Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Here we go again. One more attempt at crafting a health care reform bill with the Republicans. The problem is that the GOP wants nothing to do with the main ideas the Democrats have put forth. Part of it is ideological–a reflexive rejection of anything but market-driven health care, (which has dismally failed either to provide for everyone or to control costs) and part is a reflexive desire to defeat Obama at all costs. The Republican idea of bipartisanship seems to be do it my way or not at all. We no longer have a legislative body in Washington capable of the compromises necessary to pass major legislation. This is a high-risk move on Obama’s part; if he fails to get anything, and the public blames him rather than the GOP (which has successfully outmaneuvered and out-communicated him so far), he can kiss his entire agenda goodbye, as well as the Congressional majority in November. If, on the other hand, he is able to show the Republicans for the obstructionists they are, or is able to persuade the members of his own party to develop backbones and pass something, he might yet have the last laugh.
Topics: bipartisanship, Congress, GOP, health care reform, health care summit, Obama, opinion, Republicans | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Here we go again. Obama is reaching out to Republicans one more time, convening a health care summit in hopes of crafting a bipartisan bill with a party that wants nothing to do with bipartisanship. If anything, Republicans, emboldened by Scott Brown’s surprise victory in Massachusetts, see obstructionism as the way to success at the polls. They’re going along, of course, because they have to at least pretend to want to work across the aisle. Their modest proposals for health care reform, which, if enacted, might extend coverage to about 5 percent of the nation’s uninsured, and which do nothing to contain costs, are so at odds with the president’s more sweeping proposals there is little chance that this summit will be anything but political theater.
Obama still seems reluctant to call the GOP out. The party that loudly demanded up and down votes on the Senate floor for Bush’s nominees now holds all of Obama’s hostage for months on the flimsiest of grounds–the latest being Richard Shelby’s hold on 70 nominees if he didn’t get an earmark for his state. It now takes 60 votes to accomplish anything in the Senate, thanks to the GOP’s filibuster of everything and anything. In the bizarre math of the current political paralysis, 41 votes defeats 59. And the inability of Democrats to accomplish anything in this environment appears to imperil their majority in November. President Obama, Mr. Cool, still refuses to raise his voice. The only people who seem to be genuinely angry, for all the wrong reasons, are the Tea Party loonies. Meanwhile, the country suffers.
Topics: bipartisanship, Congress, GOP, gridlock, Obama, opinion, partisanship, Republicans | 19 Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
I thought President Obama got it exactly right in his State of the Union address last night, chiding both Democrats and Republicans for their inability to solve any of the daunting problems facing the country. The Democrats are tied in knots, unwilling to wield the power the voters gave them a year ago, and the Republicans are living up to their reputation as the party of “no,” opposing anything before them now that they are in the minority. It remains to be seen if this is the emergence of a new, more aggressive Obama, who sat on the sidelines and failed to speak for his agenda for far too long while Congress dithered and the public burned.
Topics: agenda, Congress, Democrats, gridlock, Obama, opinion, Republicans, Washington | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
The Republicans are nothing if not united in their opposition to anything the Democrats try. In the case of health care reform, their stance from the beginning has been to kill it at all costs. It’s an outrage that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to accomplish anything when the minority party is unanimously hostile to the majority party. We can argue the merits of this particular health care bill forever, but that’s never really been the point of the opposition. If it were, the Republican party would have been trying to make the bill better rather than scuttle it. They argue that they’ve been shut out of the process, but that’s not even close to the truth. Little they’ve offered has been constructive, and nothing they’ve proposed even comes close to solving the problems our current non-system of health care presents to tens of millions of Americans. As the old saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Sadly, the GOP has indicated that it will fight granting more Americans access to affordable health care all the way.
Topics: death panel, GOP, health care reform, Obama, Republicans, Senate | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
Finally, the 9/11 conspirators are going to have their day in court. What an uproar has been unleashed by Attorney general Eric Holder’s decision to allow Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his followers to be tried in a civilian court in the United States. The very idea that we at long last are returning to a bedrock American tradition–a trial by jury–in the prosecution of the alleged criminals who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has Obama’s critics foaming at the mouth. It will endanger the citizens of New York, it will be a recruiting tool for al Qaeda, these guys are warriors who don’t deserve a civilian trial, what if they’re acquitted?–and on and on.
I’d like to believe that most of these arguments are purely political, that if the Democrats were arguing against giving these men a fair trial, they would be accused of not having faith in the American system of justice. I’d like to believe that, and not that the Republicans have lost their moorings in the war on terror and their relentless campaign of fear-mongering. One thing is certain: torture will come up in these trials, and the Bush administration and their Congressional enablers will be embarrassed once again. In the end, though, most of the world will admire an America that has regained the courage to live up to its principles. The ones who hate us and our way of life will be unmoved, no matter what we do. Let the trials begin.
Topics: 9/11 conspirators, Eric Holder, GOP, guantanamo, Justice department, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Obama, Republicans, terrorism, trial | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
It now looks likely that Obama will be able to sign some version of comprehensive health care reform by the end of the year. There are still numerous hurdles to leap, but the momentum appears to have built to the point that the discussion is about what the bill will contain rather than whether it will survive. Obama’s relative silence during the summer while his opponents were loudly disrupting town hall meetings and the tea party crazies were having their fun may have been the smartest strategy, after all. I was not alone in worrying that the president was letting the protesters get the upper hand, but it may have been his version of the rope-a-dope, letting the opposition wear itself out while cooler and more patient heads worked steadily to build the necessary popular support to pass meaningful legislation.
There’s no doubt that the vast majority of Americans want this reform; poll after poll shows a strong preference for finally correcting this country’s shameful inability to guarantee all its citizens access to affordable health care. The bills wending their way through both houses of Congress are not perfect, by any means, but they are a start in the right direction. History shows that once a framework is put in place, the necessary fixes will be made in time.
It’s not a done deal yet, but I’m more hopeful than ever that, at long last, this nation will join all the other countries of the developed world in making access to health care a basic human right for its citizens.
Topics: GOP, health care reform, Republicans, tea party, town hall meetings | No Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
I suppose, given the toxic climate of Washington these days, that it was too much to ask that everyone in America celebrate, at least for a day, an American winning a Nobel Prize. One can certainly debate whether the surprise Peace Prize awarded to President Obama was a bit premature, based more on expectation than accomplishment. That, of course, was not the official Republican response, delivered by party chairman Michael Steele. He went back to the pre-election playbook, the one that worked so well for the GOP in November, referring to Obama’s rock star status around the world as the reason for the award. Once again, the Republican party challenged, not the president’s policies, but his legitimacy. In his remarks, he claimed that Obama had yet to accomplish anything. This is the height of hypocrisy, given that the Republican party has done everything it can to prevent Obama from achieving any of his goals, no matter how worthy.
I’d argue that Obama has done a great deal on the world stage. He has moved this country back into its traditional role, abandoning the ruinous go-it-alone policies that alienated us from our allies and prevented us from making diplomatic progress with our enemies. His performance at the United Nations and at the G-20 summit restored much of the confidence, lost during eight years of American exceptionalism that marked the Bush era, that we intend to keep our place as the leader of the free world.
Topics: GOP, Nobel Prize, Obama, Peace Prize, Republicans | 2 Comments »
Friday, August 7th, 2009
The GOP-encouraged, right wing media-inflamed, health care industry-funded mobs engaged in shouting down Democratic congressmen and Senators at town hall meetings presents us with a new low from a party I thought couldn’t sink any deeper. The goal, of course, is to defeat health care reform by drowning out the support with a wall of noise.
It’s hard to understand exactly what enrages these people. Yes, they’ve been fed a steady diet of misinformation about the proposed reform–told that this is a government takeover of health care (it’s not), that it’s socialism (no), that it’s a step toward single payer (not even close), that people will lose their ability to choose their own doctor (as if they actually had that)– but something else is stoking the fury. Some of it, I suspect, is lingering resentment over losing the election, some of it is fueled by the covert racism underlying the Birther movement, and much of it is fear of change fed by Republicans who simply wish to hand Obama a defeat and by the insurance and drug industries that don’t want any change in their cash flow. As usual, they’ve managed to persuade a lot of people to oppose their own self interest
The unholy alliance of the health care industry and their Republican enablers offer nothing but a return to the status quo that has shut tens of millions out of access to health care. And they’re doing it with a disgusting return to the ugly, divisive politics that were so thoroughly repudiated by the Obama election.
Topics: birthers, health care reform, mob, Republicans, tea baggers, town hall meetings | 16 Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Is it finally time for the Republican Party to give up its “family values” crusade? Have there been enough scandals yet to persuade the holier-than-thou bunch that they have no moral authority to preach to the rest of us? The hypocrisy of South Carolina Governor Mark “Impeach Bill Clinton” Sanford is breathtaking, but no more audacious than Newt Gingrich’s finger-pointing at Clinton while Newt was shacking up outside his own marriage. And while we’re at it, if you’re unable to control your own sexual appetites, maybe it’s a good idea not to bash gays and lesbians for wanting a monogamous relationship. In fact, why don’t you stay out of the sexual morality business entirely, and let all of us handle our own personal ethics? Is that too much to ask? Unfortunately, given recent experience, it probably is.
Topics: Appalachian trail, family values, GOP, Mark Sanford, polls, Republicans, sex scandal | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 29th, 2009
I’ve grown increasingly tired of the fights over Supreme Court nominees. No matter who the current occupant of the White House names, you can be sure there will be strident objections from the opposing party. Too conservative, out of the mainstream, too liberal, a judicial activist, a sexist, a racist, etc., etc. Oh, sure, there are always unexpected nuances. Who ever thought that empathy would be regarded as such a negative trait. Do we really want our justices to feel nothing other than reverence for the text–bloodless automatons in service to nothing other than ferreting out the meaning of 200-plus year-old writing? But I digress. This is just a sideshow, the thing the opponents have glommed on to this go-round. It might have been anything, just whatever was necessary to drum up the proper level of contempt for the nominee.
I ran this idea past my good friend Scott Stantis, the cartoonist for the Birmingham News, and he took exception to the portrayal of the GOP as firmly against the nomination. He claims that the conservative blogosphere is relatively mild in its criticism, and that I’m unfairly demonizing the opposition–exactly what I’ve criticized conservative cartoonists for doing in the past. This is always a tough call. What I’ve heard is Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a racist for an offhand comment made in a speech years ago, others claiming that she’s a radical leftist and a judicial activist, Republican members of the Senate saying they had a duty to prevent the nomination of such a radical from coming to a vote (wasn’t it just a few years ago that we heard Republicans demanding that every nominee deserves an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate?). Perhaps Scott is right and he reads and hears things more nuanced than I do, but I decided to go with the cartoon anyway.
Besides, it’s fun to draw torture chambers, and it’s only a matter of time before even I have to give up blasting the previous administration for its policies.
Topics: empathy, GOP, Republicans, Sotomayor, Supreme Court, torture | 8 Comments »
