Posted on 10/20/2013 11:40:55 AM PDT by neverdem
So what was accomplished by the government shutdown?
Peter Beinart declares that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the resolution of the shutdown was a Republican victory because their "surrender" consisted of perpetuating federal spending at sequester levels.
But I think what was accomplished was bigger. What was accomplished was that the conservative base communicated how serious it really is about reducing the size of government. The usual game in which the Democrats try to grab for as much as they can get, and Republicans fight back by giving them only half of it—and the result is that government still keeps growing, year over year—is something that the base won't accept. Which is why nobody notices what Beinart describes as a "victory" for Boehner. You won't hear anybody on the right celebrating about it, because it is far, far less than what they wanted.
This is my frog pot hypothesis. The right is like the frog in that famous experiment who lets himself get cooked to death so long as the temperature of the water rises so gradually that no one change is big enough to cause him to jump out of the pot. My hypothesis is that ObamaCare cranked up the temperature in the pot too fast, and the frog realized the water was boiling and jumped out.
The important part of this theory is that it explains why the Tea Party base of the right has become so radicalized. They're not reacting to this year's increase in the size of government, or even the past five years. They're reacting to decades' worth of increasing government, all at once.
Others are making similar observations. Brit Hume explains what the Tea Party got out of the shutdown...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Are we going to wait until we see our children shot on our front lawns? We are losing a war.
Jesus said to the crowd:
“When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret the signs of the times?” - Luke 12:54-56
Is Bill Clinton the son of Elvis?
This was a failure in the following ways:
Democrats try to grab for as much as they can get, and Republicans fight back by giving them only half of it—and the result is that government still keeps growing, year over year
How did having 800,000 federal employees not sit at their desks for a couple of weeks affect America? How did it affect you personally?
We have NOT lost the war. None of us yet sit where God allowed Job to be cast down.
We are being tested for sure, by God and country, but some of us plan to let neither down, no matter the cost.
It is our purpose that we are to hang with Ephesians 6 and that’s exactly what patriots shall do for both God and country, no matter the cost.
I can’t quite tell if you are fox hole material or not.
We know all that by now. So, what are we going to do about it? Give up?
Hang around FR and find out. That is if you can pick your way through the whiners. .?/
Gotta agree - some scalps must be taken.
One small point that everyone seems to have overlooked - and I wish the conservative pundits would discuss this - is an observation about the death benefits for our fallen vets.
My first reaction was outrage. Then I found out that Fisher House (one of my favorite charitable organizations) stepped in to take care of the situation. I am still outraged by 0vomit’s schemes, by his smarmy reaction to getting caught, and by how he dealt with it, but my second reaction was that this proves how little we need the government.
What we need to hammer home is that America works just fine without the federal government. Real Americans step up and take care of what needs to be taken care of. We need the federal government for very little.
Despite 0vomit doing his best to hurt us during the shutdown, all he accomplished was to irritate, annoy, and enrage people. He was like a small boy poking at a hornet’s nest.
Not only can we take care of ourselves, we can do it much more effectively, efficiently, and cheaply than the government can. The government, especially the federal government, needs to get out of the education business and the charity (welfare) business. Along with getting out of the direct welfare business, they need to get out of the indirect welfare business which consists of creating overpaid do-nothing jobs for the politically connected and for the low info dem voters.
We had no one making the point often enough to sell it, but we Republicans offered to fund every jot and tittle of government and its programs but for Obamacare.
In return, we got a refusal from the Arrogant in Chief to fund government at all, without Obamacare.
Plus, the media in a grand act of total tranference blamed the whole Obama shutdown on Republicans, as he sat cherry picking the most heinous defunding targets, of which the veterans was one of the worst.
This, in the face of an immediate Republican bill to exempt all military defunding damages.
RINOS reject what America used to value, as your comment suggests.
Fighting comes before anything is restored, and the temperature has been reached to do that, as the thread title expresses. Thx.
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