The Gingrich Doctrine and the 21st Century
My colleague Satyam Khanna notes some of the broader context for the revelation that Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) is explicitly modeling his tactics on Newt Gingrich’s obstructionism in 1993-94.
In Washington, coverage of politics is dominated by politics rather than the policy consequences of politics. Thus, because of the outcome of the 1994 elections, Gingrich’s 93-94 tactics are held to have been a great success. But it’s important to be clear—those tactics included lockstep opposition to a Clinton economic program whose opponents set it would wreck the economy, but in fact laid the groundwork for years of prosperity. Gingrich’s success in blocking health care reform has been a small but persistent drag on the economy whose negative impact has compounded each and every year for the past fifteen years and has led to the preventable deaths of thousands and thousands of people at a minimum. Politics is politics and I understand that, but anyone who looks to that era as something to be emulated is dangerously indifferent to the real-world implications of congressional behavior.
Meanwhile, the political contexts of the two eras strike me as different in a number of ways. Bill Clinton’s 43 percent share of the popular vote in the 1992 election made it plausible to believe that the center of public opinion was amenable to the idea that the President’s agenda needed curtailing. What’s more, the Democrats gained zero Senate seats and actually lost nine House seats. Under the circumstances, you can see why conservative felt emboldened. And their political strategy had a clear logic to it—a large number of Democrats in congress were representing constituencies that had pretty consistently been trending to the right in presidential politics since the 1960s. With a Democrat in the White House, the chance existed for a spirit of feisty opposition to force the voters in such constituencies to align their congressional preferences with their presidential ones.
That’s simply not the case this year. Not only did Obama have a more decisive win (obviously the absence of a third-party candidate is important here) but the Democratic caucus is more compact and includes many fewer outlier members whose constituencies are dramatically more conservative than the national electorate that backed Obama in November.
Of course, nobody can know what the results of all this will be, and objective occurrences in the world will have a large impact completely independently of the quality of Rep. Cantor’s tactical decisionmaking. But it does seem worth noting that the Virginia Republican Party, of which Cantor is a part, has not been a huge font of electoral success in recent years. Instead, the right-wing of the VA party has, with incredible speed and efficiency, turned one of the most solidly Republican states in the country into one with a decidedly blueish hue. When Mark Warner was elected governor in 2001, it was seen as a stroke of political genius to be able to carry the state. Then came Tim Kaine in 2005 and Jim Webb in 2006. In 2008, Democrats went from a 3-8 split of the state’s House seats to a 6-5 split. Warner became the state’s second Democratic Senator in a race that nobody paid any attention to because the state party had essentially thrown the election months earlier by driving their potentially electable candidate out of the race and throwing the nomination to a guy everyone knew would get his ass kicked.
In other words, though Gingrichism was politically successful in the mid-1990s, the record of Cantorism in the 21st century has been much weaker.
55 Responses to “The Gingrich Doctrine and the 21st Century”
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February 15th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
“a Clinton economic program whose opponents set it would wreck the economy, but in fact laid the groundwork for years of prosperity”
I’ve read maybe two references to this in the past month, and heard nothing about it (even on NPR). PLEASE expand on this because it seems like a no-brainer. Right now the analogy I keep hearing is on FDR and the New Deal, and the length of time that took is beyond what we’re hoping for (plus the Republican argument about government spending on WWII really causing the recovery is gaining ground).
February 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Is there any evidence that strategic thinking along the line which you’ve sketched–there were more conservative districts being represented by Democrats, etc.–influenced Gingrich?
font of
“Fount,” I think. Unless this is one of those clever typeface jokes that the kids today now deploy.
February 15th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Font and fount are interchangable old english, it literally means “fountain”, it came to mean a baptismal bowl because it was seen as dispensing an indispensible supply of salvation. The term “font” as used in electronic type is derived from this meaning.
February 15th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I can only imagine that eight years of Bush in the White House led Cantor and Bayhner and their GOP followers to imagine that my-way or the high-way is the only way. They are like spoiled children who were never taught to share their toys.
But the other problem is the horse race; it’s the politics instead of the policy.
And this is a media problem, a reporting problem. Seems like a good news story ought to be able to handle both; the politics for the competition addicts, and some policy for the polity.
And on another note, Ignatious on banks:
I’ve been saying this for a while, now. Too big to fail = too big.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Another thing that is sure to hinder Cantor’s efforts is that he is SUCH a WEASEL. I mean, just look at him and the little self-satisfied grin he wears whenever he plants himself in the background of Republican media appearances. He’s just fundamentally an unlikeable human being. Gingrich could at least score points for being pugnacious. Cantor just looks like he’s about to say that the teacher forgot to give out tonight’s homework assignment.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Cantor’s definitely a schmuck, but at this point, Matt, you can’t really say that Clinton “laid the groundwork for years of prosperity.”
What the last eighteen months have made abundantly clear is that Clinton’s people – Rubin, Summers, Geithner – are just as culpable for the disaster we’re in now.
Even just for reappointing Greenspan, Clinton deserves condemnation.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
They are counting on a coup. It isn’t about election anymore.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Some would say that the 94 election caused Clinton to move much more to the center, which in turn, created an environment of great prosperity. Or the tech bubble created the prosperity. Don’t I remember hearing that Clinton claimed welfare reform as one of his biggest successes of his administration, and I’m pretty sure that was a republican initiative.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Well, that’s a remarkable amount of prejudice and misinformation to pack into one blog post. Well done!
It doesn’t help that the underlying Times article is also largely ignorant of the history. Bob Michel, a moderate go-along-and-get-along Republican, was “in power” in ‘93 in whatever sense a Republican would have been in power, and Gingrich was not.
The Clinton tax hikes–that’s the “economic program” Matt’s referring to–were not responsible for the late bubble economy of the last 15 years. Maybe Matt means his deregulatory efforts, given the ignorance on that subject often expressed here. And Gingrich didn’t block health care reform, as anyone familiar with how the House works would know. Democrats abandoned the Clinton plan, because it was unpopular. (Gingrich did lead the effort to rein in Medicare spending, and was pilloried for that. Now Matt supports that effort.) The suggestion that not passing the Clinton plan caused the economy to grow more slowly and thousands of deaths is just odd. Didn’t Matt just suggest that what followed after the failure of the plan was years of prosperity?
Matt is on more solid ground when he turns away from policy and history, which he doesn’t know much about, to politics. But even there he seems to skip ahead to a conclusion (the record of Cantorism) that is just bizarre. The starting point for the Times article is that Cantor is a new face in the leadership, and I’m not sure how a record of 3 weeks can be fully evaluated. But given the rest of this I shouldn’t be surprised to see Matt attempt it, and am not surprised by his conclusion.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Things I learned from Thomas’ post:
- Newt Gingrich had zero influence in the House until he became the leader out of the blue.
- Deregulation leads to a strong economy.
- The economy is either good or bad, and it’s illogical to suggest that a good economy could be better.
- There is nothing wrong with judging a president after 3 weeks in office; it is downright bizarre to judge a Congressional leader after 3 weeks.
Fantastic.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
- There is nothing wrong with judging a president after 3 weeks in office; it is downright bizarre to judge a Congressional leader after 3 weeks.
How many of Cantor’s appointments haven’t paid their taxes?
February 15th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
The best thing about this article was that it made me look up who all the House Republican Whips had been for the last few decades. The list:
Eric Cantor
Roy Blunt
Tom Delay
Newt Gingrich
Dick Cheney
Trent Lott
Holy wingnut, Batman!
February 15th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
The 93 tax hike is irrelevant to the macro economic history of the age. Every sin now being cataloged in the great financial unraveling was institutionalized under Clinton and while the GOP pissed and moaned they got everything they wanted and more on the financial and monetary front from Clinton. While the niggled about taxes the credit bubble took flight.
The institutional Democratic party reveled in the exploding financial centric economy and profited from it handsomely. Many Democratic voters and Democratic leaning observers were quick to give credit to Clinton for the great economy while at the same time harboring uneasy feelings that something what not right. Still in the partisan game to this day giving Clinton credit is the knee jerk defensive position.
Every progressive and liberal should despise Clinton’s third way embrace of Wall Street and Greenspan. Clintonism has to be thrown overboard along with all the financial leaders of the age now passed. A break must be made. Figurative ropes must be hung for Robert Rubin and his gang, not just the zombie bankers who appeared before the House this week, oblivious to the fact that they are dead men.
Bush’s Republicanism just took the torch. It is true that after the dotcom bubble burst and 9/11 occurred they brought Greenspan to the White House dozens of times and begged him to let loose every credit pumping mechanism in the arsenal for the ‘war’ effort. No Democrat would have done differently. The final and most destructive blow off phase of the bubble did happen on Bush’s watch but you will hardly be able to find a single Democrat who ever questioned the mortgage mania or the absurd wildcat hedge fund fetish. Except for some pro forma grumbling about income and asset distribution the entire Democratic party was silent as we approached the iceberg.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
There’s nobody to counter the radical right in the GOP in the house. These guys really believe their own bs. And that does make it hard to compromise – after all, they talk to themselves. This is explained by Karen in the movie goodfellas, which is all about the GOP:
” After a while, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crimes. Henry was just enterprising.He and the guys make bucks hustling while other guys sat on their asses
waiting for handouts. Our husbands weren’t brain surgeons,
just blue-collar guys.The only way they could make real
money was to go out and cut corners. We were all very close.
There were never any outsiders around. Absolutely never.”
Where’s the strong box, you varmint?!
February 15th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Bill Clinton’s 43 percent share of the popular vote in the 1992 election made it plausible to believe that the center of public opinion was amenable to the idea that the President’s agenda needed curtailing.
There seems like a good chance that, had Ross Perot not been in the race, that Clinton would have barely won (like Carter over Ford, 50-49) or even might have lost.
[Looking it up. After 1992 election the House 258 D (59.3% of seats), 176 R (40.5%), popular house vote 49.9% to 44.8%. After 2008, the House is 257 D (59%) to 178 R (41%), popular vote 53% to 44.0%. If the D's tanked in the house as badly in 2010 as they did in 1994, they would lose the blue dogs and be in a five vote minority as near as I can figure. And the D's would still hold a majority in the Senate.]
Yeah, if it’s going to be a 1994 replay, then Obama will win in 2012 with 58% of the vote, and have D majorities in both houses.
Instead, the right-wing of the VA party has, with incredible speed and efficiency, turned one of the most solidly Republican states in the country into one with a decidedly blueish hue.
I think that all he’s really trying to do is to form another Boll Weevil coalition – all South, all the time. He doesn’t have any advantages tho. This guy in 1937 and Gingrich in ‘94 are all running on the same policy: all rich people, all the time.
Ya know, Matthew, I think you might be wrong about Party system shifts: in the end, 1860-1932 was run by Northerners, and 1932-2004 were run by Southerners. So, if the tide has turned, then now- 2076 will be run by the North.
max
['Can the D's bind together a solid coalition tho?']
February 15th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
“How many of Cantor’s appointments haven’t paid their taxes?”
It’s the same as the number of OBAMA’S appointments that “haven’t paid their taxes”, so your point…well, you didn’t exactly have one.
February 15th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Better late than never uh Colby? And you got my point.
February 15th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
“It doesn’t help that the underlying Times article is also largely ignorant of the history. Bob Michel, a moderate go-along-and-get-along Republican, was “in power” in ‘93 in whatever sense a Republican would have been in power, and Gingrich was not.”
As you said, Michel was a “go-along to get-along” Republican, and one that had been weakened by silly scandals. Michel might’ve had the title, as the House Republicans usually hold tightly to the concept of “who’s turn is it?”, but Gingrich was the real power behind the throne, as evidenced by the way he ran the campaign in late ‘93-’94. It was similar to the early 2000s, when Hastert was Speaker, but Tom DeLay was running the majority caucus. So no, that’s not misinformation.
“The Clinton tax hikes–that’s the “economic program” Matt’s referring to–were not responsible for the late bubble economy of the last 15 years.”
I’m not sure that any of us can say what caused, helped, or hindered the ’90s boom with any certainty. But I do know that just saying “nuh-uh” without presenting any facts or reasoning isn’t convincing, especially given the level of vitriol and misstatements you’ve shown MY in the rest of your post.
“And Gingrich didn’t block health care reform, as anyone familiar with how the House works would know. Democrats abandoned the Clinton plan, because it was unpopular.”
It was unpopular, in part, because of the spadework Gingrich did on the issue (the “Harry and Louise” ads). And Gingrich did work WITH the defecting Dems to defeat the reform (had he not, they wouldn’t have been successful). So no, you’re wrong again, he DID block it.
“The suggestion that not passing the Clinton plan caused the economy to grow more slowly and thousands of deaths is just odd. Didn’t Matt just suggest that what followed after the failure of the plan was years of prosperity? ”
There’s nothing contradictory about saying something was prosperous, but less prosperous than it could’ve been. Again, we’re not going to believe something’s “odd” just because you say it is, you’re gonna have to provide some evidence.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Re: What the last eighteen months have made abundantly clear is that Clinton’s people – Rubin, Summers, Geithner – are just as culpable for the disaster we’re in now.
They may have some culpbility relating to their later careers in the private sphere, but can you point to any public policies in the 90s that can be blamed for the current mess? I can’t.
Re: Even just for reappointing Greenspan, Clinton deserves condemnation.
Greenspan’s 90s policies were responsible and yielded good results. The trouble came in 2002-04 when Greenspan kept interest rates far too low for far too long. I don’t think Clinton can be blamed for ailing to foresee that.
Re: There seems like a good chance that, had Ross Perot not been in the race, that Clinton would have barely won
Depends on what you mean by this. If Perot had not re-entered the race in September of 92 Clinton would have a had a solid win (per polling at the time). If Perot had never been in the race at all– well, that’s a lot harder to guess about. Perot’s main effect on the race was that he brought a second (and non-partisan) critique of George HW Bush’s administration and as such he detached voters from Bush, more than a few of whom migrated to Clinton when Perot dropped out, and not all of whom returned to Perot when he re-entered the race.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Working backward:
Colby: WTF are you talking about? Do you think that the Clinton plan was voted down in the House? And do you know how the House works? How does a minority block passage of a bill favored by the majority in the House? Hint: they can’t!
No, there’s nothing contradictory in saying that growth has been slowed by lack of a particular health care reform, and saying that growth has been fantastic. It just means that the evidence for believing those two propositions at the same time is going to be hard to find, and is going to have to be very strong to be persuasive. Is there any evidence for it at all? No.
What Michel scandals are you referring to? I’m not aware of any. My understanding is that Bob was well regarded by everyone (except Gingrich) and wasn’t at all corrupt. It’s true that Gingrich was the real power in the caucus after the ‘94 election. In my view he became speaker after the ‘94 election because his strategy was successful. He didn’t have real power before that, and of course the party didn’t have any power in the House before that.
Tim: I think I’ve covered most of it. I didn’t say that “deregulation leads to a strong economy.” I said we had a bubble economy that wasn’t the result of the ‘93 tax increases, and that to the extent Matt wants to credit Clinton for a bubble economy, perhaps he is referring to Clinton’s deregulatory efforts, since many ignorant folk on the left blame the bubble economy on deregulation. I didn’t refer to Obama at all in my comment, so I’m not sure why you think that I believe we can judge Obama’s administration after 3 weeks, but can’t judge Cantor’s leadership. I think it’s a bit premature to judge either. How about you?
February 15th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
“Better late than never uh Colby? And you got my point.”
Well, I got what you were trying to say, despite not using any facts. But it’s not really a “point”, it’s an argument that you need to ignore a LOT of facts to accept.
Because no, we can’t judge Obama’s- or anyone else’s- Presidency as a whole in the first three weeks based on some weak-ass appointments. We can’t even DEFINE presidencies based on that- Lincoln nominated the obviously corrupt Simon Cameron, and Cameron had to resign in disgrace. But C-Span just put out new rankings of Presidents today, and Cameron didn’t figure in the discussion at all.
Nor can we define Presidencies based on failed appointments in the first three weeks- Bush Sr. isn’t defined by John Tower. Bush Jr. isn’t defined by Linda Chavez.
For that matter, successful, controversy-free appointments in the first three weeks HAVE ended up being major drags on Presidencies- Regan and Weinberger sailed through, and ended up knee-deep in Iran-Contra. Rumsfeld didn’t have much trouble with his nomination, and look how that worked out.
And then, many cabinet members who HAVE been central to their Presidents’major accomplishments weren’t even AROUND in the first three weeks. Stanton didn’t become secretary of war until 1862. Schultz didn’t take over state until 1982. Summer didn’t get to Treasury until Clinton’s second term, as Rice didn’t take over Stat until Bush Jr.’s second.
Now that I’m done showing off, I’ll make my point- we don’t know how ANY cabinet secretary will work out this early, and even if they work out badly, that’s not necessarily going to define someone’s entire Presidency. So while we CAN judge specific appointments (I do, so far, find Geithner rather lacking), we really can’t judge a Presidency as a whole three weeks in.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
All this partisan back and forth ignores the basic point: Cantor’s tactics are much less likely to be successful electorally than those of House Republicans in 93-94 because there are very few Democrats from conservative districts. A lot of Republican gains in the 90s were a part of the partisan shift of the white South from Democratic to Republican. MSM horse race coverage of politics rarely highlights this, and in this case that blind spot creates especially facile analysis.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
“WTF are you talking about? Do you think that the Clinton plan was voted down in the House? And do you know how the House works? How does a minority block passage of a bill favored by the majority in the House? Hint: they can’t!”
What I’m saying is, the Democrats who defected from Clinton’s reform were, by themselves, also a minority of the House, and had they acted alone, they couldn’t have stopped the reform. But Gingrich and the Republicans worked with them, and the combined group made it clear that Clinton didn’t have the votes if he pushed for it, and that blocked the bill. So Gingrich, in his role as Republican whip, does share some of the credit for the reform being stopped.
I would understand if you said that my point wasn’t clear- but you didn’t. Again, you’re making assertions without the facts or reasoning to back them up, and when you’re being called on it, responding with condescension and insults. And all of that really just damages your own credibility.
“It just means that the evidence for believing those two propositions at the same time is going to be hard to find, and is going to have to be very strong to be persuasive.”
Why? Again with you making assertions without explaining them. The fact that, as you admit, MY’s two assertions don’t contradict each other at all, means you DON’T need any kind of extraordinary evidence, because they are not, even in tandem, an extraordinary claim.
“What Michel scandals are you referring to?”
He got dogged for singing the praises of minstrel shows. It was silly, as I said, but it did weaken him, at a point when a good chunk of his caucus was already following Gingrich instead of him.
“It’s true that Gingrich was the real power in the caucus after the ‘94 election.”
Well, OF COURSE it was, as Gingrich was Speaker and Michel was retired after the ‘94 elections. But as Gingrich was writing the ‘94 electoral strategy, a good chunk of the caucus was listening to him rather than Michel, Michel was a lame-duck, and Michel was stuck in a ticky-tack scandal, Gingrich was the power BEFORE ‘94, too.
“In my view he became speaker after the ‘94 election because his strategy was successful.”
Right- and the fact that the Republicans followed his strategy, rather than Michel’s “go-along-to-get-along” philosophy, shows that he was the power in the cuacus before 1994, too. That’s why the Republican leadership is consulting him now, and why the Times’ isn’t inaccurate in this case.
February 15th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Good. Maybe the Republican Party will be crushed in 2010 and knocked out of national politics for a generation or so, and we can finally get some business done. And maybe when they come back the party won’t be filled almost exclusively with nutbags.
February 15th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Colby, the Clinton plan didn’t lose on a vote in the House. The conventional view is that it died in the Senate, not in the House. Is your claim that George Mitchell and Moynihan and the rest of the weak-kneed Dems were following Gingrich? Or is that the majority party was unable to enforce discipline over its members in the House?
On the economy: I read Matt to be saying that the ‘93 tax hikes caused the economy to perform better than it would have without the law. I read Matt to be saying that the failure of the Clinton health reform in ‘93 caused the economy to perform worse than it would have with the law. Obviously disentangling the effects of these two events isn’t going to be easy or obvious, especially since they are roughly coincident in time and supposedly push performance in opposite directions. I mean, if I say that killing the health reform caused the economy to perform better, while raising taxes caused its performance to lag, wouldn’t you wonder how that “just so” story compares to the evidence? I’d hope you would. The converse requires just as much work.
I see that the controversy over Bob Michel and minstrel shows was from 1988. I can’t see that that weakened him. What weakened him within the caucus was that he was ideologically out of step with most of the members.
February 15th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Clinton ran on welfare reform in 1992.
February 15th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Actually, if you define “success” in purely partisan, electoral terms, Gingrich was a huge success and Cantor is right to follow him. I mean, didn’t the GOP take over the house in ‘94? That’s successful, right? In purely partisan, electoral terms.
Now, there’s a pretty good case to be made that elephants controlling either or both branches from 1994 to 2006 was bad for the country as a whole, but I don’t believe that Cantor or Boehner or any other GOP in a position of power really cares or cared about that silly thing.
February 15th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Re: Clinton ran on welfare reform in 1992.
Clinton ran on “ending welfare as we know it”– a very open-ended statement that could mean anything from 19th century-syle Social Darwinism to implementing Swedish style welfare state.
February 15th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
“Colby, the Clinton plan didn’t lose on a vote in the House.”
Thomas, I know it’s easier to refute arguments I didn’t make, but you just look like a tool when you do that. I never said it lost on a vote in the House, I said it didn’t have the votes to pass in the House, and that was, in part, due to Gingrich. And while the Senate might’ve been a higher-profile rejection of the bill, it was just as dead if the House wasn’t on board. So yeah, it’s fair to say that Gingrich blocked the bill, unless you can provide some evidence that he supported it, or at very least didn’t try to organize his party against it.
“I mean, if I say that killing the health reform caused the economy to perform better, while raising taxes caused its performance to lag, wouldn’t you wonder how that “just so” story compares to the evidence? I’d hope you would. The converse requires just as much work.”
Nice try at shifting the goal posts, but my point isn’t that both of MY’s assertions are true (though if that were my point, all you’ve done to refute it is say “Nuh-uh”). It’s that his two assertions don’t contradict each other, as you clearly and unarguably indicated that they did. Thus, saying they’re both true at the same time doesn’t require any extraordinary evidence as it is a rather ordinary claim.
“I see that the controversy over Bob Michel and minstrel shows was from 1988. I can’t see that that weakened him.”
Then try looking at the situation with a little common sense. Anytime a politician isn’t controlling his own narrative, he’s weakened. Though I think that AND his ideological disposition both contributed to his weakness in his own caucus. Ultimately, that doesn’t matter, though, because my point is simply that Michel wasn’t really running the caucus, Gingrich was. And you agree with me- you’ve already stated that Gingrich made the strategy, and Michel was weak. So you’ve refuted your previous assertion that Michel was “in power”, which is what I was trying to do in the first place. Thanks for the help.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
a Clinton economic program whose opponents set it would wreck the economy
I think Matt’s use of “set” here is the most conclusive proof we’ve seen yet that he uses a dictation device.
While it’s plausible that one could manually mistype “no” for “know,” “maid” for “made,” and other homophonous pairings, making a mistake with phonemically different words is much less likely. “Set” and “said” are pronounced identically when the next word begins with a vowel, going off the same phonological rule that makes “ladder” and “latter” sound the same; a speech-to-text program, therefore, would have no means of distinguishing between them except by context. However, despite their surface homophony, the underlying phonemic structure of “set” and “said” are sufficiently different as to render them very unlikely candidates for human confusion.
So maybe Matt’s typos are just a result of his relying too much on robotic servants.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Colby you are showing off indeed. You work with what you got, after all.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
The current economic downturn is truly “another September 11″. We are living the answer to the question: “Will the country unite, if another September 11 occurs?” Asked and answered. Obama really cares, and wants to help, and I admire him for that, regardless of my opinion on some of his ideas. When I look at some Republicans, whose passion is totally focused on wanting Obama to fail, I wonder if America isn’t getting what it deserves. 46% of America voted for the “drill baby drill” sexy librarian.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
“The current economic downturn is truly “another September 11″. We are living the answer to the question: “Will the country unite, if another September 11 occurs?””
If this is another Sept. 11- a concept I’m by no means convinced of- then at least it looks like we’ve learned SOMETHING from the legislative acts that followed that tragedy. I don’t think much of the Republican’s recent moves, but I’d rather a LITTLE bit of questioning then what we got after 9-11. That brought us the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the Military Commissions Act, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe the Republicans are doing this solely out of a desire for honest dissent, but I’ll take what I can get.
February 15th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Jim Cooper and the more conservative House Democrats definitely played a role in stopping Clinton’s health care push. In fact, the whole notion of “Blue Dog Democrats” emerged among the frustrated conservatives angry at Hillary Clinton’s heavy-handed tactics.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Eric Cantor reminds me of the manager of the asshole store.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Here’s hoping that the Repubs fall flat on their face. We are in a national emergency and these guys are playing partisan politics. They’ve lost my vote for years, if not forever.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
“Not only did Obama have a more decisive win (obviously the absence of a third-party candidate is important here)”
Point of clarification: there were definitely active 3rd party candidates in the 2008 election, as well as the 2 which preceded it. Just because they weren’t a factor doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. That’s what makes the Obama victory so compelling. Not only did he win decisively, he also had the Independent party, the Green party, the Libertarian party and other parties to compete with. The biggest mistake Americans can make in politics is to assume that there are only 2 parties in existence.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Post #3 is wrong to say that fount ‘fountain’ and font ‘a set of printed characters’ are etymologically related. The first is from Latin for a spring of water, but the second is from the French for ‘melt’, since type was originally cast from molten metal.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Elrod- that’s a great point, I completely forgot about Cooper. Didn’t he try to parlay his opposition to Clinton’s reform in a Senate run?
February 16th, 2009 at 12:57 am
Colby, I don’t think we know whether the Clinton plan had the votes to pass in the House. Generally the majority gets what it wants in the House, and given control of the rules and no reasonable alternatives, I think it probably would have passed in the House. The Senate is, again, the place where most people think the plan died.
Saying that two events, roughly coincident, had apparently opposite macroeconomic effects is an unusual claim. I said the juxtaposition of the two claims is odd. So your whole “clearly and unarguably” is just in your little diseased mind.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Cantor has never run in a competitive election, not even a Republican primary. He’s never held a position that he wasn’t “mentored” into. He may have back-room schmoozing skills, but he has little or no experience persuading voters.
February 16th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Politics is politics and I understand that
But clearly you don’t. Anyone who argues that the Republicans are cynical obstructionists for not letting the newly-elected and favorably-rated President merely get his way is arguing against his/her fundamental point: that policy consequences should rule the day. Why? Because you use the President’s approval ratings and his electoral victory statistics as evidence that they are obstructing. This is just a theory, but I bet public oppinion polls have no correlation with future policy consequences…
I am not saying that the House Republicans give a fig about policy consequences at the moment; they are cynical obstructionists. But who on either side has been a ardent champion of rigorous policy debate? No one to my mind. What is unfortunately getting lost in the fray here is the large contingent of people who actually position themselves against this legislation because they do not support the policy consequences.
Something, however, makes me believe that even if some of these Repbulicans have been – and still are – honest purveyors of different solutions to certain policy issues, you would still call them “obstructionists.” Pot-Kettle-Black.
February 16th, 2009 at 10:31 am
“Colby, I don’t think we know whether the Clinton plan had the votes to pass in the House.”
It’s true that we’re both guessing on the outcome, but given the Democrats’ usual inability to control their caucus, Clinton’s early refusal to work with Congressional Democrats, and the high-profile defections like Jim Cooper, I’ve at least got evidence. But again, if you can provide some evidence that Gingrich supported the plan or didn’t organize his party against it, I’ll concede the point, but based on what I’ve found, he did block the plan, albeit with help from other sources.
“Saying that two events, roughly coincident, had apparently opposite macroeconomic effects is an unusual claim.”
No it isn’t. If I eat a cheeseburger and exercise in the same day, it’s not unusual to say that the cheeseburger is bad for my health and the exercise good. Two separate events are NATURALLY going to have different effects, that doesn’t change just because they happened within the same general time frame (And really, a two year period isn’t THAT “coincident”), and it’s not unusual to say so.
“I said the juxtaposition of the two claims is odd.”
And you said that because MY also claimed the economy got better (I can tell because it’s your VERY NEXT SENTENCE). That IS “clearly and unarguably” indicating that you think the two claims are contradictory, and you’re wrong on that. But what’s more, you KNOW all that, and I can tell that you do because instead of refuting points with reasoning or facts, you went back to insults.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:13 am
forget the Gingrich comparison… the point that Yglesias makes even more succinctly is that Cantor is a political hack – and not even a good one at that. I enjoy seeing Cantor on tv and how clearly proud of himself he is, oblivious to the fact that he’s incompetent and heading for irrelevance.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am
The GOP lost because they care and serve only the rich and powerful. The people have had enough. If republicans continue on their present course they are finished. Everybody is watching and the old GOP lies and identity politics games will not work in these times. People are really hurting and the economy is near the tipping point and this is what the news and GOP want to focus on? Grow up. The president has the momentum and GOP obstruction just looks trite and petty. Nobody believes the republicans are doing this country any good. The last 8 years prove what republicans are really good for, absolutely nothing!
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