Posted on 04/18/2024 9:28:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I can’t think of a reason why I should vote down ballot.
Lazy
First, you admit there is a chance that I'm right, because your sentence could just as easily have said "That’s not necessarily untrue" and it would mean the exact same thing.
If all the Senate got was individual spending bills, as we were on track to do, they would have to fund the ones they wanted...
Now THAT is not necessarily true 😉.
If you recall, the ENTIRETY of ObamaCare was an amended innocuous House spending bill called "H.R. 3590--A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Ways and Means," submitted by Charlie Rangel (D-NY).
Once it got to the Senate, however, they amended it to completely gut the original contents, turning this "spending bill" into a container for whatever the Senate wanted to further amend it to become. This is how the Senate got around the origination clause of the Constitution to introduce Obamacare and still insist it was a House bill.
Since the Democrats in the Senate already have a history of doing this, it gives my point more credence than yours, which to me is wishful thinking on your part that the leopard has changed its spots. There is nothing that would have stopped the Senate Democrats from taking McCarthy's single spending bill and amending it to keep the spending but insert open borders, or amnesty for illegals, or anything else on the Democrat agenda and force McCarthy to eat it.
In fact, that's what they did to President Trump in 2018 with a "must have" military spending bill. They forced Trump to accept Democrat pork or risk shutting down the government and not paying our soldiers. That's when Trump declared "Never again," but the Democrats did it again the next year and today still point back to that as Trump budget-busting spending.
Keep in mind that the above spending was approved by a Republican-controlled Senate with Pelosi in charge of the House. So it doesn't matter which chamber the Republicans control, the Democrats still ALWAYS end up on top.
All that ended with Gaetz and Johnson.
Keep believing that, and you'll never see the sting coming.
-PJ
My point is simply thar McCarthy was at least trying to get rid of the Omnibus, and to cut spending, whereas Johnson hasn’t even tried. He’s just folded at every last opportunity.
So if you want to keep score, McCarthy far outscored Johnson, on effort and attempt alone. The fact we’re stuck with the guy who won’t even try is very suspicious.
We've debated this point before. I think Johnson tried from Day One, but was saddled with what McCarthy had left behind, with deadlines rapidly approaching.
People were mad at McCarthy for dallying and wasting an entire summer when he knew what the deadline was. He waited, and then forced his caucus to act with no time remaining. That's why he was ousted, because he violated the Hastert Rule and the 72-hour rule by handing his side a massive spending bill and giving them no time to study it when he had all the time in the world to get it done properly. Then, when he moved the bill to a vote without having "majority of the majority" support, Gaetz made the motion to vacate.
So what motivated McCarthy to delay, creating a brinksmanship scenario with Democrats? What motivated McCarthy to put the interests of Democrats over the interests of his own party?
And what's motivating Johnson now to fall into the same trap that McCarthy did? Massive illegal alien entry? The Hamas invasion of Israel? The anti-Israeli protests in the United States? LAAP-dog media outrage over President Trump?
-PJ
Show me one time where Johnson even voiced something like this:
McCarthy Says Biden Must Tighten Border to Avert US Government Shutdown
A tit-for-tat decomposition isn't useful. That's a micro view of a macro problem.
-PJ
It’s perfect proof that on the very issue of the day, McCarthy was threatening a government shutdown, which is where we should be on the issue, verses letting Johnson completely surrender all leverage of any kind.
Regarding shutdowns, you must remember several things:
Former President Trump laid into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday after Senate Democrats passed their long-awaited health care, tax and climate package.“Mitch McConnell got played like a fiddle with the vote today by the Senate Democrats,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“First he gave them the fake Infrastructure Bill, then Guns, never used the Debt Ceiling for negotiating purposes (gave it away for NOTHING!), and now this,” Trump said. “Mitch doesn’t have a clue – he is sooo bad for the Republican Party!”
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said on Thursday that Senate Republicans got tricked into passing a semiconductor bill after believing that a Democrat reconciliation bill was dead.While Republicans were split on the merits of the legislation, most Republicans, including House Republican leadership, did not want to pass the CHIPS legislation if Democrats were to pursue a reconciliation bill to pass climate change, Obamacare, and other leftist priorities.
The same day that the Senate passed the CHIPS bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced a deal on the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that would aim to reduce the deficit, raise taxes, and boost climate change and Obamacare spending.
Announcing the deal immediately after Senate Republicans backed the CHIPS bill left many GOP lawmakers with egg on their faces.
"We got our ass kicked. It’s just that simple. Looks to me like we got rinky-doo’d. That’s a Louisiana word for 'screwed.' And we got our ass kicked. That’s the way my people back home see it," Kennedy said...
McConnell also lost to Schumer on a debt ceiling fight in 2021, which led to a deal to temporarily create a carveout for the legislative filibuster. One former senior GOP aide said the deal was to save McConnell’s "ego."
I don't know why McCarthy took so long in the House to get his spending bills worked out before slamming his side with it as the debt ceiling crisis loomed. Perhaps he was counting on Pelosi's promise to "always stand by him?" Perhaps he didn't see how he was being manipulated into wasting time over the summer in order to create the debt ceiling crisis that Democrats would then exploit in the Senate?
Because you know that's what Pelosi and Schumer are doing. It's why our side is always caught by surprise -- because our side in the Senate thinks the House is beneath them. That's why our side thinks it has to be the Senate bill that "fixes" what the peons in the House did.
-PJ
So what? The Senate only has that power AFTER the House first approves it. McCarthy said he was willing to shut it down in the House, which takes precedent.
I don't know why McCarthy took so long in the House to get his spending bills
Because it hadn’t been done since before Obama was in office. Even Trump with both Houses of Congress didn’t even try. McCarthy deserves huge credit for working those bills which Johnson immediately flushed down the toilet.
Can't you see how things might be different if our side coordinated between the two chambers
Once again that’s on McConnell, in the Senate. I’m no real fan of McCarthy, but he is better than McConnell. And even McConnell is better than Johnson, as McConnell at least occasionally delivered a win.
THAT's why Johnson is in the predicament that he's in right now.
No, Johnson is in the predicament he’s in, because he went back on his promises on things like FISA and tying any Ukraine funding to US border funding. He chose to surrender, and is rightfully paying the price for it.
Yea, well, we are screwed if we do something and screwed if we don’t do something.
“If the republicans lose majority in the house, the fault is totally the voters.”
Because Republicans are good and voters are bad?
Nay, you have it backwards as all partisans do: Republicans are bad and the voters will fire them.
Never mind.
You're too myopic to see what's really going on.
-PJ
Myopic? Is it not true the House actually controls the purse strings, and not the Senate?
I already explained to you how Schumer took a simple House bill to give a tax break to veterans who are first-time homebuyers and turned it into Obamacare.
Do you think they waited for the House to send them Obamacare? Did the House "control the purse strings" on Obamacare? Pelosi couldn't get Obamacare out of the House, so Schumer in the Senate had to take the initiative, and he did.
Just look at yesterday, when the Senate -- for the first time in 235 years -- dismissed an impeachment instead of holding a trial. Do you think someone who thinks like this is bothered by the "purse strings" in the House?
Go back and reread all my prior posts again (not just to you) and look at the bigger picture I'm painting.
McConnell has a "tell" and the Democrats know how to get him to go "all in" on a deal when they are holding a pair of twos (yes, I know I'm mixing my metaphors again, but I'm trying to get you to see any way I can). They know his fanatical devotion to the "traditions" and historicity of the Senate and his part in it, and they use that to manipulate his behavior. I already showed you several recent examples of McConnell getting played by Schumer.
For things that are truly originating in the House like you point out, Democrats know they have McConnell in the Senate to do what they need done because they know his "tell." For things that originate in the Senate (or are amended in the Senate), they know they have McConnell to pressure the House to go along.
For truly maverick things that come out of the House, Democrats know how to control the Overton Window. If you see Johnson making deals or decisions that go against his prior promises, it's probably because the Democrats use their minority powers in the House to change the set of available choices to Johnson, widening them or narrowing them, to limit the range of options he has to get things done. They can open up the window to see what course he's going to follow, and then narrow his options to trap him in a Box Canyon (yes, another metaphor) where he has only one or two ways out.
The reason they're so good at it is that Republicans don't coordinate between the House and the Senate the way that Democrats do, and that's also on McConnell. He's never been good at bringing in others who are outside of his personal network of sycophant devotees. I showed you an example of Democrats throwing a bone to McConnell to boost his ego after suffering a humiliating defeat. They want to keep him in place, because he's their ace up their sleeve (back to a prior metaphor).
So I'll tell you again...
It doesn't matter if it was Boehner, or Ryan, or McCarthy, or Johnson, or whoever follows. The Democrats control the rhythm of Congress because they control McConnell. Put any other Republican in the Speakership and the road still goes through McConnell. Until McConnell goes, nothing will change.
I don't blame Gaetz for trying to shake things up; he did have a personal vendetta against McCarthy, but McCarthy got too cozy with Pelosi and believed her promises just like Boehner and Ryan before him. I believe that any failures you perceive in Johnson are actually failures of the environment that Congressional Republicans find themselves in, built by Lott and Frist and McConnell, and it won't matter who Republicans replace Johnson with as long as McConnell remains in the Senate or his sycophants keep the "tradition" alive after he leaves.
We need a Summit meeting between the House and the Senate Republicans to come to a new, modern, 21st century understanding of their rules of engagement or we're going to be doomed to forever being stung by the Democrats on deal after deal after deal.
Getting stuck on a "my guy said this" or "did your guy ever say that" is missing the big picture completely.
-PJ
Republicans are bad and the voters will fire them.
And replace them with democrats. Great strategy you have there. No wonder we’re in the mess we are in.
“I’d rather have a coherent and unified opposition party than a complicit, compliant, and totally compromised GOP majority under Johnson.”
Unfortunately, it is not either/or.
We may end up with what we’ve had in the recent past: a complicit, compliant, and totally compromised GOP minority,
There is nothing Republicans could do to cause you to not vote for them.
No betrayal too great.
I appreciate the time you took to put that together, and certainly concede the Democrats are better tacticians in Congress, but appropriations (especially yearly spending bills) are per the Origination Clause of the Constitution originated in the House.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origination_Clause
The Senate can do something separate if it wants, but without the House, no spending will take place. McCarthy claimed he was ready to use this power, but was never given the chance.
Johnson is such an idiot he probably doesn’t even know he has the power, or if he does, has proven he’s too big a coward to use it.
We’re in this mess because people sit home when they don’t get what they want. Teenagers do this. Adults should be over that by now. It started in January 2017 when conservatives sat out the two special elections because the two candidates weren’t pure enough. It’s been that way for practically every election since. Midterms should have garnered us 30 seats, but clearly republicans weren’t interested. Republicans gave away a seat held by santos to the democrats. It’s a story repeated. And then you cry when Johnson has ONE vote majority after the mess you made the last four years losing elections. Even today, we have people saying they will sit out his election in November and these are FREEPERS. Absolutely ridiculous and immature.
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