Tuesday, October 20, 2015

2008 Told Ya So: Republi-CON Can't Govern (But HRC Showed She Can)

UPDATE VI:  "If you had to bet $100 on any single person to win the 2016 general election — to win $100 if you guess correctly — every rational gambler would chose Clinton."

Read the Washington Post, The math is clear: Hillary Clinton has better odds of becoming president than anybody else — by far.  

UPDATE V:  "Before all the craziness — before Donald Trump and Ben Carson and the need for two-tiered debates — Republicans’ biggest fear about next year’s election was having to run against Hillary Clinton. As we saw Tuesday night, they were right to worry."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP was right to fear Clinton.

UPDATE IV:  After the first Democratic presidential primary debate, Republi-cons should worry that 2016 is lost.

"Her experience and self-assurance in a setting where she has found herself dozens of times put her in command as she and her four lesser-known rivals for the Democratic nomination stood side by side for the first time. . .

Clinton appeared to be -positioning herself for a general-election campaign against whichever Republican emerges from that party’s nomination brawl."

Read the Washington Post, A self-assured performance by Clinton in Democratic presidential debate.

UPDATE III:  "House Republicans face a fateful choice — and not just over who will be their next speaker. It is a choice about whether they want to be a realistic, governing entity or a bomb-throwing band of purists that will, inevitably, hurt the party’s prospects not only for retaining the current GOP majorities in the House and Senate but for retaking the White House as well.

Based on the current evidence, the answer may well be the latter: bomb-throwing purists, at least among enough of the majority to prevent Republicans from functioning."

Read the Washington Post, Why would Paul Ryan want to be speaker?

UPDATE II:  "The question for House Republicans — and again, Gowdy hit the nail on the head — is what rock bottom looks like. Rock bottom at the presidential level for the party came in 1964 when Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination but proved too conservative for the country as a whole and won only 52 electoral votes against Lyndon Johnson.

Given how heavily gerrymandered most House districts are, it's hard to imagine House Republicans suffering broad-scale electoral losses (or losing control of the majority) before the national redrawing of congressional lines in 2021. The one thing I can imagine that might meet the standards of 'rock bottom' is if Ryan decides not to run for speaker and what follows is a protracted, nasty fight — the result of which is some sort of power-sharing deal within the GOP or, even more remarkably, with Democrats.

Those scenarios — especially a power-sharing deal with Democrats — seem very unlikely to me, which may mean that House Republicans are still a ways from rock bottom. But even if they haven't bottomed out just yet, that doesn't mean there is anyone in the party who can lead it in its current form. There isn't."

Read the Washington Post, Trey Gowdy is right. The House is basically ungovernable.

UPDATE:  The Republi-con party "brought this upon itself with phony promises and incendiary but empty rhetoric."

Read the Washington Post, How Kevin McCarthy predicted his own demise.  

As I first said in 2008:

Fear, Anger, and Hatred, a great election strategy for the Republi-cons, just not a very effective governing philosophy.

Read the Washington Post, Washington finally figures out that congressional GOP is disastrously broken., which notes that "John Boehner himself identified exactly what drives the party’s right flank, suggesting that conservative Republicans whip people 'into a frenzy' by promising things 'they know are never going to happen.' Such as using the debt limit to bend Obama and Dems to their will."

Read also the Washington Post, Kevin McCarthy falls to a conservative coup, which alludes to the alleged affair by McCarthy.

Go The Donald, Go!

And because Obama has no backbone, here's hoping that Republi-con will call their own bluff:

I dare ya, I double dare ya, to shutdown the government and default.