The Post wherein the GOP Senate begins to prove me right.
Remember a while back when I did a post where I stated I wanted the GOP to be the minority in the Senate? Let me remind you, I said:
If the GOP takes over again, and acts like they did last time, the GOP will likely go extinct as a viable option. I’m accused off all kinds of things in the comment section of my other post, and some of it is understandable, but if the GOP takes over, and doesn’t make SIGNIFICANT changes, we are through. Now, how much can the GOP do with a President Obama? Virtually nothing.
I further stated:
Screw that. I don’t trust that the GOP has learned anything. The budget ballooned under Bush and a GOP Congress. It has gone up even more since then, true. My ideal situation, a GOP minority with enough blue dogs to block anything and everything. I’d rather have a GOP majority that is smart enough to handle the reins, but I have never seen such a thing.
Yeah, and I got the shit beat out of me for saying it.
Well, here you are, from Politico:
The Senate’s old bulls are preparing to beat back what they see as a direct affront to their authority: a movement by House Republican leaders and conservative senators to force Capitol Hill to end its appetite for pork….
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, along with other Senate leaders from both parties, say that earmarking is a constitutional right and senatorial privilege and show little interest in relinquishing the decades-long practice of inserting pet projects into appropriations bills…
“As I think all of you know, you can eliminate every congressional earmark and save no money,” the Republican leader said. “It’s really an argument about discretion.”
Dude learned nothing. He is of course accurate in what he says, but the fact he is saying it means he’s completely tone deaf. “Everyone else does it, so we will too.”
Great plan chief, just genius. People say DeMint lost us this election by promoting O’Donnell, Buck etc. Well, McConnell is bound and determined to beat him at that, by losing us the next three. Game, set, match.
Category: Politics
I’m adopting a wait and see attitude.
I’m adopting a “I’m not letting them let me down again” attitude by just assuming McConnell will F me again, and then at least I can say “I told you so.”
There you go–McConnell’s information:
361-A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2541
Fax: (202) 224-2499
Pink slips to all, and to all a good night…
Good post TSO and I agree… the GOP is on double secret probation. It took the Tea Party and disastrous policies by Obummer & Co for this election to go the way it did. Do like they did and spend away and we will have Obama 2.0 in 2012.
I actually like my little Republican.
I’m adopting a “I’m not letting them let me down again” attitude by just assuming McConnell will F me again, and then at least I can say “I told you so.”
I’d say that most of America has the same attitude (myself included).
Good post TSO and I agree… the GOP is on double secret probation. It took the Tea Party and disastrous policies by Obummer & Co for this election to go the way it did. Do like they did and spend away and we will have Obama 2.0 in 2012.
Agreed. The GOP won nothing in 2010. The TEA Party won. And the TEA Party arose only because Americans saw they no longer had representation in Washington. They saw the Democrat Party turn to Communist-lite radicals and they saw the Republican Party do their usual, spineless crap of going along to get along and cowering in fear of what the MF-ing media would say about them if they dared call Obama and the Democrats on their radical bullshit.
“I wouldn’t say this (election) is a validation of Republicans, far from it. This was a repudiation of the direction the president and his party have taken the country. Just like 2006 was a repudiation of Republicans who strayed from their principles and got soft on spending and government.”
A-freaking-men.
I can only disagree with one thing..
Well, McConnell is bound and determined to beat him at that, by losing us the next three. Game, set, match.
That’s what was said just 2 years (1 election cycle) ago…..actually, I believe the Republican party was supposed to be done for a generation. Shows you how short peoples’ memory are and unfortunately, our elected officials too…
I would argue OT that the first time we merely lost the Independents while pissing off the right. This time if they do it again I fear that they will alienate the entire right. Now, will the right go elsewhere? I don’t know, but in several races this cycle the margin of victory in close Dem races did not exceed the amount that was siphoned off to the Libertarians.
This time if they do it again I fear that they will alienate the entire right. Now, will the right go elsewhere?
It’s happened before….Ross Perot. He cost HW Bush and Dole, Clinton never got over 50% and Perot syphoned off conservatives and independents….but I suppose that proves your point, 3 election cycles…
Perhaps we should take a shot at zero baseline budgeting.
And of course the idiot libtards who see no difference between the TP types and the entrenched beltway Republicans will do their damnedest to tie them together. Hell over at HuffPo, they already have.
Yeah, what TSO and Michael in MI said.
A buddy told me the same thing, when we were discussing the results. He said that in his mind, the GOP is on probation, period. Oh, ad we’re both Tea Party members, along with a couple of conservative democrat and libertarian friends. I say that because the liberal fems think they know what the Tea Party is about, but they really have no fricken clue.
2006:
So, McConnell has finally found something he thinks is worth fighting for? Given the election results this year, I’m not sure the voters of Kentucky agree.
Correction, that was 2007. The surge was ramping up, Reid and Pelosi were shouting “the war is lost” and McConnell’s quote “The handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall” was a reference to the Petraeus testimony – four months before the event.
“Perhaps we should take a shot at zero baseline budgeting.”
I am a big fan of ZBB, Eric, but I don’t think it can work at the federal level. Congress would be in session 24/7 just doing the budget.
But TSO is right about Senate Republicans. Too many of them just don’t get it. I think anybody who goes to Congress for more than a few terms stops being a normal person and changes to a politician.
I think the only way we get spending under control at the federal level is for the states to force a balanced budget amendment on Congress. Congress came close to doing it in 1994, the last big conservative wave. But I think we need to run it through the state legislatures, bypassing Congress and the president altogether.
Apparently the wise choice would be to forget what the Constitution says about placing the power of the purse in the hands of the Congress. Obama knows best and we should always do what he says? GS 12 budget analysts know best and they always make the best decisions in the best interest of the country? Federal bureaucrats never put something in the budget for anything but the purest of reasons. Congressmen don’t know anything about transportation projects in their districts and should have not say.. Seriously?
The President’s budget is rife with pork projects. $10B to build a mega military base on Guam? Who thinks that is a good idea.. It is pure, Pentagon pork. Move a perfectly good headquarters from Heidelberg to Wiesbaden at a cost of $2B when all is said and done? Wasteful Pentagon pork and no one. NO ONE is even talking about it. We’re all worried about some congressman adding an exit ramp which may actually decrease traffic and increase commerce and tax collection but hey, hat should be up to an unelected GS 12 in the DoT to decide. The Tea Party advocates needs to actually read the Constitution before they start yelling about following it. Ear marks from Congress were contemplated by our founding fathers. What they did not contemplate is all the port put in by the executive branch and all the sheep like folks who pay no attention to it.