Politics The Elephant in the room...The GOP today

Interesting...in the sense that I thought the elephant turds whined long & loud.

It was also very convenien that they could symbolically vote against Biden's relief bill without fear of having to explain why the peons/pawns/voters didn't get any relief.


Will any of the elephant turds actually stand up and do what's right for the country?

 

It will be interesting to see what happens with the infrastructure bill. State budgets got hit hard over the last year, but should rebound this year. However, the big federal funded projects bring in a lot of jobs in construction and planning, and pictures of politicians at ribbon cutting ceremonies for new projects goes over well with most people.

 

I would say it had to do with identity, culture, and lifestyle. Ever since the 80's where Japanese car makers, Chinese tech factories, Mexican factories, and immigrant construction and farm labor has been preventing a large group of people from having decent & stable jobs. While they watch the rich and their kids take over.

But they also have lost on abortion and gay acceptance. Guns and low taxes are the things they have left.

The talk radio, TV channels, and social media has organized and explained the outrage and who to blame instead of the corporate leaders who made the decisions. (They get a pass because, "wouldn't you do the same thing if you were in their shoes?")

 

I would say that the media and peer pressure on social media is having more influence than any politician.

 

Former Speaker of the House, Republican Congressman John Boehner, wrote an "essay" that appears in Politico today that rips into today's Trump/Freedom Caucus Republican Party.

On the political notion of "compromise and consensus building" ...

And on Obama...

Read the full essay: Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates and the Birth of GOP Paranoia

On the comment "...they didn’t really want legislative victories. They wanted wedge issues and conspiracies and crusades"...

One only need look back over the last four years

On health care, the goal was to kill Obamacare. Remember Trump's "greatest health plan ever" after gutting the ACA? Coming any day now!

Or Republican immigration reform that offers constructive improvements rather than gutting legal immigration in an appeal to the anti-immigration white nationalist base?

An infrastructure program that even hard line conservatives recognize is long overdue? More tax cuts for the rich is not a solution.

I honestly cannot think of one constructive proposal on major public policy issues from today's Republican Party.

 

One of the leading insurrectionists in Congress, Rep. Paul Gosar (R- Ariz), is ripped by his brothers and sister in an ad from the Republican Accountability Project to air on Fox News.



GOP Rep’s Family Calls Him Out Over Insurrection In Scathing Fox News Ad

 

@redux, yeah I agree and I'd say also the GOP in general is most interested in vindictive destruction, like, let's not pay attention to aids cause gays are bad. Let's not help the storm/pandemic/financial crash victims because free stuff is immoral.
I also feel like repugs are much more reliable in looking for personal gain, financial, sexual, and just plain old attention whoring due to a bottomless neediness you can just feel in your gut from their persona.
Dems aren't perfect angels but I feel like Reps are consistently devoid of any personal moral compass.



Shit like this just dosn't sound good... generous. ? ...hmm
Partner. ? ... why is it so easy to swap out partner for "customer" sounds like he's talking about a tip more than date behavior...just reeks of, " I bought you all this stuff now you owe me a sex weekend and pix I can show off later"

After a half million + dead from 'rona I see the GOP as having no bottom of bad behavior, total moral vacuum. I definitely see them as a danger for a totalitarian kleptocratic authoritarian government.

It's been on a downward slope since I first was able to vote, but it's near vertical jackass style fall these days

 

I like the bits I'm hearing about Boehner's book... Like Romney I'm surprised again.
I like his foul mouth and nicotine addiction.

 

I think the AM radio and Conservative news media got way too powerful and controlled the narrative. All of them were concerned about ad buys and campaign contributions.

Seriously, I could come up with a good "conservative" healthcare system. Loosen HSA regulations (able to put in more tax-free cash to be used for healthcare expenses), HSAs aren't tied to employment, but employers could help provide funds tax-free as incentives to work at places. As people get more and more HSA funds in their accounts as they are healthy, the premims could come down if you had $25,000 or $50,000 cash in an HSA account after 5-20 years.

Then the bank (probably a new government agency though) could use that HSA money in the bank as capital to loan to others who are sick. Interest on the loans or paycheck deductions could be used to get the funds owed back.

Excess premiums collected could be used to create a rainy day account in case of a major health problem, provide incentives to stay healthy, reward people for being healthy, provide compassionate care, provide rural mobile healthcare, and on and on.

The HSA would go towards the Medicare co-pay and 20% premiums if you stayed healthy until 65-70. The HSA would cover premiums if you lost your job.

 

The one part missing from Biden's speech was giving any credit to the agencies in the previous administration, or even the decisions of the previous administration to safely, but expeditiously get the vaccine trials and approvals done. Yes, it would have given the conservative news something to talk about, but it also might have been something that could have reduced the hesitancy. I don't know if anyone didn't get the vaccine to try and keep Biden from reaching his goal in the first 100 days, but he could have talked about that getting the vaccine isn't about given the Democrats a political win or talking point anymore too.

 

He isn't doing much compromising when it comes to policies. But it is in the nation's and Biden's interest to reach herd immunity as quickly as possible. It will happen either through people developing their own antibodies the hard way, or by using science and then have a much reduced risk of symptoms.

I know two or three of the Obama -> Trump voters who like Biden now. They aren't a big fan of the polarization, but also got brainwashed by social media and talk radio. They also really didn't like Hillary for years and years. But, I think the way to get stuff done is to try and shrink that 45% side down in the suburbs and small towns. Back in 2006/2008, the maps of the vote distribution between DEM & GOP was not nearly as one sided.

 

No.

Trump and his puppets totally blew it when it was still the Corona Virus.

The vaccine R&D was well underway before Conman decided to "jump on the bandwagon." I strongly suspect the only reason Conman started pushing for expedited approval was someone managed to make him understand it was going to happen no matter how much he fought it.

This might be one of the few times Conman actually and finally read the handwriting on the wall (well after his consistent denials) and reacted appropriately (for his benefit). But it happened in spite of Trump not because of him.

No, don't give the Trump administration, and the GOP, credit for anything.