A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that “by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, respondents conclude that the Republican Party is emphasizing partisanship more than unity.”
That should have been called the Stating the Obvious Poll, but that doesn’t sound Serious and Official enough.
62% of Americans says the Republican party is out of touch with the American people, 56% think it is not open to change and 52% say the party is too extreme.
To recap, they are a partisan, divisive, obstructionist, out of touch, stubborn, stuck in the mud group that caters to extremists. Republicans, you sound like a real attractive party:
“What we have here is a case of the Republicans here in the Senate once again not taking yes for an answer. This morning the Republican leader asked consent to have a vote on his proposal. Just now I told everyone we’re willing to have that vote, an up-or-down vote, and now the Republican leader objects to his own idea, so I guess we have a filibuster of his own bill.”
If we needed any more proof at what a hypocritical, obstructive clown Mitch McConnell is, now we have it. Remember, this is the guy who, on Inauguration Night, conspired to obstruct and destroy President Obama and who said this:
Today, via Raw Story, we witness legislation to raise the debt ceiling, McConnell’s own proposal, being rejected by… McConnell.
His intent was apparently to show “that even Democrats would not support such a bill,” a bill that would have given the president the authority to raise the federal debt ceiling on his own.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called his bluff, called for a vote, and in so many words, called McConnell a blatant hypocrite.
McConnell obstructing McConnell: Irony is not dead.
The Boehner seems set on gridlock as usual, at least until he meets with the president on Friday.
Per LiveWire, Boehner dodged and weaved– as cowards are wont to do when they don’t want to give a direct answer to a direct question– when pressed on the tax cut matter:
“Well, I think instead of the House moving on the Senate bill, the Senate ought to move on the House bill… We are not going to hurt our economy and make job creation more difficult, which is exactly what that plan will do… I look forward to my conversation beginning with the president on Friday.”
America first! Jobs jobs jobs! Republicans care about the middle class!
As you may recall, here’s what Mitch McConnell said in 2010:
In fact, in 2008 there were secret meetings led by Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell to plan their obstruction. McConnell demanded unified resistance.
Some things never change. President Obama won re-election handily, and McConnell is insisting that Obama must do things the old white guys’ way because, hey, that’s what the voters want… again, after giving the president a decisive victory and after having previously given Congress the worst approval ratings in history.
Via UPI, not shockingly but amazingly, “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated he wasn’t ready to roll over… or concede any political ground”:
“The American people did two things: They gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives,” McConnell said in a statement.
“The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president’s first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control.
“Now it’s time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office.
“To the extent he wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way.”
If Obama moved any more to the “center,” he’d have to switch parties.
This is how Repubicans operate. It’s all about political homicide, killing bills, doing away with the Obama presidency, you name it. They’re a cold, nasty, self-serving bunch. And the nastiest, self-servingest of all is Karl Rove.
On the final morning of the Republican National Convention, Karl Rove took the stage at the Tampa Club to provide an exclusive breakfast briefing to about 70 of the Republican party’s highest-earning and most powerful donors. During the more than hour-long session, Rove explained to an audience dotted with hedge fund billionaires and investors—including John Paulson and Wilbur Ross—how his super PAC, American Crossroads, will persuade undecided voters in crucial swing states to vote against Barack Obama. He also detailed plans for Senate and House races, and joked, “We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!”
Apparently, Karl Rove is so “pro-life” that he feels comfortable joking about killing a guy who’s throwing a wrench into his Sugar-Daddies-Will-Buy-Us-This-Election plans.
According to an L.A. Times editorial, he’s not far off. The problem is also that Team Romney arguments against the president’s plan are, per the article, “untrue in every particular”:
The new standards would be phased in from model year 2017 to 2025; by the end of that time, each automaker’s passenger vehicle fleet would average 54.5 miles per gallon. This won’t limit vehicle choices, because it’s a fleet average — there will still be four-wheel-drive pickups, vans and other heavy vehicles on the road, but they will be lighter and more fuel efficient than they are today and will have to be offset with more high-mileage alternatives.Romney’s price argument, meanwhile, is the sort of thing you’d expect from a clueless rich guy. Yes, the new technologies will cost more upfront, but only very wealthy people pay the full price of a new car upfront. Most people finance such purchases, and the monthly savings on gas resulting from the new standards are expected to more than make up for a car buyer’s higher monthly payment.
As the editorial points out, the Obama administration’s fuel standards are the most important environmental achievement of the president’s first term. And one of the arguments against it is that lighter vehicles aren’t as safe. However:
The heaviest classes of vehicles will probably see the biggest weight reductions. That should help reduce fatalities because the mass differential involved when an SUV collides with a subcompact plays a big factor in the death rate.
Obama’s plan will reduce reliance on foreign oil while having an impact on combating climate change. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it will save 4 billion barrels of oil and 2 billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions, with a net benefit to society of up to $421 billion, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Above is a clip of Vice President Biden calling out the GOP for their inauguration night plan to obstruct and destroy President Obama’s every attempt to reach across the aisle in order to create programs and laws that benefit Americans. You can read about that unpatriotic plan and all about Robert Draper’s book here.
[Vice President Biden's] informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was: ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’” Biden said. The vice president said he hasn’t even told Obama who his sources were, but Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania both confirmed they had conversations with Biden along those lines.
“So I promise you—and the President agreed with me—I never thought we were going to get Republican support,” Biden said.
One Obama aide said he received a similar warning from a Republican Senate staffer he was seeing at the time. He remembered asking her one morning in bed: How do we get a stimulus deal. She replied: Baby, there’s no deal!
“This is how we get whole,” she said with a laugh. “We’re going to do to you what you did to us in 2006.”
“After McConnell said it publicly–#1 goal defeat Obama–why take O so long to get it?”
Why did the president take so long to get it? Did he want to reveal the GOP to be the obstructionists they were? That’s some price to pay. Or did he feel he could somehow transcend their destructive, nasty little scheme? Was he in such disbelief and/or denial that he persisted in spite of himself?
And why aren’t more people in the media talking about the GOP myth that it was the president who had been partisan and combative, when in fact, Obama reached out to these unpatriotic goons (when he should have known better)? Or was this part of that whole “chess game” he was playing?
If so, he lost. It’s good to see he’s pivoted away from that strategy and is finally standing up to them while allowing the GOP to expose themselves for the mean-spirited, self-serving, undemocratic players they are.
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