The Return of the Inflation Tax

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

What a dodge, duck and cover. That is your excuse? Fail.

I know your game, dude.

When you cant refute the facts and simple logic (opinion) of my post, you just strike back with a "failed".

And it is not a "failure" when you and UG play the "Obama is a socialist" card? Go figure.



When 82% of the Democrats voted for the House health reform bill, it is hardly a failure.

When an even higher percentage voted for the stimulus bill, the SCHIP expansion, the credit card bill of rights, the pay equity for women bill, the tobacco control bill, the public lands management bill, etc......it is hardly a fractured caucus.

To be the majority party in the US today, one needs a big tent. You mistake minor disagreement by a small percentage of Democrats in Congress on one (or even a few) issues as fracturing the party.

Some among the Republican leadership understand that (Romney, Pawlenty)...others (Huckabee, Palin) are far too rigid and have the most vocal and obstinate supporters...and that is why the Republican party is the one fracturing from within.

Originally Posted by richlevy

The divisions among Democratic moderates and the extreme left wing are almost insignificant compared to the division between Republican moderates and the extreme right wing. This has been aggravated by the defection of a very large group of moderates, giving the impression that the only reliable voting bloc left in the Republican party is it's right wing.

The Republican candidate in the recent House election in NY did not defect...she was, in effect, driven out by the extremists...and not just extremists, but extremists from outside the state.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by richlevy

While in the minority, one criticism made of the Democrats was their lack of cohesion. The current Republican minority, while cohesive in opposition to issues like health care, in other areas is almost schizophrenic.

The divisions among Democratic moderates and the extreme left wing are almost insignificant compared to the division between Republican moderates and the extreme right wing. This has been aggravated by the defection of a very large group of moderates, giving the impression that the only reliable voting bloc left in the Republican party is it's right wing.

And when the dems were out of the White House that was the point. They were in the same level of turmoil and appeared to have no one in charge, no one to drive their ship. They looked like the protesters at the G-8. Everyone was there to protest, none of them for the same thing. When the party in power runs things, historically the party out of power looks disjointed and schizoprenic.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

I know your game, dude.

When you cant refute the facts and simple logic (opinion) of my post, you just strike back with a "failed".

That is because you do and you just did, again.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

And when the dems were out of the White House that was the point. They were in the same level of turmoil and appeared to have no one in charge, no one to drive their ship.

On the Merc truth scale....you failed!

The Democrats won 14 Senate seats and 56 House seats in 06 and 08 by seeking out and running moderate candidates not the most liberal candidates, for the most part. It was the national strategy guided by the DNC Chairman, Howard Dean.

As chairman of the party, Dean created and employed the "50 State Strategy" that attempted to make Democrats competitive in normally conservative states often dismissed in the past as "solid red." The success of the strategy became apparent after the 2006 midterm elections, where Democrats took back the House and picked up seats in the Senate from normally Republican states such as Missouri and Montana. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama used "The 50 state strategy" as the backbone of his candidacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean

The Republican approach is to stick with a conservative ideological litmus test for candidates. Some of the leaders within the party know that this is a failed strategy, but are unable to convince the hard core social conservative base that now controls the party.

I would ask again...who is running the Republican party (or the Tea Parties)? Leaders who understand how to win elections or the extreme ideologues with a litmus test?

One party has become the big tent party. Objective political observers know which party that would be.

A Republican party with open arms that wants to be more inclusive and more appealing to moderates?....it ain't happening, dude.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

bla, bla, bla...

Well another report disagrees with your partisan assessment again.

Republicans, riven but resurgent

Nov 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Why conservative in-fighting may matter less than you might think

http://www.economist.com/world/unite...ry_id=14794768

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Well another report disagrees with your partisan assessment again.

Republicans, riven but resurgent


http://www.economist.com/world/unite...ry_id=14794768

Reasonable people can have different opinions on this issue.

What I took dispute with was your assessment of my opinion as "FAILED" when it is shared by many non-partisans (as well as some Republican leaders) and is simply one perspective.

In fact, on numerous opinion posts, you grade those posts with which you disagree as "FAILED"...a narrow-minded unwillngess to accept that other opinions, as opposed to facts, are valid as well.

You want to play that game....I'll get in the gutter with you and play as well.

What is most laughable is someone who describes the Speaker of the House as a Nazi and who does not know the difference between liberalism and socialism...grading others at all.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Reasonable people can have different opinions on this issue.

What I took dispute with was your assessment of my opinion as "FAILED" when it is shared by many non-partisans (as well as some Republican leaders) and is simply one perspective.

In fact, on numerous opinion posts, you grade those posts with which you disagree as "FAILED"...a narrow-minded unwillngess to accept that other opinions, as opposed to facts, are valid as well.

Only because you grade your self as correct do you fail. And you fail here too.

What is most laughable is someone who describes the Speaker of the House as a Nazi

She is a Nazi. Does it offend you for me to call her that?

and who does not know the difference between liberalism and socialism...grading others at all.

I know the difference and I know that the Demoncrats in Congress try to blur the lines and have done a pretty good job of it in the past 10 months.

[Shawnee123]

No, you don't like Pelosi. She is not a nazi.

Your continued insistence that she is has the opposite of the effect of the one you're apparently looking for: it does NOT make us think you have any clue at all what you're constantly beeping about.

[TheMercenary]

I can call the bitch a Nazi if it suits me.

[Shawnee123]

Yes you can. You lost credibility so long ago, no one is looking for any truth or enlightenment from your posts anyway.

[TheMercenary]

Cool.

[TheMercenary]

Heh.

RealClearPolitics HorseRaceBlog

By Jay Cost

So, congratulations to all of you pundits spinning the NY-23 race as a sign of the crippling divisions within the GOP. I cannot offer you an actual Gold Medal in Pretzel Logic, but perhaps I'll offer you a complimentary copy of this 1974 classic from Becker and Fagan:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/hor...tion_meme.html


And this was real interesting. Man I bet they are glad that lady lost.

Five Reasons NY-23 Doesn't Tell Us Anything

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/hor...esnt_tell.html

The 50+ Blue Dog (fiscally conservative and moderate on other issues) Democrats won in 06-08 (and 3 races since then) in open seats that were historically red districts.

Many could have been anti-Bush votes ...or there could have been more localized reasons.

But they had one common thread and that was the Republican candidate was an extremist on non-fiscal issues.

Opinions are like assholes.....everyone has one.

You just claim that your asshole emits a sweeter scent...and on that, you "fail"

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

You just claim that your asshole emits a sweeter scent...and on that, you "fail"

Correct.


I believe more people voted against the Rebulickins than they voted for the Demoncrats.

This is one issue where I agree with Newt Gingrich....

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted disaster for his party if the conservative wing of the GOP continues to field independent candidates to the right of the party’s nominee.

“If we get into a cycle where there are tea parties and there are conservative third-party candidates, we will make [Nancy] Pelosi speaker for life,” Gingrich told POLITICO in an interview Thursday, calling the practice “totally destructive.”

.... Gingrich recounted that he became speaker after the 1994 GOP sweep, thanks to a bloc of support from a moderate wing of the party that is now nearly extinct.

Yet even as he urged his party to take a pragmatic tack to regain the congressional majority, the former speaker showed off his pugnacious side, asserting that top Democrats were contemptuous of religion....

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29496.html

....at least until his "Democrats are anti-religiion" nonsense.

We can disagree on why or how...but it is a fact that the Democratic party includes many moderates among members of Congress and that moderate Republicans are an endangered species.