When I heard that Sen. Lugar was voting in favor of Obama-court nominee, Elana Kagan, and the subsequent uproar from some quarters accusing Lugar of being a RINO (Republican In Name Only), I opined that something had jumped the shark: conservatism, Lugar, or the folks pissed off by Lugar.
Matt Tully has a column in the Indy Star on how tiring the partisanship is. I tend to agree. I don’t have a Broder-esque desire for bipartisanship just for the sake of bipartisanship. Where there are fundamental policy disagreements, I think you should compromise where you can, and fight it out the best you’re able and let the dust settle where it may when the votes come down. But, in D.C., it’s not even about policy so much anymore. It’s basically “my team rules, your team sucks” and you shape your policy arguments to fit that basic premise. If the other team adopts your policy, you don’t agree, you run from the policy. It’s about winning the game, not about governing, and it’s stupid.
“Duty, honor, party.” And I’m not so sure about honor.
Does it really matter who we elect anymore? While these guys fight it out for the prestiege of victory and the approval of the great unwashed masses, the keys to actual governance has been handed over to Big Business.
Is it tiring? I recall this blog going overboard pre-election about Bush & deficit spending as bad. Nary a peep on Obama’s increased deficit spending.
Maybe I’m missing wherein the fundamental policy difference lies on this issue? Because it looks like ‘the other team adopts your policy, and you run from the policy’ here.
First of all, my posts have been relatively anemic across the board over the last year or two.
But, to your specific point, were the Republicans proposing ending the Bush tax cuts or the War in Iraq as a means of deficit reduction/mitigation and I was suddenly against those things because the Republicans were for them? Because that’s pretty much the dynamic at work with, for example, cap & trade policy.
I don’t know what the hell to do with deficit spending. History suggests that you don’t tighten up government spending during a recession without making the recession worse. But, unfortunately, history also suggests that the governing party will get punished for addressing the deficits during flush years, allowing the opposing party to reap the benefits and spend you into a mess all over again; which is strategically valuable in that it limits policy options for the party that has to come in and clean up the mess.
Doug: as you know, Bush II had two appointments. (1) Samuel Alito was confirmed by the Senate 58-42, with only 4 Democrats supporting his confirmation. (2) John Roberts was confirmed 78-22, and did not receive a majority of Democrat votes either. Both of these candidates served on the US Court of Appeals (generally considered the best experience next to being on the SCOTUS).
Let’s compare this to the Clinton appointments. Clinton’s appointees, Ginsburg and Breyer, received 13 nay votes COMBINED from the Republicans (these two candidates also served on the Court of Appeals).
In stating this, I am trying to illustrate that Republicans have not played hardball with liberal appointees like Democrats have done to conservative appointees. Were you as upset about the lack of support from Democrats for the confirmation of these two Republican candidates? If not, how do you reconcile that? (I wouldn’t blame you if you were against Myers).
It’s not the lack of support that’s getting me down; it’s the reaction to the support that is given. I don’t recall (and maybe there was) a great hue and cry against the Democrats who voted for Alito and Roberts.
For my part, I thought Roberts was a reasonable nomination and Alito was more of a partisan ideologue. (I’m still watching to see how right or wrong I was on those opinions.)
Fair enough Doug. Perhaps you hear less outrage considering Dem senators supporting a Republican because there are so few Dem senators that do support Repub nominations?
The problem with the analysis provided by hoosieraccess is: If Kagan is (incorrectly) rejected, there is a significant chance that the next SCOTUS candidate might be more liberal and/or less qualified (and therefore less attractive to conservatives).
What do they do then?
It really is no wonder that the Democrats did not bother running anyone to oppose Senator Lugar in the last election. I am so sorry to know that neither he or Bayh oppose the nomination of Elena Kagan to SCOTUS, what with her pa’st behavior as Solicitor, her connections with Goldman Sachs and Monsanto, etc., and her written and spoken notices of her reluctance to fully support the Bill of Rights, in particular the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
On spending and recessions, I find the recession of 1921-22 is very instructive. It was short, very severe, marked by great decline in spending, high unemployment (10-11%), greatest deflation in the time such data had been collected, and high lending rates. But after that? The Roaring 20s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_of_1920%E2%80%9321
The Roaring 20s led to the biggest bust of them all. Unregulated, I think the markets lead to big booms and spectacular busts. The trick is to smooth things out without flat-lining it.
Well, if you can say that, then you can say that the Clinton years led to the biggest bust of our lifetimes.
Those who have tried to ‘smooth markets out’ have never succeeded, at least not long term. Greenspan was a genius, until he wasn’t.
You can definitely lay a lot of the anemic economic performance of the 00s at the feet of Clinton era policies. Bank deregulation and NAFTA helped gut our manufacturing base, for example.