Year: 2013

Right off the bat we won the ability to mop up Republicans in the next election. They've been so discredited through this process that it is now impossible to anyone to deny that the Republican ARE the problem.  Democrats from Maine to Maui simply need to run ads saying "My opponent is a Republican!"  to score damaging points for the foreseeable future. The next win was NOT taking a weak economy and driving it over a cliff for shits and giggles. It would seem self-evident that NOT ruining the economy would be a win for everyone, but teabags are already lamenting the big missed opportunity they had to really fuck everyone over - but good. The third thing America won is more accurate picture of the resolve of President Barack Obama.

The strength and durability of American conservatism rests in its simplicity. Scientists have demonstrated that the simpleminded favor conservatism, and that the conservative mind deals only in stark binary choices eschewing nuance. But beyond the brain chemistry that pre-wires them to absurd reduction, conservative simplicity manifests itself in a clarity of operating principles. Conservatives agree on some basic things and work hard to try and turn their beliefs into policy.

Speaker Boehner has been defeated. More importantly, the Teabagger Traitors have been defeated. As you may know by now, Speaker Boehner, early this morning, gathered his caucus, had Representative Southerland, who in a prior life, I swear to God, was a Undertaker in a Funeral Home, sing the Christian funeral hymn 'Amazing Grace,' all three verses of it, and then told them, per Robert Costa of the National Review, that he would rather throw a grenade than catch one. And so he tried desperately to craft a bill that will attract all Republican votes. Various add-ons and poison pills were bantered about all day, but in the end, the Boehner House Bill did not have the votes, and the bill, which was never really introduced, was pulled. So now, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have resumed their negotiations, and according to MSNBC per a Senate Democratic source, a debt and budget deal that will avert default and reopen the government is "imminent."

I've long held the position that Republicans are after nothing other than chaos, and a wrecked economy so that they could claim that the economy failed during a Democratic Presidency. The ACA fight is a pretext. Economist say that most pernicious and long term effects of a default are already being felt in a steep erosion of trust in American bonds as a safe haven. As Delaware Dem has pointed out here, the country is under attack. Given that reality, President Obama will be forced to do something that he doesn't want to do. ...

The Republican Autopsy Report (only released last March and already more forgotten than the great works of King Ozymandias) predicted all of the childish bullshit and GOP assholery we are now experiencing.  While at the time the outreach portions of the report grabbed the headlines, the report also warned against the "King Making" powers of independent expenditure groups.

Outside groups now play an expanded role affecting federal races and, in some ways, overshadow state parties in primary and general elections. As a result, this environment has caused a splintered Congress with little party cohesion so that gridlock and polarization grow as the political parties lose their ability to rally their elected officeholders around a set of coherent governing policies.