Posted on 04/20/2017 4:45:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
Whatever happens in the special runoff election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, Republicans better be paying attention. Democrats are motivated; Republicans are not. If Republicans don’t follow through on what they’ve been promising, what they’ve said for years they will deliver, they not only will lose in 2018, they will deserve it.
Democrats are fired up. Sure, it’s by hate, but the motivation doesn’t matter. Anger is usually the motivation for the party out of power, though rarely does it manifest itself in gangs of spoiled college kids attacking people and smashing things.
Still, Democrats are willing to use it, to stoke that hate, because it works.
But Republicans are mad too. The problem for the GOP is Republican and Democrat voters are mad at the same thing: Republicans. Obviously they’re mad for different reasons, but the reasons don’t matter; results do.
And the Georgia special election is showing some of those results.
Sure, Democrat Jon Ossoff was denied a majority and now will compete in a run-off election June 20. But it shouldn’t have come to this. This Georgia district is red. Yes, the Republican vote was split more ways than the only bottle of vodka at a writing seminar, but there’s no way a healthy GOP would have let the spitting image of the Obamacare pajama boy in the top 10, let alone to sit atop the leader board.
But Democrats are motived. They will show up, they will pay up, and they will work. Some Republicans will show up, and in this district that might be enough. But even those who show up will do so less out of joy than duty.
Since Republicans gained control of Congress and the White House, they’ve done…very little. And that’s the problem.
They ran on big ideas. They campaigned on principles, and they were elected for those ideas and principles. What voters got for their trust was nothing. It’d be one thing if they were like a fat kid locked in a candy store – trying to cram down as much as possible before they’re discovered. But that’s not the case. Their bluff has been called, and they appear frozen with fear at the prospect of having to deliver on their promises.
It’s rare air in which Republicans find themselves – they can pass legislation and have a president in Donald Trump who will sign almost anything they put before him. They’re a tap-in putt away from winning the Masters, and they don’t know which club to use.
A political base can’t be anything but disheartened to see the world at their feet and those feet stuck in the mud.
Whatever ends up happening in the Georgia runoff election, it won’t matter in the grand scheme of things; one seat out of 435 won’t shift anything in government. It’s more of a temperature taking than a harbinger of things to come…at least right now.
But if Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue can’t pull some victories out of their, um, “hats,” they’ll not only lose in Georgia, they’ll risk losing the House and the Senate next year.
Obamacare repeal should be easy. With reconciliation in the Senate they need only 51 votes to put something on President Trump’s desk. He’ll sign it, whatever it is, because he needs to sign something. They just have to do what they’ve said they’d do for seven years, what they actually did last year. But it’s apparently different when it’s real – so here we are.
If they fail on tax reform – not simply tax cuts but real reform of the corrupt system – they will leave 2017 with nothing to show for it but a Supreme Court justice. That’s not nothing, but Republican voters hoping for more will be less motivated to show up next year. And since very little, and especially nothing major, happens in an election year, this is pretty much it.
Can the GOP pull legislative victories and, more importantly, their heads out of their, um, “hats” before then? Well, they have until June 20 to convince voters who are among their most loyal.
Whatever ultimately happens in Georgia should be seen as the canary in the coalmine, not the end of the world or the beginning of a new one. It’s one election, after all. But that one election will tell us a lot about the mood going forward, about apathy and anger. Which one is growing or shrinking faster will be a bigger determining factor for who controls Congress after next year than who finally wins that seat ever will.
When is he going to deliver withdrawal from the Paris Agreement? This is something he can do himself at any time because it is a voluntary agreement that was never approved by Congress. I’m hearing worrying things about people around him trying to persuade him not to do it and that would be the biggest mistake he could make. Accepting that carbon dioxide is a pollutant which causes climate change would make it completely impossible to drain the swamp. That IS the swamp - the biggest lie of all and the foundation for centralised tyranny.
A whole list of things delivered in the first 80 days of a presidency, and some still want EVERYTHING they ever dreamed of delivered.
Why can they not still be working on it? After all, it’s only been 80 days. The resources were tied up doing other things. I didn’t even list regulations overturned, appointees confirmed, health care being debated.
All of those take time.
If you had to make a list of priorities, where would you have put Paris?
It wasn’t even on my list as a critical issue. It was on only as a 2nd or 3rd tier issue.
So 35,000 coal mining jobs, a drastic almost unbelievable drop in illegal aliens entering our country couples with a huge increase in arrests, abandoning the Paris climate accords, starting building TWO new pipelines, etc, etc all means NOTHING?
When this author said he needs to “pass something” and Trump will sign “any kind of Obamacare repeal/replace” and also that it doesn’t matter what is passed it tells me he is clueless.
He has been in office a mere 88 days or so and has more too show for it than any past administration I am aware of in our history.
Ryan promised if we delivered the WH he would “REPEAL” ObamaCare.
He lied right to our faces, OC needs to be completely repealed, roll it back to the day before it was passed
Keep none of it, zero.
Ryan’s in Britain. Little pusher should be here working on Trumps agenda
Republican leaders bhelped pass and supported ObamaCare, they do not want to repeal it, they want to keep it.
We want the wall and we want it NOW!
If the Freedom Caucus had not held their ground Ryan would have passed ObamaCare lite and we would still have OC but it woukd be around our necks.
But he hasn’t abandoned the Paris climate accords. Szins may believe this to be a second or third tier issue. I believe that killing the climate scam is the number one issue. Not only is a fraud of monumental proportions which drains billions, if not trillions, of taxpayers’ money, it is a Trojan horse for out and out dictatorship. After all, what is more important, democracy or the planet?
Well, um, you know, it is kind of hard to deliver when you are always on vacation.
When they do show up, they let Ryan do his anti Trump bullshat obstruction.
I thought passage was the first step in reconciliation with a Senate bill.
I don’t think Trump would of signed it as it was.
If he’s not abandoning the Paris climate accords, how can he be dismantling the EPA at home.
I think he will abandon.
LOL, Trump has only been on the Job 3 months ,the only thing wrong is the Insane Media
I am curious how they did, since No Republican in the House and Senate voted for it?
Well, hen sais he was goinf too and I believe he will even as he wants to look as if he “really looked at it hard” before doing it.
He simply wants too look as if he is being careful and not a knee jerk shoot from the hip “earth killer”.
Personally I believe walking on the Paris Accords is a no brainer.
Guys and gals on this thread (commenters 1-34), there’s a showdown coming where the boys will have to drop their pants and vote and the girls will have to raise their skirts (well, except Pelosi) because there indeed IS a new sheriff in town and he might not sign their next “keep the government running stop gap omnibus spending bill”.
He may just be looking forward to “shutting er down”!!!!
Sooner or later, SHUTDOWN has to happen anyway! The SOONER the BETTER!!!!
The next success will be new laws to punish immigrant sanctuary governments.
I did see on Fox News this morning that the rats in Kalifornia want to make the entire state a sanctuary state.
Trump is meeting my expectations. Congress, not so much.
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