say, when voters don’t get what they want they assume the system has failed. On one hand, voters are under the impression that presidents should be able to craft law and policy and make everything great again; and on the other, they are angered about the ineffectiveness of the legislative branch. It all depends on which of these corresponds with their own political affiliation.
As far as expectations go, Republicans deserve blame for making promises they couldn’t possibly fulfill — including the notion that they could repeal Obamacare. Then again, overpromising is not exactly a new political trend. And it’s not as if voters flock to candidates who tell them unvarnished facts about this cruel world of ours.
But did Republicans do nothing but surrender the last eight years?
If you’re a conservative who opposes immigration reform, conservatives put an end to it in 2008, when Republicans controlled the White House and Democrats controlled Congress. They stopped it when Obama was in the White House and Democrats controlled both legislative branches. Republicans then filibustered the DREAM Act of 2010 and voted to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and then many joined the suit against DACA. Yet on numerous occasions I’ve engaged with radio talk show callers and hosts who are mad at Republicans for not doing enough. Should the RNC send two battalions to shut down the White House?
The GOP was too late to stop Obamacare, and they are partially at fault for failing to deal with health care at all. Yet only one Republican ever voted for Obamacare. The GOP sued Obama for rewriting the law without a vote of Congress and, at this point, I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve voted to repeal ACA. They sent a repeal bill to the president’s desk.
Republicans also stopped cap-and-trade, which would have created a fabricated “market” for energy in the same way Obamacare fabricates “markets” for health insurance. Stopping it helped undermine Democrats' efforts to make fossil fuels prohibitively expensive — which was, initially, the stated goal of this administration. When Obama circumvented Congress again, Republicans across the country sued the Environmental Protection Agency.
Conservatives in Congress also put an end to bipartisan gun-control legislation. They stopped the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act — twice — and the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, which would have raised taxes. They stopped the American Jobs Act bailout and the authoritarian card-check stuff. They stopped the DISCLOSE Act; and the sequestration replacement; and the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013; and the across-the-board federal minimum wage efforts. Republicans sued and won when Obama abused his power by naming recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.
This is not nothing.
Even more importantly, there is a counter-history to consider. There is no way to quantify how many Obama-led liberal initiatives would have been instituted without a Republican Congress — much less a tea party wing within that Republican Congress. The Obama presidency would probably have been as far-reaching as any in modern history. The very gridlock these populists grouse about is a reflection of a divided electorate. Though I imagine that’s not the sort of argument that wins voters.
In the end, one of the persistent complaints about the GOP is that it was too cowardly facing the prospect of a government shutdown. Unlike prevailing wisdom, I doubt shutting down government is always a loser for the GOP. Republicans have done just as well after shutdowns, historically. But the idea of utilizing shutdowns regularly as means of shaping policy is unrealistic. You can shut down Washington all you like: Obama is not going to allow Obamacare to be dismantled, and Democrats are not going to offer major concessions in spending. Change takes a long-term commitment with smart policy and good arguments; Republicans don’t have them. Shutdowns just tend to prove it.
The fact is: Democrats got some of the things they wanted. But not all, or we’d be dealing with single-payer health care, carbon-trading energy markets, more union bailouts and about a dozen reforms that you didn’t even know existed.
On second thought, if/when that happens, Texas will secede and send most of the leftist packing and won't have to endure what the rest of the country has to take.
Republican got control of the house and senate.
Record deficits year after year.
Full funding of obamacare
Full funding of importing muslim “refugees”
Full funding of illegals
Giving away their power with the obama-Iran nuke deal
etc.
Absolutely worthless.
It’s a complete disaster but it could have been a little worse-Vote Republican 2016
Congress basically never lifted a finger to stop initiatives that Bammy started. Sure they may have slowed him down through inaction, but they were never proactive. Their “investigations” were all kabuki theater.
No sale.
Conservatism has become nothing except principled votes against, and blocking, and stopping, and putting on the record for the next election cycle. I played along for years now thinking that a do nothing Congress was a good thing. I contemplated the greatness of Grid Lock, and how that was better than the alternative. I was somehow deceived into this view I think, having forgotten that getting something done ought to figure into things somehow.
I agree that RINO is an easy label slapped on anyone now, but it is largely because of the opportunity cost of the last 30 years (with a short exception in the 90's) of Electoral Politics. Something has to give. Immigration is a perfect example and why Trump has rode the issue to the height he has attained. Immigration reform and border security are perpetual Election issues which never get done. Only the extension parts get done, that is the parts which take care of the problems that are created by not taking care of the problem in the first place. And this is true with so many other things, like Social Security, fraud and abuse, etc. What do we hear? Getting rid of fraud won't balance the budget or solve the problem. So what? Do we look the other way?
Ultimately this is a leadership issue. Someone has to be the leader. Obama has proven to be a better leader for their side than anyone we have had on the R side of the aisle. GW was lame duck day one in 2005, so we have been slipping and sliding for 12 years now without effective leadership. When leadership is the issue, people look for a proven leader that will change the way things are done. We could be on the verge of something great.
We’re supposed to FORGET that ‘we’ controlled the PURSE.
‘Coulda STOPPED ALL spending—and didn’t.
This article is BS.
“The timid and the traitorous will never lack for a sufficient quantity of reasons — some of them quite artful — detailing why said treasons and timidities were actually none of their own doing. “
No shortage of same. A few are amusing, but most are sickening.
Texas will have to deal with a HUGE immigration problem if they secede. Millions like me will flock to their border and try to sneak across.
Absolutely Obama-enabling Uniparty.
I’ll tell you what the cowardly and spineless GOP Congress could have been doing, and that is to have IMPEACHED that treasonous Kenyan sonuvabitch in the White House.
If they had the guts, they could have certainly prepared a solid and irrefutable case for removing lil Lord Barky, because it is without question that he has violated the Constitution continuously since the time he oozed his way into the Oval Office, he has given aid and comfort to our enemies, his Secretary of State failed to protect our national security secrets and through her own incompetence and treason, allowed good and decent Americans to die in Libya.
And the reason that didn’t happen?
Because the UniParty wouldn’t permit one side of their organization (the GOPe-RINO wing) to move against the OTHER side (the ‘RAT wing), because it’s all one great big party and We The People are the suckers who have been conned into picking up the tab for that party for too many years.
The ‘RAT party is the feces encrusted ass of our government, and the GOP is always happy to serve as toilet paper.
The late Governor George Wallace was right when he said “there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties!”.
And he’s still right today.
But the Republican party has been bad enough (with the rest of US government) that voting in someone like Trump is the perfect “[censored] you” to send from the American people.
Our great dear leader, the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan just passed The Obama/Ryan Omnibus bill that added $1 Trillion to the national debt.
Bullcrap. Bush PUSHED for immigration. The GOP has PUSHED for open borders, wars of convenience that simply never end, prescription healthcare, internationalism of every type, homo marriage, and has given Obama anything he wants. Worst of all they have all been bribed by the Saudis and absolutely never oppose flooding America with moslems or oppose any Saudi policy goal.
Yeah, they have been as bad as we think, and then some.
YES THEY HAVE BEEN
THEY HAVE BEEN WORSE THAN USELESS
“Harsanyi’s family defected from Hungary. Harsanyi is an atheist and believes that gay marriage neither undermines traditional marriage nor triggers societal instability.”
In the eyes of a Eurocentric atheist homo supporter, im sure the GOP doesn’t look bad at all.
For the first time in a generation, the big money donors CAN’T buy the election. History going on here.
The GOP crowing about a few trival bills they opposed is a joke. At best, those were the “victories” Obama gave them in return for rolling over for everything else.
The essential problem is that the GOP has rolled over on the critical life and death issue of moslem and Mexican and central American immigration.
They have embraced the homo agenda. They are standing by as the military is turned into a national embarrassment of kissing men and bloated procurement disasters like the LCS and the F-35.
It is time to dismantle the GOP, or to utterly take it over. Go Trump.
Ask this question: who hurts more from a shutdown?
Is it the working people or the gov bureaucrats and other free loaders?
By not taking a strong stance the gope forfeited any chance for meaningful compromise.
Have they been marginally better than a dhimmi congress, well, yes, but that's hardly an accomplishment.
I’m worried it may be the last one we ever have.
I’ll be surprised if it’s actually allowed to occur.
We can all laugh at me for my tinfoil if we get to January, 2017 without something big happening. I’ll gladly be wrong.
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