Republicans really shouldn’t make this so easy for Democrats. Just as Speaker Boehner has become synonymous with fail, to the degree that even the beltway admits regularly that he can’t get done or won’t get done what he says he will or what he needs to do for the party, now the entire Congress is infested with the stench of GOP fail.
Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office sent out a memo Sunday morning mocking Republicans for the fail.
You have to see the entire memo to get the full sense of fail, from an uprising against establishment leaders to fails on immigration with calls for mass deportation to catering to the 1% and pretending it makes sense and is good for Main Street to being unable to fund the DHS for weeks even as terrorist attacks made the headlines, it is not a recommendation for Republican leadership.
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Here you go:
Last week marked the first 100 days since the start of the 114th Republican Congress. What have Americans seen from Speaker Boehner and House Republicans? Let’s go through a headlines recap of the past 10 legislative weeks.
WEEK ONE:
- Washington Post– John Boehner just endured the biggest revolt against a House speaker in more than 150 years
· New York Times - House Republicans Change Rules on Calculating Economic Impact of Bills
WEEK TWO:
- MSNBC– House GOP goes on the record for mass deportation
WEEK THREE:
- CBS News– House GOP abruptly drops plans to debate abortion bill after backlash
- Huffington Post– GOP Quietly Giving Committee Chairmen Unilateral Subpoena Power
WEEK FOUR:
- New York Times– Republicans Pretend to Care About Inequality
WEEK FIVE:
- VOX– GOP Rep. Mo Brooks says maybe you should blame immigrants for measles
- New York Times- House G.O.P. Again Votes to Repeal Health Care Law
- POLITICO– Boehner: No clear idea how McConnell will resolve DHS standoff
WEEK SIX:
- Slate– House and Senate Republicans Blame Each Other for Screwing Up GOP Legislative Greatness
WEEK SEVEN:
- Tampa Bay Editorial– House Republicans should not hold Homeland Security hostage
- NJ.com Editorial– On immigration, GOP will pay for obstruction
WEEK EIGHT:
- The Hill– The terrible, horrible, no good start for GOP
- Washington Post- No House Republican leaders are going to Selma this weekend. That’s a dumb move.
WEEK NINE:
- New York Times– Chasm Grows Within G.O.P. Over Spending
- Washington Post– Error in House budget understated spending cuts by $900 million
- Washington Post– House Republicans want to cut back grants for poor college students
WEEK TEN:
- Huffington Post– Divided House GOP Prevents Embarrassment, Passes Budget Boosting Defense Spending
Also last week, House Republicans twice voted to block equal pay for equal work and passed a ”massive tax break for millionaires, billionaires.” Stay tuned for more – their obstruction, dysfunction and distraction is bound to intensify.
What’s happened to the Republican Party is it no longer stands for the things it is supposed to stand for, and that is really why it’s become a hot mess as seen above. While catering to lunatics and fringers in order to get votes, the real agenda of the party is to serve the top 1%. They have to mask this purpose in order to peel off the misinformed and the uninformed, but it creates internal chaos to have an agenda that is vastly different from what your base thinks you stand for.
This is not the party of personal responsibility and it can’t be defended any longer. It is not even the party of the wealthy and educated who feel they make better decisions for the masses, a position that can be legitimately defended even if you don’t agree with it. No, this is the party of raging deficits because they can’t tax big business at all, but they preach about deficits being bad. This is the party of “liberty” and “freedom” that actively works to take freedom and liberty away from many minorities, including deliberately working to undermine minority voting rights because, in general, minorities are on to them.
This record of fail doesn’t bode well for Republicans in 2016. How can they make the case that they can lead? Perhaps they will do it as they always do– giving them the Senate wasn’t enough, they really need the White House in order to accomplish anything. Like Senator John McCain promising to tell us where Bin Laden after we elected him. This has been their go-to line for a while now.
But the truth is always in the policy.
And policy wise, the Republican Party has pushed for things to cater to the fringers and passed things to serve their 1% masters. Fringers and puppet masters. That is what has become of the party that used to stand for personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism.
It is now left to the Democrats to demonstrate the kind of fiscal restraint and responsibility that they are not known for, but have actually been practicing for a while. No, they aren’t trying to drown government and starve the poor, so they are not turning into actual conservatives, but in terms of fiscal responsibility, their budgets tend to add up and they aren’t pretending that math isn’t a thing. They try to pay as they go, even when it means admitting uncomfortable political positions of raising taxes, albeit on the wealthy — a position that is popular, but costly in terms of dark money spent against them in elections.
Democrats have become the party of grown ups. That’s what this memo represents, and it matters.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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