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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Really wish the GOP would adopt a strategy of being the “adults in the room” as a counter to the woke excess side of the Dems. Unfortunately there seems to be much more money to made by being an attention whore like Gaetz than attempting to govern.

The GOP are being the Adults in the room in this case: they are standing up for what they believe in, willing to sink the ship of state and engage in brinksmanship rather than be intimidated and role over like children being threatened by their teacher. Only a child would fall for the same "Well what are you gonna do, vote for the other guy?" shit that has been happening over and over to Democrats for 30 years now.

The petulant children are the Squad et al; willing to threaten and wheedle and whine, but they never get anything done because they'll never risk mommy's displeasure. The left wing of the democratic party sits on its hands and does nothing productive, where the right wing of the Republican party throws out leadership, primaries leadership, throws elections, and spits on the centrist blackmail about "Well then the Democrats will win!"

I don’t see Matt Gaetz voting trump for speaker as a principled stance to take.

I suppose in the end it doesn’t really matter, but just another disappointment from politics.

Why not?

What major right-wing goals do you think the House could achieve with a Democrat Senate and President if they were to adopt the strategy of being the "adults in the room" and why is it important that they be done without a couple days of protests votes regarding McCarthy?

It’s a consistency thing. I’d like the GOP to consistently show that they are serious about governing. It’s been difficult for me to take the republicans serious since Trump and the midterms.

Honestly this just sounds like “boo outgroup” to me. The other side isn’t “serious” because they aren’t behaving how I want them too.

The GOP is my in group! It shows how far gone parts of the GOP base has gone (the part that is responsible for losing the senate majority) that my criticism is making me out to be a liberal. Matt Gaetz voting Trump for speaker is just another example of him and his followers not being serious people.

What would "serious people" be attempting to accomplish at this juncture?

What does "serious about governing" mean? Does it mean "doing everything possible to ensure that law enforcement is not interfering in politics?" Because that's what some of the holdouts are demanding with regard to the FBI and J-6 committees. Does it mean "do everything possible to ensure that major policy choices are publicy debated and openly voted on, as opposed to smuggled out the back door as riders on unrelated bills, as just happened with the water bill and omnibus?" Becuase the holdouts are demanding that too.

It really seems to me that many calls for "seriousness" or being "the adult in the room," unless tied to specifics, are just about aesthetics, and displeasure with anything unruly or that breaks with current practice in a way that displeases anyone with a megaphone.

Can you explain why this is unserious? Listen to Chip Roy. He doesn’t seem like a non-adult. Yes it is different compared to what has come before but adding 20 trillion in debt over 10’years doesn’t seem like an adult move. Waiting until a week before the end of the session to pass an omnibus doesn’t seem like an adult action. Maybe throwing sand in the start to try to prevent the temptation of those things later on is in fact the adult thing. The siren song is strong.

I don't know if "they are serious" is false because of the word "serious", but it's at least false because of the word "they" (with "GOP" as the antecedent). If the Republicans were voting as a block to try to prevent the things you're describing from happening, and if they actually meant it, that would be impressive. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that McCarthy is a traitor to the responsible anti-spendthrift prompt-budgeting causes, he's only got 19 or 20 Republicans trying to stop him, not 219. In a favorable interpretation of their actions we would have to say that only 10% of GOP House members are serious about governing, but they're being thwarted by the other 90%!

And that "being thwarted" is a bit embarrassing too. Maybe I'll be more optimistic after we find out what juicy concessions they extract or what compromise speaker they get instead, but for now, I'd be more sanguine about Republican improvements to the future of non-last-minute budget negotiations if they could at least negotiate with each other without a stalemate.

OK, but what are the specific goals you'd like to obtain if they're serious about governing? My perspective has been almost the polar opposite of yours; I agree that Trump and friends come off as clownishly incompetent, but the reality of their policy positions and pre-Covid outcomes was preferable to what I'd expect to get with more of the very serious people in charge. I'm just not clear what I should find appealing about the very serious people continuing to increase the concentration of wealth and power in the federal government.

Republicans have a different set of priorities to democrats, and democrats are less willing to compromise on Republican priorities, which include ineffectual border pork, social media laws that do nothing except increase legal costs, and grandstanding in the name of Covid accountability than republicans are on the de facto democrat priorities, which include bombing things, making upper class tax cuts more complicated, and smearing money around to their political friends’ nephews’ fraternity brothers.

Both-sidesing low-effort and uncharitable group criticism does not really cure the low-effort and uncharitable nature of your criticism. Please remember that

We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.

If the House Republicans could present a similarly united front,

But the Republicans aren't a united front on many issues, and haven't been for nearly a decade. The parties are different.

That's only because the Republican congressional leadership are such sell-outs toward their base, desperate to curry favor with Washington, D.C. elites and the left-aligned mainstream media. Democrats will never be so generous, because they get those things for free. Unfortunately for the GOP, they may have sold out too much this time.

I don't think I'm following - sure, Democrats were able to get a bunch of increased spending passed by Trump, but I don't think this implies that Republicans will be able to get a bunch of decreased spending passed by Biden. If, instead, the suggestion is that they should just figure out which things they'd like to increase spending on, then we're back to there being a couple dozen "extremists" that are against increased spending and are serving their constituents by rejecting the promise to compromise by spending more on slightly different things.

The sort of claim made in that Wiki really chaps my hide:

The sequester lowered spending by a total of approximately $1.1 trillion versus pre-sequester levels over the approximately 8-year period from 2013 to 2021.

Let's cut things a bit short so we don't bump into the Covid spending and just look at 2013 up through 2020. Federal outlays increased from $3.72 trillion to $4.87 trillion over that 7-year period. Only in government could this be considered a budget cut and only among Republicans could this be considered a negotiated victory.

Spending increased between Q1 2013 to Q1 2015, going from $3.72 to trillion to $3.97 trillion. There were no "cuts", just a slowdown in the planned rate of growth. My position is that a Republican Congress that is led by the "adults in the room" will continue to increase federal spending. I do not see any prior experience that suggests that they will actually decrease the federal budget or even make meaningful cuts to the worst sectors of federal government. You referred to the sequestration deal as "doing well" and I regard it as a perfect example of how Republican wins tend to be conservative losses.

I would sort of consider that a cut. We have population growth and we’re running 1.7% inflation then. So 3% growth would have been same per capita spending. Plus productivity growth.

So per capita was about flat during that time period and the budget shrunk compared to the economies size. Probably should have shrunk more but it was a small shrinkage. Though not much when your goal is to cut budget.

Except the game isn’t rigged. To win you need to win elections and then govern once you actually win. The Dems managed to pass quite a bit of legislation while in power recently and it’s debatable if republicans would be able to do the same if given power again.

Republicans are conservative. Which means keep things as they are. The primary conservative position is to legislate rarely and mostly obstruct. I don’t know people on the left keep saying the GOP should do more. When conservatives by definition are primarily obstructionists. Occasionally act to roll back something that went to far. And occassionally something happens in the world and they have to do something. 9/11 being an example of this.

Republicans are conservative. Which means keep things as they are.

No they actually aren't. Republicans have a large number of fairly radical proposals which most of the party (though not all of it) agrees with, including destruction of large parts of the federal bureaucracy, and roll-back of many current federal laws.

“Occasionally act to roll back something that went too far”. Which I completely agree with doing with regards to the federal bureaucracy. And I’ve posted that in prior threads. They want the fbi to go back to catching drug dealer, white collar thieves, etc.

You are not contradicting my point.

Also this session won’t be a legislative session. To roll back the bureaucracy it’s going to be hearings and proving their cases. They need the presidency in all likelihood to launch the war. Right now it’s about visibility on the overreach of the Feds.

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