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Why I Admire the Democratic Party
I will stipulate that the policies of the Democrat Party are both fiscally irresponsible and socially destructive. I will stipulate that Democrats lie to advance their destructive and irresponsible policies. I will stipulate that Democrat politicians are by and large corrupt, irresponsible, and often display a disturbing hostility toward Constitutional rights.
Having said that, there are things one cannot help but admire, even envy, about the Democrat Party versus the Republican Party.
1. Democrat Leaders Don’t Attack Their Own Members.
In the Republican Party, merely wanting fiscal responsibility is enough to get you labeled a “whacko bird” or one of “the crazies” by the party’s own leadership. There is no Democrat equivalent to Congressman Peter King or Senators Lindsey McCain and John Graham, advancing themselves by constantly attacking parts of their own coalition. And it’s not as though the Democrat Party doesn’t have crazy people attached to it: Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Code Pink, Fortney “Pete” Stark, #BlackLivesMatter, and Baghdad Jim McDermott, to name a few. But when have you heard them attacked by other members of their party, much less the leadership? The Democrats follow the Republicans 11th Commandment better than Republicans do.
2. Once Elected, Democrats Deliver for the People Who Elected Them.
The Democrat Party has one basic value proposition: “Vote for us and we’ll take money away from other people and buy you things with it.” It’s what their voters want, and when elected, they deliver. What do Republicans promise their voters? “We’re going to cut spending and get the Government off your backs.” Yet, spending is never cut, and the bureaucracy continuously grows. In fact, there has not been a major piece of conservative legislation passed since the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. In fact, it often appears that the GOP leadership spends the bulk of its time in office trying to figure out how to sell out the people who elected them and make deals with the Democrats. And on that note…
3. Democrats Always Win “Bipartisan Compromises”
Hypothetically, liberal Democrats always want to increase spending, and conservative Republicans always want to cut it. So how is it that every “compromise” ends up increasing spending, just not as much as Democrats want? Instead of decreasing, just not by as much as conservatives would like? The much-hated sequester didn’t really cut spending, just the rate of growth. Baseline budgeting is suggested year after year, but never comes anywhere near being implemented.
And consider the grand “Bipartisan Compromise” of the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill. Democrats pretty much got everything they wanted; a path to citizenship for a constituency that votes 70-80 percent Democrat and higher levels of future immigration for that constituency. What did conservatives get? A bunch of border security promises and some fines for illegal immigrants, all subject to the waivers and whims of the Democrat president.
4. Democrats Never Give Up On Their Policies, Even When They’re Unpopular
When Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took over the Congress in 2007, they didn’t just wring their hands and say, “Gee, we would really like to push the agenda our constituents elected us for, but we just don’t have the votes.” No, they went to work advancing the left’s agenda. Even if they didn’t get the payoff right away, they began laying the groundwork. Democrats pushed for state run health care for years before winning Obamacare. Democrats pushed gay marriage for years, even when it was unpopular. Even when they didn’t openly support it, they didn’t try and alienate those who did. Democrats still support partial birth abortion and gun control, even though they are massively unpopular. They aren’t easily cowed into abandoning their priorities by harsh word or a legislative setback.
5. Democrats Don’t Act Like They Are Embarrassed by Their Own Base.
One reason it’s so demoralizing to be part of the conservative base is that even when you win an election, you still feel like you’re losing the agenda. The Tea Party helped deliver the Congress to Republicans in 2010 and 2014, and what thanks do they get? The party leadership seems embarrassed by them and only too happy to deride them as “radical extremists” just as the Democrat Party and the media do. The Democrat coalition, on the other hand, includes environmental extremists, radical feminists, reconquistas, socialist revolutionaries, and a menagerie of fringe leftists. Whatever Democrats may think privately about their fringe, you never hear them trashing any constituency openly.
It is a shame that the Democrat Party, with policies so destructive, actually manages itself in a way that guarantees the advancement of those policies. The Republicans either have no grasp of how the game is played, or have no real interest in advancing a more conservative set of policies. Maybe both.
Published in Politics
Here’s a suggestion for you GOP establishment apologists. Instead of attacking me for pointing out the failures and weakness of your party, why don’t try to come up with constructive ways for the Republicans to advance the conservative reforms you claim to support and that the party ran on?
Why don’t you demand that the GOP defend the Tea Party as concerned, patriotic Americans; instead of attacking them as “unreasonable,” “extremists,” and “whackobirds?”
Why don’t you demand that the GOP begin making strong public cases for conservative policies, instead of just whining that “We just don’t have the votes so we we’re just going to have to do what the president wants.”
According to polls, 60% of *Republican* voters think the party is failing them.
Instead of slapping each other on the back and telling yourselves the GOP is winning because Obama is only getting 98% of his agenda enacted, why don’t you poke your heads out of your bubbles and consider that maybe people who are unhappy with the GOP might have a point and maybe the party should try and do better.
I guess attacking the messenger is just easier, huh?
V the K, as callers used to say to Rush Limbaugh, mega dittos. Democrats seem so much better at sticking together as a group in the public arena. We never seem to hear about their internal differences.
For just one example, look at gay marriage. At first Obama didn’t push for it. I don’t remember hearing about anyone in the gay community complaining about this. The floodgates didn’t open until Biden spoke up for it, after which Obama could be honest about his support for it. Was there anything in the press about the under-the-table tactical planning required to make this happen?
I would like Republican politicians to stop talking about their tactics with the press, and just take action. Surprise them for once, and maybe catch the democrats off guard!
In a similar vein, while I abhor his positions, I’ve come to respect some of Obama’s tactics and focus on results.
For example, the use of executive discretion in regards to enforcement of laws. Why couldn’t a republican president use this to avoid spending money on frivolous congressional set asides in spending bills? The justification would go something like this: We have a huge and unprecedented deficit, which needs to be treated as a national security threat warranting emergency actions. Don’t talk to me about the loss of the pocket veto, we’ve gone well beyond 1970s debt levels. Even if the Supreme Court, Congress and the press were to say it’s unconstitutional, I would be unswayed, especially when it comes to spending by the executive branch. Obama has been unswayed by precedence, laws and public opinion. I think a president who took action to get the budget under control would be applauded by much of the taxpaying public.
Consider it in the spirit of Andrew Jackson. Obama simply provides a more recent precedent, one that we should exploit for our own purposes.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Megadittoes doesn’t mean “I agree with everything you said”, it means roughly “long time listener, love the show, honor to speak with you, etc.”
That’s how republics become dictatorships. It’s the excuse of strongmen who shred their constitution for short term political expediency. We should reject this kind of thinking outright.
You are making an assertion not in evidence. While the US had a supposedly terribly protectionist regime in place the country grew far more rapidly than it has in recent times, but actual events never seem to matter to free traders.
Shrug. I suspect that the American ruling class has already made the choices that have locked the United States into a path of ruin and revolution, but whatever.
Trump’s lip service aimed at pleasing the pro-American GOP base and interested independents have made him the GOP front runner despite- you know, right? As a simple matter of politics the GOP would be well served to ape what Trump has said, if only to fool the rubes- but no.
The party is much more interested in riding its steely principles into oblivion- unless people who really matter get into trouble, like when the economy collapsed in 2008. Then the party will abandon its principles like a used tissue to save those politically connected worthies, principles be danged.
I humbly suggest that this is bad politics, and if the party is willing to abandon principles to save its scaly hide it should abandon those that lose it votes.
Millions of them. Crazy, I know.
Does the GOP want to win elections? Or does it want to preen at its glorious failure?
I think the answer is clear.
So you’re advocating throwing out the constitutional order.
Are you narrowly referring to my example, or more broadly the use of presidential discretion?
So you’re saying the Republicans could win more elections by having a president who consolidates power into the executive branch and ends the ancient constitutional order of checks and balances. Or am I misunderstanding you?
Power has already been consolidated into the executive branch, and the ancient constitutional order of checks and balances has become rather thoroughly unbalanced.
Ignoring this will not restore the ancient order.
There cannot be one set of rules for the left- based upon try and stop us- and another for conservatives- based upon ye ancient forgotten rules of ye olden times.
The left has to pay a price for ignoring the law and the Constitution, and it will not if the GOP simply pretends it never happened.
I advocate that the GOP use ye ancient principle of turnabout is fairplay, and give the left many heaping helpings of exactly what it has been dishing out for the last few decades.
But the party should also explicitly point out that they’re doing it to teach the left some lessons.
For example, Barry has used a swarm of executive orders to impose policies for which he plainly couldn’t win congressional approval. I suggest the next GOP president do the same, and when the left objects remind them of Obama and his many precedents.
Of course this would require some sort of political skill, which the GOP doesn’t have, so likely were better if the party doesn’t attempt anything so terribly difficult.
Xennady is exactly right, and for the same reason that Lincoln was. It is worse than useless to pretend that following the rules and winning are compatible choices here.
The Constitution is not being followed as it is, and while two wrongs don’t make a right, there are some facts which simply surpass that inappropriate metric. Labored example: You are boxing, and the other guy keeps kicking you in the nuts, and stabbing you with a switchblade, and the ref doesn’t call it, and his corner also has a gun on the turnbuckle, and your corner is advising you to just tough it out a couple more rounds because we can’t afford to anger the ref or compromise our standing with the Nevada State Boxing Commission. We should not seek to comply from a grade-school position on what is right. This is survival.
More directly, the current lawless administration finds it almost effortless to game the system, because the “opposition” is first of all, not opposed, and second, not effective. Please see Boehner’s ridiculous pre-election lawsuit to the Supreme Court complaining that the Executive is legislating from the White House. He expects this to be resolved in favor of checks and balances by a Court that legislates from the bench?
This sort of fussy dilettantism is what gets good people killed. If reasonable people cannot talk about this now, then unreasonable people will shoot about it later.
Attempted to edit and add a missed apostrophe to #131. Somehow created #133.
Has the edit function now ceased to work here again?
Oh, the yuuge manatee…
I said elsewhere (can’t find it) that it takes great steel nuts to just trample the Constitution. James of England says I am “transparently hollow”, implies directly that I am all talk, just an internet loudmouth. Majestyk wants to know who I’m gonna shoot. Been called a “keyboard revolutionary”.
Any, uh, veterans in that group? This country is in a bad way, and it’s getting worse. Any man who says he risks his life for his country but won’t risk his career to speak up about it is lying on one end of the equation or the other.
I expressly reject much of the edifice of modern jurisprudence, because I think that so much has been compromised. The foul interaction of stare decisis and the Frankfurt School, and the “Long March through the Institutions” have left our Republic a hollowed-out host to a nasty, fatal parasite.
Those with a duty to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” are not released from that duty because of a technicality. Have we ever not insisted upon Constitutional fidelity by our government? How’s that going? We don’t have it and it’s getting worse. What chance there is to defend the Constitution probably lies through unpleasant methods.
This would be abhorrent, were we not already losing the fight. “Throwing away the Constitutional Order” sounds bad. It IS bad. But it’s already been accomplished. Pretending otherwise is worse than fighting back.
The Constitution must be defended in order for it to provide any defense. It must be worked in order to work. The GOP refuses to use its Constitutional powers; to block spending, to withhold consent, to impeach. As a result, they are powerless to halt Obama’s many clearly unconstitutional and in some cases anti-Constitutional abuses.
Instead, they wait like schoolchildren for an indulgent but impartial omniscient power — a grown-up — to recognize their suffering as the morally correct point of view and grant them a boon of victory over the forces of evil. it’s not going to happen, any more than simply shouting the spell “Constitution!” is going to cause the document to carom about the marble halls of Washington DC smiting ne’er-do-wells. There it sits in its case, mere paper, unmoved by our plight.
The reliance upon a wise, all-powerful external force to remove from our shoulders the burden of liberty, the responsibility to seek, to spot, and to fight against bad men, has a good pedigree. It is Leviathan, it is religion, it is Daddy issues for those who will not stand up and earn their place on the globe, but who instead sit in the shade provided by trees planted decades ago, and wonder where trees come from.
Obama and the GOP are complicit in accelerating our abandonment of the Constitution, one through wicked design, the other merely through weakness. Trouble is coming — it’s baked in. Be ready.
You’re a good writer. Very dramatic. But the only way we can restore a constitutional order is if at least one side insists that it matters. If we show by our actions that we’re perfectly fine with the tactics of the Left so long as we’re able to use them to, them both sides have given up on the Constitution and we’re done here. And that sounds like the point you have reached, I guess. So you want to counter their strongman with our strongman? Or start a shooting revolution and remove the government? What are you proposing?
Insisting is fine. Proving it matters. That which you will not resist will prevail.
Our elected representatives “insist”, but they do not use the power available to them. If those in whom we repose our power will not use it to our benefit, then we will exercise that power ourselves. The Constitution is not an instrument to sedate the victim while his rights are amputated.
There is a difference between advocating that the legislative branch asserts itself by exercising its constitutional powers and advocating that the Republican or Conservative executive run roughshod over the constitutional order because you like the ends he would tyrannically impose.
Quite the difference. In fact the former would hopefully qualify as “proving it” in BDB’s comment #138. But right now he is just “insisting” that some unnamed right-wing strongman shred the Constitution, I guess. Of course he would only use his superpowers for Good.
Edit: Jamie Lockett tells me this is probably a misreading of BDB’s comment so I tentatively retract it.
That’s a little unfair to BDB – I think what he really wants is for the legislative branch to come roaring back and fight the current executive with the power of the purse. While I agree that this would be nice, I also think it would probably destroy our chances of effecting real long term change. That requires the presidency and congress acting together under the constitutional order to enact conservative policies.
The differences between most ricochetti are those of tactics and not politics. Even libertarians like myself agree with most conservatives here on 80-90% of issues.
I thought he was writing in support of Xennady who supported Tedley. Maybe I’m misinterpreting, and if so apologies to BDB.
The great bulk of Iraqis live in parts of Iraq that are doing pretty well. For Lincoln, the death of her husband was important, and everything else about the play was trivial.
They’re screwed for the moment, and some are screwed for the long term, but most will recover when ISIS is defeated. Brief horrors are generally less damaging than long term.
I agree that Bush selling the war better would have been helpful. I’m not sure that better communication about stockpiles would have done that, but perhaps it would have. It’s important when evaluating the counterfactuals to remember the simply herculean task of getting Congressional Democrats elected to reduce forces to fund increases.
I certainly don’t think that getting sufficient support to decisively interfere in Iran or Syria under Bush seems plausible. Obama had better opportunities.
The refugees are mostly fleeing Assad, who has killed quite a lot more than ISIS. I agree that we should do more to stop that, but again I don’t think that toppling Assad in 2008 was on the cards.
I agree that Syria has been handled exceptionally poorly (with some of the blame for that falling on our side; Paul’s affection for Putin is particularly awful). Those failures, though, came after Bush left office. Iraq was left in a solid position, and is still likely to continue its ascent into a modern, middle class, vibrantly and successfully democratic country.
I know this thread has gone stale, but whatever.
Just in what way, exactly, has the GOP ever made the Constitution matter by ignoring how the left ignores it? No, the GOP has not insisted it matter- quite the opposite, in fact.
Aside from the occasional bout of whining the GOP has made no sort of effective resistance to the left and its convenient “interpretation” of the Constitution at all.
The end result will be a strongman, if this goes on. The document will become a dead letter- if it isn’t already- because the left “interprets” it to mean whatever is convenient at the moment, which inevitably will result in a document that – or because the right gets tired of that, and resorts to the cartridge box for redress of grievances, other solutions having been denied.
I find these poor choices, and have suggested another.
You assume that ISIS will be defeated. I am not willing to make that assumption, unless perhaps we’re talking about Putin. I am stunned that you aren’t aware of the whole WMD debate that ended up wrecking support for the war, but as you were actually busy in Iraq I’ll give you a pass. But as someone who had many unpleasant arguments with opponents of the invasion, I was aware of it. And I remain angrily astonished that the Bush administration failed to understand the importance of this question- or worse did, but had other reasons to keep quiet about what was actually found.
Of course hindsight is 20/20- but hindsight is 20/20. Good luck to the people of Iraq- but my primary concern is the people of the United States.
As events have turned out the Iraq War was a fiasco- and much of that came about because of the terrible political incompetence of the Bush administration.
Alas.