Republicans & Conservatives Archives

I can’t speak for the Committee members, but, Obama’s emphasis on discussion and diplomacy as primary approaches to international affairs as opposed to Republican shoot from the hip, and ask questions later approach, is what seemed to me to so excite and motivate The Nobel Peace Prize award to Obama.

The international community did not award Obama the prize based on American domestic issues or polls which you bring up.

As for the polls, you have to look closely at how they are worded. When a poll asks: “Do you approve or disapprove of Obama’s health care plan?”, the result is entirely worthless. First, Obama never submitted a health care plan. Second, their now 3 versions at least, none belonging to Obama. So, when folks respond to that question, they are responding out of ignorance, which negates the result on that question.

Ask the same public represented in these polls to name 3 of Obama’s policies, and they will answer, health care, health care, and health care. So, when they are asked do you approve or disapprove of Obama’s policies to date, they are largely responding to the gigantic clash of information and misinformation as well as outdated information on the health care issue. Ask them if Obama’s stimulus bill, not the banking bail out bill, was a good idea, the answer will be yes, even though Congress wrote the bill, not Obama.

So, you have to take individual polls for what they mean from the scientific rigor of probability and statistics modeling and projection. What is far more useful is the trend of polls over time. In Obama’s case, as with any newly elected president, that trend has nowhere to go but down in the first year of office.

Obama is not on the ballot in 2010. The more relevant polling questions will be about public approval or disapproval of Democrats and Republicans behavior on health care, bank bailouts, jobs, assistance for those who lost their jobs in this recession and debt and deficits.

“Profile for Christine & John…
Political Affiliation: None”
Then quit complaining about what happenend to 43. I’m on the left and have little use for BHO. In another forum, I have been on the receiving end of rage and fury because I don’t believe 44 should be any more exempt from criticism than 43. Many people are very uncomfortable with criticism of BHO. I expect that to decrease over time, since, as I read the polls, people who had a favorable view of BHO are turning against him even more than people who were neutral about him. Media types like Jon Stewart have been unwilling to risk being booed by their own audience for falling off the bandwagon.

Christine and John wrote: “We handed out award before the real race started. Let’s see if he can run up to expectations.”

No. We elected him for what he vowed to work to do as president. American voters are well aware we do not live in an authoritarian dictatorship run from the White House, and that both the Congress and Courts have a say in how our affairs are managed as a nation. The most important poll I think, is Obama’s likability factor compared to Congress’. Obama’s is still liked and respected by a majority of Americans. Congress role in all this tells a very different story with their approval numbers in the 20 to 29 percent range.

Obama can’t force your representative in Congress or mine to vote one way or another or craft a bill this way or that. He can ask, our representatives will do what they will, and so far, most Americans don’t approve of what they are doing in general, to our country and her future. Obama doesn’t have to address his poll numbers for another year and a half.

Congress on the other hand, is freaking out over the anti-incumbent results and underpinnings of the recent 2009 elections, both Republican and Democrat.

Ohrealy misstates the polls. Obama’s likability polls have dropped little. His policy approval ratings have dropped significantly. The polls seem to contradict your view “people who had a favorable view of BHO are turning against him”.

I voted for Obama and disapprove of his handling of health care reform, the banking sector reforms so far, and his first deficit budget. Like those polled however, I still respect and like the man a lot, and am willing to give him some break in time, required of all newly elected presidents. He may very well lose my vote in 2012, but, he has 3 more years to make that case to me and that majority of Americans who still like his being our president, as opposed to Sen. John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Achieve enlightenment through logic and mathematics. D.R.Remer’s opinions are not a poll result. More people who were favorable to BHO have abandoned him than people who were neutral about him, which is the only way that his favorables could have gotten this low.

David

I think most of us like President Obama. He is a very attractive guy, intelligent, smart and a good family man. He has wonderful talents.

What we are worried about is what he is doing as president. Being loved is not enough.

As we wrote, we share your skepticism of polls. We noticed, however, that each drop in President Bush’s rating seemed to be a big deal to his opponents. One our our self-appointed tasks this year is to remind both sides of what they said before, so that we can make valid comparisons and judgments. Generally speaking, what applies to President Obama should apply to President Bush.

We were annoyed when people made unreasonable complaints about President Bush. Many things have not changed because that is the way the world works.

We don’t want unreasonable expectations of President Obama to redound to the detriment of America. When the fecal matter encounters the cooling device, better that he absorb the blame, if there is any to be had. We will joyfully give him credit if those great expectations pan out, but want to set up markers if they don’t.

Christine said: “I think most of us like President Obama. He is a very attractive guy, intelligent, smart and a good family man. He has wonderful talents.”

Of course that would not include the tea baggers carrying derogatory and demeaning photos and images of Obama in White Fact and in African tribal dress with a bone through his nose.

C: “What we are worried about is what he is doing as president.”

He is addressing the problems of the nation withing the constitutional limits of his office. Your side keeps trying to saddle him with the responsibility of what Congress does. I remind your side, Congress contains 40% of your side in the Senate and more in the House. There are limits to the Executive, and unlike FDR or GW Bush, Obama is observing those constitutional limits which is one reason many of us voted for him after GW Bush’s end runs around the Constitutional limits of his office.

Obama started off saying he did not want pork in the Stimulus bill. Your representative and mine refused to heed his call. Which left Obama with the choice, sign the bill and rescue the economy from even deeper recession or worse, or veto it for more fiscal discipline and leave American workers and families lurching for the financial means to keep what they have worked for. Obama made the right decision for the American workers and families in the short run, leaving him with the longer term debt to wrestle with as the economy recovers. Reagan made the same decision, Clinton made the same decision, Carter made the same decision, and both Bush’s made the same decisions though I don’t recall Bush I or Clinton facing a recession. There is a defacto bipartisan agreement that stimulating the economy through government expense or decreased revenues is warranted when the public is losing jobs and financial security.

C: “that each drop in President Bush’s rating seemed to be a big deal to his opponents. “

You mean like the big deal you are now making in your article about Obama’s polls. Standard fare for partisan politics. Objective, rational folks know to ignore these tactics and biased questions in the polls designed to maximize perceived newsworthiness rather than substantively reflect the real responses of the public to complex issues.

C: “Generally speaking, what applies to President Obama should apply to President Bush. “

Generally speaking, yes. Which means significant differences are also to be taken into account.

Some of what folks called unreasonable ahead of the public’s awareness, may have appeared to the public as unreasonable at the time. But, with time, the public came to agree with the unreasonableness of the Iraq war, the circumvention of the Bill of Rights and legislation duly passed by Congress, the abuses of the secret signing memos, and the gross mismanagement of the fiscal health of our nation. ALL these were deemed by your side as unreasonable at one time when first called out. Now, of course, between a third and a half of all Republicans and more than 70% of Democrats and Independents now understand that these were, in fact, unreasonable policies of the Bush administration.

C: “We don’t want unreasonable expectations of President Obama to redound to the detriment of America.”

I trust you are speaking for yourselves personally, because the Republicans in Congress and GOP and RNC leadership go way beyond holding unreasonable expectations of Obama to calling him a liar to his face in open public to displaying the man White Face and with a bone through his nose, as well as derogating him with terms like Socialist, Communist, Marxist, and dictator. All of which are of course, utterly ridiculous as evidenced by Obama;s disappointing the left wing liberals of his party time and again on things like prosecuting the Bush administration to the public option in the health care reform bill.

Christine, America has passed the point of no return of achieving any net positive outcomes for our future going forward. Every policy decision going forward is going to bear difficult costs and incur historically inordinate burdens on some factions in our society. That is what comes of gross neglect and mismanagement of any organization over a long period of time. All remedies become difficult, costly, and far less than theoretically optimal had timely prophylactic measures been taken previously.

The Bush administration and Congressional Democrats and Republicans pushed our nation’s fiscal position over the edge. There are no solutions to our fiscal crisis now which will not entail the perceived creation of hardship and crisis for some in our society. Taxing Oprah’s 2.5 billion worth to 1.75 billion may be perceived by Oprah as hardship and unfair. But, increasing federal revenues MUST be part of the solution now, along with difficult and hardship creating spending cuts for others.

This is what Obama has inherited and courageously taken on as his responsibility to make some of these tough and difficult political decisions. He cannot and should not however, be blamed for what your and my representatives in Congress prevent or obstruct him from doing. If health care fails to pass, Republicans have no logical right to blame Obama. But, you know what? They will blame Obama for their own actions in defeating this reform, if they are successful in doing so.

That is part and parcel of the depths to which our political system has stooped. Obama is trying to deal with the threat of health care inflation. Republicans never even tried, and instead fostered it when they had control. These facts cannot and will not be changed or revised, hard as some on the Right try.

Obama is trying to reinstate admiration and respect for America in the international community, where Republicans had diminished it severely, and strained our relations even with some of our allies on issues like torture, rendition, and foreign invasion without warranted and substantiated provocation or evidence.

After decades of warning since the 1970’s of the absolute dangers of energy dependence on foreign fossil fuels, Obama is trying to address the challenge which Republicans only exacerbated with chants like, “Drill Baby, Drill” despite hard concrete evidence that drilling could not reduce our dependence and only at best, keep pace with climbing demand.

Obama is trying and may fail. But, Republicans never even tried. That will always remain in the history of America to Obama’s credit and to Bush’s and the GOP’s disgrace.

This recession would be half what it was, had Republicans not fostered the enormous accumulation of wealth transfer from the working and middle classes to the top 1% of the wealthiest from 1994 through 2008. That transfer of wealth could have continued to circulate in the middle and working classes stimulating consumption demand and minimizing savings losses, and bankruptcies.

With ever increasing amounts of this wealth transfer now leaving America to foreign market exchanges and investments in BRIC and third world economies, instead of circulating through consumption in our own economy, Obama has an even bigger challenge, which is frought with Constitutional and legal constraints and delicate economic balance constraints in addressing. But, America’s economic future cannot brighten until a significantly larger amount of the nation’s wealth is forced back into circulation in our consumer driven economy. Our service oriented consumer driven economy requires this. Obama intends to try to address the challenge, which Republicans and Democrats in previous Congress’ created. Will he be successful? Hard to see how. But, ignoring the challenge as Bush I and II did, only makes the challenge greater and harder to overcome. Obama will try. Vested interests in Congress and the private sector will fight him. He mail fail, but he is and will continue to try to address the challenges others ignored or made worse.

Ohrealy is apparently oblivious to fluid nature of polling. New presidents win by a majority approval rating. New presidents cannot fulfill all the wishes and desires of a diverse electorate. Ergo, all new presidents will see their poll numbers drop into their presidency. But, history demonstrates such poll drops do not dictate failed reelections out of hand.

Such is the nature of fluidity of public polling and popularity contests. Its roots are to be found in academic studies of sociology and psychology, if you care to research it.

David

I’ve got no trouble blaming Congress. But it is hard to excuse the President when Congress is controlled by the Democrats i.e. the President’s party.

In the interests of keeping things fair and honest, how can you then blame Bush, when his party had smaller majorities AND in fact Congress was controlled by Democrats for 25% of his tenure? Let’s just be consistent.

Re Obama hurting the U.S. – I know that the American nation is greater than its government and certainly greater than any man, even the man currently in the highest executive office. I was glad when George Bush personally took on some of the opprobrium that might have attached to our country. A good leader should be willing to take the fall if a fall needs to be taken.

The things you mention about Obama’s courage are … things he says he is going to do. He has so far been unable to do much of anything except talk and look good.

President Reagan accomplished a lot in the face of a congress mostly controlled by his opponents and a hostile media. President Roosevelt managed big changes in the real Depression. Whether you like what Bush did or not, he did push his policies through in a Congress with a smaller majority than Obama enjoys today. In fact, Republicans did NOT control the Senate at all until 2003.

By this time in FDR’s term, it was clear we had a great leader in the White House. The same goes for Reagan. With Obama all we get is how hard it is for him because his party only control 60% of the Congress and the press only mostly loves him.

With all the front end loaded honors, I am afraid that President Obama may have peaked the day he took the oath of office. For our country’s sake, I really do hope that I am wrong.

The great presidents don’t blame their lack of success on having a hard time with their opponents or with their fellow party members. If Obama cannot accomplish his goals or keep his promises, it is because he is a weak president. And that is all there is to be said. We can debate whether his policies are good or bad, but that is a separate discussion.

Maybe you agree that what can help President Obama most would be for the opposition party to take over Congress. Clinton wasn’t much good until after 1994.

“no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.”

Did RR get permission from Congress to accept the knighthood from Margaret Thatcher and QE2?

“Ohrealy is apparently oblivious to fluid nature of polling.” Be careful Mr. DRemer, you’re very close to having to warn yourself. Polling is fluid when it doesn’t match your own opinion I guess. Reality trumps theory every time.

The Republicans are not waiting for results. They are waiting to stall things until 2010 and 2012 so they can achieve the result of getting back their majorities and the Presidency without so much as actually reforming their policies or politics.

The Republicans are pathologically opposed to actually letting Obama have any credit. They are willing to stall important legislation, ignore important events, and force unsavory outcomes on the American people in order to drag Obama’s poll numbers down.

They have engaged in a never-ending tirade of irrational, dishonest, fallacious guttersniping that hasn’t let up since Obama’s been elected. They are constantly predicting the end of the country, the end of capitalism, the end of our freedoms. You’d think they were trying to tell us that the space-time continuum would rip open if they weren’t holding the Democrats back.

And that may just be the point. They want to get to look like heroes for doing nothing but saying no. They want to convince themselves and the world that they can engage in the same policies endlessly, despite whatever catastrophic outcomes result.

It’s been successful, and it’s not been. It’s been successful in that people’s opinions have declined quite a bit. But they’ve not benefited.

Like I once asked some Tea Partisans at a rally, “What’s your yes?” What is the reasonable alternative that is moderate enough for Democrats who have to defend their actions to their constituents to vote for? I’m afraid the Republicans have been trying to postpone what is probably going to be a devastating realization if they ever fully let it be absorbed: they are no longer a party able to indulge their own political purism as they would like to see it.

They can tell you that they’re striking a blow for capitalism, but they’re only putting off a reckoning that last year’s catastrophe will make inevitable, and any further screw-ups will make even more painful.

They will tell you that they’re string a blow for our defense, but if you look at the actual results of the two wars, we can be assured that nothing close to our original objectives in either place will ever be achieved.

They will tell you that they’re keeping government out of your life, but the rest of the country, Conservatives, wants it to intervene and take on the bastards who screwed up our nation’s lives with this bloody debacle of laissez faire stupidity.

They are awkwardly trying to tap into that rage, but to what end? Well, if you look closely, to support the same kind of policies that started thing on this course in the first place.

Democrats like myself will tell people something simple, and something effective: as much as Democratic Party solutions are having a tough time of it, they are doing some good. The alternative you are being asked to support is the sort of policy that got you here in the first place. The RNC up in Washington is, to use blunt terms, like a drug dealer coming around to tempt you with another hit of the substance you’ve been addicted to, the substance you burned yourself out on.

We can continue to feed our addiction to government that encourages individual irresponsibility and a self-centered perspective on one’s obligations to society, or we can kick the habit and begin the difficult but ultimately rewarding path to recovery.

Weary Willie-
Heads of States accept gifts and rewards from world leaders all the time.

Obama gets international recognition and adheres to the proper protocols. Result? Republicans badmouth.

Cash for Clunkers program a success, stimulates car-buying. Republicans claim it’s only temporary (what, would they prefer constant subsidies?) and make fun of the fact that it’s so popular that the funds run out. Geez, I wonder what they would have said if the sales had remain stagnant, the offers left unsought.

The Stimulus bill helps to bring a positive GDP growth, perhaps ending what has been one of the longest, deepest recessions in American history.

But the Republicans can’t be pleased with that. They criticize that the President didn’t front load it all, that he got the jobless rate wrong by two points. The Republicans can wreck the economy, but when somebody tries to clean it up and falls short of expectations, guess who they want to be at fault for the bad economy?

I’m sorry if I’m ranting, but it seems to me that the Republicans want their old job back as the setters of political paradigms, and they’re annoyed that people decided they didn’t want to continue their experiment of conservative leadership.

Stephen

Democrats have filibuster-proof majorities in the Senate and a big majority in the House. They can pass whatever they want. You can evidently believe that some Democrats would oppose their own parties program on principle but you cannot give the same benefit of the doubt to Republicans.

You have jumped to an invalid conclusion about some of the legislation, BTW. Everybody recognizes a problem with health care, but solutions are different. When Republicans proposed tort reform, which would have mitigated some of the pressure, Democrats were united in opposition and Republicans couldn’t get together enough to pass it. Whose fault was that? Sort of like today.

Remember that Republicans CANNOT stop anything by themselves, but Republicans, some Democrats and now most independents do not like the specific kinds of solutions the Democrats are proposing. They don’t think they will work.

And the Democratic talking points are dishonest. They correctly point out that the rising costs of health care are unsustainable. But their proposals do not do anything about that. They do NOT cut costs. They simply shift the burden from one around among taxpayers and raise taxes and fees. This is not a solution. Studies show that the Democratic proposals will actually make the total health care bill HIGHER.

Indeed, there is a crisis, but the Dem solutions don’t address the right problem.

Health care is a really big issue. Perhaps a comprehensive plan is not the way to go. Once government puts a program in place, it becomes almost impossible to reverse. Perhaps an iterative process is better, you know try something, adjust based on changed conditions and then make the next step.

The Democratic proposals take is in the wrong direction. They do NOT address the problem of rising costs. Therefore maybe nothing is better than something done wrong and difficult to adjust.

Re cash for clunkers – it seemed like a good idea to me at the time. A lot of people thought so back then. But the figures are in now and we have found that the cash for clunkers simply moved demand to an earlier quarter. In other words, we bribed people to buy cars they probably would have bought anyway. This is another example of the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.

Re the stimulus - the first stimulus worked well The second stimulus worked too, but not as well and it was not a good value for the big piles of borrowed money spent.

Once again - we agree about the problem. We agree something needs to be done. But the Democrats did the wrong things and/or implemented the programs poorly.

BTW – this is the summary of the Republican health care proposal

This is the CBO scoring of the Republican alternative.

The Democrats in Congress block Republican ideas and the MSM reports only the Democratic side. In one case, Democrats actually physically locked Republicans out of conference rooms.

Christine-
I don’t call a majority only big enough to prevent a filibuster if everybody agrees a filibuster proof majority. That’s hype.

It’s hype that serves those who want people paying attention to the few Democrats who dissent, rather than the entire Republican Party which obstructs. Those handful of Democrats would not constitute the threat to forward movement of legislation, would not be handed their roles as the robber barons of healthcare, if it weren’t for the army of conformist Republicans standing shoulder to shoulder to blockade Democratic Party legislation.

As for cutting costs, do you understand that the Public Option is precisely about doing that? That’s why so many of us insist on it. That’s why the CBO scores the better public options as the better money savers. It’s the compromised version that’s more expensive, and naturally it would be, given just how much effort goes into satisfying the Republicans with their concerns about government/private sector competition.

We do address the problem of rising costs. Your people just hate it pathologically.

Christine-
The Republican alternative is cheap because it doesn’t cover one additional soul.

Isn’t healthcare reform in part about getting people covered?

Weary Willie,

So you see the Noble prize as a bribe? Who gets the influence? The Swiss? Really? Didn’t UBS just get nailed? Beware the chocolate!

We awarded Barack Obama the gold medal based on what he promised he was going to do for us. We handed out award before the real race started. Let’s see if he can run up to expectations. And if he can run, is he going where we the people want him to go.

Who is the “we” that awarded the prize. The public had nothing to do with it. And your critique of the award did not even remotely address the committee’s stated justification.

“We simply disagree … He got the prize for what he has done,” committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland told The Associated Press by telephone from Strasbourg, France, where he was attending meetings of the Council of Europe. Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe. “All these things have contributed to — I wouldn’t say a safer world — but a world with less tension,” he said.

So this is a post about nothing.

propitiation-
Mister, when I look at Obama, he’s out there doing things, trying to get things passed. Concerning what I see of Republicans, when I see them, they are either criticizing him for that something, or doing their level best to make sure it doesn’t happen.

On my scale of uselessness, even if he’s mediocre, your party rates below Obama in terms of usefulness, in my view.

I’m not quite sure, though, what the point of being rude to the Chinese would be.

as somebody in that article you posted a link to said:

President Obama enjoys the widespread respect of Chinese citizens. While I would have been pleased if he had met with some of the many disenfranchised groups of Chinese society — including house-church Christians; intellectuals; and dissidents such as Liu Xia, the wife of jailed Chinese intellectual Liu Xiaobo — I appreciate the president’s measured approach toward building a relationship with the Chinese government. I hope that this approach will provide a future platform for the administration to more directly engage the Chinese leadership on the issues of social justice, individual liberties and the rule of law in China.

That from a former Chinese prisoner of conscience Yang Jianli.

This has been yet another edition of “Obama can’t do anything right”, by the Republican party.

My sister once made the argument that drugs were bad because they make fun of stoners.

When I pointed out that anything can be made fun of, she didn’t seem to know what to say.

Props a mess 30 years in the making will not be undone in less than a year. Getting tough with China! How like GWB did:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=6593323&page=1

At least Obama went to see where corporate America sent all the jobs.

http://www.allbusiness.com/public-administration/4104556-1.html