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Originally Posted by roachboy
otto--how is this "people's mandate" business any different from republicans talking about "americans"?
aren't you just addressing a matter of rhetoric, the word that is used to address a constituency? you can't possibly not see this for what it is...o course the terminology has resonances (that's what makes it rhetoric)---puts you in a position kinda like the 1820s right watching the jacksonian thing happen--that would make the republicans the defenders of a narrow elite and the democrats the populists.
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A more recent comparison would be the '94 Republican Contract with America, which accomplished few its initiatives in its first year.
Hoping to duplicate the electoral success of the Contract with America, Democrats ran on a platform of "Six for '06." As of late summer, two of the items--9/11 reforms and an increase in the minimum wage--had become law, while Bush had vetoed funding for stem-cell research. Proposals to reduce subsidies for oil companies and expand Pell grants remain tied up in conference committees (note: enacted later in the year); a bill to fix Medicare's prescription-drug problem has stalled in the Senate. Still, the GOP passed only two of the 11 Contract with America items in its first year back in charge.
One man's Congressional report card
Now back to the issue at the heart of the OP....big business/big government bedfellows!
ace, Ustwo and otto:
I'm curious why you dont have problems with these big business/big government bed fellows:
Exxon/Mobil et al getting $billions in tax benefits in the Republican 05 energy bill at the expense of supporting small, start-up alternative energy development companies.
Verizon, Bell South et al getting retroactive immunity for assisting in spying on Americans in the Republican FISA bill.
But you have problems with Phillip Morris getting benefits from this bill.
IMO, the benefits to those companies in those bills had a far greater negative impact on the public good than the benefits to Phillip Morris in this bill.