Id just like to see any of hilldawgs “pay to play” proven. ... But good strawwoman....
So you're saying you expect Blackwater, the Saudis, and Russian Politicians who engage in torture to continue to give Billions of dollars to her charity now that they're not dealing with the secretary of State and future President? No reduction in funding at all?
Personally I think their haircut will be so extreme they'll find some excuse to close the charity.
I still think we should have tried the guy, even if in absentia, before we did so.
The Military does not have to (and indeed, can not) try everyone before they kill them.
Trials involve rules of evidence and laws which assume police and the rest of the legal system are able to control the overall situation, including crime scene and witnesses. Trials allow defendants to question witnesses and examine evidence.
Trying to apply those to a military situation leads to insane results. The prosecutor for the first world trade center bombing reported that the "defendants" used the legal system to find out what we knew about Al Qaeda as a whole.
If they find out we're monitoring their communications, they change them. When Bin Laden realized we knew who he was, what he was doing, and where he was, he fled and retooled.
Using the legal system's rules results in smarter, better organized terrorists, just like they would if we applied them against any army. Just because Al Qaeda is a group of criminals doesn't mean they're not also an army.
However there are lots of other treaties and laws, presumably there'd be problems somewhere. Just for starters going to war with Canada is problematic (and that's what you're suggesting).
I assume with any 1st or 2nd world nation, you just ask the police to arrest someone and have the courts deal with it. We're not killing people with drones in spite of having better options, we're killing people with drones because we don't.
We could actually say that the people that don’t mind extrajudicial assassinations are really fearful,
It's "extrajudicial" because lawless areas of the world are involved and the problem has reached a scale where the army needed to step in.
One good thing Obama was forced to do was take ownership of the situation. He went into office with soaring left-wing rhetoric and quickly figured out the underlying mess is not Presidents running amok, it's that there is no pure "judicial" solution here. All the happy "there must be a law" rhetoric is unworkable when faced with the ugly reality.
We use the law where we can, we use the army where we must. They're both tools of society.
We use "extrajudicial assassinations" because that's the least ugly solution. We make them die over there because we don't want them to knock down buildings over here. If you have a less ugly solution, by all means put it on the table.
We've done this before, i.e. had serious conflicts with non-state actors (see below). We're fighting a movement, not a state actor. The conflict will end when Islam no longer inspires people to go out and enslave/murder/etc on a big enough scale that we need the army to deal with it.
Part of dealing with this should involve state building. Part of it is just letting generation after generation of fanatics kill themselves uselessly. Part is giving Islam the time to reform.
The barbary wars.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/barbary-wars
The Anarchists, who assassinated President McKinley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States
maybe we wrote some of the terms a little too broadly – I mean, everyone *knew* what we meant – but then we didn’t really expect it to be the primary foreign policy vehicle in 2016, did we?
Is Al Qaeda still around?
-Yes (although they've been renamed).
Are they still killing people and destabilizing countries?
-Yes.
Are they big enough and dangerous enough that we need armies and not cops to deal with them?
-Yes.
If we leave them alone will they start knocking down buildings in the US again?
-They'd probably try if they're not busy executing Christians and enslaving women.
The problem isn't with the AUMF, the problem is with the reality. All the wishful thinking in the world can't return the situation to what we thought it was before 911.
Your chosen champion runs a Billion dollar pay-to-play scheme, and now that she's not going to be President I expect Blackwater, the Saudis, and Russian Politicians known mostly for torture will reduce their level of "humanitarian" giving.
That was the actual choice.
IMHO being a total flaming ass isn't disqualifying for being Prez, nor is marrying models, divorcing your wife because of money, etc.
Which leaves racism (i.e. not being a Democrat), insanity (and he and his family seem amazingly functional for nuts), and anti-immigration / anti-free-trade.
That last one did it for me, but we'll find out how serious he was.
Don Zeko:
Sure, you’d also get a righteous dissent pointing out that the majority’s holding turns the entire world into a free fire zone, unbounded geographically and temporally, in which the president can dispense lethal force arbitrarily, but the dissenters would lose and the drone strikes would continue.
Hardly the entire world, just where law enforcement has no ability to do anything.
If it takes the army to arrest someone, then they don't get to claim "because they're not cops the rules weren't followed".
An impeachable offense would be if Obama killed someone in lieu of using the justice system, but as far as I can tell that hasn't happened. If cops have control then he uses cops, not drones.
Judges can't wear their robes on battle fields. If you're hiding in a cave for the express purpose of preventing the justice system from having access to you, then the justice system doesn't have access to you.
Obama campaigned on health care reform, he was elected along with sizable majorities to enact healthcare reform and his reform bill passed Congress correctly. Nowhere, anywhere, is it written that if you lose a special election to replace a single Senator that you then are required to shelve your agenda.
All of this is true, none of it changes that he rammed through an unpopular bill in the face of determined popular opposition, nor that because he abused his super majority it was taken away from him.
it makes right wingers subsequent bleating about how Obama should have sold the plan more or reached out more or whatever just empty bleating
Sold it to the GOP? Sure. Sold it to the American people? Now that's more than empty bleating. Somehow you seem to think the GOP had the responsibility to back a bill sold on lies in the face of general opposition from the population.
GOP’s intended outcome was for the Dems to muddle around with healthcare, then fail to produce anything a la Clinton in the 90’s. Their shock, horror and outrage that the Dems learned from and declined to go along with that history never fails to warm my heart.
Haven't you lost enough elections yet? Telling the GOP to get lost is fine, doing the same to the American people is much less so. That's very high risk, whatever you're trying had better darn well work without extreme goal post moving.
premiums have continued to increase though at a slower rate and from a lower baseline than pre-aca.
Witness the goal post moving. Victory conditions were rates going down as promised, and people keeping their plans if they liked them.
that’s a circle Trump and the GOP are going to have to either try and square or leave be. They don’t have the option of just opposing anymore.
Yes. Being President is hard. Ideally we'd have someone in there with a proven track record of success and experience.
Except each time he just got more popular. The daily swings went up and down, but overall the more the GOP base saw of Trump, the more they liked him.
IMHO Trump wasn't voted in because of his personality, he was voted in despite it. It's up there with Bill Clinton's womanizing, and Reagan's forgetfulness.
Election day polls had 4%(ish) of the GOP voting against him, and that's supposed to be the wrath of god. Trump could have had a blowout election if he were "sane Trump".
60 million Americans saw all that, knew everything about Trump, and decided they preferred him, because something emails.
Something emails. Hundreds of millions of dollars of mysterious money. Billions of dollars in her own personal charity. Fixing the primary. Deplorables.
And being offered four to eight more years of the same.
The same economic growth (is it Obama's economy yet?). The same putting the green agenda in front of job creation. The same level of employment. The same watching health care costs go up. The same watching everyone connected to the government advance at your expense.
Have you missed the spectacle of the Never Trumpers crawling back one by one to kiss the ring?
Never Crazy Trump or Racist Trump or Anti-Growth Trump. However even when I voted against him I wasn't sure this wasn't an act.
If he runs things as CEO Trump (and we may be looking at Money! Trump), then I'm fine with him being an ass and wanting to entertain the masses. It's probably worth a point or two of growth to have competent management of the government in a way that doesn't kill business.
If he walks back the Crazy/Racist/AGrowth then the only problem is the intrinsic lack of dignity he brings to the office.
...you so far haven’t laid out what the GOP proposed in 2009 and offered votes to support...
Assume it was actually "nothing", as you're claiming. Why is this a bad thing? Would the country have blown up without Obamacare? The bulk of the country was happy with their insurance, and only unhappy with the cost, and they wanted what Obama promised which was to lower costs.
Obamacare was designed to expand coverage, i.e. pulling people into the system... and getting the rest of us to pay for it. That's a worthy goal, but not what was advertised and "worthy" is not the same as "popular".
Opposing this, while proposing (by implication) that we don't change the existing system, is perfectly legit.
Obama took ownership of the health care system, this was a high-risk, high-reward move. If he'd actually done a good job and fulfilled his promises, then Dems would be getting elected bragging about the great job they did.
Instead prices have continued to go up (not down), and we got a website that showed a stunning lack of competence, and the coverage isn't that great.
Bush got punished for mishandling the war(s).
Obama has gotten punished for mishandling healthcare.
Yes, the GOP made it harder for him. But he's an adult and the Dems chosen leader. He's supposed to be up to the job of being President, and a big part of that is handling the opposition.
Prove things out at a state level, figure out what works and what doesn't, then after that argue the Feds should be copying it. Sounds really good, and it's how the system is supposed to work.
A 25 year old is automatically disqualified, someone with business interests is only disqualified if he doesn't get Congressional permission. IMHO getting Congressional permission won't be that hard. Whether or not it's a good idea is a different matter.
...I don’t think that trusting the best available data and allocating resources based on it was really an avoidable mistake...
I strongly question whether she's using "the best available data" when we see results like this. It seems more likely she paid for yes-men who told her what she wanted to hear, and she fired anyone who didn't. The stories we're hearing are of that and too much central planning.
She (twice!) had three amazing resources, time, money, and the backing of the establishment... and she still blew it twice. I have to think we're looking at serious management issues.
Are you saying she would have done more of the same thing that got her the popular vote, thus screwing up? This is where things get unclear. “Didn’t work” sort of implies that the burden would be on her to fix something that wasn’t working, but it seems like in terms of getting more people to vote for her, it did work just fine.
She won what wasn't important by focusing on what wasn't important. She spent time, money, and other resources ineffectually. She had no clue she was in trouble because her bubble was so thick even her husband's advice was ignored.
Further, this is the 2nd time in 8 years she's lost to an underfunded opponent because she had organizational, informational, and mismanagement problems.
I don't see why any of these issues go away if the rules are different, especially because when the rules were different she still managed to turn lots of money into defeat. Change the rules a third time and I fully expect we'd see her manage the same trick again.
Most folks – the majority of folks – like guarantee issue, community rating, no rescission, Rule 26, caps on insurance co. profits, etc, etc.
Free benefits are always popular. Whether they're popular enough to pay for is something else.
Healthcare reform has often been a story of the Dems (or the public) wanting Universal Coverage (or in this case, to expand coverage) but flinching away from how much it'd cost.
Calling it "simplistic rejection" ignores that dynamic.
In the case of the GOP’s blanket opposition it was rather easy to organize since the party’s naked immediate interests and political welfare were both aligned so it didn’t take a lot of work.
True, but this deserves a lot more detail. If Obamacare was in the country's best interest, why was opposing it popular?
Obama was amazing popular and respected while the GOP weren't. The obvious move for Obama was for him to explain to the American people how this Bill was in their interest and have them put pressure on the GOP until they caved. Reagan was a master of this, others could make it work.
So Obama explained... that you could keep your doctor (the lie of the year), and costs would go down, etc. Lots of people recognized that these were lies and decided that Obamacare wasn't in their best interests. That the Bill was thousands of pages long (and thus unreadable) didn't help, nor did the fact that most Congressmen didn't understand what was in it (meaning the public couldn't).
The ACA was basically the GOP’s final offer from the previous time health care reform had been debated.
And yet no Dem, no matter how far to the left, voted against it because it was too far to the right. And with a super majority it'd be very odd behavior to write a right-leaning bill. The way it was presented at the time was the left negotiated with the far left in terms of what they'd do.
Obama offered the entire farm on the sequester negotiations and the only reason the GOP didn’t get it is they were so gone into rejectionism that they couldn’t countenance trading tax increases for spending cuts on a ten to one basis in their favor.
Was this when they were using 10 year accounting with the offered spending cuts happening in years 9 and 10 (i.e. after Obama left office)?
...then there’s no way they’re going to be able to pass that buck onto the liberals.
I think that's a reasonable statement, but given how many times the GOP has been wrong about who the voters will blame, I don't think a serious miscalculation on their part is unlikely.
Rather than think the GOP is stunningly competent in spite of all the evidence, I'd rather believe that they're every bit as disorganized, short sighted, and selfish as their actions suggest. They're JV High School, not Pro. Most of them would sell out their "principles" for a loose dollar. All of them are for whatever will get them elected.
Which means keeping them unified and opposed needed huge amounts of "help" from Obama himself. When the Grandmaster Chess player loses, repeatedly, to some High School Schmuck it's worth checking out his record, and if that record doesn't actually have a noted history of success, then why am I supposed to think he's a Grandmaster?
I think it's more like "how do we *make* these people do this".
Even assuming Trump EC delegates were picked for loyalty to the GOP and not loyalty to Trump (which btw I don't think is correct), Trump has been on a massive "sanity" show recently.
...the idea that the GOP’s hissy fit during the end stages of the ACA constituted the ACA being deeply unpopular doesn’t pass the laugh test.
The GOP's "base" wasn't the group that took Ted Kennedy's seat from the Dems and handed it to the GOP, for the express and specific purpose of blocking Obamacare. Similarly Obamacare got every Blue dog dem thrown out of office.
He passed the ACA and ran again- he won again.
Which was fine for him, less fine for everyone else who needed to run on voting for it. Lesson to be learned here is big changes/programs are big political risks if they only have narrow majorities.
Obamacare was passed with the political gamble that it'd be popular no matter how unpopular it was. Obamacare's various promises turned out to be happy marketing talk which raised expectations higher than could be met. Healthcare costs went up, not down as promised. You couldn't keep your doctor as promised, etc.
The GOP have majorities in Congress and the Presidency. If they look back at the past eight years and think that blame will fall to the minority party without the Presidency if they repeal the ACA with nothing to replace it that’d be an… extraordinary leap to say the least.
This is the same group which repeatedly shut down the gov thinking "this time" they wouldn't be blamed.
BTW this kind of shown incompetence is one of the reasons I doubt they were super-competent when dealing with Obama in "denying" him various victories and "preventing him" from having bipartisan wins. IMHO it's a lot more likely he's just not good at this sort of thing (probably deal making here, although coalition building and reaching out to the other side also are part of it).
A really thin resume should be read for what's not on it as well as what is. Keeping politicians unified and preventing them from doing what's in their own selfish interest is like herding cats.... and the Minority head of the House/Senate have a lot less power than a Popular President with sky high approval ratings.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Electoral College Option”
So you're saying you expect Blackwater, the Saudis, and Russian Politicians who engage in torture to continue to give Billions of dollars to her charity now that they're not dealing with the secretary of State and future President? No reduction in funding at all?
Personally I think their haircut will be so extreme they'll find some excuse to close the charity.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
The Military does not have to (and indeed, can not) try everyone before they kill them.
Trials involve rules of evidence and laws which assume police and the rest of the legal system are able to control the overall situation, including crime scene and witnesses. Trials allow defendants to question witnesses and examine evidence.
Trying to apply those to a military situation leads to insane results. The prosecutor for the first world trade center bombing reported that the "defendants" used the legal system to find out what we knew about Al Qaeda as a whole.
If they find out we're monitoring their communications, they change them. When Bin Laden realized we knew who he was, what he was doing, and where he was, he fled and retooled.
Using the legal system's rules results in smarter, better organized terrorists, just like they would if we applied them against any army. Just because Al Qaeda is a group of criminals doesn't mean they're not also an army.
"
According to the AUMF? Yes.
However there are lots of other treaties and laws, presumably there'd be problems somewhere. Just for starters going to war with Canada is problematic (and that's what you're suggesting).
I assume with any 1st or 2nd world nation, you just ask the police to arrest someone and have the courts deal with it. We're not killing people with drones in spite of having better options, we're killing people with drones because we don't.
"
It's "extrajudicial" because lawless areas of the world are involved and the problem has reached a scale where the army needed to step in.
One good thing Obama was forced to do was take ownership of the situation. He went into office with soaring left-wing rhetoric and quickly figured out the underlying mess is not Presidents running amok, it's that there is no pure "judicial" solution here. All the happy "there must be a law" rhetoric is unworkable when faced with the ugly reality.
We use the law where we can, we use the army where we must. They're both tools of society.
We use "extrajudicial assassinations" because that's the least ugly solution. We make them die over there because we don't want them to knock down buildings over here. If you have a less ugly solution, by all means put it on the table.
"
We've done this before, i.e. had serious conflicts with non-state actors (see below). We're fighting a movement, not a state actor. The conflict will end when Islam no longer inspires people to go out and enslave/murder/etc on a big enough scale that we need the army to deal with it.
Part of dealing with this should involve state building. Part of it is just letting generation after generation of fanatics kill themselves uselessly. Part is giving Islam the time to reform.
The barbary wars.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/barbary-wars
The Anarchists, who assassinated President McKinley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States
"
As far as I can tell that hasn't happened yet.
The Authorization to Use Military Force was basically a blank check with a "fill in the country" section.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists
"
Is Al Qaeda still around?
-Yes (although they've been renamed).
Are they still killing people and destabilizing countries?
-Yes.
Are they big enough and dangerous enough that we need armies and not cops to deal with them?
-Yes.
If we leave them alone will they start knocking down buildings in the US again?
-They'd probably try if they're not busy executing Christians and enslaving women.
The problem isn't with the AUMF, the problem is with the reality. All the wishful thinking in the world can't return the situation to what we thought it was before 911.
On “The Electoral College Option”
Pot. Meet Kettle.
Your chosen champion runs a Billion dollar pay-to-play scheme, and now that she's not going to be President I expect Blackwater, the Saudis, and Russian Politicians known mostly for torture will reduce their level of "humanitarian" giving.
That was the actual choice.
IMHO being a total flaming ass isn't disqualifying for being Prez, nor is marrying models, divorcing your wife because of money, etc.
Which leaves racism (i.e. not being a Democrat), insanity (and he and his family seem amazingly functional for nuts), and anti-immigration / anti-free-trade.
That last one did it for me, but we'll find out how serious he was.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
Hardly the entire world, just where law enforcement has no ability to do anything.
If it takes the army to arrest someone, then they don't get to claim "because they're not cops the rules weren't followed".
"
An impeachable offense would be if Obama killed someone in lieu of using the justice system, but as far as I can tell that hasn't happened. If cops have control then he uses cops, not drones.
Judges can't wear their robes on battle fields. If you're hiding in a cave for the express purpose of preventing the justice system from having access to you, then the justice system doesn't have access to you.
On “The Electoral College Option”
All of this is true, none of it changes that he rammed through an unpopular bill in the face of determined popular opposition, nor that because he abused his super majority it was taken away from him.
Sold it to the GOP? Sure. Sold it to the American people? Now that's more than empty bleating. Somehow you seem to think the GOP had the responsibility to back a bill sold on lies in the face of general opposition from the population.
Haven't you lost enough elections yet? Telling the GOP to get lost is fine, doing the same to the American people is much less so. That's very high risk, whatever you're trying had better darn well work without extreme goal post moving.
Witness the goal post moving. Victory conditions were rates going down as promised, and people keeping their plans if they liked them.
Yes. Being President is hard. Ideally we'd have someone in there with a proven track record of success and experience.
"
IMHO Trump wasn't voted in because of his personality, he was voted in despite it. It's up there with Bill Clinton's womanizing, and Reagan's forgetfulness.
Election day polls had 4%(ish) of the GOP voting against him, and that's supposed to be the wrath of god. Trump could have had a blowout election if he were "sane Trump".
Something emails. Hundreds of millions of dollars of mysterious money. Billions of dollars in her own personal charity. Fixing the primary. Deplorables.
And being offered four to eight more years of the same.
The same economic growth (is it Obama's economy yet?). The same putting the green agenda in front of job creation. The same level of employment. The same watching health care costs go up. The same watching everyone connected to the government advance at your expense.
"
Never Crazy Trump or Racist Trump or Anti-Growth Trump. However even when I voted against him I wasn't sure this wasn't an act.
If he runs things as CEO Trump (and we may be looking at Money! Trump), then I'm fine with him being an ass and wanting to entertain the masses. It's probably worth a point or two of growth to have competent management of the government in a way that doesn't kill business.
If he walks back the Crazy/Racist/AGrowth then the only problem is the intrinsic lack of dignity he brings to the office.
"
Assume it was actually "nothing", as you're claiming. Why is this a bad thing? Would the country have blown up without Obamacare? The bulk of the country was happy with their insurance, and only unhappy with the cost, and they wanted what Obama promised which was to lower costs.
Obamacare was designed to expand coverage, i.e. pulling people into the system... and getting the rest of us to pay for it. That's a worthy goal, but not what was advertised and "worthy" is not the same as "popular".
Opposing this, while proposing (by implication) that we don't change the existing system, is perfectly legit.
Obama took ownership of the health care system, this was a high-risk, high-reward move. If he'd actually done a good job and fulfilled his promises, then Dems would be getting elected bragging about the great job they did.
Instead prices have continued to go up (not down), and we got a website that showed a stunning lack of competence, and the coverage isn't that great.
Bush got punished for mishandling the war(s).
Obama has gotten punished for mishandling healthcare.
Yes, the GOP made it harder for him. But he's an adult and the Dems chosen leader. He's supposed to be up to the job of being President, and a big part of that is handling the opposition.
"
Prove things out at a state level, figure out what works and what doesn't, then after that argue the Feds should be copying it. Sounds really good, and it's how the system is supposed to work.
"
A 25 year old is automatically disqualified, someone with business interests is only disqualified if he doesn't get Congressional permission. IMHO getting Congressional permission won't be that hard. Whether or not it's a good idea is a different matter.
"
Eh? Other than being a Conservative and his personality, what's he done that is so awful?
"
I strongly question whether she's using "the best available data" when we see results like this. It seems more likely she paid for yes-men who told her what she wanted to hear, and she fired anyone who didn't. The stories we're hearing are of that and too much central planning.
She (twice!) had three amazing resources, time, money, and the backing of the establishment... and she still blew it twice. I have to think we're looking at serious management issues.
"
She won what wasn't important by focusing on what wasn't important. She spent time, money, and other resources ineffectually. She had no clue she was in trouble because her bubble was so thick even her husband's advice was ignored.
Further, this is the 2nd time in 8 years she's lost to an underfunded opponent because she had organizational, informational, and mismanagement problems.
I don't see why any of these issues go away if the rules are different, especially because when the rules were different she still managed to turn lots of money into defeat. Change the rules a third time and I fully expect we'd see her manage the same trick again.
"
I think she would have doubled down on the things which didn't work for her, including ignoring her husband's advice.
"
Free benefits are always popular. Whether they're popular enough to pay for is something else.
Healthcare reform has often been a story of the Dems (or the public) wanting Universal Coverage (or in this case, to expand coverage) but flinching away from how much it'd cost.
Calling it "simplistic rejection" ignores that dynamic.
"
Then why did Obama have to go out and give the lie of the year (among others) to get it to pass?
"
True, but this deserves a lot more detail. If Obamacare was in the country's best interest, why was opposing it popular?
Obama was amazing popular and respected while the GOP weren't. The obvious move for Obama was for him to explain to the American people how this Bill was in their interest and have them put pressure on the GOP until they caved. Reagan was a master of this, others could make it work.
So Obama explained... that you could keep your doctor (the lie of the year), and costs would go down, etc. Lots of people recognized that these were lies and decided that Obamacare wasn't in their best interests. That the Bill was thousands of pages long (and thus unreadable) didn't help, nor did the fact that most Congressmen didn't understand what was in it (meaning the public couldn't).
And yet no Dem, no matter how far to the left, voted against it because it was too far to the right. And with a super majority it'd be very odd behavior to write a right-leaning bill. The way it was presented at the time was the left negotiated with the far left in terms of what they'd do.
Was this when they were using 10 year accounting with the offered spending cuts happening in years 9 and 10 (i.e. after Obama left office)?
I think that's a reasonable statement, but given how many times the GOP has been wrong about who the voters will blame, I don't think a serious miscalculation on their part is unlikely.
Rather than think the GOP is stunningly competent in spite of all the evidence, I'd rather believe that they're every bit as disorganized, short sighted, and selfish as their actions suggest. They're JV High School, not Pro. Most of them would sell out their "principles" for a loose dollar. All of them are for whatever will get them elected.
Which means keeping them unified and opposed needed huge amounts of "help" from Obama himself. When the Grandmaster Chess player loses, repeatedly, to some High School Schmuck it's worth checking out his record, and if that record doesn't actually have a noted history of success, then why am I supposed to think he's a Grandmaster?
"
I think it's more like "how do we *make* these people do this".
Even assuming Trump EC delegates were picked for loyalty to the GOP and not loyalty to Trump (which btw I don't think is correct), Trump has been on a massive "sanity" show recently.
"
The GOP's "base" wasn't the group that took Ted Kennedy's seat from the Dems and handed it to the GOP, for the express and specific purpose of blocking Obamacare. Similarly Obamacare got every Blue dog dem thrown out of office.
Which was fine for him, less fine for everyone else who needed to run on voting for it. Lesson to be learned here is big changes/programs are big political risks if they only have narrow majorities.
Obamacare was passed with the political gamble that it'd be popular no matter how unpopular it was. Obamacare's various promises turned out to be happy marketing talk which raised expectations higher than could be met. Healthcare costs went up, not down as promised. You couldn't keep your doctor as promised, etc.
This is the same group which repeatedly shut down the gov thinking "this time" they wouldn't be blamed.
BTW this kind of shown incompetence is one of the reasons I doubt they were super-competent when dealing with Obama in "denying" him various victories and "preventing him" from having bipartisan wins. IMHO it's a lot more likely he's just not good at this sort of thing (probably deal making here, although coalition building and reaching out to the other side also are part of it).
A really thin resume should be read for what's not on it as well as what is. Keeping politicians unified and preventing them from doing what's in their own selfish interest is like herding cats.... and the Minority head of the House/Senate have a lot less power than a Popular President with sky high approval ratings.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.