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Koolaid_Man
10-12-2013, 11:44 AM
:p::lmao:hat:toast:hat:toast:hat:lmao:toast:lmao:h at:toast:p:

Loving every minute of it!!!!!! Obama Playing Hard-Ball Now!!!! Bout Time


http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115134/gop-death-watch-final-days-republican-party

m>s
10-12-2013, 12:18 PM
1 down, now the other to go :lol

get ready for the takeover, gonna slave whip the shit out of you on your way out the door

FuzzyLumpkins
10-12-2013, 12:32 PM
I read that last night. It's an excellent article that goes through specifics in the people and groups and involved. Just really good journalism. TNR is having a bit of a renaissance and I am enjoying it. I reupped my sub and have it in the rotation.

boutons_deux
10-12-2013, 01:39 PM
:p::lmao:hat:toast:hat:toast:hat:lmao:toast:lmao:h at:toast:p:

Loving every minute of it!!!!!! Obama Playing Hard-Ball Now!!!! Bout Time

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115134/gop-death-watch-final-days-republican-party

Tea Partiers React With Fury To World They Can’t Control

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, many pundits and political observers were eager to expunge the nation’s brutal and long-running history of stark racial oppression. They spoke of a “post-racial” society freed from the divisions of tribe, healed of the deep wounds that ached and bled along the color line for centuries.

Even those who were less sanguine about the disappearance of racism — myself included — believed that the election of the nation’s first black president signaled a new era of greater racial harmony and understanding. Surely, a nation ready to be led by a black man was ready to let go many of its oldest and ugliest prejudices.

But that was a very naive notion. It turns out that Obama’s election has, instead, provoked a new civil war, a last battle cry of secession by a group of voters who want no part of a country led by a black man, no place in a world they don’t rule, no home in a society where they are simply one more minority group. Call those folks “Tea Partiers.”

The ultraconservatives who have taken over the Republican Party are motivated by many things — antipathy toward the federal government, conservative religious beliefs and a traditional Republican suspicion of taxes, among them.

But the most powerful force animating their fight is a deep-seated racial antagonism.

Don’t take my word for it. Democracy Corps, a political research and polling group headed by Stanley Greenberg and James Carville, has published a report (http://www.nationalmemo.com/carville-greenberg/why-the-tea-partys-power-keeps-growing/) from a series of focus groups conducted with segments of the Republican Party — moderates, evangelicals and Tea Partiers.

The report confirms that Republicans, especially the Tea Partiers, “are very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority. The race issue is very much alive.” It also notes that “Barack Obama and Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many evangelical and Tea Party voters.”

http://www.nationalmemo.com/tea-partiers-react-with-fury-to-world-they-cant-control/

m>s
10-12-2013, 01:43 PM
i'll openly admit that i won't be a minority in my own damn country. that's why we're going to fix this boutons, and you and your kind aren't prepared for the repercussions of trying to stop us. You're out gunned, out witted, out prepared, and lack the fighting spirit. you'll blog and cry online as we seize back cities until yours is reached, door is kicked in and you're dragged off to the communist prisons or death camps.

m>s
10-12-2013, 01:45 PM
secession will only be a stalling tool to buy time for us to militarize and come back to seize the rest of the american territory

FuzzyLumpkins
10-12-2013, 01:53 PM
They would love you in Leavenworth, fascist.

And 'your country' was destroyed in 1945. You have no home anymore.

Koolaid_Man
10-12-2013, 01:59 PM
i'll openly admit that i won't be a minority in my own damn country. that's why we're going to fix this boutons, and you and your kind aren't prepared for the repercussions of trying to stop us. You're out gunned, out witted, out prepared, and lack the fighting spirit. you'll blog and cry online as we seize back cities until yours is reached, door is kicked in and you're dragged off to the communist prisons or death camps.

naahh we gone make it easy....^ :lol Taliban? Tealiban? same name, same style, same dress, same retardedness, same stench, same outcome :lmao that was easy!!!



http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a68/Koolbreezey/obama_drones_zpsacf17ce8.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a68/Koolbreezey/king-obama-drones_zps6e91c9d3.jpg


http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a68/Koolbreezey/obama-drones-obama-drone-war-iran-iraq-politics-1324452091_zps76a43d06.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a68/Koolbreezey/obr4_zpsb961714a.jpg

Nbadan
10-16-2013, 09:57 PM
GOP Congressman Rips Tea Party Colleagues: 'I'm Not Sure They're Republicans'
Source: National Journal


In a sign of the internal backlash against the right wing of the House Republican Conference, Louisiana Republican Charles Boustany questioned the political allegiances and motivations of his tea party-aligned colleagues and said they had put the GOP majority at risk in the current shutdown fight.

"There are members with a different agenda," Boustany said Wednesday in an interview in his office. "And I'm not sure they're Republicans and I'm not sure they're conservative."

-snip-

Boustany, a former surgeon who is not known as the most outspoken GOP member, said he fears his party's inability to rule the chamber with its own majority is threatening its hold on the House.

-snip-

Only a handful of House Republicans have spoken out publicly against the hardline faction of the House GOP, but Boustany said the shutdown had grown their numbers. "There is a very large silent majority that's getting frustrated with what's happening because of what these outside groups have done by setting false expectations, deliberately misleading the public on some of these issues and commanding allegiance of certain members who falsely place their allegiance to these groups rather than to their constitutional responsibility to govern," he said.

Read more: http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/gop-congressman-rips-tea-party-colleagues-i-m-not-sure-they-re-republicans-20131016

Let the Tea Party get pissed at the GOPers and the GOPers go nuclear on the Tea Party. I think a split is coming; this relationship between the old guard and new guard Republicans is untenable. One side believes in trickle-down economics, creating the best possible environments, for big business to grow (in terms of deregulation, limited taxation, and doing away with anti-monopoly laws, etc). The OG Republicans used the Christian Coalition because they knew these rubes would vote for them based solely on "family values" which is cheap and, a lot of these fundies are not generally selfish people... they are okay with voting against their own best self interests if they think it's the moral thing to do--this is what a lot of Progressives don't get. They're misguided and they're hurting a lot more people than just themselves voting for Reps, but, there you have it... they're not SMART. And now, the worst case scenario for the OG has taken place: these rubes they cultivated to gain seats and presidencies for their own agenda have assumed a place in office and draped themselves with the flag of the GOP.

These people are insane, illiterate, homophobic, misogynistic, fundamentalist doomseers who will do anything to get their way. I think the OG thought they could be controled. Now they've discovered that they can't. They'll expel the Tea Party, I have no doubt. They know they'll split the vote in the short term, but in the long term it will be better for their corporate overlords, and that's what they really care about.

FuzzyLumpkins
10-16-2013, 10:02 PM
As long as TX, FL, AZ, etc keep gerrymandering districts, I don't see how they can stop these types of candidates from primarying in those districts. I think it's funny that their travesty to democracy is giving them a big shit sandwich but they made that bed.

All this speaks to is a need for a new way of determining state reps.

pgardn
10-16-2013, 10:15 PM
i'll openly admit that i won't be a minority in my own damn country. that's why we're going to fix this boutons, and you and your kind aren't prepared for the repercussions of trying to stop us. You're out gunned, out witted, out prepared, and lack the fighting spirit. you'll blog and cry online as we seize back cities until yours is reached, door is kicked in and you're dragged off to the communist prisons or death camps.

That WWII German Black bread you are still eating has hallucinogenic fungus growing on it.

AntiChrist
10-16-2013, 10:18 PM
Again, I thank you poor millenials for paying for my mom's health care.

FuzzyLumpkins
10-16-2013, 10:19 PM
Again, I thank you poor millenials for paying for my mom's health care.

It's looking more and more like millenials will be paying the fine. But thank you for being a slimy shitbag.

AntiChrist
10-16-2013, 10:28 PM
It's looking more and more like millenials will be paying the fine. But thank you for being a slimy shitbag.

I hope most of you do that, because it will throw ACA into a death spiral.

FuzzyLumpkins
10-16-2013, 10:31 PM
I hope most of you do that, because it will throw ACA into a death spiral.

Why? It just will mean that the insurance companies are going to have issues with their bottomline. I have no idea of their margins or the like and I doubt you do either.

It's certainly not going to effect the medicare expansion funding for example. To the contrary if the treasury collects the fine then it just menas more money for the treasury.

AntiChrist
10-16-2013, 10:40 PM
Why? It just will mean that the insurance companies are going to have issues with their bottomline. I have no idea of their margins or the like and I doubt you do either.

It's certainly not going to effect the medicare expansion funding for example. To the contrary if the treasury collects the fine then it just menas more money for the treasury.

Adverse selection death spiral -- look into it

FuzzyLumpkins
10-16-2013, 10:47 PM
Adverse selection death spiral -- look into it

Underwriting guidelines of the ACA -- look into it and try and compare contrast with what you are getting at.

Look into what risk categories are allowed and look into cost sharing limits associated therein. Then I want you to look into the relationship between supply demand and cost. Consider how all of that relates and then think about what I mean when I say "It just will mean that the insurance companies are going to have issues with their bottomline."

Nbadan
10-16-2013, 10:48 PM
The mainstream media should take some notes on how journalism works, rather than simply pushing the lazy both sides are at fault false equivalency. This is a nice story of how the Republican establishment helped create a machine that they could not end up controlling, and which almost destroyed the country with folks clinging to a delusional ideology, funded by millions of untraceable money, crafted in the echo chamber of hate media.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-republican-suicide-machine-20131009

baseline bum
10-16-2013, 10:50 PM
I don't buy all this hyperbole. Used to hear the same shit about the Democrats when the senate blue dogs sabotaged any chance of getting a decent healthcare bill.

FuzzyLumpkins
10-16-2013, 10:57 PM
I don't buy all this hyperbole. Used to hear the same shit about the Democrats when the senate blue dogs sabotaged any chance of getting a decent healthcare bill.

Only reason why I give it credence is because the Chamber of Commerce and most business lobby's are pissed as hell. If they start looking elsewhere then the GOP is pretty fucked.

You make an excellent point nonetheless. It speaks very much how party central authority is eroding. That is an excellent thing in my view.

AntiChrist
10-16-2013, 11:04 PM
Only reason why I give it credence is because the Chamber of Commerce and most business lobby's are pissed as hell. If they start looking elsewhere then the GOP is pretty fucked.

You make an excellent point nonetheless. It speaks very much how party central authority is eroding. That is an excellent thing in my view.

I doubt they are pissed -- Obama delayed the employer mandate. You and your fellow Obamabots? Not so much

FuzzyLumpkins
10-16-2013, 11:12 PM
I doubt they are pissed -- Obama delayed the employer mandate. You and your fellow Obamabots? Not so much

It's shit like this that makes me so hostile to you. I have never voted for Obama and outlined why I do not like the Chicago politician.

The CoC et al for the past two weeks has been trying to get the GOP to take steps to stop the shenanigans. Apparently they have been heard because the shenanigans did stop.

However, if I am one of them I have to wonder whether or not going forward I would continue to be represented by the GOP. Who is to say that some antiestablishment type won't be put up on the speakers chair? They did try to usurp Beohner recently and it is abundantly obvious that their interests do not align with the tea party. The tea party is much more than half a dozen southern democrats.

ChumpDumper
10-17-2013, 10:51 AM
I hope most of you do that, because it will throw ACA into a death spiral.Good.

Then we can work on a real universal system.

scott
10-17-2013, 11:36 AM
The Irony is that it was the Gerrymander effort in deeply red states that has facilitated the rise of the Tea Party and made the "moderate" Republicans vulnerable to primary challenges from the extreme right.

"Moderate" Republicans were able to win majorities in certain states by running against Liberals. In their greed to ensure they NEVER lost, they turned extreme right-wingers into viable candidates.

Nbadan
10-19-2013, 12:05 AM
FreedomWorks chief Matt Kibbe said Friday said that divisions on the right could cause the Republican Party to split in two.


During an apperance on CSPAN, the tea party leader responded to a piece in The Washington Times indcating that some "prominent Republicans are saying that if the GOP loses the 2016 presidential elections, the party will go the way of the Whigs — or formally split into a moderate party and a conservative party."

"I think that's a real possibility because you're seeing this clash between the new generation and — to me, it's not just the old wing of the Republican Party versus the new wing —you're really seeing a disintermediation in politics. It's already happened with the Democratic Party," Kibbe said. "It's happening with the Republican Party now. And grassroots activists have an ability to self-organize, to fund candidates they're more interested in, going right around the Republican National Committee and senatorial committee."

"That's the new reality," he continued. "Everything's more democratized and Republicans should come to terms with that. They still wanna control things from the top down and if they do that, there will absolutely be a split. But my prediction would be that we take over the Republican Party and they go the way of the whigs."

-snip-

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/freedomworks-ceo-a-real-possibility-that-the-gop-splits-in-two

boutons_deux
10-19-2013, 06:16 AM
[QUOTE=Nbadan;6887232]FreedomWorks chief Matt Kibbe said Friday said that divisions on the right could cause the Republican Party to split in two.

What We DoFreedomWorks recruits, educates, trains and mobilizes millions of volunteer activists to fight for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom.

Why We Do ItFreedomWorks believes individual liberty and the freedom to compete increases consumer choices and provides individuals with the greatest control over what they own and earn.

http://www.freedomworks.org/about/about-freedomworks

The Repugs splitting in two would certainly help the Dems win the WH, but I doubt it would help Dems much red states, that are pretty much irredeemably Repug due to gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement.

Repugs in some states plan to change their electoral system from Presidential winner takes all to proportional system by district

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/pennsylvania-electoral-vote-bill-is-on-the-move

iow, the Repugs KNOW they are screwed demographically, so they know they must screw democracy.

RandomGuy
10-20-2013, 01:11 PM
i'll openly admit that i won't be a minority in my own damn country. that's why we're going to fix this boutons, and you and your kind aren't prepared for the repercussions of trying to stop us. You're out gunned, out witted, out prepared, and lack the fighting spirit. you'll blog and cry online as we seize back cities until yours is reached, door is kicked in and you're dragged off to the communist prisons or death camps.

meh. I would love to see part of the country simply go away and become a libertarian utopia, so you they can have all the little government they want, and take the jeebotard, creationist, anti-science dipshits with them.

It would become a cesspit of stupidity, corruption, and misery, then degenerate into feudal warlords and fall behind economically as just another failed -ism, to be spoken of with the same derision as communism itself.

By all means... pick some states and go.

RandomGuy
10-20-2013, 01:14 PM
Only reason why I give it credence is because the Chamber of Commerce and most business lobby's are pissed as hell. If they start looking elsewhere then the GOP is pretty fucked.

You make an excellent point nonetheless. It speaks very much how party central authority is eroding. That is an excellent thing in my view.

http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/2722/TMW2011-08-17colorlowres.jpg



from 2011....

FuzzyLumpkins
10-20-2013, 01:14 PM
meh. I would love to see part of the country simply go away and become a libertarian utopia, so you they can have all the little government they want, and take the jeebotard, creationist, anti-science dipshits with them.

It would become a cesspit of stupidity, corruption, and misery, then degenerate into feudal warlords and fall behind economically as just another failed -ism, to be spoken of with the same derision as communism itself.

By all means... pick some states and go.

Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. GO!

RandomGuy
10-20-2013, 01:19 PM
Again, I thank you poor millenials for paying for my mom's health care.

Sorry, the cost shifting happens anyway, Obamacare or not. This has been explained to you. I am paying for it, you are paying for it, with every good/service you buy.

RandomGuy
10-20-2013, 01:24 PM
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. GO!

It reminds me nothing so much of a brief blurb from one of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

A civilization decided to rid itself of all the "useless" people, like telephone sanitizers, packed them all up into spaceships and sent them off, only to die off from a disease spread by dirty telephones.

I would not care to eat produce or meat out of such a country.

m>s
10-20-2013, 02:08 PM
Were taking Oklahoma and Kansas with us along with the rest of the south

FuzzyLumpkins
10-20-2013, 03:54 PM
Were taking Oklahoma and Kansas with us along with the rest of the south

You skinheads and your meth.

boutons_deux
10-26-2013, 09:54 PM
The fallacy of the Republican “moderate”: Stop being nostalgic for the right (http://www.salon.com/2013/10/26/the_fallacy_of_the_republican_moderate_stop_being_ nostalgic_for_the_right/)

A raft of news coverage points back to the good old days, when Republicans were reasonable. The history is way off


This recent display of bomb-throwing obstructionism by Republicans in Congress evokes another painful, historically embarrassing chapter in the Republican Party — that of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose anti-Communist crusade was allowed by Republican elders to expand unchecked, unnecessarily and unfairly tarnishing the reputations of thousands of people with “Red Scare” accusations of Communist affiliation. Finally Senator McCarthy was brought up short during the questioning of the United States Army’s chief counsel, Joseph N. Welch, who at one point demanded the senator’s attention, then said: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He later added: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out. And eventually party elders in the mold of my grandfather were able to realign the party with its brand promise: The Republican Party is (or should be) the Stewardship Party.



According to Taft, McCarthy’s “anti-Communist crusade was allowed by Republican elders to expand unchecked” and it was ultimately forces like his grandfather who put that crusade in check.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/26/the_fallacy_of_the_republican_moderate_stop_being_ nostalgic_for_the_right/

boutons_deux
10-27-2013, 08:58 AM
Why Atheists Can’t Be Republicans

The secular have no place in today's GOP.

Atheists are secularists, and a secularist cannot be a member of today’s Republican Party. You’re either one or the other. You cannot be both. Now, I am acutely aware that a great number of atheists identify with the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, but this is comical. A lack of evidence is why atheists don’t believe in God. But to believe in libertarianism is in itself an act of faith, because libertarianism has not only never been tried anywhere, but an overwhelming number of economists reject the philosophy as little more than “capitalism with the gloves off” — a condition that would only exacerbate the winner-takes-all society we have today.

If an atheist is looking for political evidence, the evidence we have is that not only is today’s

Republican Party a theocratic sponsor, it’s also a party that has been proven wrong on just about everything in the past three decades or more:

from evolution to climate change,

trickle-down economics,

that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators,

that the Bush tax cuts would lead to jobs. It didn’t. It added $3 trillion to the debt.

They were wrong

that the stimulus would trigger inflation,

that austerity stimulates an economy and

that universal healthcare is worse than slavery.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/atheists-cant-be-republicans?akid=11085.187590.Qzbjqg&rd=1&src=newsletter915483&t=10

A major, perhaps primary, feature of the "Christian" theocratic, supremacist brain-dead assholes is that they are just as intolerant and close minded as all religious fanatics, extremists, the TX Taleban being an outstanding example

boutons_deux
10-28-2013, 09:23 AM
internecine warfare: centrist Repugs violently de-snotting you tea baggers

“Hopefully we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” said former Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio, whose new political group, Defending Main Street, aims to raise $8 million to fend off tea-party challenges against more mainstream Republican incumbents. “We’re going to be very aggressive and we’re going to get in their faces.”…

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/24/head-of-centrist-republican-pac-lets-go-beat-the-snot-out-of-tea-partiers-in-the-primaries-next-year/

boutons_deux
10-28-2013, 03:42 PM
Ex-GOP Senator: Republican Party Totally Disconnected from Reality

I suppose the obvious answer is that the party is so far off to the right that it can’t even come to grips with reality in America today. Now, that’s the easy answer because it’s clear that the Republicans, through their most extreme members, are showing that tendency.

The Republican Party started to purge its moderates … starting in about ‘86. I was part of that purge in ‘88 when I lost as senator. Now you’re left with the religious right and the rural votes — and that’s it.

http://www.alternet.org/ex-gop-senator-republican-party-totally-disconnected-reality?akid=11087.187590.Vdx2Pu&rd=1&src=newsletter916138&t=7

boutons_deux
10-28-2013, 04:42 PM
cuccuinelli losing in VA, Bitch McConnel behind in KY

and now

Sam Brownback, who has served in Kansas as a Congressman, U.S. Senator, and now Governor, is in danger of being unseated after one term, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted for KWCH-TV in Wichita. Today, the Democratic ticket of Paul Davis and Jill Docking edges the Republican ticket of Brownback and Jeff Colyer, 43% to 39%.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/26/1250796/-Shock-Early-Poll-Brownback-Trails-Democrat-Paul-Davis-in-Kansas?detail=email

boutons_deux
10-30-2013, 03:35 PM
the old lesbian in hot water boiled by tea baggers

Poll: Lindsey Graham May Face Runoff

As the Republican primary campaign in South Carolina’s U.S. Senate race begins to intensify, incumbent Lindsey Graham’s poll numbers are sliding. Graham now polls (http://www.winthrop.edu/winthroppoll/default.aspx?id=9804) at 51 percent against his three opponents; if he fails to get above 50 percent in the primary, he’ll face a runoff election against the second-place candidate.

Graham has received a number of high-profile endorsements in his campaign for a third term: President George W. Bush, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz have all donated to his Senate campaign. Despite these notable donors, however, Graham is losing support in one key voting bloc: the Tea Party wing of the South Carolina Republican Party.

“I think I can safely speak for just about everyone in the Tea Party that we don’t like Lindsey Graham,” Keith Tripp, a member of the Laurens County Tea Party, told (http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/30/politics/lindsey-graham-challenge/) CNN.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/poll-lindsey-graham-may-face-runoff/

boutons_deux
11-19-2013, 03:13 PM
PPP Poll: Dems Could Win 'Sizable Majority' in House in 2014 - Pickup Opps in 49 of 61 Districts (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/20/1249208/-PPP-Poll-Dems-Could-Win-Sizable-Majority-in-House-in-2014-Pickup-Opps-in-49-of-61-Districts)

A new round of post-shutdown polling shows that Democrats not only have an opportunity to take back the House of Representatives next year, but that they could win a sizable majority if voter anger over the shutdown carries into 2014....

Republicans will likely find this third round of surveys to be the most alarming yet, given that the new results show substantial Republican vulnerability in many districts that were not even supposed to be close. Incumbent Republicans trail generic Democrats in 15 of the 25 districts we most recently surveyed. This means generic Democrats lead in 37 of 61 districts polled since the beginning of the government shutdown. Democrats only need to net 17 seats in order to retake the House.

And the bad news for Republicans doesn’t stop there, because in the minority of the 61 districts where Republicans lead in the initial head-to-head question, 11 more Republicans fall behind once voters are informed that the Republican supported the government shutdown and 1 race becomes tied. This means that our results indicate Democrats have pickup opportunities in an astounding 49 of the 61 districts surveyed.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/20/1249208/-PPP-Poll-Dems-Could-Win-Sizable-Majority-in-House-in-2014-Pickup-Opps-in-49-of-61-Districts

baseline bum
11-19-2013, 05:50 PM
Isn't a generic candidate usually a lot better than a real one in a vote for congress though? Of course generic candidate is going to beat actual piece of shit incumbent when congress has a 9% approval rating.

ErnestLynch
11-19-2013, 06:18 PM
Yeah I remember them saying that after LBJ and the Vietnam war about the dems, then Nixon resigned and Carter was elected and the republicans were dead again....then they said the democrat party was done during the Reagan Revolution, then they declared the republicans dead when Obama was elected and now we're back to the democrats being in trouble again....

8 years is a long time to put up with the bad ideas of either of these parties. I wish there would be a 'leave people the fuck alone' party.

boutons_deux
11-22-2013, 01:41 PM
In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today.

The outsize influence of hard-line elements in the party base is doing to the GOP what supporters of Gene McCarthy and George McGovern did to the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s — radicalizing its image and standing in the way of its revitalization.

While there are no catchy phrases for the Republicans of 2013, their image problems are readily apparent in national polls. The GOP has come to be seen as the more extreme party, the side unwilling to compromise or negotiate seriously to tackle the economic turmoil that challenges the nation.

If a values backlash and racial-political polarization helped forge the staunch conservative bloc, the conservative media has reinforced it.

The politicization of news consumption is certainly not new; it’s been apparent in more than 20 years of data collected by the Pew Research Center. What is new is a bloc of voters who rely more on conservative media than on the general news media to comprehend the world. Pew found that 54 percent of staunch conservatives report that they regularly watch Fox News, compared with 44 percent who read a newspaper and 30 percent who watch network news regularly. Newspapers and/or television networks top all other news sources for other blocs of voters, both on the right and on the left. Neither CNN, NPR or the New York Times has an audience close to that size among other voting blocs.

Conservative Republicans make up as much as 50 percent of the audiences (http://www.people-press.org/2012/09/27/section-4-demographics-and-political-views-of-news-audiences/) for Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’ Reilly. There is nothing like this on the left. MSNBC’s “Hardball” and “The Rachel Maddow Show” attract significantly fewer liberal Democrats.
I
see little reason to believe that the staunch conservative bloc will wither away or splinter; it will remain a dominant force in the GOP and on the national stage. At the same time, however, I see no indication that its ideas about policy, governance and social issues will gain new adherents. They are far beyond the mainstream.

Any Republican efforts at reinvention face this dilemma: While staunch conservatives help keep GOP lawmakers in office, they also help keep the party out of the White House. Quite simply, the Republican Party has to appeal to a broader cross section of the electorate to succeed in presidential elections.

This became apparent last fall. Voters generally agreed with the GOP that a smaller government is preferable to a larger, activist one, and therefore they disapproved of Obamacare. However, exit polls showed popular support for legalizing same-sex marriage and giving illegal immigrants opportunities for citizenship.

This combination of conservative and liberal views is typical. To win, both parties must appeal to the mixed values of the electorate. But it will be very hard for the Republican Party, given the power of the staunch conservatives in its ranks.

Of course, the Democrats of the 1970s were able to overcome their obstacles. All it took was Watergate, an oil embargo and a presidential pardon of Nixon for Jimmy Carter to secure a thin victory in 1976. Not even the most frustrated Republicans could hope for a similar turn of events.


The nation’s demographic and social shifts (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-demographic-shift-could-hurt-democrats-too/2013/03/08/de82ab38-8128-11e2-a350-49866afab584_story.html)have also played a role in galvanizing the new bloc. Conservative Republicans are more likely (33 percent) than the public at large (22 percent) to see the growing number of Latinos in America as a change for the worse. Similarly, 46 percent of conservatives see increasing rates of interracial marriage as a positive development, compared with 66 percent of the public overall.



To the conservative base, Obama, as an African American in the White House, may be a symbol of how America has changed. Unease with him sets conservative Republicans apart from other voting blocs — including moderate Republicans, who have hardly been fans of the president. For example, a fall 2011 national survey (http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/)found 63 percent of conservative Republicans reporting that Obama made them angry, compared with 29 percent of the public overall and 40 percent of moderate Republicans.

Via Breibart: (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/03/22/Pew-is-Estranged-from-Conservatives)


. He knocks conservative media for attracting a highly conservative audience, then asserts: “There is nothing like this on the left.” Yet a Pew study released just this week (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-numbers-prove-it-the-republican-party-is-estranged-from-america/2013/03/22/3050734c-900a-11e2-9abd-e4c5c9dc5e90_story_2.html) shows that MSNBC is more skewed towards opinion over news than any other network, including Fox.


By ‘nothing like this on the left,’ Kohuc is stating (obviously) that the left does not depend on cable television for news, or opinion sites. In words the author at Breitbart can understand: We read and stuff too.

TeyshaBlue
11-22-2013, 01:43 PM
lol thinkprogress. lol alternet. lol Daily Kos. lol trothout. lol rawstory. lol simpleton.:lmao

BradLohaus
11-23-2013, 09:32 PM
iow, the Repugs KNOW they are screwed demographically

Bingo, that's what this all comes down to. You have to give the D's credit; their plan to elect a new people looks like it will result in a permanent Left dominated federal government in the future. (Don't think that this "just happened"; a Labor politician in Britain admitted that they sought out non-European immigration to England "to rub the Right's nose in diversity and to win elections")

I remember reading that Romney won 70% of the white Protestant vote and 60% of the white Catholic vote. Think about that. That would have given him a landslide victory not that long ago at all; instead he lost. If Hillary wins then I think we have seen the thread title come to life. Some Dem once said, "We will beat the Republicans by making them turn into Democrats." That's exactly what will happen, and they did it through immigration. When Texas goes blue (which is a 100% certainty BTW, just a matter of when - surely you don't think that a Texas that is 25% white in 25 years is going to vote for conservatives, do you?) then that's it.

Nbadan
11-24-2013, 01:54 AM
Republican Rep: 'The GOP Coalition Constitutes A Shrinking Portion Of The Electorate'
TOM KLUDT – NOVEMBER 18, 2013, 6:58 AM EST


The Republican Party is at serious risk of running out of Republican voters, according to a senior GOP lawmaker.

“Republicans need to understand that their political problems are neither tactical nor transitory,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said, as quoted by the Washington Post. “They are structural and demographic. The hard truth is the GOP coalition constitutes a shrinking portion of the electorate. To change that daunting reality, Republicans must appeal to groups that are currently outside their ranks or risk becoming a permanent minority.”

A former pollster, Cole is known to speak candidly about the political problems facing the GOP. He broke with his party late last year when he said that Republicans should accept President Barack Obama's offer to extend middle income tax cuts in the near-term. Cole also said that Republicans would be damaged politically by the recent government shutdown.

###

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/republican-rep-the-gop-coalition-constitutes-a-shrinking-portion-of-the-electorate

boutons_deux
11-25-2013, 03:12 PM
Why Republicans should be very, very afraid

For all the built-in advantages that should favor the Republicans in 2014 (from gerrrymandered one-party House districts to a daunting Senate map for the Democrats), I have yet to find a GOP strategist totally convinced that the party will hold its House majority. In similar fashion, Democratic consultants talk nervously about “the funky atmosphere” among the voters who soundly re-elected President Barack Obama less than a year ago.

But the more likely outcome is that, even in defeat, the tea party wing of the Republican Party will draw the wrong lessons from its repudiation by a lopsided majority of voters. Instead of recognizing that House Republicans went too far in their implacable and implausible demands to defund Obamacare, the right wing of the GOP may perversely conclude that its congressional leaders hoisted the white flag too soon. The NBC News/WSJ poll (http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/11/20920095-first-thoughts-a-divided-gop-cannot-stand?lite) picks up this split: 72 percent of tea party backers approve the scorched-earth tactics of the congressional GOP, while only 42 percent of non-tea-party Republicans hold similar views.

Not too long ago it would have been easy to predict that the 2014 elections would be a referendum on the rollout of Obamacare. Today, a better guess would be that the health care law will prove to be one of those partisan issues in which supporters and critics cancel each other out. There will be the inevitable clash of testimonial ads: Democrats will favor weepy spots featuring Americans getting health insurance for the first time, while Republicans will go with small-business owners wailing about how Obamacare forced them to cut jobs. And most voters will wisely hit the mute button.

What this suggests is that the after-effects from the government shutdown and the debt ceiling dance of doom are apt to become the dominant voting issues of 2014. That is why, despite the down-with-all-incumbents mood among the voters, Republicans are disproportionately at risk. Voters are accurately blaming the Republicans for the government shutdown — and that stigma will be hard to escape.

It is telling, in the NBC/WSJ poll, that 65 percent of voters think the government shutdown is hurting the economy and 63 percent describe a failure to approve a debt ceiling bill as “a serious problem.” These are memories that are not going to be erased with a handshake deal at the White House and the reopening of the national parks.

In 1914, cheering throngs all over Europe sent their boys off to war confident that victory could be achieved in a few months with limited casualties. Instead, for the next four years, armies on both sides endured horrible death tolls in the trenches of France. And, increasingly, soldiers found it impossible to recall what they were fighting for.

So it was when the House Republicans shut down the government confident that they could win major concessions from the White House in a few days. Now they are hunkered down in the trenches, with public opinion turning against them, desperate for any rationale to abandon the battlefield. But they cannot simply surrender because … well … that would mean that they have been bleeding in the polls for nothing. Rarely has a political party lost so much so rapidly from a series of strategic blunders. So, for a change, I believe the hype. Republicans will need a long time to recover from their biggest Capitol Hill debacle in memory.

http://news.yahoo.com/why-republicans-should-be-very--very-afraid-192943188.html

and the debt ceiling debacle, aka sequestration, kicks in even worse in January, as certainly nothing will happen in Congress, esp the House, to stop it.

Nbadan
11-26-2013, 03:06 PM
It's going to be interesting what happens in the 14 midterms...traditionally, the party in the WH loses seats..the Dems certainly have more seats up in the Senate, but there is no indication yet that the GOP is making gains in the seats that are open.....nominating Tea Bag candidates could hurt the GOP again....which is why I think the GOP needs to distance itself from Cruz and the Teabaggers ASAP...

....Christie is the only GOP candidate that could challenge Hillary or Elizabeth Warren or a combination of the two...but the teabaggers could undermine christie

EVAY
11-26-2013, 03:27 PM
As a couple of folks have pointed out, the dems or the republicans are declared dead every few years following one or another's election disaster.

The Republicans have definitely made themselves out to be a fringe right party by their recent vociferous idiocy ( e.g. Crus, et.al.). However, if the Dems cannot get Obmacare functioning without increasing everybody's insurance rates (and this seems to be a more plausible reality day-by-day), then they will simply hand the reins of government back to the republicans. Why? Because the one thing that the American electorate hates worse than an ideologue is ineffective government.

EVAY
11-26-2013, 03:29 PM
I agree with the observation that right now the Republicans bear a more striking resemblance to the Dems of the McGovern/McCarthy era than they do of any period since then. And the Dems did destroy themselves in the process of going further and further left and with increasingly strident voices. BUT...the repubs can still recover if the Dems shoot themselves in the foot, which they seem quite capable of doing.

boutons_deux
11-26-2013, 03:30 PM
"Christie is the only GOP candidate"

If Bush's Brain can't marginalize the tea baggers, the tea baggers will not vote for Satan-Hugging Christie, esp since they are too stupid to see that his "moderate" label which is totally false.

however, Christie as Pres would epitomize the USA as larded up with fatass greasebags.

Nbadan
11-26-2013, 03:38 PM
if the Dems cannot get Obmacare functioning without increasing everybody's insurance rates

As the web site works out it bugs and more and more people sign on I think you'll see more competitive rates...right now some private insurance companies are holding out hoping that other providers will take more of the risk from people who are high risk or have diagnosed conditions...

Nbadan
11-26-2013, 03:42 PM
And the Dems did destroy themselves in the process of going further and further left..

i'm not seeing that.....President Obama has kept us out of two wars now that McCain and Romney would have fought...Iran and Syria...but it's not like those on the left are happy about the domestic spying and his constant support of bankers and corporate americans...

boutons_deux
11-26-2013, 03:47 PM
Dems did destroy themselves in the process of going further and further left and with increasingly strident voices

bullshit. Dems strident? moving further and further left? They are to the right of Repugs of St Ronnie era.

EVAY
11-26-2013, 03:50 PM
bullshit. Dems strident? moving further and further left? They are to the right of Repugs of St Ronnie era.

No b_d...read it more carefully. I was saying that the Dems of the McGovern/McCarthy era destroyed themselves by becoming ever more strident....THEN...NOT NOW. Ever since Clinton and Gore the Dems have looked a bit more centrist. That is why they are looking reasonable as the repugs look more and more far-right fringe.

boutons_deux
11-26-2013, 04:43 PM
No b_d...read it more carefully. I was saying that the Dems of the McGovern/McCarthy era destroyed themselves by becoming ever more strident....THEN...NOT NOW. Ever since Clinton and Gore the Dems have looked a bit more centrist. That is why they are looking reasonable as the repugs look more and more far-right fringe.

McGovern, etc were ANTI-WAR, and Repugs painted them as chickenshits, traitors, unpatriotic, Love or Leave it, My Country Right or Wrong, but eventually McGovern was "winner" since the chicken-shit Americans forced to the end to the VN war.

EVAY
11-26-2013, 05:18 PM
McGovern, etc were ANTI-WAR, and Repugs painted them as chickenshits, traitors, unpatriotic, Love or Leave it, My Country Right or Wrong, but eventually McGovern was "winner" since the chicken-shit Americans forced to the end to the VN war.

Yes, I realize that they were anti-war. I met and liked McGovern, in fact. I was also anti-war for the Vietnamese war. But none of that changes the fact that the presentation that the Dems made at that time was, in fact, strident. They claimed that anyone who disagreed with them about the war was morally corrupt and out to oppress the wonderful, peace-loving Viet-Cong. The war was wrong...but just as the far right now claims that those who disagree with them about abortion or war trials or (fill-in-the-blank) they are morally deficient, it pisses people off. That was my whole point...not that they were necessarily wrong about their positions, but that they were so strident and morally self-righteous that they turned off the very people they were trying to convince...just like far right is doing today.

Extreme positions may be incidentally correct or erroneous, but extreme positions screamed at the voting public are seldom convincing. People really do get tired of being told that they are morally inferior, and they tend to vote against those who continually tell them that.

Why is it that I am not surprised that it is difficult for you to understand this?

boutons_deux
11-26-2013, 05:23 PM
"the presentation that the Dems made at that time was, in fact, strident"

how get attention and protest the war otherwise? 100Ks in the streets, students on strike, finals cancelled, etc, etc. It worked.

That's when fat blue collar workers and police and fireman started sewing American flags on everything, to show they support America's unmitigated, murderous, botched VN war. My Country Right or Wrong. Well, all the flag wavers were wrong, because America was wrong.

EVAY
11-26-2013, 05:53 PM
^^^^Yes and the slogan of the far right was also 'My country - Love it or Leave it'. Nowadays the far right is threatening secession and the Dems are saying "my Country - Love it or Leave it". Sorry if you fail to see the parallels.

boutons_deux
11-26-2013, 08:23 PM
Dems are saying "my Country - Love it or Leave it"

link?

exstatic
11-28-2013, 08:15 AM
^^^^Yes and the slogan of the far right was also 'My country - Love it or Leave it'. Nowadays the far right is threatening secession and the Dems are saying "my Country - Love it or Leave it". Sorry if you fail to see the parallels.

More like "Secession is illegal and treason, you idiot."

EVAY
11-28-2013, 10:38 AM
More like "Secession is illegal and treason, you idiot."

:lol:toast Well, actually when I heard some folks proudly saying they had signed the secession petitions I told them I really wished they would go. I don't know why they are still here. "Just because you can't get a majority of people in your state to leave with you doesn't mean you should stay. Please...can I help you pack?"