Mike Donilon, a senior adviser to the president, said in a White House memo on Tuesday that an “obstructionist” stance taken by the GOP toward President Joe Biden’s plan for COVID-19 relief would not likely be favorable for the party and would likely only contribute to further damaging the GOP’s already shrinking national support.
The Republican Party may be lost for a generation if they don’t find a way to rid themselves of Trump.
Fine by me either way.
It boggles me how the Republican Party, addicted to a loser, can continue to pat itself on the back for doing nothing. But then, I like to think and find solutions to problems.
Dems need to keep this in the public eye…the GOP doesn’t want to serve you.
It’s anti-health
It doesn’t care if your kids aren’t educated
Jobs? The ‘free market’ will handle that
Public services, such as well-maintained roads free of potholes, road kill and snow? Quit your whining
Obstructionists? Who, pray tell? Oh, not Mitch, or Gaetz, or Jordan, or . . .
They would never! 
It would be nice to co-sign this person’s “highly informed” take. But recent and not so recent history shows us otherwise. One reason the Republicans appear to pay no price for their anti democratic and obstructionist ways is our lack of aggressive messaging about what’s broken, but the most infuriating is their mindless MAGAt army, and they can only be out worked and out managed. 2022 is going to be an utterly schizoid year, a sine wave of peaks and valleys, and I fear the midterms may tip on a dice roll.
“Doing nothing” isn’t really doing nothing if it’s “owning the libs”.
I don’t think the obstructionism will work and the perception will rebound against them. They need ideas and related policies that will help the American people. Unfortunately for them they are fresh out of ideas. The Republican party needs to die.
The piece of data missing here is that about 20% of the U.S. population controls about 50% of the senate. It genuinely doesn’t matter how many soccer moms you piss off in that other 80% of the country, until we can get past this one nagging reality…
And exactly why the Democrats need to obliterate the filibuster. With that kind of gross imbalance, the filibuster, as a “check” just compounds our minority status. Sigh.
Oh!! The irony! Slightly OT, but Congressman Kinzinger has been named to TIME magazine’s 100 Next list that highlights emerging leaders in politics, tech, and business.
Yep, and I think the story out of Texas is going to resonate for years to come. The GQP can do their best to spin it that windmills are to blame, but there are too many examples of windmills working in places with much colder climates like, oh, Antarctica for them to get too far with that lie. Whether or not it changes things in TX, it’s part of a larger story about the GQP policies leaving people to suffer and die. People desperately want government that works, and all the GQP is offering is failed government.
This seems like the kind of strategic leak Republicans would put out to pressure Democrats, way back when they knew how to govern.
Hopefully, this memo will help put an end to those inane “bipartisan” or “unity” questions from sillier reporters, and motivate them, instead, to perhaps ask Republican legislators why they’re so out of step with Americans.
I heard McConnell is trying to “unify” his GOP senators by all obstructing Biden’s stimulus plan. Kumbaya, Mitch, you MFer.
The irony here in Texas is that our Governor downplayed Covid at every step to force people to work, in order to prioritize businesses over people. And our Lt. Governor famously asked seniors to sacrifice themselves voluntarily so we could get back to business.
But because of their own incompetence and lack of foresight, I’m sitting at home on this cold Wednesday morning instead of being at work. They have shut businesses down across the state and caused more shortages than the pandemic did.
But, thankfully, because of the grace of President Biden, things, as bad as they are, won’t devolve into a worst case type scenario. Not that they will ever be grateful.
The big lesson did Dems from ‘10 is that they didn’t go large enough helping Americans recover from the 08 crash. Nobody knows this better than Biden.
The messaging I see here that I really like is that the Biden team is framing bipartisanship as a voter issue. In other words, what makes something bipartisan is whether it has support from voters on both sides of the spectrum - not if Mitch and McCarthy give Rep senators and representatives permission to vote for it. I imagine the framing going forward will be that Dems have put forth bipartisan bills but that Rep politicians are out of touch with the mainstream of their party (the mainstream actually being Reps and independents who are persuadable)
Republicans are obstructionists because it has worked for them for 25 years. They have the advantage of having supporters who vote in every election. And these reliable voters LOVE obstructionism. In fact, obstructionism pretty much all they want from government.
The left wing of the Democratic party by contrast, does not vote. Or at least not for Democrats. If we’re lucky they will turn out for the presidential election but come the midyear – ie the next election – they won’t vote based upon any number of grievances, real or imagined or just out of laziness. The preference for bouting instead of voting is huge.
So, polls that show a “majority of Americans” don’t have a lot of meaning in this context. Republicans understand this.
And he’s right…the Republican party is now depending on the Trump supporters…the racists, the misogynists, the Christian militants who want to undo our Constitutional system and create a theocracy based in Christian sharia law. It’s irrelevant to them that goes against everything this nation is about, they just want power and don’t care how much it will ruin the nation to appeal the basest of our people to keep it. We’re probably fortunate that Trump was so open about what he was doing and his minions came out into the light, it’s made it pretty clear to the rest of America where things stand.
Now, the trick is to get people to vote…if everyone votes Republicans don’t stand a chance if they continue to cling to the white supremacist base. 2022 and 2024 really need to be about that, Republicans have to be tied to their worst elements, because if they regain power then those elements will be driving the party, and the nation, over the cliff.
Republicans haven’t known how to govern—or cared about knowing how—since Eisenhower was in office.
The Democrats need to do big things that help people and brag about it every day. There is no subtlety in American politics.
For everyone saying the GOP is dead, I can only say that after 4 years of the worst president in history, Republicans gained control over 2 more states in state elections and won back seats in the House. Those GOP controlled legislatures are working hard right now to rig their judiciaries and all future elections.
https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures
“A state government trifecta is a term to describe single party government, when one political party holds three positions in a state’s government. There are currently 38 trifectas: 15 Democratic and 23 Republican. As a result of the 2020 elections, Republicans increased their trifecta total with a net gain of two trifectas. States with divided government—no trifecta for either major party—declined by two. Democrats neither gained or lost trifectas.”
As noted above, the EC and especially the Senate have disproportionate advantages favoring rural states and GOP candidates. They have everything in place to regain power and further suppress efforts at actual democracy.
If the GOP is dead, its zombie twin is still ravaging the countryside. Until we start winning state houses, we are the threatened majority. Things may look good now, but we have a long, long hill to climb. Despite our senators, AZ is still a very red state controlled by Republicans.