Governin's hard Republicans are getting pummeled in the messaging wars amid an escalating standoff over Homeland Security funding. In interviews with The Hill, centrist Republicans are conceding that their party — not the Democrats — will be blamed if the critical agency shuts down at the end of the month. If that were to happen, it would echo the Ted Cruz-led government shutdown of 2013 and the Newt Gingrich-led shutdowns of the 1990s, all of which turned public opinion against the GOP. House and Senate Republicans are openly divided over a strategy to fund DHS, a fissure that has produced a round of intraparty fingerpointing at a time when GOP leaders are trying to prove they can govern.
The Department of Homeland Security should have never been formed in the first place. What a waste of money and effort.
Can we get rid of the Patriot Act too? Unfortunately I shudder to think how republicans would vilify the President if the agency wasn't funded and there was another attack on the country. They're probably hoping that's what happens. But seriously, remove the poison pill in the bill and I'm sure it would sail through congress.
I like the courage of Cruz and Paul and how they stand on principle. But there is a line to be drawn where you have to "compromise," and they continually refuse to do so.
Looks like once again republicans are shooting themselves in the foot. When will they learn holding the country hostage while you throw a temper tantrum is not governing? Poll: Blame for DHS shutdown would fall to GOP Washington (CNN)Republicans in Congress would shoulder the blame for a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security if they are unable to enact a new spending bill to keep the agency running, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. The survey finds 53% of Americans would blame the Republicans in Congress if the department must shut down, while 30% would blame President Barack Obama.
That's really nothing to crow about. The fact that only 50% are blaming the Republicans for something for which they are 100% responsible for as a factual matter is indicative of the lack of connection with reality of the rightists.
Two months into a republican controlled congress and we're already on the brink of a government shutdown. STUNNER: House GOP Votes Down Its Own Bill To Avert Shutdown In a huge embarrassment for Republican leaders, the House voted down their bill Friday to avert a Homeland Security shutdown hours before the midnight deadline.
I'm not really sure if you can personify ineptitude in a Speaker of the House any more so than Boehner. Say what you will about Pelosi (that you find her a communist demon spawned harpy, eg) but she NEVER had the same kind of embarrassing series of failures that Boehner has had. When she and Steny had to get something through to retain credibility, it usually happened. She got the bills, right or wrong, through. He keeps having to torpedo his own bills because he can't get them past his own party- that's not the way it's supposed to work. I've honestly lost track of the number of mega fails he's had in 4 years. Operation Rat**** lives, and it's ****ing all of us.
I actually give him a lot of credit. He's fighting against a group of people in his own party that would rather watch the country burn to the ground than to be seen as endorsing anything that Obama did and he's managed to not destroy the country in the process. I feel bad for the man. Being Speaker has been his dream job and he finally has it and he has a fractured party with a rogue element that eschews all common sense and rational thought.
Except that he enables them all the time and if not for that rogue element he wouldn't be Speaker in the first place. He cares more about retaining his own speakership than anything else. And we all pay the price.
Oh please. The Democrats dealt with this problem for over 40 years. The split in the Democratic party between the South and the rest and of the country was as caustic as the current split in the Republican party. The Democrats just became very good at managing it and eventually it just solved itself since most of those troublesome Democrats became the crazy Republicans that are now causing Boehner headaches. Boehner is a freaking wimp and has enabled this behavior by repeatedly caving to the hostage taking strategy demanded by the extreme right wing of his caucus. He was stupid enough to let this stuff fly when it was first proposed with the debt ceiling/sequester crisis. He deserves no credit whatsoever and he's proven to be entirely ineffective at shutting down that part of his caucus. Good speakers manage to avoid situations like this. I hope he gets booted out and replaced by someone who can manage that caucus properly.
I disagree. The far right crazies are only about 50 people. There are 380 others that he could work with to craft functional legislation. But instead, he repeatedly gets the hopes of the far right up (debt ceiling, government funding, immigration, etc), gets crushed by them, and then passes bills primarily with the support of Democrats. He's enabling the crazies and whipping them up into a frenzy before dousing them with reality. There was no outcome where immigration reform was going to voided - Senate Democrats would have filibustered it forever. So why make a big stand on it, if the only endgame is that you're going to cave? Each time he does this, he just loses that much more credibility and his opposition just grows. He needs to just stand up to these people instead and tell them if they don't participate, they'll be marginalized. There are enough rational Dems that you could find 30-40 of them on major bills if the bills tilt right but not in some obnoxious way.
I'm not sure that anyone can manage the crazy part of that caucus. I think the better solution is to ignore them. If you want to govern, you have to produce legislation that that can get 6-7 Dem votes in the Senate anyway. So find solutions that can produce those votes and 30-40 Dem House votes. Then the crazies are irrelevant.
The one thing I would say is that the extreme polarization he has to deal with is worse than ever before But like I said, the extreme polarization is the direct consequence of a f decades of GOP strategy to create as many safe republican seats as possibe and to jam minorities into small districts, leading to an ever-more rightward tilt and the pogroms against non tea party moderates....this is the bed he and the GOP leadership made themselves; he is responsible for lying in it.
Actually, according to the research which has been conducted on the subject, gerrymandering has contributed only a very small amount to the polarization which has occurred since the 1960s.
