2012 starts today.

 

Obama has himself to blame for the gelding of his administration that happened yesterday.  His disdain for the gritty every day business of getting down to the grass roots to communicate with voters has been evident.  Woodrow Wilson and Adlai Stevenson come to mind as other intellectuals who had many of the same attributes as this man. 

I heard Mike Pence speak today on the tube.  The tone and the message seemed clear to me.  What was said was that the "American People" have spoken and that they have utterly rejected the awful, terrible follies of the lefty Obama Administration.  John Boehner and Eric Cantor said much the same thing later this morning.  

It appears that the Republicans will today begin their campaign to regain undivided control of the federal government.  To that end they will oppose everything Obama might want to do, no matter what it is.  They will pass all manner of legislation in the House secure in the knowledge that the Senate and the president will block much of that and that the Republicans can then "run" on that over the next two years.

There is a willingness to exaggerate and distort the truth in Republican circles that is disheartening.  Where, for example, is there in their discourse any acknowledgement of the extent to which TARP money is being repaid with interest? Where is there any admission that the Republican Party is as despised as the Democratic Party?  Lewis Black is correct about these parties.  "The Republicans suck and the Democrats blow," he says.  I share his outrage.  pl 

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/03/election.main/?hpt=T1

Comments

[Jackie]

The spectacle of John Boehner blubbering last night was too much for me.

[dh]

Best analysis I've seen so far pl. In a nutshell... Obama just isn't a very effective salesman.

[Patrick Lang]

Jackie

I understand crying. I am a Celt. What I don't understand is crying for yourself. pl

[William R. Cumming]

Well the situation is more complex than most Americans realize and perhaps more than I realize. I posted an instant analysis on my own blog this AM but now that I have been to the dentist will add some more here.

Mostly the additional thoughts are questions? First how much do you think the takeover of the HOUSE and near miss in the SENATE owed to the energy and interests of the TEA Partiers? Second, how do the Republicans coopt, incorporate, workwith or whatever the TP elected sympathsizers. It is interesting to me that all seem focused on additional fiscal steps like cutting the budgets but no one focuses on the dollar devaluation which has been enormous since 1/20/2009 helped by both the Administration and the FED and now with the FED getting ready to fire another shot in the currency wars with its $500B buy of US bonds in addition to the $1.5B of purchased assets since 2008! Monetary policy is now undercutting any real limits actual or potential on fiscal policy. The GOP has said it will take on the FED and its unelected manipulators. The fact that the FED only focuses on inflation despite a multirole charter is fascinating to me. Is it because inflation is the only way out for the defective balance sheets of the FIRE sector?
This relates to the TP movement and its enthusiasts because the GOP cannot just say NO to Obama but must also say NO to the FED! If it does so there may be economic chaos, but if it does not do so the FED's launching of a currency war against all other nation-states is a race to the bottom to see whose currency can be devalued the fastest! Sounding a bit like the finances of the WEIMAR Republic in post-WWI Germany to me.
It is bad enough when fiscal policy and monetary policy is set by those competent and able, but if totally set by the followers of the TP then this will be a radical movement that rapidly gets out of control. Like Pandora's box the TP may be playing Pandora. Time will tell.

[William R. Cumming]

Correction: The FED has bought $1.5 Trillion in "assets" for its books since 2008!

[Brad Ruble]

Howard Dean won him the election, he took Rahm Emanual to the White House.

[lina]

There was lawn sign in my neighborhood that said "Reelect Nobody!"

Losing the House will benefit Obama. Speaker Boehner now gets the microphone. When you're in the majority, you have to say what you're FOR. And we all know what they're for. They blather on about federal spending, but when asked what they'll cut, they can't answer. Well, when you're the majority, you have to answer.

Why Obama, et. al., can't figure out the use of propaganda remains a mystery to me.

[confusedponderer]

I share your assessment of what R's will do. An outrage. They will do anything in their power to make Obama fail.

And if the D's are in any way as lame as they have been the last two years, they will not be able to effectively counter that. Disgusting.

IMHO, America needs good governance, asap.

And the opposition party is not only obstructive, but effectively hostile (abolish taxes! abolish the fed! abolish regulation! bla bla bla ...) to the very concept of governance. A nightmare. Where Bush was bad as far as governance goes, the tea partiers will be a magnitude worse.

[Jackie]

Pat,
Exactly!!! He gets to be Speaker of the House and he was crying. Tip O'Neill he is not.

[eakens]

The only positive trend I have seen recently is that the voters (in CA at least) seem to be putting some thought into voting on the propositions. Special interests seem to be having a harder time buying propositions with misleading advertisements.

[Carl O.]

The Republicans took 12 years to prove to the voters that they were incapable of governing. The Dmeocrats have now accomplished the same thing in four.

[s nadh]

With Feingold and Grayson gone (and it was expected that they would lose) I don't know of any progessive voices left on Democrat side. I take it you can safely assume that the "austerity" campaign to loot social security will now begin again in earnest, most likely in the new year or perhaps sooner.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

Excellent Analysis.

The difficulty with both parties is that marketing, propaganda and ideology have become separated from reality and history. In a two party system, Congress ricochets between one party or the other but there is no real change or confrontation with the reality of two unwinnable wars, climate change and cutting government spending into an Economic Depression. Reality is going bite very hard at this Presidency and new Congress.

[Roy G]

The Republican Revolution Redux; look at how well it went for US the first time.

[Brent Wiggans]

I, too, believe that Obama bears much of the blame for the electoral debacle that his party has suffered. He went for the main chance in 2008, distaining the seasoning of a few more years in the Senate, an experience that might have given him a better understanding of how Congress works - and doesn’t - and also of the necessity for the President to provide strong, relentless, public leadership for the issues he really cares about. While I think his process of getting it done has proven disadvantageous for his overall ability to govern, I do not believe that the doing of health care in the first two years was a mistake. It was what he cared most about and he got a version of it done where all others have failed. In his greatly weakened position he must now hope that his health care program’s benefits have not been postponed for too long and that they will start to be widely felt over the next two years while he holds off efforts to dismantle it in the name of the newly discovered religion of the political class, Fiscal Prudence.

As for the Republicans, they successfully manipulated and channeled the righteous anger and frustration of the people over the sorry state of the economy and the effects it is having on their daily lives. For the GOP to try to act on the incoherent platform that they put forward as a cover for their only real aim, to take back power, (and the Tea Party’s agenda of contradictions that they have subsumed) will be to believe their own bullshit. If they go forward as if they have some kind of popular mandate for whatever occurs to them to do for the next two years, 2012 may find them in the trough of the now-regular, two-year oscillation cycle of popular disillusionment.

[walrus]

I commend to you Robert Paxtons paper on Fascism referenced via articles on the subject linked to by Mr. Silverman (link below).

If Paxton is correct, what happens next is that there will be a struggle within the Republican party between the Tea Partiers and the big business oriented current Republican elite, which must already be wondering what it has let itself in for, as did the Weimar conservatives.

Be prepared for chaos since the Republicans have no clear strategy apart from frustrating Obama at every turn and wresting control of the White House and Senate in 2012.

Paxton's views suggest that if there is further public disenchantment with the decision making processes of liberal democracy as practised in Washington, then American fascism, of a pious, patriotic, Tea Party style, will take over quicker than anyone could believe.

I still believe that Gen. Petreaus would be unstoppable as a Republican candidate backed by the Tea Parties on a mission of "cleaning out" Washington. The boiling anti intellectual and racist (illegal immigrants and welfare queens!) anger is already palpable.

http://www.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf

[walrus]

As for Obama, who? I cannot think of a person less likely to succeed at anything useful for the country for reasons I have already bored you to death about.

[Medicine Man]

Carl O.:

That is just how efficient the Dems are.

Seriously though, I'm starting to think that some species of sweeping congressional reform is the only way forward. It really looks like the system itself is not equal to the challenges the US faces.

[Phil Giraldi]

The "take on the world" foreign policy of the past nine years that has been shared by both Dems and GOP has been an unmitigated disaster for every American. Now, with a new crowd of neocons and Israel firsters in charge it will get even worse and more hard edged. God help us all.

[Matthew]

Col: I just felt that we are adding more steps to the Long Retreat from Reality.

Last night, Rep. Cantor said he wants to go back to the 2008 budget numbers. Essentially, the Republicans want to continue to spend money we don't have but less than is being spent now. What courage!

Ironically, the Republican desire to protect the top 2% of taxpayers could result in all the Bush tax cuts expiring.

We'll see.

P.S. I loved the line about Celts crying...just not about themselves. Fabulous.

[Patrick Lang]

walrus

I think that Petraeus would be little interested in "cleaning out" Washington. pl

[Ael]

There is confusion between governance and electability. The Democrats have lost their ability to govern (such as it was) but have enhanced their electability.

The Republicans are caught between their vows to balance the budget, not raise taxes, not cut defense spending and not cut entitlements.

Obama does not need to get any legislation passed in the next two years and can blame the Republicans for everything.

I.e. Obama holds the high ground.

[Abu Sinan]

I dont think the Tea Party really had much to do with this. I would argue that the Tea Party probably cost the Republicans the Senate as well because of the idiots they ran in several places that had no hope of winning. The establishment Republican picks in these places probably would have won.

The opposition historically does well in midterm elections and this would have been true with or without the Tea Party. Their net contribution was to loose the Senate.

[Nancy K]

I live in CA so our election results were not bad at all, if you are a Democrat. As for the Rep saying that Obama is too far left, I just do not see it. What are all the teabaggers or just middle class Rep going to do when SS and Medicare are gutted. They won't be able to blame that on Obama.
I agree that Obama is too passive, he is an appeaser.
I would like to see the Dem politicians rise up and roar, but not too likely that will happen.

[jr786]

@Phil Giraldi:

I know you're right but I still will take some temporary relief in the fact that Charles Schumer will not be the Senate majority leader. It's the little things, sometimes.