I can't wait for the Republicans to take over the House

[toddwv]

The Republicans winning the House was not my preferred outcome. I mean, I actually support a bipartisan Congress but the current state of the right-wing is enough to scare anyone who is concerned with the corporatization of our federal government.

However, this could actually be a good thing for the Democratic Party. The Republicans can't hide behind their minority status in Congress anymore. Let's face it, the Republicans get a bye in the MSM these days even while they continue their work to destroy the country. There will be a transition period but then the MSM will have to work hard not to hold the Republicans up to a brighter light. Even if the MSM decides to continue to kiss the elephants' ass we can finally point at the Republican controlled House and place the blame squarely where it belongs.

I'm tired of the constant barrage from the right. I'm tired of playing defense. It's time to go offensive and in a big way; the change in power in the House provides exactly the right opportunity.

Let's face it, this economy isn't going to start creating jobs all of a sudden just because the tax cut bill was passed. Far from it. If the Democrats had held both houses of Congress, then they would continue to get the blame AND the right would have a valuable card to play in trying to get even more tax concessions from the uber-wealthy and if there is a double-dip, guess who is finally going to get the blame? I know, I know, I'm being horribly optimistic in thinking that the American people can put 2 and 2 together and actually get 4 but maybe they will realize that if a party in power creates a HUGE economic mess which is then cleaned up by another party and then the former party is given control once again and creates another HUGE economic mess, that the American people will finally and conclusively come to the understanding that the ideology of the former (Republicans/GOP/teabaggers) is pure garbage. The Republicans have held our legislative process hostage for some time now by pressing a gun up against the heads of unemployed workers, Presidential appointees, the middle class, job creation and a host of other innocent victims of right-wing ignorance and hate.

The guns is still being held but at least now the MSM will have no choice but to report on its existence.

Now I want to make it perfectly clear. I'm not wishing for another economic downturn OR a continuation of the current job situation. In fact, I truly hope that the economy picks up steam but my gut instinct tells me that it's just not going to happen this year or the next. Yes, I am also concerned about the Republicans vision of a "balanced" budget which means cutting all social programs while the "defense" budget continues to grow up and up but I'm hoping that the Democrats can at least counter this since they still control a majority in the Senate.

The wild card is the President. Compromise is a requirement in DC or NOTHING gets done, ZERO. I'm truly hoping that the President takes a good long look at all situations requiring compromise and make sure that the compromise doesn't screw us in the long-term. Maybe with a Republican House, he'll also be able to stand firm on various issues now that it won't seem like he's running up against a wall created by his own party; a wall that was in acuality created by the Republicans.

So many ifs and buts... I know but regardless of the situation, we HAVE to find a silver lining somewhere or we'll all try to move to Canada...

[somone]

1. "with a Republican House, he'll be able to stand firm on various issues now"

Weird logic, to say the least. And "Republicans winning the House could be a good thing for the Democratic Party"???

[hlthe2b]

2. Up is Down, Down is Up, In is Out, Out is In and Black = White...

Ummm. Ok

[Rectangle]

26. The house is going to be a national FREAK SHOW for the next 2 years!! n/t

[True_Blue]

44. Rand Paul

God help us!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Clue Phone Alert!

D's and R's have been playing this "We're in power," "No, you're in power" game for 200 years.

:think:












No! Really :think: !

[rfranklin]

11. Actually, the Republicans came into existence in 1855...

so your timetable is a bit off.

[Cirque du So-What]

12. Actually, this is just semantics

Conservatives have been around forever - whether they go by the name 'Republicans,' 'Whigs,' 'Know-Nothings' or 'Nazis.'

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

20. see #12

Iow, timetable=straw

[spanone]

4. it will be bad for america.

[lamp_shade]

5. Great post, toddwv. This is why Boehner is crying all the time and peeing in his shoes.

In a few weeks, he has to show the American people how he governs. I'm giddy about it.

[Better Believe It]

15. How "giddy" will you be when Congress passes bills to cut "entitlements" and Obama signs them?

[Hell Hath No Fury]

16. They'll be giddy enough to be --

dancing with a lamp shade on their head. :eyes:

[SharonAnn]

33. Actually, they'll probably dolots of "investigations" instead of anything real.

That way, they can make it look like the Democrats are corrupt.

And the Republicans don't have to actually do anything that they'll be held accountable for. They'll just point the finger and say "They're bad guys. Trust us!"

[eleny]

6. Yeah, being the majority really sucked

[tosh]

7. I must admit...

that I've had the same thoughts.

The Senate is still ours and if we can only have one, it is best that it is the Senate. It is a bit scary that we have so many contrary Dem senators, though.

[PearliePoo2]

8. Nice thoughtful post and I am inclined to agree with you.

I doubt seriously there will be much job creation. The ReThugs are tripping over themselves sending manufacturing and business elsewhere.
They are laying off and out-sourcing their consumers here in this country. Jobs that will likely NEVER come back.
I DETEST these greedy, selfish, phony war-mongers

[bluestate10]

28. We can make jobs come back with our buying decisions and by starting and

running ethical, worker and consumer oriented companies. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

[stubtoe]

9. Net recommendation: 0 votes (Your vote: +1)

Man, I hate the unrec function. This is an excellent post.

[toddwv]

42. Thank you.

Don't sweat it, I know how the internet works. I'm more interested in encouraging discussion than gathering virtual points.

[stubtoe]

10. Silver linings.

I notice a bit more MSM mention of Republican tactics. Not a whole lot, but some. It's a start.

[AlabamaLibrul]

13. With a Republican House, we will get nothing done. With a majority in both, we got the Republican

agenda.

[AndyTiedye]

14. There Really Isn't Any Upside To This

I'm tired of the constant barrage from the right.

It is only going to get worse. Much worse.
The House will stop doing anything useful and spend all its time attacking Obama.
The Mighty Slime Machine will eat it up. There is NO limit to their appetite for that sort of thing.

The Republicans have held our legislative process hostage for some time now by pressing a gun up against the heads of unemployed workers, Presidential appointees, the middle class, job creation and a host of other innocent victims of right-wing ignorance and hate.

The guns is still being held but at least now the MSM will have no choice but to report on its existence.

The MSM always has a choice in what stories to report and what stories to ignore.
Don't expect them to stop their Repiglicking ways as long as they are owned by the people who own them today.

The President will be in an even weaker bargaining position than he has been.
He will be forced into even more unpopular compromises.
He can't call the Republicans' bluff because they are not bluffing.
These Republicans Make Scrooge look like a great philanthropist.

[toddwv]

22. So what changes?

The House is stymied by the Senate. The Senate requires compromise or stuff doesn't get done. The House passed PLENTY of good legislation but it got hacked to death in the Senate/House conference and the Democrats took the blame on both ends.

The only difference is that the House Republicans will most likely start their political assassination agenda and launch investigation after investigation. They did that during Clinton's administration and he certainly didn't grow any weaker. In fact, the Republicans ended up taking a huge hit in elections that eventually resulted in them coughing up both houses of Congress and the Presidency.

I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist. I have a good idea of how DC works and realize that it is probably ALOT worse than I think.

I'm just saying that we can sit back and bitch because we lost one house of Congress while we maintain control of the Senate and the White House. We can complain that Congress hasn't shit rainbows and the White House hasn't pushed through legislation that appeals to 100% of liberals/progressives 100% of time. OR we can acknowledge that true change takes a frustratingly lengthy amount of time to truly accomplish.

With the Democrats holding both houses of Congress AND the White House, the bullseye was clearly on their backs the entire time. That's no longer the case. I don't see the Republican House improving their dismal approval ratings any time soon, if all. There is a critical election in 2012 and the Republicans have just painted a target on their backs. Note how the teabaggers are all but quiet now that the election has passed. IF the Republicans don't succeed in implementing their agenda in its entirety, AND THEY WON'T, the right-wing is going to tear itself apart.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

17. You are either very young --

or very ignorant. :(

[NNN0LHI]

30. Can't rule out both being true

[COLGATE4]

31. K&R!

[SheilaT]

18. I must respectfully disagree that

this is a good thing, or that the Republicans will take any responsibility whatsoever for the wreck they have made of this country. They will continue to say taxes need to be lowered, especially for the wealthiest, that social security and medicare and every other social support program is a waste and must be ended immediately. They will not care if it is their own grandmothers who end up dumpster diving for food.

And I am heartsick at Obama's unwillingness to call out the Republicans on all of their dirty tricks. He should have been holding news conferences every single day during the entire health care debate, stating over and over again why we need health care for all. He should never have allowed the insurance companies to set the debate, to be in a position to gain millions and millions of additional dollars while millions of Americans continue to have inadequate or no health care system at all.

I believe that Barack Obama is a genuinely good human being, who sincerely believes he is doing the right thing. However, I also think that his experience in both the Illinois legislature and then his short time in the U.S. Senate gave him neither any real understanding of how the legislative process works, nor a strong network of connections with other legislators. Compare him to Lyndon Johnson, who had spent 12 years as a U.S. Congressman, then 12 years as a Senator before he became Vice-President. He had the connections and the know-how to pass legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act that probably never would have passed under JFK.

No, we are looking square in the face of a long, sad decline of our country. If you're already rich, these are good times. If you're not already in the top 2%, well, too bad.

[toddwv]

21. I'm not saying that the Republicans will take responsibility.

Eventually people are going to wake up and see that wealth consolidation into the hands of a few is a VERY BAD thing. It's happened before in this country and we got the same exact outcome, nearly complete economic devastation followed by stringent legislation that produced a period of unprecedented growth. It's really is frustrating that we have to go through these cycles but that is the way of things.

[SheilaT]

37. We have just had ten years of complete economic

devastation, and still people voted for Republicans and tea-partiers, the very ones who brought us to this point and who will make it worse. i see almost no hope for the stringent legislation that is required to produce growth and to prevent the utter ruin of social security, medicare, and every other social support system out there.

Far too many Americans have been voting against their self interest, for reasons I don't fully understand, and it's too glib just to see they are stupid or they watch too much Fox news, although both of those statements have truth in them. This goes back to Ronald Reagan, who was ludicrously hailed as The Great Communicator by the mainstream press when in reality he was not a hell of a lot more articulate than W. But he could read his lines well, knew how to hit his marks and look at the camera and seem sincere. People fell for it. I was appalled when he won election in 1980, stunned that he was re-elected four years later, discouraged mightily when Bush I came into office after eight years of Reagan.

What we do honestly need is the kind of passion and commitment on our side that will send genuine progressives out there telling the truth and running for office, countering the constant lies that are told by Republicans, tea-partiers, the likes of Beck and Limbaugh. Unfortunately, we collectively seem to lack that passion and will, and we don't have the big money behind us. I've begun thinking about running either for Congress or the Senate in 2012, but I do have half-way decent Democrats in those offices where I am, so I don't think there would be any point. If any of those three were Republicans I would actually be looking into a campaign, knowing it would be a nearly impossible battle.

I just wish others out there would commit to standing up against the abomination that is now the U.S. Congress, and stand up for genuine Democratic and more importantly, genuine progressive principles.

[toddwv]

41. +1

And that's not going to happen if we sit around a piss and moan over losing a single house of Congress.

[toddwv]

45. There were a number of elements that resulted in the 2010 election outcome.

1) The Democrats success in the 2006 election resulted in alot of traditionally red seats being given to Democrats.
2) Greatly unrealistic expectations.
3) It's the economy stupid
4) The SCOTUS ruling removing constraints on corporate money thereby allowing a HUGE influx of cash into the right's election war chests at EXACTLY the wrong time.
5) The Democrats, for some reason, let the right control the message and did little to confront it. This may have been the result of the proliferation of the right-wing media and its undeniable clout and the fact that the alleged "left-leaning" MSM isn't as left-leaning as the right would like us to believe. In the end the MSM has been consolidated under the control of corporations and we all know where these newly declared persons deserving the rights and privileges that were once only afforded actual histories, we all know where their votes generally fall.

[SheilaT]

46. Your points number 5 are the core of

what we have to be willing and able to stand up to.

Personally, I tend to think that a way needs to be found to completely undercut the lie that the mainstream media is left leaning. It hasn't been left leaning since the Washington Post covered the whole Watergate thing -- which I well remember, being an adult and living in DC at the time.

By the time Reagan became President, the press was falling all over itself to cater to the conservative movement, and to distance itself from any genuine left or progressive aspects. Reagan somehow was seen as a champion of the little man, even after firing the air traffic controllers. And Lane Kirkland, then head of the AFL-CIO, was utterly complicit in this. No wonder unions have been on the decline ever since.

Fighting the money feels insurmountable, and it is very difficult, but more than once a candidate who has spent less has still been the one to win the election.

Point 3 "It's the economy stupid" is absolutely true, but in a sad way. It IS the economy, and yet most Americans still think that unions are the villain, that cutting taxes for the rich will benefit them, that they actually have to worry about estate taxes. The vast majority out there have no idea just how much the top 1 or 2 or 5 percent actually earns, or how much wealth they actually control. They also have absolutely no realistic idea of how totally unlikely it is that they themselves will ever be in those upper ranks. Again, this all goes back to Reagan and his war against the supposed welfare queens and the glorification of greed.

[obxhead]

19. Slight problem with your analysis.

"I know, I know, I'm being horribly optimistic in thinking that the American people can put 2 and 2 together and actually get 4 but maybe they will realize that if a party in power creates a HUGE economic mess which is then cleaned up by another party and then the former party is given control once again and creates another HUGE economic mess, that the American people will finally and conclusively come to the understanding that the ideology of the former (Republicans/GOP/teabaggers) is pure garbage."


The problem is the Dems did nothing to clean up the economic mess. It could be argued that the stimulus reduced the effect of the recession, but it would be a hard fought argument. Other than that Dems have piled onto the deficit. In fact today they will add a trillion dollars to it.

I understand what your saying and have thought along the same line of thinking. It would be an excellent line of reasoning had this admin actually been cleaning up the mess instead of exacerbating it.

[Motown_Johnny]

23. they will blame the nonexistent jobs on regulations, or health care or

any number of things that their self deluded supporters want to hear.

A loss is a loss.

[TheKentuckian]

24. Why do you think there will be significantly any difference in accountability or

taking responsibility?

Please review the previous 40 years and get back.

[bluestate10]

29. Republicans will not be able to shift responsibility.

Republicans will have to originate and defend passage of bills. Democrats can play the sniper's roll and pick those bills apart at the seems. Republicans are now in a position of complete exposure. The republican "base" would have died off more by 2012. Republicans will be left with more voters who remember once again why they voted that party out of power in 2006 and 2008. But next time, the vote will not be only out of power, but out of existence.

[AndyTiedye]

34. The Media Will Take Care of Shifting the Responsibility

[bluestate10]

38. Democrats can't let them. Fight sound-bite for sound-bite.

A perfect example is the re-elected governor of my state. When he was running for re-election, every time his republican opponent punched, the governor parried and counter-punched, without allowing the republican's accusations to catch traction for one second. The performance was a thing of beauty to watch. The governor's performance turned a close race into a 6.5% win margin.

[toddwv]

40. Please review the past 6.

2006 - Democrats swept both houses of Congress.
2008 - Democrats picked up even more seats and the White House.

That's not holding the Republicans accountable?

Make no mistake, the Republicans are all in at this point. Their party is on the brink of destruction. They have isolated themselves from pretty much anyone who isn't older, white and Christian. They seem to relish their anti-minority title even while their base will continue to shrink as nature runs its course and their most loyal voting block, senior citizens, dwindles. They MUST produce or they will implode. The teabaggers have already declared an Inquisition where they plan to go after Republicans who aren't right-wing enough. Do you really think that the old-boy Republican establishment is going to bend over a chair and take it? I doubt it highly.

So unless the Republicans show a marked improvement over their previous time in power AND they meet the teabaggers' checklist, there is going to be a gigantic elephant hunt in 2012 and the most vocal of the hunters will be from their own political slant.

So if the Democrats piss and whine and complain, the Republicans will be definitely capitalize. It's time to stop complaining about what's past and start planning the response otherwise the Republicans will dominate the discussion yet again.

[sweetapogee]

25. A problem with your logic

as I see it, the pukes will still successfully blame the dems for all sorts of things and there isn't anything we can do about it. If we don't do what the pukes propose and the economy remains in the shit can then we get the blame. If dems do what the pukes want and the economy stays in the shit can, we get blamed for doing what the pukes wanted knowing it would fail.

The only real solution to our dilemma is for us to craft simple, sold proposals that make sense and that have have a track record of success. If we are depending on our ability to blame the pukes, i think we will be blaming the pukes for many years.

[bluestate10]

27. We are headed for a replay of 2006-2008.

Only next time republicans will not come back from the hole they dig. Bear two years of pushing hot button social issues and insane economic policies. Real change will start in 2012 as the republican congressional count gets trimmed, with it getting destroyed in 2014. Why? Because independents will regret their 2010 votes by 2012 and turn away from ever considering a republican as a viable leader. Keep fighting and keep looking forward, time is on our side.

[NNN0LHI]

32. Anyone beginning to see why we end up with boobs like Bush running this country for 8 years now?

And with a +90% approval rating on top of that!

About 9 out of 10 people you see walking down the street are imbeciles.

Don

[backscatter712]

35. There's some good points here.

Once Bohner and co. take control in the House, they no longer have the luxury of being able to do nothing but obstruct - they're responsible for actual governance.

And yes, that does make them vulnerable - they're gonna have to give in on a few things, which will make the teabaggers howl about betrayal. Or they can shut down the government, which might make the teabaggers happy, but ensure that the GOP will get little more than 30% of the vote in 2012.

[TheKentuckian]

36. Please review the last 40 years.

[bluestate10]

39. The key is how democrat in Congress and Obama get their message out.

If we see the democratic own foot tripping of the last two years, republicans will not be held accountable and destroyed by voters. If democrats master the sound-bite battle to come, democrats will win 2012 in a walk.

[Vickers]

43. Unrec because I dislike horseshit. n/t