Anyone else (possibly) getting a mandatory vacation come Tuesday?

[DinoDoc]

I don't and I'll be glad when he retires his current term is up. I say that as someone once proud to have voted for him to be President.

[kentonio]

Ah was that before you swung far right and became an extremist?

[DinoDoc]

Ah was that before you swung far right and became an extremist?

You should be glad when he leaves the stage as well. It was the leadership of he and his ilk that gave you the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin.

[Aeson]

BTW no one claimed the Democrats are blameless (well, other than you're stupid ass) and what I said, which was absolutely and unequivocally correct, is that your retarded attempts to claim that both sides are equally to blame and that therefor they're both equal is a load of ****ing horse ****. We're talking false equivalency city and you're so full of **** it is fertilizing your share cropper fields in the PI.

The only clear thing is that there is a gulf between the two sides that neither is willing to bridge. Whether that gulf is the fault of one or the other sides is simply a matter of perspective. You want the R's to bridge the gulf to your party's position.They want the D's to bridge the gulf to their position. For anything to come of it, one or both sides will have to compromise more. So far no one has been willing to compromise enough to get a deal done.

That is simply the truth, and it's just partisan politics to paint either side as the good guy in this ****-fest. D's were able to pass Obamacare without any regard for R's. R's are now able to hold up it's funding (at least for a while) without any regard for D's. Until they get some compromise, it will only end if one or the other side gets enough votes to railroad the other side.

[kentonio]

You should be glad when he leaves the stage as well. It was the leadership of he and his ilk that gave you the likes of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin.

I have no problem with those people existing, they are representative of a significant proportion of Americans and it's better that they be openly represented rather than acting as simply an evil influence on otherwise moderate representatives. We had the same problem in the UK with the people who have now left the Conservative Party and joined UKIP. It removes part of your base, but you pickup more moderates as a result and at least you can feel clean afterwards.

[DinoDoc]

Perhaps you could explain to me the strategic sense of a political party going to war against its base of support. We have a fair number of years of data now that it doesn't seem to work as a strategy to win elections.

[kentonio]

Perhaps you could explain to me the strategic sense of a political party going to war against its base of support. We have a fair number of years of data now that it doesn't seem to work as a strategy to win elections.

A broad tent strategy only works as long as all aspects of the base are willing to co-exist. Pandering to the far right is costing the GOP huge amounts of moderate support, and much as it pains the hard right to admit it, there are a lot more moderates in the country than there are far right conservatives. If the right are insisting on the party strictly complying with their goals and are unwilling to compromise on that, then the GOP are not going to get back control of the country, it's as simple as that.

You talk about going to war with the base, but what exactly do you call it when the right start calling the moderate Republicans RINO's and start trying to oust their representatives for not being dogmatically pure enough?

The far right are currently exercising far more political weight than their numbers warrant, and they're only getting away with it on the back of public fears and pain about the bank bailouts and the recession. It's not sustainable, and a quick look at the GOP polling numbers should tell you that. Last week the Republican party polled its lowest ever approval numbers with Gallup at 28%. When the GOP push the ideas of the hard right they find their popularity being hammered.

[Hauldren Collider]

DinoDoc, the Republican party did not lose because it isn't conservative enough. The GOP is in fact turning away large demographics that it should not be, because of policy positions that are objectively wrong.

[DinoDoc]

DinoDoc, the Republican party did not lose because it isn't conservative enough.

It's going to be a little hard to stomach if you are going to claim that McCain and Romney lost because they were too Conservative. The good part is that isn't what I was arguing. My point is that McCain and people like him have been fackless and incompetent in their leadership of the party to the point that it left the base thirsting for something to excite them and allow them to harness their energy. If you want to deal with the people that should be among your most enthusiatic supporters (ie what the Tea Party should be), a more productive approach would be to actually talk with them rather than at or about them. Actually harnessing the energy of the base of the party rather than fighting it would have more effective results and is less likely to result in instances such as the current situation.

[dannubis]

[PLATO]

Looks like we have a deal. Back to work slackers!

http://news.yahoo.com/compromise-or-collapse--lawmakers-eye-breakthrough-on-debt--spending-150123572.html

[Docfeelgood]

just drama

[pchang]

Vacations over. Get back to work!