Still More on the GOP

So “Let them Filibuster”? What a remarkable, ingenious, original thought, especially since your fellow Swampland contributor Karen Tumulty has been chewing on that few a few years and posted blog entries to that point no less than 3 times in the last 2 weeks.

ed: “for a few”

We might be seeing this soon. The Democrats still haven’t found a single Republican to join them on the jobs bill in the Senate:
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/all-aboard-dems-press-republicans-not-to-obstruct-jobs-bill.php?ref=fpa

Shorter Joe Klein:

I am shocked to announce that my initial inclination — that Democrats “should have” given in to GOP demands, regardless of the merit or the political utility of the capitulation — may have been incorrect.

“Jujitsu is an essential political principle, too often overlooked: You roll with your opponent’s initiative, let him (or her) live with it. If the Republicans want to completely halt the U.S. Senate, perhaps they should be allowed to do that…and see how the public responds.”

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One slight problem there Joe. You have about 12 or 13 Democrat Senators who are scared shitless that they will lose their precious Senate Seat now that Mass was taken by a Republican. They will not go with any Obama plan either, just like their Republican counter-parts.
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How do you rectify that?
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All Republicans have to do is point out the basic facts of how the health care bill is full of DEALS, BRIBES and SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS for the Democrat backed special interest groups and your little theory as has been proven this past summer goes flying out the window like a bird being chased by the big house cat.
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You can’t take a pig and put lipstick on it and make it a movie star. It’s still a pig Joe Klein. It’s still a pig!!

why aren’t the Democrats in Congress and the President loudly declaring the ‘tit for tat’ principle? Supermajority will be the rule in both directions. If and when the Republicans want approval for anything or anyone, they too will have to muster 60 votes… i.e. with both sides adopting this set of principles, the country is paralyzed.

Yep – the GOP wants both their stuff in the bills AND they want to be still be able to vote NO on both cloture and final passage.

And if they don’t get their way, it’s because the dems aren’t “reaching out.” I’m with you – let them filibuster. And I’d also like to see the house making them take tough votes on issues that will hurt them.

This post is hilarious. I’m speechless.

Joe the joke Klein says:

“Jujitsu is an essential political principle, too often overlooked: You roll with your opponent’s initiative, let him (or her) live with it. If the Republicans want to completely halt the U.S. Senate, perhaps they should be allowed to do that…and see how the public responds.”

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One slight problem there Joe. You have about 12 or 13 Democrat Senators who are scared $hitless that they will lose their precious Senate Seat now that Mass was taken by a Republican. They will not go with any Obama plan either, just like their Republican counter-parts.
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How do you rectify that?
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All Republicans have to do is point out the basic facts of how the health care bill is full of DEALS, BRIBES and SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS for the Democrat backed special interest groups and your little theory as has been proven this past summer goes flying out the window like a bird being chased by the big house cat.
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You can’t take a pig and put lipstick on it and make it a movie star. It’s still a pig Joe Klein. It’s still a pig!!

@forgottenlord: Utterly HI-larious!
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I can’t help but picture a TIME staffers’ meeting where everyone takes turns briefing the others on current projects. Karen, speaking on HCR, the budget and #makethemfilibuster, sees Joe off to one side fiddling with his BlackBerry and calls him out: “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.” “Not true! Not true!”, stammers Joe, “You’re doing great work.” He leaves the meeting post a new revelation he’s just had…

@sz: Pls C my 1.2 reply to forgottenlord. I totally agree with you. ::still wiping tears from eyes::

I can’t even talk.

I wonder what Amy’s reaction was. What really goes on in those meetings?

Why not let the 41 Republicans filibuster–let them stop the Senate, dead in its tracks?

What’s the over-under on when Joe Klein realizes that an obstreperous minority can delay legislation, but cannot stop anything “dead in its tracks” indefinitely?

Here’s my prediction: October 22, 2018:

After a filibuster by the Democratic minority in the Senate runs out of gas after 3 weeks, President Palin signs into law the Strategic Brawndo Reserves Act. This Act authorizes the reclamation of ANWR by filling empty oil wells with Brawndo, as well as generously spreading Brawndo across the tundra (It’s got what caribou crave. Electrolytes.)

4 days later, Joe Klein posts a mea culpa, in which he realizes that the minority party isn’t as powerful as he thought. In retrospect, he would have pushed harder for a Democrats to have forced a filibuster of HCR back in 200.

90 seconds later, CIGNA-Wellpoint-Aetna-Pfizer-Merck, the new owner of Time.com, removes Klein’s post from the website, terminates Klein, and sues Klein for “disparaging a health insurance provider”.

LOL
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come on I’m going to choke

There’s no sense bargaining with a GOP 100% committed to obstructionism.
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It’s also worth noting that their proposals aren’t meaningful. Did you read the Atul Gawande article about health care in two towns in (post-malpractice ban) Texas? http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande
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Also, ending medical malpractice in the US would save about .5 % of costs. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/10/the_congressional_budget_offic_4.html
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It’s another unsersious proposal from a party uninterested in policy.

Hilarious. Sad, but hilarious.
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One quibble: I believe under the Citizens United ruling, CIGNA-Wellpoint-Aetna-Pfizer-Merck will be the senior Senator from Connecticut in 2018.

We wouldn’t want the MSM to bring up facts, it gets in the way of being a pundit. We keep hearing about things but never see what it means.
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If they want to know about Republican policies and how the citizens fair then look at Republicans states and how they do.
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Start with education and work your way to health care.
It is a race to the bottom.

I was just wondering with all the “GOP” articles today, when we might have a little blurb on how Rahm Emanuel completely disrespected the mentally challenged the other day.
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Any news on that one Joe Klien? Or is this just bash Republican day?
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“F-ing Retards”. Wasn’t that how it went Joe?

@square1: Will CIGNA-Wellpoint-Aetna-Pfizer-Merck run the seat directly? Or, will they do so through pharmacological advances that keep “Corporate” Joe Lieberman functioning into the latter half of the 21st century?

We all know that you’re upset that Rahm hasn’t apologized to you yet, rustybutt. But the truth is, he really, really, really thinks you are a “F-ing Retard”. (also, so does everyone else, maybe except sz!)

Joe won’t address that because that’s probably how he also normally refers to liberals –”f*cking retards”– when he’s responding to somebody on Journolist.
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When he’s in print, he’ll use a slightly more palatable phrase like “The Idiocy of The Left.”

Joe, law suits against doctors play as small part in the healthcare problem.

And it’s beyond strange that so many are calling for tort reform, where at least most doctors have a chance to ask a judge to dismiss the lawsuit and the case is heard in public before a jury, and yet refuse to take on the insurance industry or doctors charging per patient instead of working on salary (the way they do at the Mayo clinic).

You’ve been harsh on those who have insisted the public option is the only answer. You’re guilty of putting way too much emphasis on tort reform as a large part of the solution to healthcare reform.

Welcome to the very back of the bandwagon, Joe.

Is this a remake of Freaky Friday where, like, Joe Klein and Markos Moulitsas bump into one another and magically exchange bodies, and now Joe is all, “There’s no point in making concessions to Republicans because they won’t give you any votes anyway…” I’m headed over to Daily Kos to see if Markos has made a post about how the public option was never really an essential part of HCR. Then I’ll know for sure that something is truly awry.

Yesterday, Rusty was complaining about how liberals were forcing everyone to adhere to political correctness *and* demanding that the White House should fire Rahm Emanuel because he wasn’t politically correct enough.
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Looks like he’s decided which side of that argument he’d like to own. Have fun with your political correctness crusade, Rusty.

Is it April 1st?

Do any of you lefites recall it was the Gang of Seven, led by some prominent Republicans, who preserved the filibuster when Repbublicans held the majority? Amazing how your minds work.

Yea I know little kevin. Liberals will protect and defend the right of some “gay” dude who wants to stay in the Army ala repeal of don’t ask don’t tell. Because Stuart Smalley wants to feel “special”.
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But, out of his next breath he will take someone who was born with an actual physical or mental deficit, and then shout out “F-ing Retard”, like it don’t mean squat.
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But, that is also how liberals are. Call American people DUMB and STUPID (ain’t that right Joe Klein……*wink wink*).
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It’s all the same, yes indeedy. It all makes total sense to me.

Rusty, get real. Even the *NRO* thinks it a non issue.

I can’t put it better than NRO’s Mark Krikorian:

“[Rahm's] use of “retarded” has no more connection to people with Down Syndrome and other forms of retardation than his constant use of the F word refers to the act of coitus. “Moron,” imbecile,” and “idiot” used to be terms used by psychology to denote different gradations of retardation, but now we just use them as epithets, and that’s obviously how he was using “retarded.” Emanuel is a vulgar jerk, but can’t conservatives, at least, refrain from grievance-mongering and hair-trigger offense-taking? I realize pouncing on him is payback for all the stuff the Left does to us, but, really, someone has got to be a grown-up in this country, and conservatives are the only candidates left,”

BTW — Rush Limbaugh complained that House Dems were “retards”. Have you asked Time about a story on that?

No, I remember the Gang of Seven railing about the House banking scandal back in the early ’90s.

Yup, you pwned yourself.

Glad you realize, though, that you should have pushed back on O’Reilly.

No, that was the Gang of 14 ( link to wikipiedia entry ).
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That was a coalition of centrist New Democrats and Republicans who could be seen in a room with a Democrat (and not be primaried) who “worked together” to ensure that the New Democrat bloc promised to always vote against their fellow Democrats’ filibusters, as long as the Republicans did nothing.
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These New Democrats, led by Ben Nelson of Nebraska, went on this year to successfully threaten joining with the Republican minority to filibuster health care reform legislation, so that the only health care reform proposals that stood a chance of making it to the floor of the Senate –for the “up or down vote” the Gang of 14 previously cherished– were New Democrats’ legislative priorities.

Joe’s first ideological impulse is always to to surrender in the physical face of rightist masculinity rituals when confronted by them on television. Witness his shameful support of the Iraq invasion on Meet The Press –support he later denied, then recanted.
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Third Way Democrats are like that.

out of his next breath he will take someone who was born with an actual physical or mental deficit, and then shout out “F-ing Retard”, like it don’t mean squat.
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Rusty, because it pains you so much to hear those remarks, I will not bring to your attention similar, if not worse, comments made by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter among others.

“little kevin”? Heh. I’m 6’4″, 220lbs.

Right – the Gang of 14, that I remember.
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And what a selfless move by those in the Republican majority to fight for the rights of the minority party at a moment when the GOP held a commanding 51-49 edge in the Senate. Clearly, they would never, ever be in the minority again.

Unfortunately Joe doesn’t listen to others, he doesn’t listen to himself. Ah, the contradictions.

Hey, his reading list seems to be improving by leaps and bounds. So far, it seems to be having a positive effect. When do you think he’ll start linking to Greenwald?

JK:
“My response: he should have. But what I should have said was, “Bill, do you think that would have won him any Republican votes?”

So doing real HC reform and more importantly to do the right thing is of no consequence to you and other liberals.

So just another lie. No surprise that you and the left defend the Bar Assocation as a wholly owned sub of the Democratic party.

PS

Hey Joe here is a flash for you the Repubs have shut down am incompetent Congress and WH. And guess what?

Judging by several elections and Obama disapproval rating the public is more than ok with it. Apparently they dislike liberal ideology more than they dislike Congressional gridlock

Oh I think you struck a nerve with ole kev Rusty. No doubt he’ll be telling you the size of his _ _ _ _ next.

No, I’ll leave the barely repressed homoerotism to the conservatives here. You all have some serious issues.

[...] by Karen Tumulty Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 10:26 pm Submit a Comment • Trackback (0) Welcome, Joe. We've been here for a while. But you can now join Ed Rendell and Doris Kearns Goodwin. And, oh, [...]

Obama’s approval rating is much higher than that of either Republicans or Democrats in Congress, maybe by as much as 30%. The election of Brown in Massachusetts is that he was a much more likeable and hard working candidate. It had little to do with ideology, and almost nothing to do with Obama.