Discussion for article #222660
And individual candidates have no chance of winning the Republican nomination if they support it. What a pickle – a delicious pickle.
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“If the Republicans don’t do it they shouldn’t bother to run a candidate in 2016. I mean, think about that. Think about who the voters are.”
That won’t stop the Tea Party, the Libertarians or the Christianists from running a candidate.
Get the popcorn ready.
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God, I hate that insufferable prick. I hope he’s telling the truth for once.
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So, are all you Tea party patriots going to knuckle under and do the bidding of the Republican party’s big business establishment, or are you going to stand with other real 'Muricans and stop the Mexicans and libruls from taking over Our Country?
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No need for a warning at this late stage of the game. Especially from wedge groups like the NRA and Chamber of Corporations.
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America-hating Donohue has obviously converted to Islamofascism or gay marriage or some other liberal malady. Next thing you know he’s going to announce his belief that the earth is older than 10,000 years and that the earth orbits the sun. Heresy!! Apostasy!
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Don’t count Jeb Bush out of the mix yet.
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What about their vahyues (hideous bigotry and xenophobia)? Crowd oughta have broken out in a chorus of Dixie when the know-it-all city boy opened his Yankee pie-hole!
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Cue the RWNJ excuse machine:
“We lost because we weren’t conservative enough”…
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Yeah, where’s that cheap labor. Come on repubs.
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Exactly, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. I won’t be particularly surprised if Boehner brings reform up for a vote during the lame duck session hoping to take it off the table for 2016 and calculating that 2 years will be enough time for the issue to die down. With the help of several retiring “moderates”, he could certainly pull enough Democratic votes to make it happen. It still won’t make a damn bit of difference.
GOP candidates will be asked in debates whether they support the reform passed by Congress or whether they’re against it and what they would’ve done differently. The base will skewer anyone who supports the plan and that will force all their candidates to take further and further right positions.
Instead of spending 2013 dicking around with non-scandals and trying to embarrass a newly reelected president, they should’ve been working on passing immigration reform. Midterm years usually favor Republicans and can be especially tricky for the party of a president in his second term, so they had an advantage that could’ve mitigated any damage with their base and the four years before the next election would’ve allowed time for their base to move on from the issue. If they try to pass something at the end of the year, it’ll just become a rallying cry for the far right.
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Voting for immigration reform to help your party win the White House in 2016 doesn’t do a thing to help you when you lose your job in a primary in 2014.
Otherwise, I agree with you that 2013 would have been a “safe” year for Republicans to do that, but you must consider individual-level incentives. Here’s a comment I wrote elsewhere, about Benghazi!, but the idea holds for any GOP crazy-talk that poisons their reputation among non-crazies:
They are probably acting very rationally.
If you’re a Republican Congressman in a strongly Republican district or state, which is more important to you, making sure you get reelected or making the party look 0.1% better in 2016?
If you take the sane route – “Hey, guys, I think this Benghazi! thing is a little out of hand. Let’s talk about how to get the economy going,” – you lose a primary and lose your job. There is a silver lining. Your voice is one of the sane ones among hundreds of crazy ones, so maybe you helped your party increase the chances at the White House by 0.1%.
If you take the crazy route, you make it hard for anyone to outcrazy you in the primary, so you probably keep your seat. No benefit in presidential elections or in marginal seats, though. (You’re not running for president or in a marginal seat.)
Seems like a prisoner’s dilemma, in that no one has
any incentive to deviate from Peak Wingnut even knowing full well that it’s destroying them as a party.
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The Tea Party right is convinced that Boehner will betray them and bring up immigration reform this year. There is no time to do it unless he brings up the Senate bill for a vote. The summer recess and general election are coming up and the House has already scheduled less work days this year than last year.
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Also, this makes me smile: They preach all the time about the free market, sometimes referring to ECON 101, because all the economics they understand is the first half of ECON 101, where assumptions of prefect competition always hold perfectly.
Now they’re getting destroyed by Prisoner’s Dilemma, the very first thing you learn about in game theory. Apparently they dozed off halfway through ECON 101.
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Classic Vlasic!
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Which means the GOP will most definitely double-down in their wars on the poors, the browns and the vaginas.
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Ya, and I’m sure that if the GOP blocks immigration reform, the US Chamber of Commerce will not support the GOP nominee…
If they do, they will be admitting to throwing away members money!
I think this is what many in the GOP are thinking, nominate a “Goldwater” or really Rand Paul and then after the disaster the establishment GOP can get back control and pick up the pieces. I mean after Goldwater the GOP won 5 of the next presidential elections. Furthermore it is unlikely the GOP establishment has a candidate that can beat Hillary anyway.
But here are some problems, in 2016 two of the GOP’s five Supreme Court justices will be over 80 and a “Goldwater” could, as Goldwater did, cost the GOP several senate seats in a year when 23 GOP held senate seats are up.
Also everyone, including Dems who lick their chops at the thought of a nomination of Rand Paul or someone similar should remember, sometimes a fool rushes in and gets the job done.
…an it will be all Obama’s fault
because he didn’t switch over to being against it.
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