Posted on 02/19/2014 9:40:30 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Republicans are stumbling toward the 2014 midterm elections fighting among themselves again. Democrats are happy to see it, because Republican disarray is one of the few things that could prevent another very good election for the GOP. We should all know the reasons for the Republican advantage by now: Midterm voters are older, whiter and more conservative than presidential election voters. Democrats have more Senate seats to defend. Republicans have a huge, baked-in advantage in the House, thanks to redistricting and the clustering of liberal voters in urban districts. So the great Democratic hope is that Republicans will sabotage themselves, by nominating unelectable wingnuts for Senate seats, and demoralizing the base with infighting. So far, Republicans seem to be cooperating.
The element of the GOP that is dedicated to a magical thinking-based strategy of forcing the nation into default until Obamacare is repealed is not happy with Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The party leaders agreed to support a “clean” debt limit increase, so that the party could not be accused of trying to bankrupt the country (again) right before these very important elections. (The plan is to save the next major crisis for 2015, I think.) This, obviously, has been treated as a grand betrayal of conservative principles by the usual players.
Ted Cruz — whose Senate career seems to be leading toward either sabotaging the Republican 2016 campaign or quitting the Senate after one term to become a professional conservative celebrity — actually forced Senate Republicans to openly vote for the increase, and ever since he has been relentlessly trashing McConnell and the GOP leadership for capitulating. As he told conservative radio firebrand Mark Levin, “They wanted to be able to tell what they view as their foolish, gullible constituents back home that they didn’t do it.”
That is basically true! It’s also true that McConnell and Boehner can’t really blame Ted Cruz for this being an issue. As Brian Beutler explained, once the GOP leadership allowed the debt limit vote to be used to extort concessions from Democrats, they legitimized debt limit extortion as a tactic. Do it once, and conservatives will understandably wonder why you’re not doing it every time the debt limit is up for a vote.
Speaker Boehner is similarly under attack, from Georgia Senate candidate Rep. Paul Broun (who voted, in the last speaker’s election, for former House member Allen West), who is precisely the sort of candidate who could lose Republicans a Senate race in a very red state. Well-heeled right-wing pressure groups like Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund have also called for Boehner to resign as speaker.
One side-effect of all these right-wing complaints is to make Speaker Boehner and Sen. McConnell look like reasonable men.
For Republicans, the point of voting for the clean debt limit increase this time is to appear moderate, mainstream and not crazy. The party has a bit of an “image problem,” which is to say that many Americans correctly perceive the party as being essentially controlled by angry apocalyptic extremists. Ted Cruz (and Paul Broun and the Senate Conservatives Fund and all the rest) are helping — perhaps inadvertently — GOP leaders shed that image. Cruz bashing McConnell makes McConnell look moderate. Now, it looks a bit like the Republicans are a mainstream party with a small, vocal fringe element, instead of an extremist party with a pragmatic element.
Not to overstate the positive effect. Right-wing infighting could still contribute to McConnell losing his election or fringe candidates preventing the party from taking the Senate. But right now, GOP leaders can point to the ire of nutjobs like Broun and *ssholes like Cruz and tell the press, see? We’ve marginalized them! And everyone is so eager for the Republican “fever” to “break” that the fact that the party hasn’t actually moderated a single one of its various discredited positions won’t much matter.
In America, you’re a nutjob if you think trillion dollar a year deficits are OK and that it’s not Congress’ job to do anything about it.
u r cruel.
They just can’t help telegraphing who they fear, can they. There’s a way to use that inevitability to compel hostile news outlets to carry your message. The general who masters this technique can be successful. Examples include Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms.
One side-effect of all these right-wing complaints is to make Speaker Boehner and Sen. McConnell look like reasonable men.
When liberals talk about Boehner and McConnel as
reasonable men, you know there IS something wrong
with their positions.
I pray these liberal pundits have to eat it come
election time.
That's WHY they called him a sulking rage - to create a opposition meme to try to undermine his strength.
Remember Rule #1 - liberals are collectivists. They say nothing without group calculation and group approval. And what the grop loves the most is skulking around in the dark spreading lies and sabotage and stabbing in the back with poisoned blades and running away.
Vile, vile, vile.
Did Chelsea Clinton grow a beard?
He looks like he is related to Pajama Boy.
Second observation is in the title terms "Sulking Rage" and its association with Ted Cruz.
So far nothing surprising given source-title. Now I will dig in a little to find something stupid wrapped in Urban Northeast pseudo-logic.
And here is is:
The party leaders agreed to support a “clean” debt limit increase, so that the party could not be accused of trying to bankrupt the country (again) right before these very important elections.
And Ted Cruz is trying to bankrupt the country?
Of course this is the writer's opinion. There is no news here, no journalism, just yelps and bean farts from the Salon echo chamber. Again this is not surprising given the source and title. At this point I make the guess that the writer is a typical young urban preppie with a pink cupcake lapel pin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Pareene
He looks like a pajama boy who decided to get dressed and walk outside. I was almost expecting a bowtie.
Again nothing surprising. Ted has gotten under their skin and threatens the empire of the NY-Boston liberal fortress because he has revealed the democrat infiltrators inside the GOP.
THANK YOU TED!!!
“It is not enough to merely kill a man. You must destroy his reputation” - Joseph Fouche minister of police under Napoleon
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