Boehner was like Bugs Bunny, stepping out of the elevator the second before it impacts the ground.
Ryan got the massive fucking tax cuts he always wanted. He can walk out telling himself he’s a winner. And he no longer has to deal with Trump or the crazies.
And he can start making real money as a lobbyist/contractor and start really taking big advantage of said cuts.
If the Foxconn deal goes through it’s going to take a massive dump on Wisconsin’s future. A few winners and a ton of losers. At best, WI taxpayers will have only suffered a net loss $1-2 billion of their tax dollars 10 years from now - and that’s if the magic accounting the Repugs made up were to be real. Of course WI is fronting over $4 billion (don’t believe Walker’s $3 Billion figure). I’m sure the execs at Foxconn are laughing their asses off because what’s stupid is the contract is so poorly written to defend the WI taxpayer, and Foxconn is so untouchable they can abort the moment the gravy train slows. At that point it’s back to China (or Vietnam - they’re new favorite place to subcontract).
Already Paul Ryan has been caught being a massive hypocrite. He has been railing against Eminent domain and how evil the government is trying to take land for the public good. He brought in a crapload of lawsuits and laws.
So what does he say when home-owners come to him, begging for him to not let the state of WI take their land? “Oh sorry, can’t help - not my jurisdiction”.
Conservatives, not necessarily the GOP, but still relevant:
Conservatives have had it up to here with these meddling kids.
As an entirely new movement for gun reform is being driven by a group of smart, passionate and media-savvy Florida teenagers who survived one of America’s frequent mass shootings, many on the right are more than a little put out. The problem, as conservatives see it, is that the mainstream media have given these young people more attention and more credulous coverage than they deserve, and because the teens are both young and victims, they aren’t subjected to the critical scrutiny they ought to be.
But what really ticks conservatives off is that they themselves are feeling constrained from criticizing the Parkland students, because they are worried they will be criticized for attacking such sympathetic spokespeople…
…No, what conservatives are really mad about is that the tactic of demonizing those they disagree with — which is so common in contemporary political rhetoric (on both the right and left) — has, in this case, been taken away from them.
You can say the Parkland kids are wrong, but calling them names, trying to dig into their personal lives to find something embarrassing, encouraging your audience to not simply think they’re mistaken but to hate them with all the venomous fire they can muster — that’s what some on the right wish they could do, but can’t, at least without looking like soulless ghouls. Certain conservatives have been complaining about this from the beginning. Less than a week after the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Fox News host Tucker Carlson whined that the media were “using these kids in a kind of moral blackmail where you’re not allowed to disagree or you’re attacking a child.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson whined that the media were “using these kids in a kind of moral blackmail where you’re not allowed to disagree or you’re attacking a child.”
Of course, Tucker and the rest of the GOP are well versed in moral blackmail: “You’re not allowed to disagree with the Iraq invasion or you’re attacking the troops.”
At this point I don’t think I can describe myself as conservative anymore, since I increasingly want things to change, as I become increasingly aware of things being fucked up.
The anger at not being able to destroy teenager who express themselves after experiencing the tragedy they did has nothing to do with being conservative. I mean if you’re mad because you can’t attack a girl, because she’s a girl, about her sex life or her looks or anything else that makes someone like a monster, that’s not really traditional, that’s just the demonize anyone we disagree with Fox News and those who helped create and support them came up with.
Welcome to the land of the free. I think you’ll like it here.
(To be clear, I Ieft my party some time ago. I tend to vote for Democrats for pragmatic reasons but political parties are like organised religions – None of them seem to get it just right. At the end of the day, once you’re free of party (or religious) ideology, you’re free to chart your own path based on what’s decent and good and just and sensible and smart, etc and so on.)
I’ve been in that boat for a while. Then again apparently anything to the left of Goebbels is a communist these days. So they can keep that label.
I’ve seen similar evolutions in some of my friends. I find it interesting, because it seems the traditional path is for people to become more conservative as they age but what I see in my social group is the opposite movement.
See, there are still things that I believe that would have been considered conservative in the past, like believing in free trade, capitalism, individual responsibility, etc. But the GOP has in many ways abandoned that kind of stuff in favor of populism, which used to be left wing bullshit. They’ve just cloaked it with a veneer of racist nationalism. But stuff like tariffs? That the did that you normally hear from Bernie Sanders.
And it’s still bullshit. And it still think a lot of what folks on the left say, especially regarding economics, is largely bullshit. The guy’s who believe that the government can spend as much as it wants forever, are idiots.
The problem we are going to have not though, is that there isn’t any real, responsible party for rational economic conservatism. There are just mindless dogmatics, who are also hilariously hypocritical. “You can’t spend money on anything, every, because the dent will bury us! Oh, but now we can spend as much as we want, because whatever.”
I feel like the complete corruption of the GOP is going to leave us in a very unbalanced state from a political perspective.
I think this has… already happened. I am not sure why it sounds like a future thing.
You are right it has occurred.
But, as recently as Dec 2013, you could go back to the Paul Ryan, Sen. Murray budget agreement and see signs of fiscal constraint. Sure we still spent too much on defense but less than hawk wanted. From the perspective of conservatives too much on social program and not enough from the progressives. But it was a two year budget agreement, it was passed on bi-partisan bases in an organized fashion, and spending increased by modest $20 billion between 2014 and 2015 ($1.012 to $1.014 trillion). The deficit dropped to just over 2% of GDP.
It is criminally stupid to be running increasing budget deficit when the economy is near full employment. The current budget is over 1.3 Trillion a 300 billion increase in 4 years. The destruction of the old GOP is not only going to leave us unbalanced politically by also fiscally.
You don’t have to convince me of that. I am in favor of capitalism, for the most part, and spend, heavy if you must, during downturns and make-up for it, pay it down, when things are going good. We keep not doing the second part, year after year.
I mean I am sure some would pant me as a raging liberal here but that’s because the right has gone to La La Land and anyone not all the way left just sort of sticks out some place between the you’re not liberal enough crowds and the Neo Nazis, white supremacists and bigots on the right… oh and the one ones that preach fiscal responsibility but only for everyone else’s priorities… they’ll spend it all on theirs.
Exactly. I’m all for ramping up government spending during economic downturns, but now is the time we need to be digging out of the hole created from the financial crisis. Instead, the Republicans slashed taxes and increased spending again (Bush tax cuts paired with invading two countries is the other I refer to)! I swear if I hear one more conservative around here claim the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, I’m going to lose my shit.
Democrats need to be willing to rein in spending, and Republicans need to be willing for there to be taxes to pay things down and rein in defense spending.
I wonder what you guys think is excessive spending from the Democrats. The entire non-defense discretionary budget can be entirely eliminated and it would do fuck all for the debt and deficit. Until and unless health care costs are checked (by far the biggest driver) the debt will continue to consume an ever increasinging share of GDP. After that, defense spending and raising taxes (specifically, capital gains) will need to be addressed.
Obama offered the big compromise to Boehner for not-insignificant cuts to social programs in exchange for a modest tax hike.
Look what happened.
Even that a-hole David Brooks at the NYT wrote an op-ed expressing dismay at how the Tea Party morons squandered a deal of a lifetime.