Republican extremism has blocked compromise

As a conservative, I view the Tea Party as a blessing and a curse. Many members of the Tea Party caucus have done a great deal to advance the cause of liberty. On the flip side, they have also blocked compromise, making our government essentially nonfunctional. Boehner would have been a pretty competent Speaker if he didn't have to suck up to the TP in order to keep his position. They have him by the proverbial nut sack.

I wouldn't blame solely the Tea Party, though. Ideologues on both sides of the aisle are at fault.
 
Party politics block compromise. You stick with your own or they wont support you and you attack the other side because they are that other side.
 
Strange how when Juan Williams makes an attempt towards honest journalism the rightwingers Cain him. Read the comments at the bottom of the article.
 
Threedee said:
As a conservative, I view the Tea Party as a blessing and a curse. Many members of the Tea Party caucus have done a great deal to advance the cause of liberty. On the flip side, they have also blocked compromise, making our government essentially nonfunctional. Boehner would have been a pretty competent Speaker if he didn't have to suck up to the TP in order to keep his position. They have him by the proverbial nut sack.

I wouldn't blame solely the Tea Party, though. Ideologues on both sides of the aisle are at fault.
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Which contradicts your first premise. This wouldn't of happened to Tip O'Neal. Call a spade a spade. Boehner has been a weak Speaker.
 
Keep in mind that the scholars Williams is referencing hardly come from liberal backgrounds. The American Enterprise Institution is the nations oldest conservative think tank.
 
All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.
 
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do to keep the idiot Democrats from fucking the country up.........
 
I posted this yesterday, and the JPP conservatives fled the thread.


\\\(())/// said:
We now have history’s first draft of the story of this Congress. There is so much political fog right now that it is hard to get a clear view of the reason for the dysfunction on Capitol Hill.


But three new books take a step back to get a clear look at the fray, and all three conclude that no-holds-barred, right-wing politics is to be blamed.


Two congressional scholars, Thomas Mann of Brookings and Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, authored the first book —“It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.”


They write that today’s Republican extremism has led Congress to be more dysfunctional than at any time after the Civil War.


The second book is journalist Robert Draper’s “Do Not Ask What Good We Do,” a tragic account of far right-wing House freshmen engaging in tantrums and bullying Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).


The third book is “The Passage of Power,” the latest volume by President Johnson’s biographer, Robert Caro. It covers LBJ’s transition from his time as Senate majority leader to the White House as the powerful Democrat negotiated with Republicans to pass critical defense, highway construction and civil rights laws.


In today’s Congress that kind of compromise is “near impossible,” Caro is telling interviewers, due to Senate Republicans’ use of the filibuster to block all legislation from President Obama and the Democrats. Caro calls the GOP action “unconscionable.”


And in sharp contrast to the GOP’s constant criticism of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Caro is of the opinion that LBJ’s successor as the leader of Senate Democrats is doing a “terrific job” of dealing with “near impossible circumstances.”


Caro’s overall historical assessment fits exactly with the other two books.


Mann and Ornstein paint sad pictures of a House Republican Conference that is “more loyal to party than to country” and intentionally crippling Congress “at a time when the country faces unusually serious problems and grave threats.”


Draper’s book focuses on a bloc of Tea Party members elected in 2010 who pushed the nation to the brink of default over raising the debt ceiling because they saw the spending cuts that accompanied that increase as insufficient.


He quotes freshman Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) as saying: “I didn’t come to Washington to be part of a team.”


http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/225663-opinion-gop-extremism-crippling-congress
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as far as compromise is concerned, remember last fall when the the Dems wanted to increase the debt cap?.........the Republicans agreed to compromise if spending was reduced........then they agreed to compromise so long as spending was reduced later.....and we all know how that worked out, don't we.....this fall we will need to raise the debt cap again and we still haven't seen any spending cuts.........
 
PostmodernProphet said:
as far as compromise is concerned, remember last fall when the the Dems wanted to increase the debt cap?.........the Republicans agreed to compromise if spending was reduced........then they agreed to compromise so long as spending was reduced later.....and we all know how that worked out, don't we.....this fall we will need to raise the debt cap again and we still haven't seen any spending cuts.........
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I don't recall that, PiMP. Cite.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
as far as compromise is concerned, remember last fall when the the Dems wanted to increase the debt cap?.........the Republicans agreed to compromise if spending was reduced........then they agreed to compromise so long as spending was reduced later.....and we all know how that worked out, don't we.....this fall we will need to raise the debt cap again and we still haven't seen any spending cuts.........
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I'd like to see that cite as well.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
I realize you may be young, but even a teenager ought to be able to remember what happened last fall........
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So you can't link to any evidence that the events occurred as you described them?




Republicans are offering their preferred view of history.


They point to the Democrats’ failure to pass a budget, both when Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate in 2008-2010 and now when they hold the Senate majority.


The GOP charge is technically true, but as the new books illustrate, it is more about creating fog than it is about the whole truth.


First, there is no chance of a polarized House and Senate agreeing on a budget.


And as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) points out, the Democrats supported and Congress passed the Budget Control Act last year instead of a budget resolution.


This new law has the full legal effect of a budget because it sets strict spending limits for the next decade, far more than the one-year limits usually found in a budget resolution.


It is estimated that these spending caps will result in almost $900 billion in cuts.


The Budget Control Act also created the supercommittee to craft a reform proposal and a contingency plan if it failed to do so.


It failed and the result will be another $1.2 trillion in spending cuts starting in January.


This means that the Budget Control Act constitutes the biggest package of spending cuts in American history and is already written into the law.

http://thehill.com/opinion/columnist...pling-congress
 
\\\(())/// said:
It failed and the result will be another $1.2 trillion in spending cuts starting in January.


This means that the Budget Control Act constitutes the biggest package of spending cuts in American history and is already written into the law.
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or it would have, if we had actually gotten $1.2 trillion in cuts in January.....they haven't happened yet, and it's May.....
 
The party of "NO" continues to refuse to allow this legislation to come forward but as slasher has pointed out we now have a Budget Control Act that runs out in 10 years instead of the single year that annual budgets do. Democrats are doing their part. It's time the naysayers stepped up and did something for the money we are paying them.
 
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