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This week, Troy Senik sits in for Rob Long, The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney on the political fallout from the shutdown, and David Limbaugh (aka EL Rush Bro) is –not surprisingly– energized by the whole thing. Also, the media’s fixation on the Republican Party’s demise, and Lileks gets off the first Harlow Wilcox reference on any media in at least 50 years.
Music from this week’s episode:
Crawling From The Wreckage by Dave Edmunds
The Ricochet Podcast opening theme was composed and produced by James Lileks.
Thankfully, EJHill has returned from furlough.
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But I think you reveal yourself in your next comment when you say people are exasperated with both sides. Are you projecting your own exasperation? Pronouncements of moral equivalence are troubling, especially when there’s no comparison between the parties’ respective positions.
We’re in the “time warp” effect on Ricochet here where some posts occasionally appear out of order, so I’ll address this quickly again.
The short answer is: no, I am not. I am relaying the admittedly anecdotal impression I get from overhearing discussions in passing among people who are less informed, and less politically active, than we are here.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses, David. For the record, I am bucked up. No problem there. I just see this episode as an own goal — one we’ll recover from but one we should learn from.
Well, when you start off — without ever having addressed me before — making a snarky comment about me being afflicted with multiple personality disorder, I’d hardly call you a flatterer :-)
Well, I cannot say I’ve had occasion to address you previously, but now that we are engage in discussion, let me simply say to this: we who were not enemies before, have now become friends.
A couple months back most voters probably did not know that Republicans opposed Obamacare while Democrats supported the program. Now they do. This is the handiwork of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
I can confirm this anecdotally as I’ve had to correct the record twice during the shutdown. One guy was using excalmation points to illustrate the ACA had “bipartisan support!” Ah, not so fast…
And I agree with everything else, I’m glad the opposition narrative is out there. It was the best opportunity to use majority status in the House to make some noise.
Well, when you start off — without ever having addressed me before — making a snarky comment about me being afflicted with multiple personality disorder, I’d hardly call you a flatterer :-)
Well, I cannot say I’ve had occasion to address you previously, but now that we are engage in discussion, let me simply say to this: we who were not enemies before, have now become friends. ·7 minutes ago
Thank you, Sir, and Ditto. And many thanks also to the kind words from George and Scott. Good night my fellow warriors — if I may presumptuously use that term.
I’ll yield the thread after this post, because this has gone on long enough.
My argument with you isn’t artificial: it is a strategic disagreement. We both want a conservative Senate in 2014, and a conservative president in 2016. However:
I regard the shutdown as a mistaken strategy that accomplished very little and which it was obvious from the start would not accomplish very much (and what’s more–you, and I, and Ted Cruz all knew that). I thought that as an act of political-theater, it would not redound to our benefit. I think it presented a muddled and confused message, not a clear-voiced, straight-forward argument about what the GOP is for. It exposed our divisions more than Democrat’s weaknesses.
You regard it far more positively–if not indispensable, then at least beneficial in the long run.
Also a failure to be able to count votes. McConnell spells it out here– don’t shoot the messenger.
I won’t shoot the messenger, Duane, not at all. Senator McConnell’s discussion of “maintaining our principles” was laughable after throwing his $3 billion pork project into the bill. Mind you, this isn’t a new project, it’s already spent its initial $755 million budget.
So you’re telling me you trust the political chops of a guy with the audacity to do this? He just kissed his seat goodbye.
………Matt Lewis asked a provocative counterfactual that many of us have on our minds: if the current GOP officeholders (what some have termed “the establishment”) actually had the votes (and the power) to overturn Obamacare, would they? Or would they be content to trim around the edges? ………….
………… my own hunch is that they would in fact repeal Obamacare. ……….. if there are GOP members of Congress who, in their heart of hearts, are wobbly about whether Obamacare should go … those are the people the RINO label was made for. ·15 hours ago
What does “trim around the edges” mean?
Troy, you mean Avik Roy (not to mention Douglas Holtz-Eakin), who favors reform along the Swiss and Singapore line? Total repeal is almost impossible, not because the Senate requires 60 votes, but because the majority of the public, including conservatives, think the health care system is broken and something needs to be done to assure access, care, and cost control.
Fault “lies not in our stars” (high cultural reference there, for those scoring at home), “but in ourselves that we” failed to address this when we had the chance. The vacuum was filled by dreck.
Tim Carney’s “Get in line behind…” riff at about the 25 minute mark was worth my annual Ricochet tariff. Exactly so.
My argument with you isn’t artificial: it is a strategic disagreement. We both want a conservative Senate in 2014, and a conservative president in 2016. However:
I regard the shutdown as a mistaken strategy that accomplished very little and which it was obvious from the start would not accomplish very much (and what’s more–you, and I, and Ted Cruz all knew that). I thought that as an act of political-theater, it would not redound to our benefit. I think it presented a muddled and confused message, not a clear-voiced, straight-forward argument about what the GOP is for. It exposed our divisions more than Democrat’s weaknesses.
You regard it far more positively–if not indispensable, then at least beneficial in the long run. ·30 minutes ago
I agree. As you are laying it out here, we have a substantive disagreement — I suppose limited to strategy. I had different expectations about the Cruz strategy (Long view) and don’t believe it was mere political theater. No space to elaborate further. Take care.
If anything tells you something about the mindset of the intelligentsia and the pundit class go read every story with the word “Syria” in it from August and early September through the lens of Syria in our current environment.
Then go and ask your non-plugged in neighbor about “Syria”.
Hey Blue Yeti, whatever happened to the next big story prediction?
I agree totally. I loved it, Tim should write an article in the Examiner called “Get in Line Behind….. (insert Obama Grievance here). This was such a great podcast I think one reason is that James was FINALLY able to get a word in that wasn’t just a Segway, More from James please.
Also, both Tim Carney and David Limbaugh were able to articulate what I’ve been feeling regarding this shut down. If the Republican party can’t fight a year out from the midterm elections, when will they? A year is an eternity in politics and as Obamacare keeps revealing its ugly head to the “low information voters” and they realize they are footing the bill for this they may start to pay attention and the Republicans need to be ready with their message.
We’ll bring it back when Rob returns to the show in a couple of weeks.
I realize I am not as ” in the know” as most on the site, so maybe you guys can explain it all to me. The Grown up GOP, the guys that are upset with the Tea Party guys, the ones that presided over Bush’s expansion of the federal government, the guys that brought us the historic 2008 election, those guys are angry because Cruz et al took a stand on the continuing resolution. These are the guys that said it would be better to wait for the debt ceiling debate to make some sort of stand. These are the guys that are upset at being called the “surrender caucus” ? We’ll they showed us! The biggest thing we were able to get was a promise to follow part of the law THEY passed! And as far as the debt ceiling being a better place to have serious discussions about anything, we’ll they fixed that too didn’t they. Now there will be no discussion when it’s time to raise it again. The president will just tell congress how high it’ll go and unless you have 2/3 the senate, you can take a hike! Surrender caucus indeed!
Hadn’t you heard? It’s all Cruz’s fault.
Hadn’t you heard? It’s all Cruz’s fault. ·3 hours ago
Well, that is a refreshing change; I was tired of hearing that everything wrong with the world is Bush’s fault. Whether from Obama & Co. or people at Ricochet who ought to know better.
I’d like to point out a couple of sleight-of-hand attempts made during this podcast. The first was the promo for the book, Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. The author is pushing the statistic that the Supreme Court has overruled only 103 of the 15,817 federal laws passed since 1954. Come on. The Supreme Court can’t just randomly pick out laws and declare them un-Constitutional. The laws must be challenged and brought before them. The relevant statistic is how many of the laws brought before the Court were overturned.
The second piece of legerdemain was David Limbaugh’s. He declared that Tom Cruz never really thought he could defund Obamacare, but could merely put us in a better position to defeat Obamacare down the road. Sorry, that doesn’t pass the laugh test.
I’ve heard Peter refer to Ted Cruz’s reference to the “surrender caucus” several times. Apart from that one comment, has Ted Cruz made other disparaging remarks along the lines of the routine disdain and contempt shown by John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others in their respective remarks about the Tea Party in general and certain senators/congressman in particular?
Having listened to the entire podcast I have to say two things: 1) David Limbaugh is fantastic. He may not think he is the “right” messenger, but he preached just right to this choir member, and 2) James Lileks continues to be the unsung hero on this podcast. He captured the view of so many democrats/progressives I know in describing how they see the conservative view as “Hobbesian chaos.” Perfect.