Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATE II: House Republicans Talking Tactics & Tinkering Around the Edges

Debt, Economy, Elections, Politics, Republicans

No wonder neoconservative kingpin Bill Kristol (http://barelyablog.com/?p=33225) anointed House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan as heir apparent to the neoconservative project. Ryan is a strategist; he has more plans than principles. You and I do not want to see the debt ceiling raised. But for some reason, Ryan thinks that “tactic isn’t viable.”

Tactic? Come Again? Ryan believes that it has to be lifted (something to do with the neoconservative national-pride dybbuk).

He is, however, prepared to “tack on requirements for deep spending cuts as a condition of passage.” (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/06/5779097-ryan-hints-at-debt-ceiling-strategy) Why, thank you, Sir.

No sooner do our overlords arrive in DC, than their campaign promises evaporate. (http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=579.)

(I’m placing hyperlinks in brackets, for now, because hyperlinks attached distort the blurb that propagates to my Facebook page. Any suggestions?)

UPDATE I (Jan. 14): When it comes to serious spending cuts, Republicans intend to tinker around the edges. John Stossel exposes just how little they will do to beat back the federal behemoth:

New Speaker John Boehner, leader of the Republicans who now control the House, says he wants to cut spending. When he was sworn in last week, he declared: “Our spending has caught up with us. … No longer can we kick the can down the road.”
But when NBC anchorman Brian Williams asked him to name a program “we could do without,” he said, “I don’t think I have one off the top of my head.”
Give me a break! You mean to tell me the Republican leader in the House doesn’t already know what he wants to cut? I don’t know which is worse — that he doesn’t have a list or that he won’t talk about it in public.
The Republicans say they’ll start by cutting $100 billion, but let’s put that in perspective. The budget is close to $4 trillion. So $100 billion is just 2.5 percent. That’s shooting too low. Firms in the private sector make cuts like that all the time. It’s considered good business — pruning away deadwood.
GOP leaders say the source of their short-run cuts will be discretionary non-security spending. They foolishly exclude entitlement spending, which Congress puts on autopilot, and all spending for national and homeland security (whether it’s necessary or not). That leaves only $520 billion.
So even if the Republicans managed to cut all discretionary non-security spending (which is not what they plan), the deficit would still be $747 billion. (The deficit is now projected to be $1.267 trillion.)
This is a revolution? Republicans will have to learn that there is no budget line labeled “waste, fraud, abuse.” If they are serious about cutting government, they will ax entire programs, departments and missions.

UPDATE II (Jan 16.): Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Majority Leader, was out and about … lobbying for an increase in the debt ceiling. Why, of course. Give a little, get even less. “Live and let live,” said the one leech to the other.

On Grief And The Aggrieved

Crime, Democrats, Etiquette, Pop-Culture, Republicans, The State, The Zeitgeist

In the aftermath of the Arizona shootings, our masters in modern Rome are foregoing “partisanship” (read principle) and are coming together to spend funds not their own to secure their sorry asses against the statistically minuscule chance that these royal behinds will come to harm. Curiously, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson is commending House Speaker John Boehner for being “extraordinary in setting the right tone” for “a more enlightened way.”

“A more enlightened way” than what?” It’s almost as though Larson is the aggrieved party and Boehner a member of the offending group. Both parties have assumed these respective roles.

Indeed: “Republicans are clearly responding as if they feel somewhat incriminated,” said University of Michigan political science professor Lisa Disch. “On the one hand, they are acting very quickly to distance themselves from the incident, but on the other hand, they seem to be feeling as if they have been caught at something; caught at using rhetoric that is incendiary.”

On the topic of grief: A day after their child’s dreadful demise, the parents of the “9-year-old girl gunned down in Saturday’s shooting rampage outside an Arizona grocery store” were liberally granting interviews.

To me this is unsettling. We once used to grieve privately—at least initially. These days, there is nothing people will not share and express in public, and ASAP. They have no private selves.

This is part of our festering cultural commons.

Et tu, Boehner?

America, Elections, English, Founding Fathers, Multiculturalism, Political Philosophy, Republicans

Did I just hear John Boehner say that America was an idea more than a country? The representative from Ohio took the gavel, today, Wednesday, becoming the 61st speaker of the House of Representatives. Toward the end of his address, Boehner repeated the preposterous notion of America as a propositional nation.

The call to think about the US as an idea—rather than real flesh-and-blood communities animated by shared language, history and heroes—is the call of statism at its purist. For a rootless deracinated people are the most pliable, most miserable, and, thus, easier to control.

Faith in the propositional nation presupposes endless immigration. For, after all, this country is presumed to have had no particular requisite characteristics at its founding. And if early Americans had certain characteristics, these are taken to have played no role in the system of individual liberties America’s apparently amorphous founders established.

It’s Party Time For … Tea Partiers

Elections, Ethics, Morality, Politics, Republicans

Picture “a swanky Washington hotel,” a pulsating techno beat filling the barroom lobby, and country singer LeAnn Rimes for the main event, which is packed with lobbyists and costs $2,500 to enter. Drum roll. You’ve arrived at the fancy fundraiser for the 2011 freshman class of Republicans.

VIA THE LOS ANGELES TIMES:

“The new class of Republican lawmakers who charged into office promising to shun the ways of Washington officially arrives on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. ?But even as they publicly bash the capital’s culture, many have quietly begun to embrace it.

“Several freshmen have hired lobbyists — the ultimate Washington insiders — to lead their congressional staffs. In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s swearing-in, dozens of the newcomers joined other lawmakers in turning to lobbyists for campaign cash. And on Wednesday, congressional offices will be packed with lawmakers’ relatives, friends, constituents and lobbyists, all invited to celebrate the new Congress.”

“This picture of business-as-usual Washington clashes with the campaign rhetoric of many newcomers, some who were propelled by support from the anti-Washington ‘tea party’ movement. It also muddles the image House Republicans hoped to project as they took the helm this week.”

Think of yourself as their servant, your nose pressed against your master’s mansion windows.