Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina is pleading with Republicans to thread lightly on the impeachment talk, suggesting that Democrats would want nothing more than an impeachment conversation before the midterm elections.
In a radio interview with WQSC 1340, the South Carolina Republican said, “Believe me, let’s make one thing perfectly clear. The only people who want impeachment more than the right wing of the Republican Party is the entire Democrat Party.”
“Oh, they’re desperate for impeachment. They would love to be able to talk about impeachment and immigration between now and the November elections. Instead of talking about jobs, and the economy, and health care. They are desperate to change the dialogue, which is exactly why you heard the president starting to talk about his amnesty cause he’s begging to be impeached.”
Mulvaney added Republicans should “follow the Constitution” and only impeach the president if he takes an action that meets the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.
“Let’s not fall into a trap when the guy absolutely wants to be impeached,” the congressman said, citing money raised by Democrats exploiting the supposed threat of impeachment.
This is the ad that’s causing a stir in Republican circles in Wisconsin and nationwide. Mary Burke (D) and her campaign put together an ad using Scott Walker’s own words, showing things he promised then and how they are now.
That ad can run against any Republican by simply replacing the names. There are many areas where they said one thing, then did another.
The Fourth of July is always a great time to revisit what makes the United States a great nation, and I always come back to the same characteristic: Compromise. There is probably nothing more American than our genius for compromise, even more so than apple pie and motherhood, both of which were invented by people who didn’t live here in the first place. But compromise? We are good at that, and the reason I think we’re in the political quagmire we find ourselves in today is because we’ve stopped compromising, and I blame the Tea Party for this situation.
I know the right wing likes to blame President Obama or Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for not compromising when the Democrats had the majority from 2009-2011, but the truth is that all three of them did offer opportunities for the Republicans to support the health care law that, after all, was the brainchild of conservative scholars who thought it a far better idea than what the Clintons were peddling in the 1990s. The same is true for the Dodd-Frank bill and the stimulus package, which had far too many Republican tax breaks and not enough in grass-roots spending to be fully effective. But at least those laws got passed.
The problem today is that the Tea Party-inspired GOP has become the party that has consistently traded the good for the perfect and has come up empty each time. They could have had a grand bargain twice that cut social programs and the deficit, but because it didn’t go far enough, the Tea Party faction in the House wouldn’t support it. The same is true of the ACA, which the right still wants to repeal, and a whole host of other issues where we could actually have made some progress and then improved the legislation down the road, but because the bills required compromise, the Tea Party was not interested.
I fully understand that this is sometimes the way politics goes in this country, but this time it seems different because now the right is saying that they, and only they, interpret the Constitution as it should be analyzed, so anything that runs afoul of that reading is wrong and un-American. This is the dangerous part of their agenda and the one that runs directly against their reading of American history, because they reject compromise of any sort.
This country, plain and simply, was built on compromise. The Declaration of Independence was a compromise that mentioned freedom and equality but didn’t mention slavery. The Constitution was a compromise over commerce, slavery and representation. The run-up to the Civil War included a number of compromises that in the end could not satisfy the southerners who decided that slavery was a protected right and got the Supreme Court to agree with them. Financial legislation, social legislation, immigration laws and even US foreign policy in the era of the great world wars had elements of compromise.
FDR compromised, as did every other president we’ve ever elected. You’d think that Ronald Reagan was some great pillar of conservatism who blocked everything the Democrats sent him over eight years, but he compromised too. He cut taxes and then raised them. He signed a compromise immigration law and a tax overhaul that had both liberal and conservative elements. He bargained with terrorists after saying he would never do that. George H.W. Bush, who I think will be rehabilitated once historians get into the meat of his administration, did the absolute right thing by raising taxes to fight the budget deficit in the early 1990s.
You get the picture, I presume.
Lack of compromise is political suicide, and that’s a lesson that the Tea Party will ultimately learn. The more savvy politicians know that you need to get what you can given the political mood and realities of the times. Then you run on your successes and build on them. That’s how the Republicans ran the country until the 1930s and how the liberals ran things until the 1990s. Since then, what has government really accomplished? It’s so bad now it took the threat of massive disruptions to get a Farm Bill. Bob Dole couldn’t even convince his fellow Republicans to back a measure that would support people with physical disabilities.
We’ll get through this and people will look back and wonder how it ever got so bad. If the Tea Party persists, though, they will become a historic party.
In the Democratic primary for governor in Nevada, voters were not too happy with the actual candidates on the ballot. What got their attention however, was the option that said, “None of these candidates.”
“None of these candidates” won hands down.
“None of these candidates” earned 30 percent of the vote when The Associated Press called the race, outpacing the leading actual candidate, Robert Goodman, a retired state Economic Development commissioner from Las Vegas who’s run statewide twice before and shares a last name with the Vegas mayoral dynasty, at 25 percent. But according to state law, Goodman will win the nom
The poll conducted by Gallup finds that despite what Republicans would have us believe, Americans are not stupid. We know which party is looking out for us and which is looking out for the Koch brothers.
Americans view the Democratic Party more favorably than the Republican Party, even though both parties have a net unfavorable rating. Democratic Party favorable ratings have held steady since last June, while Republican favorables have increased slightly from their all-time low last year. Still, if the Republicans’ current favorability ratings hold, they will be the lowest ever for either party in an election year.
The “Explainer-In-Chief” has a word or two for the weak-back, feathery-knees Democrats who are laying down to the Republicans false attacks on Obamacare – Don’t lay down, fight for what you’ve accomplished!
“What I advise the Democrats to do is talk about the good things that have happened under the bill, acknowledge the problems and say, ‘Let’s do what sensible people would do. We had a problem we had to deal with, Albert Einstein couldn’t have done it perfectly the first time, now let’s set a long-term repair process,’” Clinton told moderator Gwen Ifill.
“Nobody could’ve done this perfectly,” he added.
Noting a recent bipartisan agreement over one of the small business requirements within the bill, Clinton suggested Congress should have more special committees that work every year to get bipartisan improvements to the law.
“I think we’re rocking along pretty good here,” Clinton said after touting some aspects of the Obamacare’s successes.
“It’s a beginning, and I think that the people can handle the truth. Talk about what’s good about it, talk about the remaining problems, commit to fix the problems. That’s the best political position,” Clinton said.
I think I’m just going to assume that the Democrats will lose the Senate in November and prepare myself as I would for any frustrating event I’ve endured over the past few years. That way, if they do eke out a win or tie, then it will be that much sweeter.
There’s been no shortage of discussion about the ramification of a GOP takeover of the Senate, but not much would really change, save for the fact that no judges or executive appointments would be ratified. The Congress would pass some bills that President Obama would veto, and the country would be treated to an intramural fight as the far more conservative House would pass more extreme bills that the less extreme Senate would either ignore or try to temper so that they’re palatable to the larger caucus. In short, how would this term be different from all other terms, save for Obama’s first two years in office?
Which makes former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ comment that a Democratic loss would mean that “The party’s over” seem rather quaint. The party’s been over and it doesn’t look like it’s coming back anytime soon. Even if the Republicans take the Senate, they will most likely lose it back to the Democrats in 2016, because the GOP will have to defend a whopping 27 seats and convince the young, the Hispanic and the African-American that they have their best interests at heart. And they’ll have to win the presidency, which at this point doesn’t look like it will ever happen.
The GOP seems to think that young people are in play because they aren’t signing up for health insurance at the rate that the ACA needs in order to function, but recent surveys show that the millennials aren’t attached to either political party, and less so to the Republicans. It is true that many people become more conservative as they gather life experiences such as marriages, children and mortgages, but let’s remember that on social issues, the younger generation is far removed from the right wing scolds who want to decide who gets rights and who doesn’t. And we’ve also seen the effects of less government involvement in, say, North Carolina, that should scare people away from a more libertarian direction.
It hasn’t been a good year for Democrats so far, but nothing that a more robust turnout can’t alter. But the party? Turn out the lights.
The Hill is reporting that Democrats and Republicans alike say the 113th Congress is shaping up to be the worst ever.
Veteran lawmakers are used to partisanship and stalemate, but they say Capitol Hill has sunk to a new dysfunctional low.
Congress has in some ways already closed for business until after the mid-term election. Any laws made between now and November will be minor.
President Obama’s “year of action” has started slowly and could end up as a punchline. Congressional approval ratings have hit all-time lows.
The relationships between congressional Republicans and Obama as well as between Democratic and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill lack the indispensable element of trust.
The most memorable action taken by this Congress was last year’s shutdown.
Recently, there was a report detailing how the abortion rate under President Obama is at its lowest level in three decades. By itself, that is very impressive. But when you look at the rate of decline under both Democratic and Republican presidents, you have no choice but to come to the following conclusion – Republicans just talk the talk. It takes a Democrat to actually deliver.
This chart shows the rate of decline in abortions since the Reagan administration. Republicans would come with their dumb talking points about Mr. Obama, and if you listen or believe them, they would even tell you that the President’s wish is for the entire country to head to the clinic tomorrow and abort… something. But when you’re dealing with facts, there’s no argument.
Notice the rate of decline under both Reagan and Bush Sr. There was hardly any decline at -0.01%. Then there was a huge drop under Clinton at -16%. Bush W saw a moderate -8% in his eight years, and in the five years of the Obama administration, there is already a -14% decline. Combined, for the 18 years Republicans had the White House, there was a measly 8.01% reduction in Abortions. For the Democrats on the other hand, there is already a 30% decline, in only 13 years!
Democrats have shocked the political world by defeating Republican obstruction and moving on to a final vote on extending unemployment benefits by a margin of 60-37.
All Democrats voted for the bill, and were joined by Republicans co-sponsor of the bill Dean Heller, Susan Collins, Kelly Ayotte, Rob Portman, Ben Coats, and Lisa Murkowski. These 6 Republicans deserve praise for doing what is right for their constituents who are out there looking every single day, but are struggling to find a job.
Before the vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid said that, “It’s true that the rich are getting richer, and everyone else is getting squeezed.” Reid said that among the unemployed who need an unemployment extension are 20,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Reid said, “For many Americans these benefits make the difference between being able to live a decent life and becoming homeless.”
The last time emergency jobless benefits were allowed to expire was in November 2008. At the time, benefits were extended for three months by a voice vote in the Senate. Republicans in both the House and Senate supported an extension under President Bush that was not paid for, but they are objecting to the same extension under President Obama, and demanding that it be paid for.
Back in session after holiday break, the Senate will hold a procedural vote Monday evening on whether to reinstate unemployment benefits to more than 1 million Americans, as a compromise deal struggles for the votes it needs for passage.
The extension to unemployment benefits was a casualty of December budget negotiations, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed to resume debate in the New Year, and President Barack Obama has since called on lawmakers to greenlight the “vital economic lifeline.”
Along with calls for raising the minimum wage — which polls show most Americans support — extending unemployment benefits could become a key part of Democratic talking points in advance of the midterm elections set for November.
The payments stopped on Dec. 28 and Democrats, led by Obama, are pushing hard to revive them. The issue is perceived to be vital to many of the party’s core voters, who could be crucial in low-turnout, midterm elections.
And Democrats have left little doubt that they will use any Republican opposition to unemployment benefits as a political cudgel.
As pressure mounts, some are seeking a bipartisan compromise.
According to the Washington Post, Sen. Dean Heller R-Nev., and Sen. Jack Reed D-R.I., are behind the bill senators will consider Monday evening, which provides $6.5 billion to extend unemployment insurance to 1.3 million Americans for another 3 months.
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