People Hate Republicans
It seems that conservative legislators are really excited about their efforts to block efforts at an economic recovery package:
“We’re standing on our core principles, and the core principle that suffered the most in recent years was fiscal conservatism and economic liberty,” said U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., one of several younger congressmen trying to lead the party’s renewal. “That was the tallest pole in our tent, and we took an ax to it, but now we’re building it back.” [...]
The second-ranking House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., said, “What transpired … and will give us a shot in the arm going forward is that we are standing up on principle and just saying ‘no.’”
The public is less entranced by this behavior:
I’m not surprised to see most Republican legislators acting this way. But I really am surprised by how many have been following the Limbaugh Line. Barack Obama won the election pretty handily and he’s quite popular, meaning that even with Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008 there are still a bunch of GOP legislators representing states or districts where Obama is well-liked. I would have expected more “running scared” behavior from that sub-set of the GOP.
49 Responses to “People Hate Republicans”
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February 9th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I realized that the GOP was doubling down on their brain-dead strategy when even Mike Castle of Delaware — probably the most moderate Republican congressman, and hailing from an indigo-blue state — voted against the bill. If Obama can’t bring Castle to the table, then this stimulus crap is only a harbinger of things to come.
If Castle has joined up with the flat-earth society that is the current GOP, then we’ll have straight party-line votes from here on out. Obama needs to concede this fact, and move forward without any more bipartisan parlor games, ’cause they ain’t gonna work.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Steve Benen on GOP hectoring (via Brad DeLong)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016801.php
February 9th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Weren’t they ALREADY far more popular before Obama sacrificed his mandate on the altar of bipartisanship? And I thought this was a fight to rescue the country, not a popularity contest.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
But I really am surprised by how many have been following the Limbaugh Line.
Dude, them’s the only ones left (just ask Lincoln Chafee). Limbaugh is a racist asshole. That he’s hated by NotRepublicans is a welcome sign. That he’s embraced by Republicans is hardly surprising. That’s your modern Republican party (i.e., since Nixon’s Southern Strategy).
February 9th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
If the conservative shock troops are still sufficiently motivated and funded, the biggest threat a Republican incumbent faces, even in a purple district, may be a primary challenge. Given the state of mind of the Republican base this may be entirely rational strategy on the part of GOP House members.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
1) The Republicans are showing much higher ratings than they should –and the Democrats are showing negatives when they should not — because Republicans are waging a propaganda war and Democrats are refusing to fight.
2) Matthew is telling you all about obscure trifles like fish barriers –but he’s NOT telling you the full cost of this little soiree: $9.7 TRILLION so far when you add in the $5.7 TRILLION in UNFUNDED guarantees that Treasury and Fed are handing out while REFUSING to say WHO is receiving the guarantees.
3) The American people are being buttfucked like dogs and if the Democrats are too fucking stupid to hang this smelly commode lid around the necks of the Republicans then the Democrats are going to be the ones wearing it in the years to come.
4) I fucking warned you this would happen over two years ago– during the giddy celebrations of the 2006 elections.
I say again: You’re being set up. Half the nation is Fox Nation — and they’re listening to that lying alcoholic Glenn Beck rant about Obama the Socialist. You need to destroy that little fucker now.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
What’s best for the GOP as a whole isn’t necessarily best for any one congressman. Thanks to gerrymandering most of the remaining Republican congressmen likely have more to fear from primary challenges than general elections. They have to say no to spending money on anything that can be construed as helping poor people or the Club for Growth will fund their challengers.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
That’s not fair!!!!!
He is racist, pill-popping, prostitute-visiting, frequent-divorcing asshole.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Re the $9.7 Trillion , see http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aGq2B3XeGKok
How can the Democrats claim to represent the American people and allowed this shit to happen without giving us ANY warning — and while having 45+ Senators for the past 10 years?
Is there any reason why we should not hate the enablers of this apocalypse just as much as we should hate the perpetrators?
You all seem to think we’re on the USS Invincible. That fucking delusion’s going to fail within the next few months as the interest rates on US Treasuries soar and the dollar collapses.
Somewhere Bin Laden is giggling — our own fucking leaders have hurt us far worse than Al Qaeda could ever have hoped to achieve.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I do think that if we can hold things together for a couple years so that we can take advantage of the awesome 2010 Senate map we can probably push up to about 70 Senate seats and then the GOP will really run scared. It’s going to be tough, since first term presidents usually lose seats in Congress, but Obama really is genuinely popular and moreover is genuinely loved by a wide swath of the electorate.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Matthew – Wouldn’t you agree, though, that this is all working out splendidly for the future of the Dems & for the country?
That is, Limbaugh is finally being called out into the national spotlight as a right-wing fanatic that stirs up crazies into a tither. And the GOP is simply not even balancing that with reality and just repeating his radio show’s un-researched entertainment material as FACTS.
I think that as this past November showed us all, the majority of Americans do get it. Smoke, mirrors and snow-jobs are not going to be enough to pass along radical right-wing conservative agendas as good for the country. Instead, I think most people now see that they are good for one type of person: the Rush Limbaughs of the world.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
If people are in a massive car wreck and suffering great pain from major internal injuries, they won’t give a shit if the Democratic driver insists “It’s not my fault — I had the right of way.”
February 9th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The book Votes, Money, and the Clinton Impeachment has a theory that can be applied to the current case:
http://www.amazon.com/Votes-Money-Clinton-Impeachment-Morris/dp/0813398088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234201670&sr=1-1
The book argued that right-wing Republicans voted to impeach Clinton despite the wishes of their constituents, because the sheer enormity of right-wing Republican campaign contributions actually made it in their strategic interest to disregard the preferences of their constituents completely. It goes something like this: (1) Republican takes completely crazy wingnut, countermajoritarian stance, (2) Republican gets rewarded for crazy wingnut stance with massive campaign contributions, (3) Republican doesn’t have spend money on primary challenge from an even wingnuttier wingnut, (4) Republican spends loads of campaign money in the general election telling lies and deceptions to make their views seem less wingnutty than they really are.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
The Republicans still don’t quite realize they lost. And they definitely don’t realize that the country has decisively turned against their standard ideology. They still think America is a conservative country, and it’s going to take a while to disabuse them of that notion.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
But I really am surprised by how many have been following the Limbaugh Line.
Yeah, but a lot of these wingers are from the belt where McCain 2008 outperformed George Bush 2004. Plus, most of them are (correctly, one suspects) calculating anti-incumbent sentiment will hurt the Dems more than the GOP in 2010.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
The Republicans still don’t quite realize they lost.
This liberal Democrat confesses sometimes he wonders the same thing.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
This liberal Democrat confesses sometimes he wonders the same thing.
You don’t quite realize that the Republicans lost?
February 9th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I think the question Matt ends on is the interesting one: I’m trying to figure out *why* the Republicans think this is a winning strategy for them.
Here’s what I figure: they figure that the recession is going to be deep and long, and the stimulus will not appear to have clearly *worked* for a long time, if ever. But characterized as “wasteful spending,” it *can* be linked to populist anger about TARP, etc. So even if opposing it is unpopular now, it’s setting them up for a possibly winning argument in 2010.
I hope that’s false reasoning, but I’m not sure it’s false.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I’m not surprised to see most Republican legislators acting this way. But I really am surprised by how many have been following the Limbaugh Line.
Aren’t we making too much of the fact that Republicans voted unanimously against the stimulus bill in the house? They knew it would pass anyway. They also knew they’d get another oppurtunity to vote for it after Senate “moderates” had done some grandstanding. So where was the downside to voting no?
If you’re a Republican representing a district Obama won, you can vote for the final measure and say your initial vote against was an effort to improve the bill. Now, if Republicans vote unanimously against the final stimulus bill, then I’ll be shocked.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
So, uhh… what’s the source of this polling data? I can’t find a reference to it in the linked article, nor is there any cited source for it.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
The Republicans aren’t talking to their constituents but Obama is. They keep listening to Rush the big fat dope fiend instead of the people who voted for them, but by now regret it. Those folks have lost jobs, homes, retirement savings, etc. They are mad and the republicans have decided to “stand on their principles” (the same ones that got us in this mess in the first place) instead of helping the struggling workers in their districts.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
This is like a moment of Judo Zen in politics. The GOP and conservatism built this incredible media machine that allowed them to dominate the public discourse, but they are now dominated by their own creation. It doesn’t matter how unpopular Limbaugh is, for example, in the country as a whole. What matters is that he can single out individual Republicans and crucify them in front of the national GOP base.
Mike
February 9th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Gallup
February 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
@Willie:
Gracias. Assuming I didn’t just miss it somehow, the post really should be amended to include that link (at least IMHO).
February 9th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
@25 — I think that’s right.
@28 — Limbaugh’s power is remarkable. The analogy would be if a Democratic congressman had to apologize for appearing to belittle MoveOn or Daily Kos. We might get there in a couple of years, but I think we ain’t there yet.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Republican corruption created an economic crisis that’s required $9.7 TRILLION to deal with. SO far.
And yet the Republicans are being allowed to present themselves to the voters as guardians of the Treasury.
What part of “political incompetence” do Democrats not understand? Why the fuck didn’t they just elect John Kerry President?
February 9th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I think you’re overlooking their self-image as a band of idealists prepared to risk all in defense of principle. Too bad for the rest of us that the principles are dangerously divorced from reality, their idealism is so inconsistently applied as to raise questions about their sincerity, and their heroic pose reflects either cynical misrepresentation or self-delusion.
Besides, all that posturing works really well for them when they done their alternate guise–as victims of them big, bad libruls–on talk radio.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I don’t think the GOP is so inexplicable. First, they’ve a rigid ideology. The movement conservatives own the party, so it’s not likely to budge.
Second, they’ve won with the coalition of white-male resentment and rich people’s self-interest (with resulting advantages in funding and media control) so often that they may just feel that this is just a temporary glitch owing to the business cycle, especially as they’ve probably irrational faith that Iraq can again be turned to their advantage. Either the surge will work, as they think it has, and they can try to say that unpatriotic Democrats just don’t get it; or the place will blow to pieces, in which case they’ll blame the unpatriotic Democrats for betraying victory.
Third, they figure that the last thing they want is successful domestic policy, as Obama will get credit for turning their mess around. They figure that right now they’re unpopular, but the more likely it is that things won’t be right by 20012, the better off they are.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
IT is a truism that people won’t give you their vote if you don’t ask for it — that’s why we spend so much time/effort on Get out the Vote.
Why don’t our leaders understand that the voters won’t understand that Republicans are destructive lying assholes if fail to point that out to the voters.
The time to turn the voters against the Republicans permanently isn’t 1 month before an election — most voters have tuned out at that point. The time to hang the Republicans is NOW.
You’ve won the election — the next one is not for two years. You don’t have to suck up to uncommitted voters. You can speak freely. So why is the full cost and scope of this disaster being buried under the rug. WHy are Republicans being let off the hook?
February 9th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
The Republicans may be “successful” with a Limbaugh strategy in the medium run.
Have a look at the German Nazis’ strategy before 1933 – how they managed to win over people and seize power with their extreme agenda.
Obama & Co may be not successful enough in a time of economical depression and declininig US leverage in foreign politics. Then enough people will join the surging Republican wave — no matter how extreme it will be.
And then … help us God.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
People Hate Republicans
I believe the more appropriate title should have been “Leftists Like Me Hate Americans”.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
But the public *already* favored Democrats over Republicans in terms of restoring the economy.
You seem to think that the purpose of stimulus wrangling is to boost Democratic approval. . . so Democrats can wrangle over stimulus. They already had that, and look what they did with it: Obama offered a watered-down package in hopes of getting Republican support, then watered it down even more to get Republican votes that never materialized, which encouraged Democratic idiots–uh, centrists to jump in and make even more cuts.
What good are the Democrats if two straight electoral landslides don’t encourage them to forge ahead and abide by their principles? You think an opinion poll will succeed where 2 landslides didn’t?
February 9th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
If this crummy bill passes, they will have lost a battle but won the war.
And the Democrats don’t quite realize they won. Which is worse?
Could it be because they turned $880 billion of spending into $780 billion almost evenly divided between spending and tax cuts? You think they are sad over that?
February 9th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
SteveIL is a REAL ‘Murrikkkin from the “patriotic parts” of the country.
He can’t read a map, can’t read a simple bar graph, can’t read an opinion poll, can’t read election results.
I’m glad the Republikkkan Party is FULL of “real ‘Murrikkkins” like Steve. Let them nominate Palin and Wurzelbacher. Let them keep sinking into further ignorance, intolerance, incompetence. and irrelevance.
February 9th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I would have expected more “running scared” behavior from that sub-set of the GOP.
=============================================================
Probably because they read more polls than just the one MY cites
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history
Obama Approval Index History
Date – Presidential Approval Index
02/09/2009
+14
01/21/2009
+28
Sinking like a rock
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/economic_stimulus_package/support_for_stimulus_package_falls_to_37
Support for the economic recovery plan working its way through Congress has fallen again this week. For the first time, a plurality of voters nationwide oppose the $800-billion-plus plan.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed, and 20% are not sure.
Two weeks ago, 45% supported the plan. Last week, 42% supported it.
Opposition has grown from 34% two weeks ago to 39% last week and 43% today.
February 9th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Oh, and this one
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/economic_stimulus_package/50_say_stimulus_plan_likely_to_make_things_worse
50% Say Stimulus Plan Likely to Make Things Worse
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