Posted on 10/10/2013 10:58:12 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Missouri’s Republican U.S. Senator is expressing some frustration with his GOP colleagues in the House of Representatives over a temporary debt ceiling increase proposal and the partial government shutdown.
Sen. Roy Blunt says the shutdown was a strategic error because it is overshadowing the troubled implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
“The President had as difficult an August and early September as any president, second-term president, could have and we figured out how to change the subject,” he said Thursday in a conference call.
Blunt says an offer by House Republicans to temporarily raise the debt ceiling is a missed opportunity to cut spending.
“The debt ceiling, combined with opening the government, gave us at least an end date on when it was likely we could bring these discussions to conclusion,” he said.
House Speaker John Boehner and other top Republicans met with President Obama Thursday afternoon to discuss a short-term proposal by Boehner to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. The White House has called the proposal “encouraging.”
The idea that you shouldn't fight tooth and nail against a program that you know is going to cause huge problems for millions of people because you will get more political mileage out of standing on the side and watching the train wreck occur is the very epitome of why people don't trust politicians.
I think your calculus is overly pessimistic. People don’t follow a lack of leadership. They will not vote for Republicans when votes for Republicans are essentially throwing a vote away. 2012 is one example. Few in the Senate have the spine to be a party which fights for its issues.
That is a perception which is more deadly to the Republican party than you realize.
You can say arguments to the effect that “some spectrum of blue states will never vote conservatives, and that Republicans will never be a factor there and we wont pike up in the senate.”
It is a bogus argument to say Republicans should abandon the important fights. Who votes for a party that does not stand for anything? Rather, what inroads can you make in any of these places if you don’t genuinely represent your position as one which you stand by.
Thank you. The notion that people are going to suddenly see how bad ObamaCare is and run the Democrats out on a rail is simply naive. The Democrats have an army of scriptwriters who will tell the world that up is down, and that whatever bad happens is because of Republicans. And enough people will believe it, that the political damage to the Democrats would be nowhere near enough to have an effect.
We lose elections when conservatives stay home, and we win when conservatives vote. We do the former, when we are seen as ineffective and “moderate”, and we do the latter, when we take strong, bold stances. Doing nothing was a recipe for disaster, since conservatives would have simply found something better to do on election day.
And the Karl Roves of the world would be left wondering why their brilliantly laid trap failed (yet again).
-— With Cruz’s 21 hour speech, something very important happened. The Republicans got out-front of the problems with Obamacare. The Dems can’t do what they always try to do, which is blame the ‘pubs. Obama owns Obamacare, -—
The LIVS don’t understand much, but they now understand that Republicans oppose Obamacare. And that is an increasingly important lesson.
-— Had Cruz (and the house) not done anything, the election of 2014 would have resulted in an irrelevant, marginal change, one way or the other. Now, we at least have the possibility of stopping this monstrosity before it becomes entrenched. -—
Absolutely. LIVS don’t turn out for mid-terms because they’re stupid and ignorant. Our turnout will be extraordinary, because we now have an unofficial leadership that is worth rallying behind.
If Sun Tzu said that, then he wasn't using proper English. He should have said "fewer" instead of "less" because soldiers are countable.
People are just now finding out what Obamacare means to their own budgets. Now is the time to make the distinction.
If congress does not act now we will be saddled with the abomination forever. I swear sometimes I think thats the RINOs' real objective.
We can agree/disagree on the shut down but now isnt the time to whine..its time to fight to the end...these clowns come out now and keep complaining.
We are on the beach you asswipes!
Bingo. That is the biggest point of them all, and one that needs repeating. If the Republican house holds firm, conservative turnout will be off-the-charts, at a time when Democrat turnout will be depressed.
If they don’t, however ...
The GOP, for this and many other reasons, is dead. They won't ever win another majority with idiots like King, Ryan, McConnell, Cornyn, and Blunt acquiescing their way to defeat.
The failure of Obamacare isn't going away.
I disagree with some of your conclusions, W won in 2004 by slim margins and the rest of those years you listed we listened to the RINOs and Party Boys and got the same sad results.
And you suggest we pick our battles. If we were to follow that advice I can’t foresee any battle the Republican party would ever fully engage in not expecting to surrender and lose. The GOP doesn’t try to win, they don’t even try to play not to lose, this party plays to lose. It hasn’t played to win since 1984.
It is always and I mean always: the hill to die on is the budget battle next year, the hill to die on is the debt ceiling battle in six months, the hill to die on is obamacare. When we reach those hills the RINO’s and Party Boys run out scream platitudes about how tough they are, the democrats go BOO! The whorish media spits out a bad story and the line then from the RINO’s and Party Boys becomes, you guessed it, this is not the hill to die on, we need to pick our battles, will just surrender and take this issue away from the democrats foolishness.
2. Clinton was running for his second term, not in it.
3. He ran against Bob Dole.
Presidential election year, not an off election year.
From the tenor of the comments I see more clearly than ever the influence of moles in our conversation. Their go slow, reconsider, be reasonable rhetoric is intended to do nothing other than question the merit of applying true conservative principles to political issues. “We do not want to alienate....” is actually a white flag of surrender flown in the face of our mortal enemies. The fact is we very much do want to alienate those who consider the Constitution outmoded and the government too small by half.
We will win the Senate in 2014.
So what is the Blount, Rino Strategy?
-— Heard this line of thought in dealing with the democrats 1990, 1992, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012 -—
But this time it will work.
And Romney can win.
They weren't routed in 96 when they held the House and picked up 2 Senate seats, even though Clinton was re-elected.
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