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Reexamining GOP obstruction in the obama era

Here's some reporting on the Republican Party's sabotague of the economy under Obama:

Tim Alberta’s new book, American Carnage, confirms and deepens previous reports that show just how cynically Republicans viewed the economic crisis of 2008. When Congress was debating a taxpayer-funded bailout in September 2008, Paul Ryan lectured his GOP colleagues that they needed to think of the country: “We’re Americans,” he said. “And if we don’t do something, this economy is going to crash.” However, Alberta notes, “n truth, Ryan feared not just the crash itself” but the prospect such a crash would lead to a Republican wipeout at the polls; he warned that a crash would lead to “FDR on steroids.”

After Obama took office, the entire Republican legislative calculus revolved around the premise that Republicans were engaged in zero-sum competition — anything that helped Obama pass a stimulus bill hurt their party. When Obama expressed openness to their stimulus ideas in a private meeting, Alberta reports, they reacted with panic. “If he governs like that, we’re all ****ed,” Eric Cantor’s communications director, Brad Dayspring, told his boss.

Alberta reports that Republicans declined to address infrastructure spending in their counterproposal to Obama precisely because they believed House Republicans would support it. “Boehner and Cantor both knew that the one thing that could buy off their members was big spending on roads and bridges,” Alberta reports. They declined to include any such spending in their offer, because the goal was not to improve the economic-rescue bill but to block it.​


And here: How Republicans Sabotaged the Recovery – Foreign Policy
 
uptower said:
What the voters want is not Republicans or their ideals. Both in the Obama years and now the Republicans represented fewer voters than the Democrats but picked up more seats due to gerrymandering, voter suppression and other electioneering tricks. 2018 gave a taste of what voters really want; this year regardless of who 'wins' the electoral college in the election, when you look at the turnout and count the votes, you'll see again what the voters really want.
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What the voters want is not Democrat's or their ideals. That's why Republicans took over over a thousand seats from Democrats and it had very little to do with gerrymandering.
 
Moderate Right said:
What the voters want is not Democrat's or their ideals. That's why Republicans took over over a thousand seats from Democrats and it had very little to do with gerrymandering.
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It has something to do with gerrymandering. Also voter suppression. Also lying.

About the lying: polls show that even Republicans support tax increases on the wealthy. So Republicans have to lie about it. And lying is right in Trump's wheelhouse. Trump promised tax hikes during his campaign:
In August 2015, then-candidate Trump told Bloomberg: “I do very well. I don't mind paying a little more in taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country." A month later, he unveiled his tax plan in Trump Tower and declared, "It’s going to cost me a fortune, which is actually true."​
No, it was a lie. Every iteration of Trump’s tax plan, from his first campaign outline to the lightly detailed blueprint his White House team released in the spring of 2017, has been scored by independent analysts as a huge tax cut for the very rich.

In the summer of 2017, before the big tax cut for the rich, Trump was still lying about it:
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he declared “the truth is the people I care most about are the middle-income people in this country who have gotten screwed.” He then proceeded to open the door to higher taxes on top earners, by name-dropping his pal Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. From the Journal (emphasis mine):

And if there’s upward revision it’s going to be on high-income people. You know, I was with Bob Kraft the other night. He came to have dinner with me. He’s a friend of mine. And as he left, he said, Donald, don’t worry about the rich people. Tax the rich people. You got to take care of the people in the country. It was a very interesting statement. I feel the same way. ...

We want — look, the job producers we’re going to take great care of, but we have to take care of middle-income people in this country. They built the country, they started this whole beautiful thing that we have, and we have to take care of them. And people have not taken care of them, and we’re going to. And I mean, I have wealthy friends that say to me I don’t mind paying more tax. And I’ll tell you what I sort of don’t like, is when they — you know, you’ll do your charts in The Wall Street Journal and they’ll be brilliantly done, very nice, and they’ll show that a rich guy who made, you know, $25 million last year is going to pay less than he was. In a certain way, I don’t like that. I’d rather take that difference and put it into the middle-income and put it into corporate.​
 
jpn said:
It has something to do with gerrymandering. Also voter suppression. Also lying.

About the lying: polls show that even Republicans support tax increases on the wealthy. So Republicans have to lie about it. And lying is right in Trump's wheelhouse. Trump promised tax hikes during his campaign:
In August 2015, then-candidate Trump told Bloomberg: “I do very well. I don't mind paying a little more in taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country." A month later, he unveiled his tax plan in Trump Tower and declared, "It’s going to cost me a fortune, which is actually true."​
No, it was a lie. Every iteration of Trump’s tax plan, from his first campaign outline to the lightly detailed blueprint his White House team released in the spring of 2017, has been scored by independent analysts as a huge tax cut for the very rich.

In the summer of 2017, before the big tax cut for the rich, Trump was still lying about it:
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he declared “the truth is the people I care most about are the middle-income people in this country who have gotten screwed.” He then proceeded to open the door to higher taxes on top earners, by name-dropping his pal Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. From the Journal (emphasis mine):

And if there’s upward revision it’s going to be on high-income people. You know, I was with Bob Kraft the other night. He came to have dinner with me. He’s a friend of mine. And as he left, he said, Donald, don’t worry about the rich people. Tax the rich people. You got to take care of the people in the country. It was a very interesting statement. I feel the same way. ...

We want — look, the job producers we’re going to take great care of, but we have to take care of middle-income people in this country. They built the country, they started this whole beautiful thing that we have, and we have to take care of them. And people have not taken care of them, and we’re going to. And I mean, I have wealthy friends that say to me I don’t mind paying more tax. And I’ll tell you what I sort of don’t like, is when they — you know, you’ll do your charts in The Wall Street Journal and they’ll be brilliantly done, very nice, and they’ll show that a rich guy who made, you know, $25 million last year is going to pay less than he was. In a certain way, I don’t like that. I’d rather take that difference and put it into the middle-income and put it into corporate.​
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Gerrymandering is quite inconsequential, just like illegals voting is quite inconsequential, just like Russians influencing our elections is quite inconsequential. Dems won in the House in 2018. Republicans cleaned up in many races over the last 10 years, both at a national level and the state level, with many of those races not even subject to gerrymandering. You can't tell me that Republicans won everywhere that can't be gerrymandered but only won in elections that were able to be gerrymandered by gerrymandering. Hell, you can't even gerrymander anything unless you won in the first place so, if you won in the first place you can't prove that you wouldn't have won in the future but for gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is nothing but an excuse by the left for losing.
 
Where is the tea party now who complained about deficits back in the Obama era? I'm tired of the hypocrites on both sides.
 
Moderate Right said:
Gerrymandering is quite inconsequential, just like illegals voting is quite inconsequential, just like Russians influencing our elections is quite inconsequential. Dems won in the House in 2018. Republicans cleaned up in many races over the last 10 years, both at a national level and the state level, with many of those races not even subject to gerrymandering. You can't tell me that Republicans won everywhere that can't be gerrymandered but only won in elections that were able to be gerrymandered by gerrymandering. Hell, you can't even gerrymander anything unless you won in the first place so, if you won in the first place you can't prove that you wouldn't have won in the future but for gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is nothing but an excuse by the left for losing.
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Gerrymandering is not inconsequential. At all.

WASHINGTON — Majorities of voters in at least three battleground states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina — chose a Democrat to represent them in the state's House of Representatives. Yet in all three states, Republicans maintained majority control over the chamber despite winning only a minority of votes.

For that, you can thank gerrymandering — the process by which partisan lawmakers draw legislative districts in a way to disadvantage their opponents. Its effects are well-documented at the federal level: In states like North Carolina, U.S. House delegations feature huge Republican majorities, even when the majority of voters choose a Democratic representative.
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By the way, it works both ways. If I remember right, Maryland (Delaware?) is gerrymandered in Democrats favor. But the GOP won big in 2010, which was a census year, so they were able to gerrymander a lot of states. They also took advantage of computer technology for the first time to slice and dice the districts to a finer degree than has ever been done before. This year's state races are important for the same reason--census year. District maps are only drawn once a decade, following the census.
 
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jpn said:
Gerrymandering is not inconsequential. At all.



By the way, it works both ways. If I remember right, Maryland (Delaware?) is gerrymandered in Democrats favor. But the GOP won big in 2010, which was a census year, so they were able to gerrymander a lot of states. They also took advantage of computer technology for the first time to slice and dice the districts to a finer degree than has ever been done before. This year's state races are important for the same reason--census year. District maps are only drawn once a decade, following the census.
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Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
 
Moderate Right said:
Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
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This is how the conservative mind works. They want to believe in something, so discount any fact contrary to that belief. They'll start tossing insults rather than reconsider their position.

You wrote: "Gerrymandering is quite inconsequential, just like illegals voting is quite inconsequential, just like Russians influencing our elections is quite inconsequential."

I replied with facts, providing examples of various state legislatures rendered unrepresentative of the actual vote by gerrymandering, and an example of how US Congressional representation in North Carolina is highly misaligned due to it.

Your response was to call my response stupid. Why do so many conservatives think that being belligerent is in any way persuasive? Of course gerrymandering doesn't affect state-wide races. That goes without saying. Resting your argument on the obvious is...well, I won't call it stupid. How about odd?
 
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Digger said:
During Obama's presidency, the GOP shut down the government several times. Everyone agrees that this harmed the economy. But Republicans at the time argued that the issues they were being stubborn on were so important for the long term health of the economy that it justified the short term damage.

What were these issues? They wanted to repeal and replace Obamacare, they wanted to reduce the deficit. And they wanted to extend Bush's tax cuts for rich people.

What can we learn from their actions upon taking power in 2017 about the sincerity of their arguments? Well, they didn't repeal and replace Obamacare. They didn't reduce the deficit. They did give another huge stinking tax cut to rich people.

I conclude from this that the GOP doesn't really care about deficits and Obamacare. They harmed the economy for disingenuous reasons.

Why did they do it? Maybe they think tax cuts for rich people are so good for the economy in the long term that it's worth hurting the economy in the short term to get them.

But I posit another explanation. Instead of good but stupid, maybe they're evil but smart. McConnell let the truth slip when he said his highest priority was to deny obama a second term. Not create jobs, not help the economy. Hurt obama.

The tax cuts for the rich increased the deficit. Repeated shutdowns slowed the recovery. The GOP caused these things, and then complained that "Obama's deficit" was to big and "obama's recovery" was too slow.
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It's pretty obvious what the GOP is about? Holding on to power. Enriching themselves, rigging the system so they can get less votes and win. Doing anything to stack the court with pro corporate, right wing extremist hacks that will protect corporations and the rich over the rest of us.

Trump's administration solidifies this as unquestionable, they aren't even hiding their corruption, their disdain for checks and balances.
 
Digger said:
Your first paragraph is just so ridiculous all that I can do is underline it. Just look at yourself for a minute. Charging small businesses higher interest rates doesn't hurt the economy. It's hard for me to take you seriously.

Your second paragraph is purely a correlative argument and warrants no further response. In your parlance, saying that the economy grew during the shutdown is not the same thing as the shutdown didn't hurt the economy.
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How can anybody take any conservative seriously? They don't have any facts, all they do is deflect, they lie, spread complete nonsense and are the epitome of hypocrites? You get nothing but deflections and projection.

They believe in complete bull****, and yet they continue to believe and lie about it over and over again
 
Digger said:
Neither party cares about the debt. But only one party uses the debt as an excuse to shut down the government, harming the economy. Only one party keeps passing massive tax cuts while increasing spending. The other party proposes tax increases to pay for the money they want to spend. Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility. Just look at the last few decades. Every time a Republican president gets a Republican Congress, the deficit explodes!
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Doesn't matter to the right wing cult. They don't care about actual facts. Decades of evidence of how wrong they are, and they still deny it. Ironically, the so called "party of personal responsibility" displays none, all they do is blame democrats and brown people for all their problems. When in reality they should be blaming republicans and the greedy rich they worship while they take it in the A from them
 
jpn said:
This is how the conservative mind works. They want to believe in something, so discount any fact contrary to that belief. They'll start tossing insults rather than reconsider their position.

You wrote: "Gerrymandering is quite inconsequential, just like illegals voting is quite inconsequential, just like Russians influencing our elections is quite inconsequential."

I replied with facts, providing examples of various state legislatures rendered unrepresentative of the actual vote by gerrymandering, and an example of how US Congressional representation in North Carolina is highly misaligned due to it.

Your response was to call my response stupid. Why do so many conservatives think that being belligerent is in any way persuasive? Of course gerrymandering doesn't affect state-wide races. That goes without saying. Resting your argument on the obvious is...well, I won't call it stupid. How about odd?
Click to expand...

Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
 
Conservative said:
Poorly formatted, DISMISSED!!!
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You say so because you can't refute anything I've said and are unable to recognize your own words. If it helps, just eliminate your words from the format and respond to what I stated that was in reply to the what you wrote in your post. Even you should be able to handle that. But I think you won't because you can't give a formidable reply of any substance. Instead, you seek a cowardly route away from giving an honest and forthright reply. Typical Conservative that so many other posters on this forum have experienced. Anyway, your claims are dismissed for lack of supporting evidence. That is dismissal for debate reason, not some little boy excuse like yours.
 
Moderate Right said:
Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
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How else do you explain Pennsylvania, where Democratic candidates won 54 percent of the statewide House popular vote but walked away with just 45 percent, or 92 seats, of the 203-seat state legislature. Just a coincidence that it's heavily gerrymandered?

Okay, then there's Michigan and North Carolina. The states draw their legislative districts by passing bills in the legislature. Whichever party controls the legislature controls the redistricting, and Republicans happened to be in charge of both legislatures following the 2010 Census.

In 2018, both states saw a six percentage-point gap between Democrats' share of the popular vote, and the share of state House seats they won. Michigan Democrats won 200,000 more votes statewide than Republicans did but will get 52 out of 110 seats. North Carolina Democrats prevailed in the popular vote by 79,000 votes but won 54 out of 120 seats.

Coincidence again?

You remind me of Trump claiming that he actually won the popular voting except for massive voter fraud in New Hampshire. Or Trump claiming there were more people at his Inauguration than at Obama's.
 
bluesmoke said:
You say so because you can't refute anything I've said and are unable to recognize your own words. If it helps, just eliminate your words from the format and respond to what I stated that was in reply to the what you wrote in your post. Even you should be able to handle that. But I think you won't because you can't give a formidable reply of any substance. Instead, you seek a cowardly route away from giving an honest and forthright reply. Typical Conservative that so many other posters on this forum have experienced. Anyway, your claims are dismissed for lack of supporting evidence. That is dismissal for debate reason, not some little boy excuse like yours.
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I put him on ignore weeks ago. He simply refuses to debate in good faith.
 
jpn said:
How else do you explain Pennsylvania, where Democratic candidates won 54 percent of the statewide House popular vote but walked away with just 45 percent, or 92 seats, of the 203-seat state legislature. Just a coincidence that it's heavily gerrymandered?

Okay, then there's Michigan and North Carolina. The states draw their legislative districts by passing bills in the legislature. Whichever party controls the legislature controls the redistricting, and Republicans happened to be in charge of both legislatures following the 2010 Census.

In 2018, both states saw a six percentage-point gap between Democrats' share of the popular vote, and the share of state House seats they won. Michigan Democrats won 200,000 more votes statewide than Republicans did but will get 52 out of 110 seats. North Carolina Democrats prevailed in the popular vote by 79,000 votes but won 54 out of 120 seats.

Coincidence again?

You remind me of Trump claiming that he actually won the popular voting except for massive voter fraud in New Hampshire. Or Trump claiming there were more people at his Inauguration than at Obama's.
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Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
 
Moderate Right said:
Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
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Are you trolling me?

Of course they didn't win non-state races due only to gerrymandering. I never said they had. You stated that gerrymandering is inconsequential. I provided clear examples of non-state-wide races where the popular vote was not reflected in the final results. Some of that was almost certainly due to gerrymandering. A state could easily, say, vote GOP for governor in 2012 and then six years later vote popularly Democratic in 2018 but not get a representative number of house seats due to gerrymandering. Why is that so hard to believe?

So answer me this. In the examples I gave you, Pennsylvania, Michigan, NC, why wouldn't gerrymandering be a rational explanation for the statewide vote not be reflected in the number of seats won? What other explanation do you have?
 
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Moderate Right said:
It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
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Two totally separate issues. Gerrymandering skews election results. In favor of the GOP in places like NC, in favor of the Dem's in places like Maryland.

Voter fraud is the overwhelmingly fraudulent claim the GOP uses to excuse tactics to suppress minority, low income, and student voters, who tend to vote Democratic.
 
jpn said:
Are you trolling me?

Of course they didn't win non-state races due only to gerrymandering. I never said they had. You stated that gerrymandering is inconsequential. I provided clear examples of non-state-wide races where the popular vote was not reflected in the final results. Some of that was almost certainly due to gerrymandering. A state could easily, say, vote GOP for governor in 2012 and then six years later vote popularly Democratic in 2018 but not get a representative number of house seats due to gerrymandering. Why is that so hard to believe?

So answer me this. In the examples I gave you, Pennsylvania, Michigan, NC, why wouldn't gerrymandering be a rational explanation for the statewide vote not be reflected in the number of seats won? What other explanation do you have?
Click to expand...

Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
 
jpn said:
Two totally separate issues. Gerrymandering skews election results. In favor of the GOP in places like NC, in favor of the Dem's in places like Maryland.

Voter fraud is the overwhelmingly fraudulent claim the GOP uses to excuse tactics to suppress minority, low income, and student voters, who tend to vote Democratic.
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Yes, two totally separate issues with the exact same outcome. Nothing substantial. You can't gerrymander unless you won in the first place. So, if you won in the first place, it's pretty damn hard to prove they wouldn't have won again without gerrymandering. This is especially true when all of the surrounding races that can't be gerrymandered go in the very same direction of what the left claims was gerrymandered.
 
Moderate Right said:
Please explain to me how you gerrymander the presidency, the US Senate, and state governors, all of whom won big during the last 10 years. It's stupid to claim that even though Republicans won tons of races that can't possibly be gerrymandered that they won the others only due to gerrymandering. It's nothing but an excuse, like the right claims that illegals voting is a big problem.
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Okay, you're a troll.
 
Moderate Right said:
Yes, two totally separate issues with the exact same outcome. Nothing substantial. You can't gerrymander unless you won in the first place. So, if you won in the first place, it's pretty damn hard to prove they wouldn't have won again without gerrymandering. This is especially true when all of the surrounding races that can't be gerrymandered go in the very same direction of what the left claims was gerrymandered.
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Spoken like a troll.
 
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