Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus

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Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus
Posted by SMAZ on Fri Oct 18 10:59:51 2013 fiogf49gjkf0d which side are you on right-wingers? ---------------- The Republican civil war is just getting started By Jon Terbush The Week With the government shutdown and debt ceiling fight in the rearview mirror, Republicans can move on to more important matters — like determining which of the party's warring factions will control the GOP going forward. The recent fiscal fist-fighting ostensibly pit Republicans against Democrats, but the real power struggle was between Tea Partiers and the GOP establishment. The conflict, bubbling beneath the surface for some time, finally boiled over into a messy public spat that, even as the shutdown came to a close, showed no signs of stopping. The fissure has been growing since 2010, when the Tea Party ousted establishment candidates in favor of their own contenders. What was then a populist revolt has since rocketed congressional neophytes like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to the forefront of the party's ideological and tactical debates, giving the hard right newfound legislative muscle. Just look at how Cruz and company dragged the party into a shutdown strategy that even Karl Rove said "no sentient being" believed would ever work. As the shutdown came to a close Wednesday night, Cruz seized the microphone to mourn his failed strategy — and to once again lash out at his colleagues. In a bold display of hubris, he accused his fellow Republican senators of spoiling his gambit by "bombing our own troops." Moderate establishment types struck back. Perhaps the oldest of the old guard, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — who called Cruz and his cohorts "wacko birds" earlier this year, and who criticized the shutdown tactic from the start — took a victory lap on Twitter. The GOP got burned badly in the shutdown fight, walking away with nothing to show for their efforts but a historically low approval rating. The only question left for them to answer in the aftermath is "who deserves to be written out of the movement going forward," as Politico's Alexander Burns put it. For moderates, the answer is easy: Cruz. "I think it's important for Republican leaders around the country to speak out against him and neutralize him," Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said of Cruz. "Otherwise he's going to start the same nonsense again in December or January." On the flip side, Tea Partiers blamed moderate Republicans for selling out the party. Powerful grassroots organizations that fomented the early Tea Party uprisings and who promoted the shutdown effort are driving that message home to movement conservatives. FreedomWorks blasted the shutdown deal as a "full surrender" to Democrats. The Senate Conservatives Fund called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a "turncoat" and urged conservatives to oust him in a primary. Likewise, National Review's Michael Walsh took issue with Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-S.C.) contention that Republicans had to cave because they were losing so badly in the polls. Graham's problems, of course, can be solved by the simple expedient of primarying him out of his Senate seat next year and replacing him with someone who understands the new normal of American politics, otherwise known as "fundamental transformation." This really is the best thing that could happen to him and his fellow accommodationists in Congress, since a loss to a Democrat would only reinforce their belief that conservatives are the real problem with that wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party formerly known as the GOP, whereas a public humiliation at the hands of their own voters pour encourager les autres might actually do some good. [National Review] It's in this environment that right wing figures like Sarah Palin and Red State's Erick Erickson have suggested conservatives break free and form their own party. The calls for a complete split "mark a new, more acrimonious chapter in the long-simmering conflict between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment," wrote The Atlantic's Molly Ball. While the two sides had coexisted through an odd marriage of necessity to this point, the Tea Party has grown increasingly tired of "feeling taken for granted by a party that alternately panders to them and sells them down the river." The lingering animosity is only poised to worsen going forward. Each side is well-funded. And as a handful of hardcore conservatives showed in the shutdown, neither side has much of an institutional advantage either. Furthermore, the big fiscal deal only funds the government through January 15 and hikes the debt ceiling to February, at which point we could very well replay the same bruising fight all over again. McConnell said Thursday another shutdown was "off the table." Yet Cruz, on the very same day, said he would do it all again. At some point, the GOP, for its own sake, will have to reconcile those competing visions for the party, represented respectively by the "suicide caucus" and the "surrender caucus." There is plenty of middle ground where the two can and have met before, but the wide divide between them, laid bare by the shutdown, is a raw wound neither side seems intent on closing any time soon.
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Re: Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus
Posted by AlM* on Fri Oct 18 11:20:49 2013, in response to Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus, posted by SMAZ on Fri Oct 18 10:59:51 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d Seems like the wing nuts control the House Republican Caucus by 144 to 93 while the old guard control the Senate Caucus 28 to 18. Looks like moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans are going to have to figure out a way to work together, which will be tricky. 22% of the country is nut job right wing. Probably close to that percentage is pretty far left wing. That doesn't leave much of a center, especially in the House, where there is no penalty for 144 Republicans to go off the deep end and no penalty for a fair number of inner city Democrats to refuse to compromise either.
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Re: Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus
Posted by SMAZ* on Fri Oct 18 11:30:47 2013, in response to Re: Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus, posted by AlM on Fri Oct 18 11:20:49 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d Some are predicting a formal schism between the mere right-wing GOP and the neo-fascist Tea Party. I don't think it will happen but if it does it would be Barack Obama's greatest achievement ---------------------- The Conservative War on the GOP What was once an uneasy alliance between Tea Partiers and Republican loyalists is increasingly marked by hostility—and many on the right now want a divorce. MOLLY BALLOCT - The Atlantic On his radio show recently, Glenn Beck urged his listeners to “defund the GOP.” Sarah Palin has threatened to leave the Republican Party; Rush Limbaugh calls it “irrelevant.” The Senate Conservatives Fund has targeted mainly incumbent Republican senators for defeat. Erick Erickson, one of the right’s most prominent commentators, wonders if what's coming is “a real third party movement that will fully divide the Republican Party.” Conservatives have declared war on the GOP. Tired of feeling taken for granted by a party that alternately panders to them and sells them down the river, in their view, Tea Partiers and others on the right are in revolt. The Republican Party itself is increasingly the focus of their anger, particularly after Wednesday's deal to reopen the government, which many on the right opposed. Now, many are threatening to take their business elsewhere. “Conservatives are either going to split [from the GOP] or stay home,” Erickson, the influential editor of RedState.com and a Fox News contributor, told me. “They’ll first expend energy in primaries, but if unsuccessful, they’ll bolt.” "Conservatives are either going to split from the GOP or stay home. They'll first expend energy in primaries, but if unsuccessful, they'll bolt." Erickson, a former Republican elected official in Georgia, stressed that he wasn’t advocating such a split, only foreseeing it. “I think the GOP is already splitting,” he said, with grassroots activists feeling “played” by elected officials’ unfulfilled promises to defeat Obamacare. The calls for a split mark a new, more acrimonious chapter in the long-simmering conflict between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment. Steve Deace, an Iowa-based talk-radio host, said his audience has never been angrier. “They’re tired of electing a bunch of Republicans who care more about what the media thinks about them than what the people who elected them think,” he told me. “Why do I care whether John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House? Why do I care whether Harry Reid or ‘Ditch’ McConnell is the Senate majority leader? What changes? Nothing changes.” To Deace, “political-party disintegration” is on the horizon. And he’s not alone: Sean Hannity, on his radio show on Monday, said he’d previously opposed a third party, but “I’m not so sure anymore. It may be time for a new conservative party in America. I’m sick of these guys.” Ann Coulter’s new book is titled Never Trust a Liberal Over 3—Especially a Republican. Groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund and Heritage Action wear their contempt for GOP elites as a point of pride, and spend the bulk of their resources campaigning against rather than for Republican officeholders. The Republican establishment, these conservatives say, doesn’t seem to understand that the Tea Party isn’t a wing of the GOP. “It’s an autonomous force,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. In emails and conversations across the country, Martin told me, she’s hearing more rumblings about taking the Tea Party out from under the GOP than ever before, though the organization hasn’t taken a position on it. “When either party is doing the right thing, the Tea Party stands with them," she said. "And when either party is doing the wrong thing, we hold them accountable.” The recent government shutdown, and the infighting it laid bare between Republican factions, convinced many conservatives that the institutional GOP would rather sell them out than stick up for them. “There are two views on the right. One says more Republicans is better; the other says better Republicans is better,” said Dean Clancy, vice president of public policy for the Tea Party group FreedomWorks. “One view focuses on the number of Republicans in the Senate, the other on the amount of fight in the senators.” When Beck made his appeal to "defund the GOP," he told his listeners to stop giving money to Republican committees and give to FreedomWorks instead. "We kind of agree," Clancy told me. “Giving to the party committees is wasted money, because they’re just incumbent protection clubs .... Sometimes you have to beat the Republicans before you beat the Democrats. Just because they're 'our guys' doesn’t mean they'll be our guys when it counts." Dissatisfaction within the ranks appears to be one driving factor in the record-low approval numbers recorded for the Republican Party in several recent polls. A Gallup poll last week, for example, found just 28 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of the GOP, the lowest level of support in the two decades Gallup has asked that question. Among Republicans, 27 percent saw their party unfavorably—twice the percentage of Democrats who held a dim view of their own party. To some Republican institutionalists who have long seen the Tea Party as a destructive force, the talk of a schism merely confirms what they've always suspected—that these activists are a radical, destabilizing force, nihilists devoid of loyalty. Some, like the renegade moderate David Frum, urge the Tea Party to go ahead and leave: “Right now, tea party extremism contaminates the whole Republican brand,” Frum wrote on CNN.com this week, wondering “whether a tea party bolt from the GOP might not just liberate the party to slide back to the political center.” Representative Charles Boustany of Louisiana lashed out at his intransigent colleagues Wednesday, telling National Journal, “I’m not sure they’re Republicans and I’m not sure they’re conservative.” But most party loyalists seek to placate and explain the Tea Party fervor, and to urge the rebels back into the fold. Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman and George W. Bush aide, said he understood where they were coming from. “A lot of them are new to the process,” Gillespie told me. “They weren’t Young Republicans or College Republicans. They didn’t come up through Republican clubs, and they feel that the Republican Party in the past has not fought hard enough or stood firm enough on these issues.” Gillespie chalked the tensions up to the party being out of power and lacking a unifying leader; he pointed to similar dislocations in the past, including Ross Perot's third-party candidacies in the 1990s. “I would rather have them trying to shake up the existing party than run as third-party candidates—that would be completely self-defeating,” he said. “We live in a two-party system in the United States. If you’re going to translate your ideas, your beliefs, your principles into policy, it’s got to be done through the electoral process, and that involves participating in a political party.” Gillespie and others said party institutions have been weakened by changes in campaign-finance law. (The ostensible head of the Republican Party, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.) They noted that the pragmatists and the Tea Partiers don’t disagree on policy, only on what tactics will make the most progress possible toward goals like reducing spending and reversing Obamacare. And they pointed out that conservatives stand little chance of winning elections outside the two-party framework—though their pleas for unity signaled an awareness that Republicans might be equally crippled by the loss of their ideological base. "Everybody understands standing your ground, hoisting your flag, and making your stand, but at some point, you have to decide if your stand is sustainable." “Everybody understands standing your ground, hoisting your flag, and making your stand, but at some point, you have to decide if your stand is sustainable,” said Ari Fleischer, the former George W. Bush press secretary. “A lot of people who got elected in 2010 came to Washington as conservatives, not as Republicans. They came to change what was wrong in Washington—they don’t have the same expectations or practical goals as others.” But as for the threats of deserting the GOP, Fleischer said, “I don’t know what that means. Are they going to start a third party? What’s the chances of success for that?” Some establishmentarians worry the Tea Partiers are already blithely driving the GOP into the ground. “I don’t think they care about the party. I think they care about issues and philosophies,” said Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia and onetime chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “I have a philsophy, too. But parties are coalitions. What they would like is for the party to be a private club with a litmus test .... The party they would design would be a regional party that would not be viable in many parts of the country.” Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and Republican presidential candidate, blamed “gerrymandered districts” and “the political news-entertainment complex” for empowering passionate minorities within both parties. “If you’re a libertarian or a Tea Partier, you tend to be skeptical toward anything viewed as the establishment, so to the extent you view the traditional Republican Party as the establishment, it follows that there’s room for skepticism,” he said. “But neither party can be successful unless they can get a reasonable amount of support from the whole coalition.” In the Tea Partiers’ view, the clueless establishment hasn’t yet internalized the seriousness of the threat to its supremacy. The grassroots has taken control, and it will have its way or secede. “This is where the wind is blowing,” Deace said. “I don’t think you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. People like me are not just taking marching orders anymore—they actually want something in return for a vote.” It will not be possible, Deace predicted, for the two factions to coexist. “This is going to end in divorce,” he said. “One side is going to win control, one side is going to lose, and the losing side will go do something else. There will not be a reunification.”
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Re: Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus
Posted by bingbong* on Fri Oct 18 11:56:42 2013, in response to Re: Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus, posted by SMAZ on Fri Oct 18 11:30:47 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d I'd love to see that schism, it would ensure Democratic majorities for better than a generation. Conservatism is no longer a functional philosophy. It cannot address the needs of a radically different population (in America it has been decidedly euro-centric, while our population is shifting towards a hemispheric majority), use of technology in resolution of issues (such as alternative energy for climate change mediation) and social issues of equality and access (i.e. education, entrepreneurship) . It won't be until the republicans face and address the new realities that they will have a chance at power again. The shark has been jumped, and it's headed out to deep waters. As it should be.
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Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week
Posted by Olog-hai* on Fri Oct 18 12:10:02 2013, in response to Suicide Caucus vs Surrender Caucus, posted by SMAZ on Fri Oct 18 10:59:51 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d Everyone to the left of Stalin and you are "right-wingers" yes? "Progressives" like McCain and McConnell are "right wing", really?!? You go on and keep upholding a party that takes God out of its platform, then. See if they don't get rid of useful idiots like you first.
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Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week
Posted by bingbong* on Fri Oct 18 12:12:47 2013, in response to Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Oct 18 12:10:02 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d We have a secular government. Period. This isn't Europe. never was. never should be. Don't like it, go back.
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Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week
Posted by Olog-hai* on Fri Oct 18 12:15:40 2013, in response to Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week, posted by bingbong on Fri Oct 18 12:12:47 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d Bullshit. We have a government that's supposed to be neutral rather than secular. Europe is further left than the USA is right now. The USA is supposed to guarantee freedom of religion, not attack it as the ACA is doing.
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Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week
Posted by bingbong* on Fri Oct 18 12:23:58 2013, in response to Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Oct 18 12:15:40 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d Wrong. It's secular. Always was intended to be. Everyone has the equal right to be free FROM religion if they choose. Being "neutral" implies that is not the case. The ACA addresses science and proper medical care. You're not a woman so it's none of your damn business. Decisions about such are the provenance of the individual, not government, not an employer. Every woman has the right to not use contraceptives if she wishes. Begins and ends there. (that most do not pursue that option shows superior intelligence, capability to perfom math, ability to judge and balance time and capabilities, etc....)
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Re: Olog Sides with the Suicide Caucus
Posted by SMAZ* on Fri Oct 18 17:53:05 2013, in response to Re: SMAZ is a moonbat who posts The Week, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Oct 18 12:10:02 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d One vote is in. 1-0 for suicide. Anyone else?
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Re: Olog Sides with the Suicide Caucus
Posted by LuchAAA* on Fri Oct 18 18:13:56 2013, in response to Re: Olog Sides with the Suicide Caucus, posted by SMAZ on Fri Oct 18 17:53:05 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d no one cares. UFC is tomorrow. Playoffs. NFL. 40 ounce and weed. That's what the voter cares about. No one cares about what you're posting about.
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Re: SMAZ Sides with the SS Caucus
Posted by Olog-hai* on Fri Oct 18 21:42:59 2013, in response to Re: Olog Sides with the Suicide Caucus, posted by LuchAAA on Fri Oct 18 18:13:56 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d The current government policy guarantees none of the above.
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Re: SMAZ Sides with the SS Caucus
Posted by SelkirkTMO* on Fri Oct 18 23:54:55 2013, in response to Re: SMAZ Sides with the SS Caucus, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Oct 18 21:42:59 2013.* fiogf49gjkf0d Why? Are the republicans going to shut down football next? :)
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