Conservative National Review warns GOP "Governing is a Trap"

Didn't the Republicans ignore the mandate that Obama received, twice?

 

Bullsh!t. The only people who think that Obama is an "extreme partisan" are the people who just swallow the Fox line without even beginning to think.

 

I'd just like to hear why you like Elizabeth warren, policy wise. It's not just that you like her, you've indicated you want her to run for presidents presumably meaning you'd support her.

I don't have a promblem with you liking warren, I just don't know anyone who supports her for some reason other than her liberal policy positions. In fact, most are ardent liberals and proud of it.

 

I like Warren a lot because she's an independent anti-bank voice in a Senate filled with people too closely tied to the financial lobbies. I know financial reform is associated with liberals, but I don't think it's necessarily a liberals position - both parties have long been tied to the financial industry. The far left and the tea party base (not their politicians) both tend to be a bit more anti-bank due to their populist origins. I think when you focus on the success of wall street, your economy is off the rails - the goal should be the success of main street, in which case wall street naturally benefits. Warren seems be one of the few Senators to grasp that.

That said, she would be a horrible president because she has no charisma whatsoever, and I'm not sure about her positions on many other issues.

 

I'm not sure why you are so eager to pigenhole Deji. There are plenty of reasons to like Warren without being a liberal. There are several things I like about Ron and Rand Paul but I don't consider myself a liberatarian or libertarian leaning conservative.

 

I'm not pigeonholing him, I'm trying to have a discussion about Elizabeth Warren. I have not met someone who supports her presidential candidacy that is not a liberal. (Major included)

 

Great, let the veto begin. A democrat will win in 2016 for president and the cycle will continue. Thanks Obama for the cheap gas!! I want it to go lower!!

 

Just what did Obama do to lower the price of gas?????

 

And I'm not trying to be evasive or a troll -- I'm just being careful to make sure I explain myself. In a pipe dream ideal, a post-capitalist, post-nationalist utopia free of conflict sounds great, but I'm not naive enough to expect that to happen until technology improves to Star Trek levels and can provide near unlimited energy and food on demand. I have to deal with the world as it is, but that certainly doesn't mean I have to accept the status quo, or that I have to accept someone else's moral panic that limits everyone's freedom. Even within the family of nations that are democratic and reasonably free, each one has it's own flaws. I also understand that some solutions aren't going to work with other cultures. It would be great to be a post-doc in Norway, but I wouldn't want to own a small business there. I don't have any romantic notions about these things or believe there are easy solutions to the world's complex problems. In short, to paraphrase the president, I'm no ideologue.

Elizabeth Warren is not exactly LBJ. Her rise to influence was as a trial lawyer for Philip Morris and she voted Republican until the mid-90s: "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets," she said.

Her speciality as a Harvard law professor is middle-class personal finance and bankruptcy -- they are subjects she can rightfully be called a qualified expert in, and certainly things affecting us now. She is extremely critical of the relationship between government and Wall Street: "I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial.'" she said. As I've posted before, finance and insurance feeds most politicians, including both of Obama's political campaigns. What they put into campaign finances dwarfs every other interest in DC, and it's something I didn't fully realize until my job brought me there and I couldn't believe it. Groups like AIPAC or the ACLU or NRA aren't a pinky finger on that gorilla.

When it comes to Wall Street and our politicians, it's more like "too big not to keep my mouth shut and cash the checks if I want to keep my job."

She was one of the few people in public office to question why criminal charges weren't pressed: "if you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re going to go to jail... But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night."

And that's not to speak of the bailouts - your money and mine went to subsidize the loss of high risk speculation, which we were told would collapse the world's economy otherwise. But isn't it reasonable to ask why a financial system exists that permits that to happen, especially when the people affected who invested in those banks found themselves broke and were told "oh well, that's the way the free market goes"? If anyone dared to suggest bailing the actual victims out, there would be outrage for giving handouts to freeloaders, but multi-billion dollar banks? Nah, that's totally cool.

Or why in real terms, the middle and working classes are making less than ever in the post-war era, or that half of all bankruptcy comes from unpaid medical bills? Well...those things are her bread and butter and she addresses them, which is a politically courageous thing to do.

She also doesn't do the lame populist thing and say "more regulation." There's plenty of regulation -- it's just bad regulation designed to protect big American banks and make competition more difficult to newcomers and outsiders. It's anything but a free market and I've personally consulted for small financial trading companies that can't do business in America due to regulation that prices them out, and forces them to go to London or Hong Kong or Frankfurt where markets are more transparent and more open.

Read the Economist or watch any financial news in Europe or Asia, and they aren't saying much different than she is:

"People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: They're right. The system is rigged. Wall Street CEOs wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs and that they still strut around congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them."

Last year she sponsored a modified return of Glass-Steagall provisions, co-sponsored by John McCain, and well...it was wildly supported by all the the senators from both parties who don't rely on large banks for campaign funding, so it of course failed miserably.



So, like Perot talking about the "big sucking sound" of jobs going overseas, or Ron Paul questioning American foreign policy, and with Dennis Kucinich, the Patriot Act, I don't expect her to have a prayer of winning the low-information voters even in her own party. I do think she provides a relevant political message, and a welcome change to the usual chatter about guns or abortions or gay marriage or whatever it is that distracts the public from critical debate about the status quo.

Tell me again why I should vote for Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, or Hillary Clinton? Or want to watch them "debate" each other?

 

John McCain is a notable advocate, and Obama is notably against. It's definitely not that partisan.

I wish the Tea Party did more to support reform of the financial industry -- it certainly doesn't conflict with their core identity.

Maybe, but I brought her up when the subject of debate came up. I'd much rather see her debating than our usual suspects, and I'd like to see them forced to talk about things outside their rehearsed talking points.

 

Because obviously global commodity prices and economic events are the direct result of whomever happens to be the US president.

 

I think if you asked people about Warren's solutions to some of these financial issues they'd be highly in support of it. Then you tell everyone that she's this crazy liberal and they don't support her of course. It's the disconnect between sensible solutions to very serious problems that we all recognize and the political ridiculousness that seems to win the day.

 

Agreed - that's what I like about her. She injects a much needed voice into the discussion.

 

Being from Massachusetts, and reflecting the pro-choice and mildly anti-gun stance of its constituents are all that matters to many voters.

 

Don't hold your breath on Democrats cooperating with GOP crazies. It's going to depend on the issue, of course, but house leader is already whipping his right wing mob into a frenzy by promising to repeal Obamacare. That, of course, would be a huge waste of time, nothing more than political grandstanding, but par for the course, because Republicans have nothing to offer policy wise except Stop Obama. That's it. And for all yapping about Republicans taking the Senate, they have virtually no chance of winning the next Presidential election as long as Democrats are smart enough not to nominate Clinton.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...ss-priorities-jobs-obamacare-column/17267261/

http://thefederalist.com/2014/11/06/mike-lees-plan-to-fix-congress/

 

Weren't you one of the people decrying Obama's leadership in part because gas prices had gone up while he was in office?

 

Both articles have as a central strategy some form of "repealing Obamacare." I thought we were talking about governing, not repeating the same ideological purity tests that have failed time and again. Both of these articles clearly show that these authors are more interested in opposing Obama than actually doing things to help Americans.

As usual.

 

When things go bad, it's his fault. When the same things go good, there's no way he could've had a hand in it.* It's like the whole stupid incompetent leader who's also a socialist mastermind taking over the country.

* this is not meant to be an argument that presidential actions have any negligible effect on gas prices.

 

I know, their doublespeak and hypocrisy knows no bounds.