Tag: 2012

President Trump

For weeks, Mr. Trump has been engaged in not-so-quiet discussions about making a potential White House bid, but he has taken few visible steps, beyond television interviews, to test his support and demonstrate his seriousness. By accepting an invitation to appear at [CPAC], Mr. Trump is once again fueling speculation about his political future — and generating maximum exposure in the process.

Help us Flying Spaghetti Monster, HELP US!

President Trump

Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on the government is not libertarian.

Mitt Romney (when governor of Massachusetts) saying the sort of thing that makes him unelectable in 2012. Sad but true.
But he gets at the real “fix” for the individual mandate: simply opt out of guaranteed care for some defined period and pay a fine to get back into it with no guarantee against taking yet another hit for any preexisting conditions. In other words: Go die in the streets; we won’t lift a finger. The GOP and their Tea Klan enablers can certainly get behind that, as it’s the basis for their entire worldview. I’m sure they’ll all be rushing to get in on that particular filing deadline…

Status Quo, Everyone!

In one of the great surprises of the era, meaningful filibuster reform is going nowhere and Ezra Klein reports that:

…this process kicked off because Democrats were furious at Republican abuse of the filibuster. It’s ended with Democrats and Republicans agreeing that the filibuster is here to stay.[…] Both parties are more committed to being able to obstruct than they are to being able to govern. That fundamental preference, as much as any particular rule, is why the Senate is dysfunctional.

Indeed. Under the agreement we do get a few nice things, in that secret holds will apparently go away, there’s a big cut in the total number of appointees that the Senate must approve, and there will be no more of this “read the bill” nonsense.

Anyone that believes that the next time the GOP has the Senate and the Presidency and but also lacks a 61 vote majority, whether or not McConnell himself is still around and running the GOP Senate, that they won’t instantly eliminate the filibuster using a simple majority vote at the start of a new Congress is smoking something. And nary a peep will be made on that day about today’s “agreement.” That would be shrill.

It would do nothing to the august nature of the Senate to require actual debate take place to uphold a filibuster, and furthermore to put the onus of that continuing operation on the minority. Instead, we punish the majority, and often times the vast majority, on whom today rests the need to fight off constant quorum calls and schedule the entire legislative year around various “marination” periods that automatically and interminably ensue any time any actual action starts to happen. It is just incredible that this malignant process, one that arose by chance and error in the first place, was deemed “too good to do away with.”

Incredible, but all too indicative of the era.

Status Quo, Everyone!

Random Thought #371

politicalprof:

It should be remembered that no one—and I mean no one, of any party—who advocates more tax cuts for Americans, whether businesses or individuals, is serious about solving the American national deficit. The only reasonable response to anyone who follows a statement about the need to reduce or cure the United States’ national debt with a statement about the importance of more tax cuts is to laugh at them until snot runs out of your nose.

That this isn’t already the widespread response and being ceaseless spread and solidified by Democratic operatives as politicians of all stripes take to the hustings come 2012 is precisely why the Democrats fail. Period.

Until they accomplish that one thing: lancing the festering boil that begins with the merely foolish Laffer Curve and ends now with the grade-A, unadulterated horseshit in which tax cuts never even need to be budgeted for, and then successfully turn all of that into a massive and truly, viscerally horrifying joke that all representatives of the Tea Klan and their GOP enablers must run, run from at each and every stop (see: “maximum acceleration on BullshitOne, Charlie, they’ve got the pitchforks out here too!”), well, until that day: we’ll get precisely nowhere in this country.

Texas, Our Texas

Obviously very early, but signs say that it could go for Obama in 2012…under certain circumstances:

Texas ought to stay safely in the GOP column for 2012 but with a weak nominee Obama would have a chance and these numbers are further confirmation that you’re probably talking about 400+ electoral votes for the President next year if his opponent is [redacted].

But unsaid, and what ought to scare the pants off the GOP in Texas: that any potential candidate would poll as losing Texas to Obama right now is, shall we say: interesting.

Not KBH’s Senate seat, not the 2012 cycle, but soon and for a long time: Texas will be blue. The demographic tontine that is the core of the modern GOP will make it ever more so. I think I’ll even live to see it be a fairly reliable blue. And that will be a big, big deal.

Texas, Our Texas

There’s much for them to be angst-ridden about. If they think it’s bad now, wait ‘til next year.

Mitch McConnell, never one to beat around the bush, describing the prospects for bipartisan comity in the Senate in the next Congress.
I’m sure we’ll all be very sick of the media pushback against what is clearly pure partisan politics, precisely what the 93% of the public says it is sick of. I imagine the firestorm will ultimately force McConnell to give a tearful retraction somewhere around 5pm EST today. So clear your calendars.
But, by all means Democrats, keep handing over hostages.