The Fiscal Cliff

[venkman]

The GOP strategy should be to win elections and repeal Obamacare, cut spending, and reform transfer payment programs. Everything they are currently doing (and have been doing for the last 6-8 years) is counterproductive to winning elections, which is the ONLY way for them to accomplish anything. Elections matter. Trying to blackmail Obama into repealing his flagship social program is asinine and purely a stunt to raise money off of.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

I knew you'd say that. Sure, I guess having the GOP in control of all branch of the fedgov is preferable to having the dems in charge. But: 1) Republicans won't repeal Obamacare. They were never serious about it to begin with other than symbolic (meaningless) votes. After 2014? Obamacare is locked in. It's over. They will not repeal Obamacare if they had both branches. 2) We saw what happened the last time the GOP was in the drivers seat: the Mediare prescription drug plan, giant deficits, etc. They did not reverse or slow the growth of government. I'm convinced that the GOPat the Washington establishment level is just committed to big government as the Democrats. Cruz and Lee are actually doing what they said they'd do at election time.

Sure, elections have consequences. So we just surrender because Obama won an election? The democrats never do that: they keep fighting for what they believe in and don't give up. No wonder they kicked our ass. The Cruz/Lee plan may have worked if the GOP leadership wasn't trying to undermine the effort.

But hey, just elect republicans! Just keep donating to the RNC!

Whatever.

[venkman]

Absolutely correct. When you are out of power, you work on the parts of your agenda for which there is widespread support. Obamacare is unpopular and may yet collapse under it's own weight, but there is not a groundswell to dismantle it yet. There IS widespread support for spending cuts and entitlement reform. Republicans had a chance to tie the debt ceiling to spending in general again, and they screwed the pooch by tying it to Obamacare instead.

It won't collapse. it will morph into single payer.

[il Padrino Ute]

It won't collapse. it will morph into single payer.

Which is what Dear Leader wanted from the start.

[SandYFan]

Which is what Dear Leader wanted from the start.

Absolutely. Create a piece of crap hybrid system, and when that fails, swoop in to save the day with single-payer. It's been the long con the entire time.

[woot]

Absolutely. Create a piece of crap hybrid system, and when that fails, swoop in to save the day with single-payer. It's been the long con the entire time.

While most democrats wouldn't share the "long con" sentiment, it did seem pretty universal (in my quite limited experience) that the ACA was important mostly as a stepping stone toward real change, rather than being any good of itself. Much of the frustration over the shutdown among Obamacare supporters has included mention of how heavily-compromised and diluted the bill was to begin with.

[New Mexican Disaster]

I knew you'd say that. Sure, I guess having the GOP in control of all branch of the fedgov is preferable to having the dems in charge. But: 1) Republicans won't repeal Obamacare. They were never serious about it to begin with other than symbolic (meaningless) votes. After 2014? Obamacare is locked in. It's over. They will not repeal Obamacare if they had both branches. 2) We saw what happened the last time the GOP was in the drivers seat: the Mediare prescription drug plan, giant deficits, etc. They did not reverse or slow the growth of government. I'm convinced that the GOPat the Washington establishment level is just committed to big government as the Democrats. Cruz and Lee are actually doing what they said they'd do at election time.

Sure, elections have consequences. So we just surrender because Obama won an election? The democrats never do that: they keep fighting for what they believe in and don't give up. No wonder they kicked our ass. The Cruz/Lee plan may have worked if the GOP leadership wasn't trying to undermine the effort.

But hey, just elect republicans! Just keep donating to the RNC!

Whatever.

This is the first thing I have ever read written by you in a political area that I have agreed with.

[venkman]

This is the first thing I have ever read written by you in a political area that I have agreed with.

[UVACoug]

I knew you'd say that. Sure, I guess having the GOP in control of all branch of the fedgov is preferable to having the dems in charge. But: 1) Republicans won't repeal Obamacare. They were never serious about it to begin with other than symbolic (meaningless) votes. After 2014? Obamacare is locked in. It's over. They will not repeal Obamacare if they had both branches. 2) We saw what happened the last time the GOP was in the drivers seat: the Mediare prescription drug plan, giant deficits, etc. They did not reverse or slow the growth of government. I'm convinced that the GOPat the Washington establishment level is just committed to big government as the Democrats. Cruz and Lee are actually doing what they said they'd do at election time.

Sure, elections have consequences. So we just surrender because Obama won an election? The democrats never do that: they keep fighting for what they believe in and don't give up. No wonder they kicked our ass. The Cruz/Lee plan may have worked if the GOP leadership wasn't trying to undermine the effort.

But hey, just elect republicans! Just keep donating to the RNC!

Whatever.

The Cruz/Lee plan never had any chance of working, and EVERYONE (including Cruz and Lee) knew it. It was a fundraising stunt ... nothing more. No one sane would have pushed this country into default over this asinine plan. That is tyranny, not democracy. The GOP leadership didn't "undermine the effort." The GOP leadership did what everyone with a brain knew they were going to do ... including Cruz and Lee. The only reason Cruz and Lee put on this dog and pony show was because they knew the GOP leadership would intervene to stop this nonsense before it caused any lasting damage. Cruz and Lee are ecstatic that the GOP leadership intervened. It allows them to continue to engage in their outrageous demagoguery, claiming that everyone but them are a bunch of cowards, all the time knowing that cooler heads would prevail and stop anything drastic from happening. It allows them to claim to be the only truly fearless leaders of "true conservatism" while having assurance that none of their radicalism will ever have any chance of being implemented. It's a great way for them to raise money and accumulate a fan club (allowing them to make even more money and to accumulate more power). It's also a complete sham.

If you want to know what Cruz and Lee are doing, read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Congress-Elect...words=congress

It is relatively short and, in my opinion, paints a pretty accurate picture of how Congress works. Reelection is the engine that motivates everything these guys do. In the past, it was accepting committee assignments, enacting legislation, and bringing home pork that were the tools that congressmen used to get reelected. Those things don't work when your base is the Tea Party, who hates government and government spending. As a result, Tea Party congressmen have to lean on something else to get reelected ... and for Cruz and Lee it has become cheap political stunts and demagoguery. It seems to be working pretty well for them ... they clearly have convinced several people here that the are engaged in a noble cause.

[myboynoah]

The crux of Ted Cruz

Cruz comes off as smarter than all of the above combined. There’s a reason so many outside the Beltway admire him. To those who feel jilted by the system and insulted by critics, he is a vision of palm trees, dates and fountains. He articulates what they think and feel and, as a bonus, he’s got that Latino thing.

But Cruz is a mirage, an idea conjured in a fantasy that can’t be realized in reality. Like many successful politicians (and narcissists), he reflects back to others their own projected needs and desires. But then reality sets in — the debt-crisis deadline looms, or the defunding ruse is exposed as theater — and only dust and dung remain among the shards of mirrored glass.

[Uncle Ted]

The crux of Ted Cruz

To the most important point, the crux of Cruz: The only person who loves Ted Cruz more than Ted Cruz is Barack Obama.

Yep... and I am sure that Barack Obama loves Ted Cruz. It is a strange Harvard thing. You can add Rmoney to the mix for a ménage à trois.

The one thing Cruz may have done is got people talking about Obamacare...

According to the recent PEWresearch report, written by Paul Hitlin and Nancy Vogt both researchers at the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, the analysis of about 600,000 tweets that directly referred to the government shutdown and 900,000 Twitter conversations in the same time period on Obamacare, led to this:


"Opinions about the shutdown in the run-up to the deadline were dominated by those opposed to it and who largely blamed Republicans. But there was more conversation on Twitter about the ACA than the shutdown in those three days, and views there were driven by opponents of the program and were largely critical of the president."

On the healthcare issue, the writers stated in the story:


"Of the Twitter conversation that included opinions, 71% opposed the health care law while 29% either supported the measure or opposed the Republican efforts to defund it."
[...]

http://www.examiner.com/article/ted-...pose-obamacare

Which has given him lots of face time with the news media...

A new video from ABCnews, in which the senator debates ABC News' Jon Karl about the government shutdown and public opinion highlights the issue:


Jon Karl: "People hated this shutdown. They hated this impasse, and this was seen as the Ted Cruz shutdown. You, more than any single individual, were seen as the one that triggered this crisis to begin with."


Ted Cruz: "Jon, I agree that a lot of DC politicians tried to call it that, and a lot of media did too. But ... look, let me be very clear, I said throughout this, 'we shouldn't have a shutdown, I don't want a shutdown,' I repeatedly voted to open the government..."


Jon Karl (interrupting): "But there never would have been a shutdown if you hadn't gone with this strategy of saying 'we are not even going to fund the government for six weeks unless we can defund Obamacare.'"


Cruz: "There never would have been a shutdown if Harry Reid and President Obama hadn't said 'we will not compromise, we will not negotiate shut the government down.'"
[...]

So the media has made Cruz the "whipping boy" of the shutdown but Cruz has made Obamacare the talk of twitter.

Of course, Obamacare will most likely implode on its own, but it may take the rest of the country with it...

The survey bothering Cruz, and mentioned on his website, was the 2011 McKinsey & Company finding that thirty percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering employer-sponsored insurance in the years after 2014. The survey of private sector employers seemed to be just a sampling of attitudes suggesting that the shift away from employer-provided health insurance could be greater than expected, and thus, as Avik Roy, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, states in a Forbes opinion:


"McKinsey’s numbers jibe with those of the progressive Urban Institute, which recently published a study fearing that “droves of employees—potentially tens of millions—are likely to shift out of employer-provided health insurance over the next decade or two, especially as newer firms and their employees find it more profitable [to do so].”


Roy adds:


"The problem is that, under Obamacare, a huge chunk of the country will be eligible for government subsidies, if they buy insurance on their own. If more people attempt to take advantage of those subsidies than the government projects, and employers recognize they will save money by dumping their workers onto the federal dole, the Congressional Budget Office has underestimated Obamacare’s costs by trillions of dollars."

[Jacob]

The GOP strategy should be to win elections and repeal Obamacare, cut spending, and reform transfer payment programs. Everything they are currently doing (and have been doing for the last 6-8 years) is counterproductive to winning elections, which is the ONLY way for them to accomplish anything. Elections matter. Trying to blackmail Obama into repealing his flagship social program is asinine and purely a stunt to raise money off of.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Also not a strategy. Theses are merely goals, which most elected republicans share.

Cruz's strategy sucks, they said, but they didn't know what a strategy was.

[UVACoug]

Yep... and I am sure that Barack Obama loves Ted Cruz. It is a strange Harvard thing. You can add Rmoney to the mix for a ménage à trois.

The one thing Cruz may have done is got people talking about Obamacare...

http://www.examiner.com/article/ted-...pose-obamacare

Which has given him lots of face time with the news media...

So the media has made Cruz the "whipping boy" of the shutdown but Cruz has made Obamacare the talk of twitter.

Of course, Obamacare will most likely implode on its own, but it may take the rest of the country with it...

Wow! People are talking about Obamacare ... what an accomplishment.

[UVACoug]

Also not a strategy. Theses are merely goals, which most elected republicans share.

Cruz's strategy sucks, they said, but they didn't know what a strategy was.

Of course it's a strategy. What are you talking about?

[calicoug]

I don't see it that way. Tell me, what should the GOP strategy be? Near as I can tell, it's capitulation and prayer.

Republicans have become obsessed with strategy and messaging and have completely forgotten about forming actual policy. Quick- what's their proposal for replacing Obamacare?

Cruz put the nation through a shutdown and threatened a default for personal aggrandizement. He knew it wouldn't work. And he didn't care. Still doesn't. He's a very smart man, but he's a psychopath. He shouldn't be in charge of anything. He's hurting the country, hurting his party, but increasing his standing amongst a small group of radicals who happen to control GOP primaries right now. He's set up to win the 2016 nomination. It's mind boggling what is happening to the Republican Party. The nation works best when there are two legitimate parties vying for votes. We all need the Republican Party to reassert itself by moving towards rational centrist ideas. Heritage Foundation and Cruz are dangerous.

[calicoug]

Yep... and I am sure that Barack Obama loves Ted Cruz. It is a strange Harvard thing. You can add Rmoney to the mix for a ménage à trois.

The one thing Cruz may have done is got people talking about Obamacare...

http://www.examiner.com/article/ted-...pose-obamacare

Which has given him lots of face time with the news media...

So the media has made Cruz the "whipping boy" of the shutdown but Cruz has made Obamacare the talk of twitter.

Of course, Obamacare will most likely implode on its own, but it may take the rest of the country with it...

Anyone on the left who loves Cruz after this is a fool. The absence of a rational presence on the right may turn to more wins in the short term for Dems but it also doesn't force Dems to work for the wins (both through policy and strategy). It can create a lazy party that shoots off in equally radical directions.