How to wreck the GOP in 3 easy steps! - By Thomas Frank

[DonViejo]

Congress is a mess, but that doesn't mean Obama is powerless. Now's the time for change — and here's how to make it

THOMAS FRANK

President Obama is in the doldrums. He has run out of ideas, and out of gas. His strongest supporters are in the grip of a morbid fatalism. There is nothing the president can do any longer, they sigh, because of the intransigent Republicans in the House of Representatives. The great days of the Obama presidency are behind us, everyone seems to believe, and the most this once-promising president can do now are hold convenings and issue small-bore executive orders while awaiting a round of midterm elections that are likely to go against him. Oh, woe is he.

It’s time to snap out of it. Obama is still the most powerful man in the world. The nation still needs presidential action. And the Democrats need action too, if they’re going to avoid disaster this fall.

Last week, I asked around for suggestions, things the Obama administration could do, all on its own, that the Republicans in Congress would be powerless to stop. I heard countless good ideas: Obama could make it absolutely clear to his FCC chairman that net neutrality is the policy of his administration; he could reclassify marijuana so that it is no longer a Class 1 narcotic; he could reform the federal contracting system to discourage outsourcing and promote good labor practices; he could encourage whistleblowers rather than punishing them.

There is also still an opportunity for momentous, headline-making, consensus-shattering deeds. Each of the following three ideas would move the country in the direction Obama has always maintained he wanted to move us—toward accountability, away from inequality, toward a healthy middle class. And each of them is sufficiently big that it might make a difference this fall.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/17/how_to_wreck_the_gop_in_3_easy_steps/

[corkhead]

1. we can always dream, can't we

[KittyWampus]

2. LOL! Frank is a master of understatement

If the AG started multiple antitrust cases:

I asked Barry Lynn what this would look like. “The administration can begin tomorrow to attempt to enforce antitrust law exactly as the Johnson Administration enforced it in 1967,” he wrote me. Obama and Co. would encounter obstacles here and there, of course—the companies singled out by the Justice Department would fight like hell, for example. But there would be little the House of Representatives could do to stop the administration, Lynn says, short of “cutting off funds for enforcement or declaring monopoly legal.” Either of which would, of course, be fatal to the right.

[Laelth]

3. Excellent essay.

Frank makes three suggestions:

1. President Obama should instruct his Attorney General to start enforcing the nation’s antitrust laws the way Democrats used to do.

2. Investigate and prosecute fraud committed during the housing bubble.

3. Make it clear that he will no longer tolerate the college tuition price spiral.

I favor all three of these proposals, yet it seems unlikely that Obama will pursue any of them. According to Frank, this is why:

Looking back over all the suggestions I have made here, I begin to suspect that the administration’s stagnation isn’t a problem of ideas, it’s a problem of backbone.

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/17/how_to_wreck_the_gop_in_3_easy_steps/

-Laelth

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. The suggestions he listed even before those three were all really good too. nt

[elehhhhna]

5. Backbone my azz. It's called Bait & Switch and he has no intention of pissing off his corpprate

peoplefriends. Never did.

His his healthcare reform - exhibit A. Corporate giveaway to shore up an unstable, crap biz model that NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD has adopted. Why? b/c it's soooooooo wonderful? LOL

[Calista241]

11. I don't see how these will "end the Republican Party"

1. Will hurt dems and repubs equally.

2. Has been done piecemeal so far, but even if it was fully pursued, I don't see how throwing a few people in jail helps, even if a majority of the people are Repubs. A couple, hundred or even a thousand donors doesn't do ginormous damage to a political party.

3. Is just good sense. You don't think republicans are worried or want to do something about rising tuition costs? I think if smart legislation were proposed, they'd jump on it, but even dems haven't really tried to tackle this. They've tried to lower rates for loans, but not to provide the same education for less total money.

[Enthusiast]

13. +1

[sellitman]

6. I for one refuse to believe

We are headed for a political demasculating at the hand of the GOP in the next election.

I wish more folks would stop pushing this GOP meme.

[pocoloco]

7. Kerry is going to win in a landslide!!!

[ybbor]

9. I'm sick of it, too

I refuse to believe that we are going to get our asses whipped!

Get out there and get the people to the polls!

[nonoxy9]

8. Great piece of wishful thinking by Frank

If only we had a president who listened to the people who elected him.
How many articles have been written since 2010 that opine "Obama can turn this all around if only he would (insert campaign promise here)..."

[Octafish]

10. That's all well and good, but we need to get ready to Fast Track TPP.

C'mon! Get with the Program.

[Enthusiast]

12. That would be wonderful......................but.

You know.

[madville]

14. Instead there will be EO's on Immigration

A good long term strategy to secure the Hispanic vote for decades but likely to cost is the Senate in this midterm.