Posted on 10/06/2013 11:06:26 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Simple and unadulterated hatred for Obama has driven the party to alienate the electorate by shutting the government down over their opposition to Obamacare.
As I watched the deadlock over the approval of government expenditure finally lead to a partial shutdown of the US government, I could not help thinking how unfortunate it is that US lawmakers are behaving in ways unbecoming of their great and dynamic democracy.
At stake in this incomprehensible showdown between Republicans and Democrats is the much-needed Congressional approval to government expenditure.
The Republicans, under the sway of a minority of right-wing diehards, decided to use blackmail to refight lost battles; of these none proved more acrimonious than the Affordable Health Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. It is beyond comprehension how Republicans concluded that they could roll back the clock and have another chance at defeating a bill that is already the law of the land.
Relying on a clearly myopic vision, the Republican leadership has adopted a hopeless strategy of saying they will not approve government expenditure unless the Democrats and President Barack Obama agree to roll back Obamacare, or delay its funding, or somehow diminish its scope and limit its reach.
Obama, understandably, refuses to negotiate. The Republicans refuse to drop their demands. Their strategy is reduced to fighting old battles, and blaming the shutdown on the president’s refusal to negotiate.
Why should the president and Democrats refight a battle that they clearly won? The Republicans tried to stop the Obamacare bill from becoming law and failed. They tried to have it declared unconstitutional and failed. They tried to defeat the man himself and deny him a second term in the White House and, here again they failed. It would be reckless, having won these hard-fought battles, to allow the defeated party to use blackmail to achieve what they could not achieve through the democratic process.
It is equally intriguing that the Republican leadership concluded that their myopic strategy would endear them to the American public. And this in the face of countless polls telling them otherwise. A recent CNN poll found that by 56 to 38 per cent of respondents said it would be bad for the country not to raise the debt ceiling; and they would blame the Republicans for it.
The influential media also clearly blamed the Republicans. The New York Times lamented how “Republican leaders have fallen under the control of a radical faction … committed to a Total War posture against Obamacare”.
The Washington Post also blamed Republicans for the shutdown. The Republicans had to know that their effort to derail the Affordable Health Care Act was doomed from the beginning.
The Republicans are stubbornly fighting against a law that offers affordable health care insurance to the 40 million or so Americans who have no health coverage. As one observer put it: “The Democratic Party is opening up its historic programme to bring health care to all citizens, and the Republican Party is closing down the federal government.”
A new National Journal poll found that a plurality of Americans think that the Republicans’ top priority is “causing political problems for Obama”.
I think that therein lies the reason — or at least one of the reasons — for the ostensibly suicidal strategy adopted by the Republican leadership: Pure, simple, unadulterated hatred for Obama. Why so much hatred that the road ahead for the party is blurred with the fog of resentment?
I think partly because of racism; there is a fanatic faction at the far-right of the political spectrum that has never accepted that a black man could be the President of the United States; that never accepted that this black man is evidently of superior intelligence and clearly of superior eloquence.
Hatred of this man was the driving force behind the campaign to claim that Obama was not born in the US and that his birth certificate was a forgery, and therefore did not qualify to be president.
There is also a fanatic faction of the population, moved by ignorance and animated by prejudice against Muslims, that believes Obama, whose middle name is Hussain, is in fact Muslim; as if this in itself is a crime.
The ideological vacuity of the Republicans’ ideas invited opportunists and demagogues to step in and claim to authentically represent the people. Such a demagogue appeared in the person of Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He propelled himself centre stage by combining a visceral hatred for Obamacare with a sharp sense of self-promotion. This took the form of a 21-hour filibuster, which he and everyone else knew perfectly well would not make a dent in the Obamacare law. Cruz is already mentioned as a presidential candidate for 2016.
The Republican party has been going downhill since the disastrous John McCain-Sarah Palin all image and no substance ticket episode.
In provoking the government shutdown and using blackmail to refight lost battles against popular and much-needed health care insurance for millions of Americans, the Republican party has proved once again that it is out of touch with ordinary people.
Sigh. Willi Munzenberg smiles down.
Just another pinko commie geek lib.
Without wasting my life reading any more of that drivel but the highlighted part, I have to think that the Republicans have the support of the electorate and their polling tell them so.
Without the obvious millions of phonecalls and letters supporting the fight, does anyone really think that Boehner would be playing along or that he could keep all of his Caucus in one piece?
I wanted to see the publication which pushes this propaganda but the linky is misdirected.
Heck I disagree with the GOP on insurance to an extent, but I am still supporting Cruz.
Cruz is knock-down drag out winning supporters every day.
Go Cruz.
Do you think Pres. Obama and Democrats in Congress are doing too much, too little or about the right amount to compromise with Republicans in Congress on a budget plan to end the shutdown?
Too much . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8%
About the right amount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29%
Too little . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50%
Not sure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13% actually, more people think Democrats are "doing too little" compromising LOL! Though within the range of error. http://today.yougov.com/news/2013/10/04/poll-results-federal-shutdown-hp/
There is so much crap, BS, tripe and outright lies in that “article”, I don’t know even where to start. Meh...
Think of Congress as a country club.
Leftists want to pretend that this is all about hatred and not about the opposition to what Obama and the Democrats are doing.
They cannot ever be honest. “Journalists” are just some of the most dishonest people around.
The link brings me to a story about wikileaks
ObamaCare is not insurance it is just another wealth redistribution scheme and power grab
I seriously believe the GOP needs to pass a bill in the House.
I’m series.
American companies are sending jobs out of America, and our unemployment rate is now painfully high.
The GOP is stuck. Pass a bill GOP.
(and bring back American jobs)
“The best way I know of to punish a province is to allow a professor of political Philosophy rule it” Fredrick the Great exasperated when dealing with Marx and Engels as he was forming individual states into a unified identity today known as Germany after the Franco-Prussian war.
This is as far as I read, since I already know what the rest of the content will be.
Had it started out...
"Simple and unadulterated hatred for [losing their country and their freedom,] Obama has driven the party to alienate the RINOs electorate by shutting the government down over their opposition to Obamacare..." I might have sucked into reading the entire article.
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