Thread: GOP: now & in the future

In a party of dimwits some are dumber than others. With Palin and Bachman having run off to lick their wounds I think Congressman Louie Gohmert takes the prize for dimmest dimwit of them all!

Louie Gohmert, America's dumbest congressman, gives a speech

Whatever you do, don't cast aspersions on his asparagus.

Lettuce check in on the further adventures of America's dumbest congressman, Rep. Louie Gohmert. It appears Rep. Gohmert now has an innovative idea to simply defund large parts of the executive branch until someone, somewhere adequately answers for all the various conspiracy theories that rattle around inside Louie Gohmert's head. Defunding Obamacare a few dozen times has gotten boring, after all, and defunding food aid to poor children has been done to death, and Gohmert has come back from his long, dull August break with an entire hive of bees in his bonnet.

[Gohmert] kicked off his speech with the reading of a Wall Street Journal editorial on the IRS.

Louie Gohmert looking to a Wall Street Journal editorial for wisdom is like a mouse deciding to build his home inside a burning tire because it's warm. Oh, you might say, Mr. Gohmert is going to be speaking about the IRS conspiracy debunked months ago. Understandable; he has always been a bit slow on the uptake. But no, it is actually about Fast and Furious.

Gohmert particularly seemed to single out the Department of Justice for budgetary vengence, saying it hasn't been forthcoming dating back to at least the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal.

That's reaching back a fair ways, but all right. Let's run with that one.

But the massive posters of the four men killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack made their point. "They deserve the truth [about Benghazi] to come out," Gohmert said.

Wait, what?

Gohmert went on to cite a recent Breitbart post which tossed out the idea that the Obama administration may have violated an international law passed in 2011 against shipping weapons in or out of Libya.

Oh no. Now the mouse is smoking meth. You shouldn't smoke meth in a burning tire, Mr. Mouse. (Side note: I'm seeing a fantastic opportunity for a children's book here. The moral lessons I think would really speak to the kids today.) He then went on to conjecture that members of this administration may find themselves under international indictment for arms-trafficking in Libya, because only Republicans are allowed to deliver arms to rebel forces, and then only in exchange for something good like cocaine or hostages or a second, larger burning tire to live inside of.
This is all just one speech, mind you, but I hopes it further clarifies my certainty as to this man being the dimmest bulb in a collection of dim bulbs. It seems every one of his speeches is like this: you keep thinking he is about to get to a point, but he never does; you keep stumping yourself on how to rebut his arguments because you can't ever quite parse out what the hell they are, or how you would address them in such a way as to not make you look like an equally raving lunatic. I'm almost convinced he's putting us on, a Borat-style genius, but that would imply his entire district was in on it and, as we've seen repeatedly, most of these people do not really comprehend satire.

gohmert is an embarrassment and an ignoramus, but two factors will keep him in office for years to come:

1. the questionable intellect of the voters in texas' first congressional district

2. highly effective gerrymandering. for example:

Originally Posted by raycarey

gohmert is an embarrassment and an ignoramus, but two factors will keep him in office for years to come:

1. the questionable intellect of the voters in texas' first congressional district

2. highly effective gerrymandering. for example:

Its really disgusting that this shit is allowed.

Republicans Prove That They're Living In An Another Reality By Dredging Up And Mangling An Old Warren Buffett Quote

Coming out of a meeting to lay out their new strategy to defund Obamacare as a condition for government-funding and debt-ceiling bills, Republicans said they had the momentum.
What is the Republican evidence for their newfound momentum? Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a former chair of the Republican Study Committee, explained:


“All the momentum is in our direction. Warren Buffett said yesterday, ‘Scrap the bill.’ The AFL-CIO said last week, ‘Repeal the bill if you’re not going to fix it.’ Everyone knows this thing isn’t ready. Everyone knows."


Here's the problem with that evidence: Warren Buffett did not say that. And though certain unions within the AFL-CIO have well-documented problems with Obamacare, that sweeping statement misrepresents the union's position.


Debbie Bosanek, a spokesman for Buffett, told Business Insider that she alerted Buffett to the quote, and said he was shocked that it was attributed to him.


"It is a very false representation," Bosanek said. "Mr. Buffett never, ever said Obamacare should be scrapped. He never said it, and he never thought it."


Full article: Defund Obamacare? Warren Buffett Quote Spurs GOP Hope - Business Insider

To mangle an old joke-

Why aren't there any Republicans on the Starship Enterprise?
It's set in the future.

Originally Posted by raycarey

but how knows...maybe the GOP will go the way of the whigs.

They will be back. Too many of them already own the country.

Originally Posted by raycarey

filling the leadership void with cranks like rand paul and rafael cruz.

Steve Stockton, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Paul Broun...

The comedic value of the current GOP puts anything Colbert comes up with to shame.

Obama has made a fine republican president, so the people that really run the GOP still rule.

The continuing implosion of the Grand Old Party is so completely bizarre...

Karl Rove: The GOP's Self-Defeating 'Defunding' Strategy

It will only strengthen the president while alienating independents.

Karl Rove: The GOP's Self-Defeating 'Defunding' Strategy - WSJ.com

^ Thanks for the article, Tony.

I am still bewildered over how much this funding is, and where this Obama care funding is going. To the exchanges?

This poll was from Saturday so after the shutdown the swing should be even wider now..

Republicans in Congress have hit a new low in the minds of Americans and now face a steep deficit when matched up against congressional Democrats, according to a new poll.
The Quinnipiac University survey shows that Americans disapprove of the job Republicans in Congress are doing by 74 percent to 17 percent. The 17 percent who approve of how Republicans are doing their job is the lowest number on record for Quinnipiac, which has been polling since 2001.
Also bad news for the GOP is how far they've fallen behind in the so-called generic congressional ballot -- a choice between a generic Democrat and a generic Republican.
When given that choice, voters now favor the Democrat by a nine-point margin, 43 percent to 34 percent. That is also a new low for the GOP in Quinnipiac's polling.
But Democrats aren't in great shape, either, the survey finds. Voters disapprove of the job they're doing in Congress by 60 percent to 32 percent.
The poll shows most Americans blame both parties equally for the gridlock in Washington (58 percent), but among those who choose a side to blame, 28 percent blame the GOP and 10 percent blame Democrats.
The poll was conducted through Saturday, so it doesn't include the actual government shutdown or the negotiations that took place in the final hours.

Poll: Republicans in Congress hit new low

Silly Republicans, shutting down the government does not delay or defund the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare".

The Health Insurance Marketplace opened right on time yesterday.

After 42 failed attempts to repeal "Obamacare" we come to this.

Has the GOP forgotten that their candidate in the last presidential election ran on the promise to "repeal and replace".


Romney lost and he lost badly. Why? Because the majority of Americans recognize that the American health care system is hopelessly broken and must be reformed. The ACA, aka "Obamacare" is a small step in the right direction. Passed by the house and the senate, signed into law by the president and vetted by the Supreme Court, face it, the ACA is good for America and it is here to stay.

As Republican Senator Jeff Flake told AFP: "It was never realistic to tie Obamacare to government funding. I don't think it ends well for us."

It would have been interesting if Romney had ever elaborated on what he would replace it with.

He couldn't of course. As the "severely conservative" Gov who signed an almost identical piece of legislation into the law of his state (along with some tough gun bans) he would have been thrashed from all sides six ways til Sunday.

As long as the GOP continues like this then Stewart and Colbert never need to worry about job security.

Originally Posted by quimbian corholla

It would have been interesting if Romney had ever elaborated on what he would replace it with

Romney Care but he was not allowed to even mention any sort of government health care system. Didn't fit the Rep priority. Get rid of Obama and kill Obama care.

I wouldn't bet against Dems winning House majority. Gerrymandering or not. Plenty of "Republican" districts where even in last Congressional elections GOP won by narrow margin. This whole debacle could well be the straw that broke the elephants back.

Republican Nutcase Michele “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann is back in the news...




Michele Bachmann Compares President Obama To A Crack Dealer

“President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care,” she said in an interview with the far-right WorldNetDaily site where she regularly gives explosive interviews.
Once they enroll millions of more individual Americans, it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people,” Bachmann continued. “All they want to do is buy love from people by giving them massive government subsidies.”
Michele Bachmann: Obama is peddling


Ya know what's really funny about all this? The Tea Party princess actually voted AGAINST the House’s resolution to delay Obamacare...

Top Republican Calls For Replacing Obamacare With Obamacare...


Republicans often face criticism opposing Obamacare but having no plan to replace it.
So Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been tweeting about his replacement proposal: Let every American participate in the Federal Employee Health Benefits program.
"Federal employees have long enjoyed high-quality, affordable health care benefits through this free market, consumer based system," says Issa.
I'm not exactly sure what Issa means when he calls FEHBP a "free market" system. The system does set up a marketplace where private health insurers offer plans that have to meet certain specifications, and then individuals choose the plans they like best.
That's also true of the Obamacare exchanges, which Republicans do not tend to think are very "free market."
In fact, FEHBP is similar to the Obamacare exchanges in a lot of ways.

• If insurers want to participate in the FEHBP, they can't exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions, just like Obamacare .
• They have to accept applicants " without regard to age, race, sex, health status, or hazardous nature of employment." This is called guaranteed issue, and it's just like Obamacare.
• They have to charge all applicants the same premium for a given plan. This is called community rating, and it's more restrictive of insurers than Obamacare , which allows for substantial premium variation based on age.

The key way that FEHBP differs from Obamacare now is that only federal employees can participate in it. Those federal workers have 75% of their plan premiums paid by the federal government, and their own 25% contribution is deductible on their federal tax return.
I asked Issa's office what financial support he would propose to help non-government workers buy FEHBP plans and haven't heard back yet. If he's going to heavily subsidize those purchases, then his plan will really look a lot like Obamacare.
If he's not, then there's a significant problem: A lot of people won't be able to afford to buy FEHBP plans. The cheapest plan available where I live, a high-deductible plan, is $5,000 a year for single coverage or $10,900 for family coverage. That's accessible for people with high incomes and some with middle incomes, but many people who are too rich to qualify for Medicaid will find that out of reach.
And besides affordability, there is the issue of adverse selection. If you require pre-existing condition coverage and you impose guaranteed issue and community rating, insurance plans are going to be a lot more attractive to sick people than healthy ones. If healthy people choose not to buy insurance, average costs per plan participant will rise, driving up premiums, and causing even more people to choose not to buy.
That could lead to an "insurance death spiral," where premiums are very high and the FEHBP's participant pool ends up being just very sick people. That's what's happened in New York State, where community rating and guaranteed issue have made insurance premiums so high that less than 0.1% of residents get insurance through the individual coverage market.
There are two ways to prevent a death spiral. One is to reward people for buying insurance, as Obamacare does with subsidies, and as the federal government does now by paying 75% of employee FEHBP premiums. The other is to punish people for not buying insurance, as Obamacare does with the individual mandate.
Whatever approach Issa takes to preventing a death spiral in his FEHBP-for-all plan is likely to make it look even more like Obamacare.
This illustrates why Republicans have had so much trouble coming up with a "replacement" for Obamacare. When you take a private health insurance market and try to fix the problems with it, like sick people not being able to get covered, you end up layering on rules that are similar to the ones in Obamacare, for the same reasons that Obamacare's drafters imposed them.


Top Republican Calls For Replacing Obamacare With Obamacare - Yahoo Finance

Originally Posted by TonyBKK

Once they enroll millions of more individual Americans, it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people,”

Absolutely impossible actually. Wow, fancy that- a government that is required to do more than drop bombs on people, and pay themselves too much.

Rewind a few years, and I wouldn't have minded being Michelle's crack feeler/ healer/ wheeler dealer. Sure wouldn't be her psych though.

Originally Posted by sabang

Sure wouldn't be her psych though.

I would. Talk about a candidate for long term therapy she's a gold mine.

Capitalist running dog.

Originally Posted by robuzo

Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein discussing the impasse on C-Span. These guys did call it: Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein on Government Shutdown - C-SPAN Video Library
Ornstein: "We are much closer to disaster than I have ever seen before." Ornstein is well-known as a calm, sober analyst. When he is talking like this it's serious. My view is that about a quarter of the electorate, and therefore a much larger portion of GOP, simply does not recognize the legitimacy of the president and is willing to burn the whole place down if that is what it takes to destroy him. They are the most radical major US political faction since the mid-19th Century. I think the reaction of the public in the US is mostly a combination of disbelief, naivete and ignorance- they can't believe and can't imagine what is going to happen if this government shutdown morphs into something much bigger in two weeks.

^ A fascinating and very troubling assessment of the dysfunctional state of politics in the US today. The Tea Party radicals and their scorched earth style of politics is incompatible with constitutional governance. The sooner we are rid of them the better!

Originally Posted by MrG

Originally Posted by sabang

Sure wouldn't be her psych though.

I would. Talk about a candidate for long term therapy she's a gold mine.

Ever since this photo became public, I've never been able to take her seriously.

Thugs upset about being dissed: What’s the fight about? Republicans struggle to explain
"We aren't going to be disrespected...We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."
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Charlie Pierce kindly explains:
Marlin Stutzman's Endless Victimhood - The Lonely War Of Marlin Stutzman - Esquire
Have a cookie, Marlin. Have a cookie and go play with your toes.

A largely unremarked element of the etiology of the prion disease currently afflicting the Republican party -- and therefore, alas, the country -- is the carefully cultivated, and by now deeply inculcated, sense of conservative victimhood that has been a prime element of conservatism's emotional appeal since long before Richard Nixon rose to power on it. They are always beset. They are always besieged. They are always surrounded -- by intellectuals, by scientists, by the all-powerful Left that exists primarily in their imaginations, because it certainly doesn't exist in American politics, and hasn't since the days of Joe McCarthy. Culturally, this always has been expressed partly by the endless conservative bleating that somebody, somewhere is getting laid. The Gospels tell us that the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ's church. The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank's marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.
---
See it all the time on Teak Door, the boundless resentment and sense of victimhood of the American "conservative" expat.