How Right-Wingers Still Run America, Despite Losing Elections

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-right-wingers-still-run-america-despite-losing-elections

There is more than may appear in President Obama’s plan to cut the social safety net in his new budget proposal. The offer, on the face of it, reflects a significant violation of a major liberal creed, discarding the strongest liberal political card and Obama’s peculiar negotiation style of making major concessions at the opening of a give-and-take session. But it also reflects the sad but true fact that the dynamics of American politics cannot be understood in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans. Party labels aside, the nation is still being ruled by what I call a majority “conservative party.”

If Democrats and Republicans were the true divide, the meager gun control measures recently introduced in the Senate would have the majority needed to pass. After all, there are 53 Democratic Senators (and two Independents who generally side with them). Moreover, this time, the threat of a GOP filibuster is not to blame. Yet the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, removed the assault weapons ban from the draft bill because some 15 Democratic senators, in effect, supported the conservative pro-gun position, making up — with the Republican senators — that majority “conservative party.” Thanks to this party, the same legislative defeat is about to befall liberal proposals to curtail high-capacity magazines. This leaves only better background checks on the table, but these, too, will inevitably be rendered ineffective by the conservatives via the underhanded gutting of enforcement (more about this shortly).

Social security and gun safety are but a couple of the numerous issues on which conservatives in Washington get their way and the minority liberal party loses out. Most recently, every Republican and 33 Democratic conservatives came together to repeal a tax on medical devices, a major source of funding for Obamacare. And on Dec 28, the conservative party — 42 Republicans, 30 Democrats and 1 Independent senator — voted to extend the foreign intelligence law known as FISA, opposed by civil libertarians. We should further expect that the conservative party will keep winning on many fronts, from greatly limiting all new investments in education to unduly slashing social spending.

Some argue that the president is trying to build up a broad following so that, come the 2014 elections, the Democrats will carry the House and he will be able to push through a progressive agenda in the second half of his term. These doe-eyed optimists disregard the fact that, even if the Democrats hold both chambers, the additional Democrats elected in 2014 will largely be from so-called red (i.e., conservative) districts. The situation then will be much like it was in 2009 when the Democrats had a majority in the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a president in the White House and yet still could enact very little progressive legislation. The reason? Very much the same: conservative Democrats voting with the GOP to extend the Bush tax cuts, cut social spending, weaken financial regulations and so on.

[abelenkpe]

1. K&R

[marmar]

2. K&R ...... I've never seen an ideology that's so out of sync with public opinion......

...... have so much sway in government.

[xchrom]

3. +1

[City Lights]

9. !

[malaise]

4. K & R n/t

[HughBeaumont]

5. Economically, there IS NO OPTION.

That's the saddest part of all.

No matter what politician we put in office on any level, 94% of the time, they're a genuflecting slobberer at the foot of one Milton Friedman. This was all by design. The Corptocracy had plants EVERYwhere, starting in the late 60s-early 70s. Business. Congress. Education. Publishing Houses. Media. Hospitals. The White House. It's been a slow motion grab since the early 60s, Ronald Reagan was groomed and used as the keykeeper of the Floodgates and the machine behind him expanded like a hydra, training charges like Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Martin Feldstein (a McCain/Bewsh/Reagan/Romney stooge and CNBC regular), Paul Weyrich, Grover Norquist and the Failure Fuhrer himself to do the Corptocracy's bidding.

Look upon that name: Martin Feldstein. A Group of Thirty member (whose roster smells of the worst neolib scum), AIG board member and former Reagan economic advisor, Feldstein is not only the reason most economics classes in universities around the country follow his Harvard-core laissez-fail neolib agenda, resulting in our business schools churning out soul-void bean-counter right wingers who view labor as an unnecessary expense rather than the most important aspect of a company, but he was also the driving force behind Social Security almost getting privatized during the Bewsh Administration.

[Scuba]

6. "Some argue that the president is trying to build up a broad following ..."

If that were the case, he would be pushing a nation-wide slate of progressive candidates who stood for:

- Creating jobs through infrastructure and education investments

- Raising the minimum wage

- Medicare for All

- Strengthening Social Security

and ...

- Higher taxes on the wealthiest to pay for it all.


If he thinks cutting Social Security is the path to a "broad following" he's a fool.

[datasuspect]

7. there was a corporate coup in 2000

it NEVER FUCKING ENDED.

when will people FINALLY JUST FUCKING GET IT?

[TimberValley]

8. I think the idea is that there are more conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans. n/t.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. "Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...

"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1795.