Republicans & Conservatives Archives

C&J

Drivel. Truth is not subjective.Lieing and fear mongering is not loyal opposition.People that believe the lies are stupid,mis-informed and more worried about their self interest than the country’s and at this point,often rascist.The Democrats driving the country over a cliff? After 8 years of the Rep kleptocracy leaving the country hanging on to the edge of the cliff only to be rescued by the drastic efforts of a Dem president and congress without any Rep support ?
The Reps were right about some things. BHO was and is naive about some things. He should have had the DOJ run abscam sting operations before health care was brought to the table and put a dozen or so Rep reps in prison where they belong, that is if they could get them out of the rest rooms long enough.When Maconell stands up there and spouts what he KNOWS is a lie,over and over it is not loyal opposition. It is obstruction. It is the leader of the Rep congressional schills doing their corporate masters bidding. Do not confuse that with loyal opposition or democracy.

bills

Thanks for the example of partisanship.

You know that if they ran a non-partisan abscam, they would certainly catch more Democrats. You assume w/o evidence that Republicans would be more involved.

John and Christine nice spin. Can you explain to me why the conservatives in the link below would want to revise the bible to get rid of liberal views? Can you explain what this has to do with truth, durable consensus and conservative values?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34270487/ns/us_news-faith

Consensus is built around yesterday’s verities. It works well until something changes, but most people will resist changing their minds.

Consensus is built on agreement, and needs nothing else. When consensus changes, it can change fast, and strongly. The Republicans have had the misfortune of creating two instances where they lost hold of the consensus.

They do not have consensus on healthcare. They are supporting the distant minority’s position on that manner, even if they’ve succeeded at muddying the waters on what is, exactly, what people want.

What is truth?

Ask a philosopher. Meanwhile, the more practical question is, how do we best approximate the truth in our guesses about what right and wrong. We can get all subjective about things, but subjectivity of the mind does not translate by any necessity to subjectivity in the way the world actually works. At best, you can convince people of the truth of what you say. But if your subjective truth lines up poorly with the real world, then much of what you do merely sets you up for a fall.

We achieve consensus on most issues & they are no longer controversial or partisan.

That is not a practical means of consensus governance, in no small part because some make controversies where none exist. Global Warming is not controversial among Climate Scientists. It’s consensus. That doesn’t mean there aren’t disagreements or controversies, but it does mean that those who know a subject well buy a certain explanation, theory, or solution.

When we fail to achieve a durable consensus, we have conflict and politics. Politics is a means of addressing (notice we didn’t say resolving) differences w/o having to resort to withdrawal or even violence. In America, we believe in Democracy, which means that the minority will accept the rule of the majority, subject to the protection of its rights and the operation of law.

I don’t buy your restriction to merely addressing differences of opinion. What’s the point of politics then? Is it merely a school play where all the kids step forward and speak their lines?

If I bought into that, if Democrats in general bought into that, we’d be discussing our minority tactics on these pages.

Instead, Democrats upset the status quo, using new media and the Republicans ongoing cavalcade of mistakes against the Republicans.

That doesn’t mean that the non-rulers have to like what is going on or that they have to cooperate in any way beyond those things required by law and custom. This prerogative of the opposition delights the minority and tends to annoy the majority. It is interesting to watch how roles easily reverse. Some of our Watchblog writers have been enjoying themselves by simply copying the words liberals used while in the minority and pasting them in today’s context. The role reversal is remarkable and came remarkably fast.

Yes, the Republicans went from being the folks who tried to destroy the filibuster, whose majority leader called it wrong for both parties, to being the folks who now hold the current record for most obstructive Senate minority in history, having almost doubled the previous record in the process.

And very fast, indeed. What numbers of threats it took Democrats four years to reach, the Republicans reached in two.

Is the President an idiot or a liar? It might depend on WHEN you ask.

Bush was mostly attacked for what he actually did. He drew us into a war on false pretenses, his allegations sloppily researched. He opened up a can of worms on civil liberty with his treatment of prisoners in Gitmo, and tarnished America’s reputation on human rights by justifying and carrying out acts of torture.

His administration truly let people down.

Obama’s administration hasn’t really been given a chance to let people down. It’s been excoriated from the start by a Republican Party intent on returning to the majority by scuttling everybody else’s efforts.

Neither side is more misinformed, malevolent, self-interested or just stupid than the other. We just don’t agree about politics.

I wish that were true. But I have to listen to the prominent people in your party taking those Birther lines, talking about Death Panels, and justifying a never ending blockade of the Senate, done with the Republicans offering just offering token alternatives, and I can’t agree with what you’re saying.

I can’t also listen to the Republicans talk about the same old solutions to the problems that got worse under a government using those solutions, and think that their proposals are equal to mine, or better. The evidence just doesn’t support that assertion.

The loyal opposition MUST oppose; that’s their job.

This is not a loyal opposition. To apply the term would be a distortion of it. A loyal opposition does not challenge the legitimacy of the government and its power. It does not endlessly obstruct a chamber in which the voters have given the other side an overwhelming majority.

The term comes from Britain, where one party runs the government, and the other simply stands aside and critiques the policy, while respecting the legitimacy of those in power. If you were using the term properly, actually, your people would HAVE to step aside and let the majority rule as it would. Your folks are doing nothing of the kind.

But let’s credit the fact that we are not a parliamentary government, that the Republicans have their voice. What the Republicans are doing now is not productive. The Republicans have never conceded the Democrat’s right to the majority. The filibustering is not a recent development, but dates back to the very start of the Democratic Majority. They didn’t wait to be offended, they didn’t try to get their way through regular legislative channels first. No, the Republicans pre-emptively attacked the ability of the Democrat’s to exercise their legislative authority.

And when the next election came around, and Republicans were thrashed even worse, did they concede that Americans wanted a change? No, they started right back up again, again before they availed themselves of other means of relief from the legislation they disliked. Even afterwards, as in this healthcare debate, when they announced a willingness to debate, to negotiate, the answer to every concession and compromise the Democrats have made is “no”.

The Republicans could vote against bills they didn’t like in the Senate, and I imagine they could convince some folks in the Democratic Party to do the same. The Republicans could win some victories in the Senate, if they went by ordinary means.

Their problem is that they could not win them all. There would be majorities for many things that there were not super majorities for, and liberal policy could shockingly come out of a majority Democrat Senate.

The Filibuster strategy is a deliberate contravention of the will of the voters, who put those Senators in charge of the Senate by their votes. The Republicans can try to justify this ad hoc and post hoc by pointing to poll numbers, but they never waited for or care for the verdict of the voter when it came to their resistance.

Republicans in Congress are defending our values.

Liberals see the Republican minority in Congress as a big rock on their road to … wherever it is they think they are going. We see them more as the rearguard of reason preventing the power drunk, but fortunately poorly organized, Democrats from driving the country over the cliff. The Republicans in Congress for the most part are defending our (C&J’s) values.

What justifies the prevailing of your values over that of the majority?

Your policies drove this country into the ditch. Now you oppose any change in them to get this country out of the ditch. Now you try to blame us for a situation your mismanagement created.

Your values were voted down by a majority of Americans. Your party tells the folks whose values did triumph, that because you think so highly of your own policies, your own partisan positions, you’re entitled to strip the rest of us of our ability to govern for ourselves, as adults.

You talk about getting to a bright happy place. If your party’s politics were more mature, less insistent on its own primacy, you would understand that politics does not allow for bright happy places. It allows for relative happiness, that one can get by making the right compromises, but the path of those who insist on getting their way without any question, even as a majority is not a happy one, and never will be.

You can’t tell the rest of us to go **** ourselves on what we want and hope for any kind of bright happy place. This is a Democracy. Your party lost by obstructing what the people of this country wanted, and I don’t think that this will somehow magically turn into a winning strategy, over the long run. Look at your party’s numbers on support.

While the analysis of politics as as a back and forth on what is true certainly is the reality of the situation, there are independently discernible truths about the effectiveness and the consequences of economic theory, and international political or military forays. The internal politics of a nation is about pleasing enough voters in a democracy to win a contest.

The contest is ultimately about who holds the most realistic view of the world. Sadly, many Republicans cannot see this outcome of the most recent polling(vote). Eventually, the King realizes he is not wearing clothes. One can accept this and retreat to dress one’s self or one can stand about naked and scream that the new king is naked, too. Perhaps some will be convinced. Perhaps few will. Time will tell us. You can guess what I’m betting on.

I had a disappointing conversation yesterday. As I have been working in a small college town in Texas and home of the Bush(41) library, I have been impressed by the locals’ politeness and somewhat less radical views on conservatism. The politeness is still there, but two people with college degrees and life long residents, went on a rant about the coming Great Depression and the race riots that may occur, especially if a white man were to assassinate Obama.

I politely nodded and smiled, as I am in a professional relationship with these folks, and cannot express my own political views.

The entire basis of their political rant was based on racism. The lazy black folk, are destroying the country with their black president.
These are college educated men, who would never think of themselves as racist, believe they judge men on merit, and would never use racist epithets.
But their world view is completely racist. They are sincerely scared.

In eastern Kentucky, there are virtually no black communities. In that part of the country, they talk about blacks in the same way, though many have no personal experience with blacks, but also talk about lazy, good for nothing white trash as well, since the welfare moms they see are white.

While we all know there are drug addicted ne’er do wells in the world, whom hard working folks resent, why does it always become a racist issue? Why does the Republican party use these biases to blast “socialism” and the “welfare state”? Because it works on deep resentments in common folk. They talk about fiscal responsibility, but show none. They talk about their core beliefs, but the entire rise of the party, of late, is based on these code phrases. It’s a sad and cynical disease in this country. Still. Slavery has one hell of a tail. It’s funny how the Republicans /conservatives now take advantage of the opposite end of the human foibles that once were the founding principles of their party.

Here is one simple, inconvenient truth: No developing country with significant and remotely accessible stocks of fossil fuels will agree to leave the stuff in the ground.

Yet…liberals will continue to bow to ALGORE and the psuedo-science predicting global catastrophe if we don’t bankrupt ourselves with Crap and TAX.

“Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves — about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion,” writes energy expert Peter Huber in City Journal. “If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.”

Obama will go to Copenhagen and make a nice speech. Hell, he might even sign something. And any worthless piece of paper he signs will be quickly be shoved into his desk drawer just as Bill Clinton did with his piece of paper from Koyoto.

This is actually interesting, he canceled a 1200 per handshake event (3000 handshakes had already been sold) because of ‘unforeseen events’. We don’t know if he is not showing up to Copenhagen at all, or just this event is being canceled.

Perhaps he just calculated how many emissions he was going to put into the atmosphere to go and got a change of heart? Though, that hasn’t stopped him before…

Even stranger though, the website promoting the event just deleted all mentions of it, not even leaving a note for people explaining that the event was being canceled. As if it never existed…

It could be nothing, but of course many of us thought the Tiger Woods thing was nothing either, until it turned out to be something. I’ll be keeping my eye out.

There is a palpable frustration among liberals. They seem to have believed that they had reached some kind of finish line in the last election. They are surprised that the American democracy didn’t just give them the keys and let them drive off.

Democrats are not the same as liberals. There are many moderate Democrats. Liberals make up only around 20% of the American population. There are more Democrats than that and many more people voted for Democrats who do NOT want the liberal agenda enacted in its entirety.

Sorry guys. It is not the Republicans who are blocking you. It is the majority of the American people, including many Democrats who evidently don’t want to buy what Pelosi and Reid are selling.

About electoral victories in general, there is no reason for the winners to smile smugly and claim that this election victory was really any kind of victory for “decent people” An awful lot of decent people lost out in this last election, and I don’t think a lot of them take kindly to being treated like second class citizen.

The Democrats won the last elections. That makes them the majority and puts them in charge. It doesn’t obligate everybody to get on board with their programs and it doesn’t necessarily make anyone who disagrees with them wrong in any way, except being currently less popular.

J2t2

When you can explain everything any liberal does, we will explain everything conservatives do.

As it happens, however, that John studied Greek in college, can read the Bible in its original form and has some particular expertise in textual studies. Suffice it to say that this controversy is part of what has been going on for many centuries.

Clearly, some of the newer translations that use gender neutral terms are technically mistranslations, since the Greek is very clear about gender and it is almost always masculine. Whether you should stay with the original text or modify it for today’s sensibilities is certainly a question of politics, not scholarship.

Translation is a surprising contentious business, with each translator thinking he/she is the only one to get the correct interpretation. Translations of the Bible have ALWAYS had political implications. This latest transition thing is no big deal.

So John would decline to defend it from a conservative point of view, noting that nobody who actually understands translations would be at all surprised that translators are “spinning”. Maybe somebody should explain that to MSNBC and maybe they would spin differently.

We would refer MSNBC to Matthew 7:5 “You hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then shall you see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother’s eye.” BTW – if you follow the link, you will notice the variety of translations possible.

Stephen

I believe that you generally, although inadvertently, support our point. Your post eagerly defends in Democrats what you despised in Republicans. Let me get a few specifics that are easy to answer.

“What justifies the prevailing of your values over that of the majority?” The Constitution doesn’t justify the PREVAILING of our values, but it guarantees that we can defend them. This is exactly what is happening under the law and custom.

- “Your values were voted down by a majority of Americans.” Check those public opinion polls lately. IF Republicans take back the House in 2010, do you anticipate just giving up? I hope not. Why should you expect that from the other side.

This is a democracy and the Republicans are playing by the rules of democracy. The Democrats enjoy absolute majorities. They can do what they want. I hope Republicans can force them to modify some of their plans, but if the Democrats cannot accomplish their goals, it is entirely their fault.

Re the filibuster – your statement about the Republicans trying to destroy the filibuster is a category error. There is no such thing as THE Republicans and that is why they failed. The same goes for Democrats and why they are failing to push through the more radical proposals.

We have two major parties but our democracy is not that binary. Individuals can vote their values. This is why “Republicans” couldn’t destroy the filibuster and why “Democrats” cannot push everything through the Senate.

This is a good thing, BTW, and we are pleased that much of the leftist stuff is being altered or blocked by Republicans and moderate Democrats.

Gergle – “there are independently discernible truths about the effectiveness and the consequences of economic theory, and international political or military forays,” - that might be true, but none of us knows them. You are demonstrating very well what we said in the original post – that most people cannot believe that their opponents come to their opinions for good, honest and intelligent reasons.

We (C&J) sometimes believe that those that disagree with us are stupid or craven, but we understand that we cannot allow this narrow-minded intolerance to govern our thoughts.

“The contest is ultimately about who holds the most realistic view of the world.” And you no doubt believed this after the 2004 elections too. The Polls show that Republicans may well take back the House in 2010. Will that indicate that the Democrats don’t hold a realistic view of the world?

Christine,

Perhaps I should have said, “in the eyes of the electorate.”

In short, Yes. The voters decided that Bush had a truer vision than Gore or Kerry.

Although, there was some well known issues with the Gore/Bush contest results.

As to discernible truths, actually there are some that some of us know. Truth/ reality may be slippery to philosophers and physicists, but then most of us don’t operate in those fields.

We aren’t in a depression…yet…in part because of that. As to military/international diplomacy efforts… the outcome of certain strategies are fairly well understood, given certain conditions.

That doesn’t mean we can predict the complexities of the future, or as Alan Greenspan noted, overcome certain human foibles.

Gergle

That is why we make the distinction between THE truth and useful truth.

Christine,

Sometimes the opposition is stupid or craven, though. That’s the point of “useful truth”. Sometimes there is a right or wrong answer. To not distinguish between the two makes one a fool. One may be polite about it, and take care to persuade and educate, but the truth, in these cases, is not maleable.

Gergle

It is truly amazing to me how the word “liberal” has come to mean intolerant of other ideas.

The test of fairness is substitution.If you change the identities of the subjects but not their behaviors, it should not change judgments. Yet clearly liberals ask first who is doing something and only then assess the results.

In the example we used in the original post, we think it is always bad to call the president hateful names. For liberals it depends on the party in power.

I guess sometimes the opposition is stupid or craven.

Christine,

The problem is not everything is up for debate. This is the same argument creationists make for equating intelligent design with evolution. They aren’t equivalent theories.

Gergle

We agree that everything is not up to debate, but much of what we believe to be true is in fact just settle consensus.

You seem to assume that the things the right believes are opinions while the left has fact. This is clearly not the case.

You are also extrapolating a little on science. We believe that evolutionary principles best describe reality and allow the most accurate predictions. In ordinary parlance, we believe in evolution. However, evolution in the popular mind is not the scientific version.

In fact,the popular mind version of evolution is something closer to intelligent design, unfortunately. If you say, for example, that we have “no right” to destroy a species, you are a believer in intelligent design, whether you like it or not. (We happen to generally agree with that “no right to destroy species” thing, but we recognize that it is faith, not science based.)

Evolution is a heartless and directionless process. This bothers most people. They implicitly assume that nature as we see it today has some kind of deeper meaning than the simple result of long term probabilities that it is.

Science tells you what IS. It doesn’t tell you what is good or what you SHOULD do. Most people are searching for more meaning than that, so they add meaning to a meaningless process, like when people use their imaginations to see snoopy in cloud formations.

Christine,

In fact,the popular mind version of evolution is something closer to intelligent design, unfortunately. If you say, for example, that we have “no right” to destroy a species, you are a believer in intelligent design, whether you like it or not. (We happen to generally agree with that “no right to destroy species” thing, but we recognize that it is faith, not science based.)

I believe you mean there are two versions, the actual theory, and the ignorant version. I have no idea what “no right to destroy species” has to do with evolution theory.

To say evolution is like intelligent design is just babble.

Yes, science doesn’t give you common sense or morality. It doesn’t pretend to. One could argue that neither does religion, but it certainly pretends to do so. It is a common misconception to believe atheists are immoral or amoral. Many atheist actually see religion as immoral.

While I’m not particularly adamant about it, I believe morality is simply a learned behavior. I don’t preach to people about what they believe with regards to morality, but most religions have a rather vile history. It is mostly about tribalism, in my opinion.

Gergle

We probably agree about the science of evolution and perhaps about science in general. It has no morality and should not. That is why science is an incomplete way for people to live.

It is the problem when reason outruns morality. As the saying goes, “a madman is not someone who has lost his reason; it is someone who has lost everything EXCEPT his reason.”

Let me (J) explain the species thing. We have an endangered species act and people want to protect cute animals like pandas and polar bears. They often appeal to a kind of morality of nature to justify the protection. Of course, nature has no morality. Or more correctly, by the “morality” of nature you should do whatever you can get away with in the pursuit of survival and reproduction.

I don’t think most of us want to accept this.

I make a separation between science and faith, as well as between science and values. Science must inform decisions but cannot make them.

Take the species argument again. Science may inform us that the longfin smelt will die if we don’t increase water flow, but it doesn’t tell us what to do about it or which values should get priority. That is a matter decided by human courts and legislatures based on human values and priorities.

Christine-

This is a democracy and the Republicans are playing by the rules of democracy. The Democrats enjoy absolute majorities. They can do what they want. I hope Republicans can force them to modify some of their plans, but if the Democrats cannot accomplish their goals, it is entirely their fault.

The reason Democrats cannot achieve their goals on many issues is the enforced, not constitutional, necessity of an ABSOLUTE sixty vote supermajority, and the Forty Republicans who refuse to give the system enough slack to let the votes proceed on anything less than that.

If it took only fifty one votes, the Democrats could pass a lot more at the levels of consensus that the Framers originally intended.

If you are an originalist at all, you would be horrified by the use of the filibuster, because it’s an unplanned artifact of Senate Rules of order, not an original constitutional statute.

The framers never intended the whole process to be held hostage like this, by the combined might of a political party. That was not how they worked to ensure minority rights.

As for the Republican forcing them to modify some of their plans? Good god. They already have. But they still don’t vote in favor of cloture, to allow things to move forward, much less vote for any compromise.

Tell me, really, how you two expect folks to continue to compromise with Republicans who never vote to allow debate to end, much less reward compromisers with their added votes?

You seem to believe that it’s your right to just demand this, but it’s not; it’s a privilege you earn from others, and if they sense that they won’t gain much from compromise, they’ll either be impotent, or encouraged to simply give their constituents what they want. The compromises will not be between Republicans and Democrats, but Conservative Democrats, Centrists, and liberals.

And the more Republicans stay the hostile, intolerant enemy, who won’t say yes to anything, the more the conservatives and centrists of my party, at least the ones who straddle the divide between Democrats and Republicans will find their positions weakened. What’s the point of negotiating with those of little good faith? What’s the point of asking them their opinion or advice, or trying to count on them to help pass anything?

The Republicans are stalling for time, for 2010. They are trying to win back the Senate and Houe by doing nothing, and allowing nothing to be done, holding the political tantrum of all time, to fend off the frightening, oncoming wave of liberal policymaking.

The irony is, the Republicans may simply be adding more snap to the backlash at the end of the day, undermining their ability to work on behalf of their constituents on a productive, positive basis.

Let me ask you this, what I ask of Democrats, Third Party-folk, and Republicans alike: Where do you think you’re going with this particular strategy? What goals do you seek, and how does this strategy suit those goals, over time?

The Republicans are looking for the magic solution to their problems, the push that goes far enough to take them back to where they think they deserve to be. They still believe they have the consensus, and they have but to wake the silent majority once more, and they’ll be back.

Meanwhile, they have given themselves over to the Jokers of the political world. They have let themselves become convinced that when people criticize Sarah Palin, it’s out of fear of her magnificent political abilities, rather than the fact that they just despise her politics and scratch their heads at her incompetence.

The Republicans are giving themselves over to an incoherent movement of special-interest saturated loudmouths, whose politics are simply oversimplified, boiled down sloganeering, little different than what most Republicans and Republican pundits have been feeding these people during the rise and fall of the Republican majority.

Just listen. Was this not kind of stuff that Republicans were saying early on? Look at Dick Armey and the others who push this “grassroots movement”, with their organization founded by a billionaire. Are these people saying anything we haven’t heard Limbaugh or anybody else say before?

Hell, let’s be blunt. These are the dittoheads. These are the people who hang on every word of the e-mails blasted out from the GOP HQ. These are the people who are thinking 2010 and 2012, but not thinking just what their party does that doesn’t get their party kicked right back out the next election, when they get the job they’re fighting for.

There’s more to politcs than winning: ultimately, those we elect must govern. If the Republicans work that way, what they’re ultimately going to do is clean the Democrat’s house of their Conservative Democrats and rightward centrists, and ensure that those who replace them are more liberal. They are also, even now, forgoing many opportunities to get what they want first by negotiation, making their minority less effective at doing anything less than just being a roadblock.

The Republians need to realize that they have to share power now. It’s no longer optional in the long run. They’ll share, or they’ll be cut out, as a consquence of their own obstruction.

Stephen

We keep on coming back the bottom line. You are angry with Republicans for not agreeing with the Democratic leadership. Yet many Democrats obviously are not on board. Otherwise they wouldn’t need Republicans.

Look at the spectrum in the Senate from left to right. Obama and Biden used to be the left. Now you probably have to go with Al Franken to right all the way to Jim DeMint or John Cornyn.

Okay now go down that group and figure out where you have to be to get in the middle. In order NOT to get enough votes you have to go to number 60. That is well within Democratic territory. Why do you think that Republicans should be more liberal than around 20% of the Dems?

Maybe it is the Democrats who have to share power. It is really silly for the Democrats to claim to be victims here.