2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe whole Republican Party is incompetent.
Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2013, 09:23 AM - Edit history (1)
Everyone is afraid to say it out loud and put it in writing but the problem with the US government is too many incompetent Republicans elected to office. They do not have the basic intellect to lead. The GOP politicians on average have a low reasoning ability. Why not come out and say it?
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)They are not incompetent, they're deliberately obtuse and destructive.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)they may have their share of goofy ones within their ranks, but overall they know exactly what they are doing.
UCmeNdc
(9,602 posts)I would call them incompetent at every turn. Let them work to overcome that label.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)The GOP has no interest in building a strong government.
And destroying it is much easier.
Bill USA
(6,436 posts).. anything from being accomplished.
A few years ago Peter Beinart wrote an excellent article on this, in Time magazine:
Why Washington is Tied up in Knots
In the Clinton years, Senate Republicans began a kind of permanent filibuster. "Whereas the filibusters of the past were mainly the weapon of last resort," scholars Catherine Fisk and Erwin Chemerinsky noted in 1997, "now filibusters are a part of daily life." For a while, the remaining GOP moderates cried foul and joined with Democrats to break filibusters on things like campaign finance and voter registration. But in doing so, the moderates helped doom themselves. After moderates broke a 1993 filibuster on campaign finance, GOP conservatives publicly accused them of "stabbing us in the back." Their pictures were taken off the wall at the offices of the Republican Senate campaign committee. "What do these so-called moderates have in common?" conservative bigwig Grover Norquist would later declare. "They're 70 years old. They're not running again. They're gonna be dead soon. So while they're annoying, within the Republican Party our problems are dying."
In Clinton's first two years in office, the Gingrich Republicans learned that the vicious circle works. While filibusters were occasionally broken, they also brought much of Clinton's agenda to a halt, and they made Washington look pathetic. In one case, GOP Senators successfully filibustered changes to a 122-year-old mining act, thus forcing the government to sell roughly $10 billion worth of gold rights to a Canadian company for less than $10,000. In another, Republicans filibustered legislation that would have applied employment laws to members of Congress a reform they had loudly demanded.
With these acts of legislative sabotage, Republicans tapped into a deep truth about the American people: they hate political squabbling, and they take out their anger on whoever is in charge. So when the Gingrich Republicans carried out a virtual sit-down strike during Clinton's first two years, the public mood turned nasty. By 1994, trust in government was at an all-time low, which suited the Republicans fine, since their major line of attack against Clinton's health care plan was that it would empower government. Clintoncare collapsed, Democrats lost Congress, and Republicans learned the secrets of vicious-circle politics: When the parties are polarized, it's easy to keep anything from getting done. When nothing gets done, people turn against government. When you're the party out of power and the party that reviles government, you win.
The Endless Filibuster
All this, it turns out, was a mere warm-up for the Obama years. ...
In 2009, Senate Republicans filibustered a stunning 80% of major legislation, even more than during the Clinton years. [font color="red"]GOP leader Mitch McConnell led a filibuster of a deficit-reduction commission that he himself had demanded[/font]. The Obama White House spent months trying to lure the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, into supporting a deal on health care reform and gave his staff a major role in crafting the bill. But GOP officials back home began threatening to run a primary challenger against the Iowa Senator. By late summer, Grassley wasn't just inching away from reform; he was implying that Obamacare would euthanize Grandma.
(more)
Copyright 2010 Time magazine
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)If they can get everyone to hate the government, Democrats will stay home, and the crazy right wing will come out and vote in droves.
Harmony Blue
(3,978 posts)but the Democratic party is like the keystone cops with their failure to capitalize on that incompetence.
Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)just so they can keep turning around and lying to their dimwitted supporters about how government is inefficient. Yeah it's inefficient...when we keep electing people to office who want to dismantle it. That is precisely what they mean by "limited government"--pretty much not doing squat once they get elected, except giving themselves tax breaks and cutting things. Governments cannot function well when there is less tax revenue to fund services such as education, police, and entitlement programs.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)to private owners once improvements and infrastructure are in.
http://www.texaswildlifeunlimited.com/devils_river_texas_drsna/2010/11/sierra-club-announces-opposition-to-devils-river-land-proposal.html
sbh
(93 posts)Samantha
(9,314 posts)I am pretty sure it is deranged.
Sam
Kablooie
(18,658 posts)Retrograde
(10,204 posts)They're good at getting their base out for mid-term and state elections, which gave them control of the House and enough state legislatures to gerrymander districts so they won't be losing that control soon. Deranged and despicable, yes, but they're getting a lot of what they want.
Kablooie
(18,658 posts)By refusing to bargain they prevent any policies they disagree with from becoming law.
In the meantime they are taking over state legislatures and are throwing them hard right with no conflicting federal laws to deal with.
They are achieving much more of their agenda than the Democrats who are achieving just about nothing.
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)polichick
(37,152 posts)They're doing exactly what they want to do - kill democracy and destroy the federal government.
They're succeeding.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)UCmeNdc
(9,602 posts)Results that improve nation's prosperity.
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