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babylonsister

(170,963 posts)
Mon Dec 31, 2018, 09:52 PM Dec 2018

A Shutdown Reveals the Transformation of the GOP

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/gop-shutdown-shows-transformation-gop/579184/

A Shutdown Reveals the Transformation of the GOP
Republicans used to force government closures in the name of fiscal restraint. Now they’re digging in for the sake of the profligate wall.
6:00 AM ET
Charles J. Sykes
Author of How the Right Lost Its Mind


Republicans used to shut down the government in the name of fiscal restraint. Now they’re digging in for the sake of a boondoggle. This Trump-era shutdown could well become the longest ever, eclipsing the Clinton-era 26-day standoff over Medicare spending, and the Obama-era 16-day standoff over Obamacare. GOP tactics in the past may have been misguided, but at least the party was in theory fighting on behalf of its signature goal: reducing the size of the federal government.

This time, there is no talk of budget cuts, recisions, reform, or sequestration. After years of warning about the debt and the deficit, the alleged budget hawks have fallen silent. Even for the ideological performance artists in the Freedom Caucus, this shutdown is all about actually increasing spending for, of all things, the Wall, a Stone Age technology to deal with an Internet Age noncrisis.

snip//

This wall-induced shutdown is the greatest insult yet. Republicans in Congress must know that Trump’s campaign pledge will do nothing to address immigrants who overstay their visas, drug trafficking, asylum seekers, or the overall question of immigration reform. Leaving aside the ugly symbolism of the United States building a massive border wall, it would require the promiscuous use of eminent domain to seize private property, trigger an environmental nightmare, and cut off vast swaths of territory from access to natural assets such as the Rio Grande. Could it be that even private-property rights have gone the way of spending cuts and fiscal restraint? If Ann Coulter wants a wall, she must get her wall.

It seems fitting that Speaker Paul Ryan is leaving the stage at this juncture in this way. According to The Washington Post, “Ryan’s last moment on the House floor came Saturday evening when he gaveled the empty chamber shut, the last legislative session of 2018 going out with a whimper.” Picture this man who supposedly devoted his entire career to deficit reduction, just going through the motions in the service of a profligate mania. He’s not pretending anymore. Neither is the party.
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hibbing

(10,076 posts)
2. signature goal: reducing the size of the federal government
Mon Dec 31, 2018, 10:00 PM
Dec 2018

I'm no historian, but please let me know when that party has ever reduced the size of the federal government.

Peace

Pepsidog

(6,252 posts)
4. Republicans and Fox are pure evil scum. Combined they have divided the country and send the country
Mon Dec 31, 2018, 10:51 PM
Dec 2018

back a generation. Just think of where we would be had Repubicscum hadn’t stolen the election from Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary. Imagine we had all this technological advancement and innovation and did not have two wars or maybe could have prevented 9-11. Just imagine where our country would be without the treacherous and traitorous Republican Party and Fox not spreading disinformation and not dividing our country and harming our institutions. Just imagine what we could have been had Fox or Republicans never seized the levers of power.

Initech

(99,915 posts)
8. And they are like ravenous animals.
Mon Dec 31, 2018, 11:44 PM
Dec 2018

They will stop at nothing to gain absolute power and whine and cry about it when it gets taken away from them.

Astraea

(461 posts)
9. excuse me... but when was it ever about "fiscal restraint"?
Tue Jan 1, 2019, 12:42 AM
Jan 2019

If there were any fiscally conservative politicians, they died out long ago. Look at the Reagan years and try to tell me that bullshit with a straight face.

catbyte

(34,174 posts)
10. It wasn't even about "fiscal restraint" with President Obama. How many times did
Tue Jan 1, 2019, 01:01 AM
Jan 2019

the republican congress raise the debt ceiling for Bush Co? They just wanted to discredit and destroy Obama, but it backfired every time. Most Americans know who's at fault for this, and it's not the Democratic party.

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