Its a bill for a 2 week extension of the debt limit to allow further negotiation. I wouldn’t get too excited.
Seriously, the best move right now is for the Democrats to side with the non crazy Republicans and put the crackpot wing of the GOP into the gutter where they belong.
Let the adults govern and they can fucking pound sand.
Ha ha ha…That’s good.
Dude it’s turtles all the way down.
Nah, you can think they are all bad, but they aren’t all crazy idiots. Some are just cowards.
I’d call cowardice bad.
Maybe if the “good men” do nothing in the face of evil, they’re not actually good men.
I think you’re drawing a distinction between ‘crazy’ and ‘bad’ which, TBH, doesn’t really matter.
Would the debt ceiling negotiations have ended this same way if MTG or Gym Jordan was Speaker? If not, then the distinction must matter somewhat.
Sure, I’ll accept the proposition that Kevin McCarthy is not as bad as Jim Jordan. How far that takes us towards reasonable governance is another question, IMO. Reasonable governance doesn’t take the nation hostage for a negotiating advantage. The debt ceiling deal is, well, bad. It’s just not as bad as it might have been. That doesn’t make it good, or even reasonable.
And I don’t think Timex was arguing that any of them are good, just that there are differences between the “burn it all down” crazies and the types that are motivated by helping their conservative interests and holding on to power. With one setup you can still keep some semblance of something that approximates a government and with the other you cannot. I suspect the big headline stuff like the debt ceiling are the worst examples of this and really it’s all the little stuff(bills, committees, whatever) that nobody pays attention to that just keeps chugging along in the background with the current arrangement that a Speaker Boebert would immediately wreak havoc by blowing up. I think back to all the stuff Trump wanted to do but was prevented from doing by the people in his administration. Even though those people weren’t good they also weren’t into unfettered chaos.
Throwing kudos of any kind at a few republicans for simply not being willing to burn the country to the ground is job well done for normalization.
It’s not kudos, it’s pointing out a difference. Again, there would be no deal if one wing of the party was in power. That doesn’t excuse or celebrate what McCarthy did. Refusing to acknowledge differences between the farthest right Republicans and the less far right normalizes the crazy wing.
I don’t get this attitude that you can never ever say anything remotely charitable about a Republican compared to another Republican. Pointing out that a broken leg isn’t as bad as a severed spinal cord doesn’t somehow make a broken leg good or desirable.
Our needle is buried to the right at 3.6 roentgen so I guess that means there is no difference between 3.6 roentgen and 200 roentgen. Both are bad levels so why even acknowledge they might not be identical. We don’t want to normalize 3.6 roentgen worth of radiation, after all.
Ultimately, unless you guys do a way better job of winning elections, and take over all branches of government, with a super majority in the senate, then you’re going to need to negotiate with the GOP.
I think there are members of the GOP where that’s possible, and members with whom it’s not.
I think the disagreement is on whether there is actually anyone on the Republican side you can work with for reasonable government. I think the answer is mostly ‘no’. I concede the point that at least with McCarthy you can prevent a default with a shitty bill, but that’s pretty obviously outside the realm of ‘reasonable government’. It’s simply not the case that Dems can make common cause with ‘reasonable’ Republicans in the House because there aren’t any reasonable Republicans in the House. That doesn’t mean we can’t get the occasional bill passed — maybe Ukraine funding? — but it does mean that pretty much everything else will be about owning the libs and vanquishing wokeness.
Just an aside, but I’m curious why you use categorizations like “you guys” in discussions like this. I thought you were a registered Democrat and have been largely voting D since the GOP went completely off the rails with Trump, so wouldn’t that be “we”? Force of habit or do you see yourself as separate or above the fray?
Oh ya, I’m definitely a Democrat at this point.
But I also separate myself from what I see as a fairly unrealistic position of thinking that the Democrats are going to take a government wide super majority. I don’t think that’s really ever going to happen… but if you want to base your idea of governing on the idea that you’ll never have to compromise with the GOP, then that’s what you need to do.
Gotcha, thanks! Not that it was any of my business, I was just curious. :)
We are, right now, compromising with the GOP, so I think it’s a safe bet that nobody believes it won’t ever be necessary. The question is rather, ‘is compromising with this GOP a strategy for reasonable government?’
Not sure that’s really a useful question though, unless you have some alternative pathway to getting reasonable government?
I think that’s the situation we’re in. They control the House, so you need to compromise with them.