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The Republicans started an ill-advised conflict without an exit strategy? Who could've seen that coming!
Surprisingly (and I think this is the problem), none of them.
The ones who voted against McCarthy’s ouster might have seen this coming. (Though plenty just wanted to keep the shitty status quo that was keeping Ukraine unfunded).
I was really nervous that the Dems fucked up in voting him out, and that we’d end up with a worse speaker (like Jordan), but been pleasantly relieved by the holdouts who seem to want a slightly less insane speaker.
They’ve even struggled at times on basic votes to keep the chamber functioning.
You seem to be assuming that proper functioning was their goal. They were sent there to tear it all down, which is precisely what they did. Never forget that they play by an entirely different set of rules.
Not to mention all of their dysfunction and obstruction is just a smoke screen so the wealthy can continue extracting wealth from our economy and offshoring it. Republicans are in government to ensure that the status quo does not change unless it's for the benefit of the ultra wealthy or fundamentally religious.
The Republican end game is to turn the USA into something resembling Mexico or India where the wealthy can do whatever they like at our expense.
Except that many who support it do not know that is the goal. They think it's about morality somehow, like abortion=murder but somehow school shootings are meh, whatever.
Religion getting involved in politics doesn't always lead to a bad outcome - e.g. that's how slaves were freed in the UK - but it sure does create a pipeline where people can be fed whatever misinformation, anti-vax, anti-science, anti-facts, etc. Ironically Jesus Himself says things like "don't put heavy burdens onto others without offering to help them", "workers deserve their (living) wages,... that very same day that they work even so don't withhold it for days just bc it is convenient for you - they also have needs and you must be considerate of them", and my personal favorite, "test EVERYTHING against what you KNOW to be true" i.e. be skeptical, but unfortunately Christians aren't listening to Jesus anymore so much as whatever they are fed from the pulpit.:-(
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You're a few hundred years too late on the last paragraph.
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oops can't fund school lunches or ukraine defense if there's no functioning house, whooops! oh no, who could have seen this coming (cues howler monkey greene)
They didn't care before, but now they have a new conflict in Israel. They tied the government's shoelaces together at just the moment they needed it to function so they can help kill brown people and get their god to start the rapture (who is apparently too helpless to do it himself).
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Less that they don't know HOW to end it and more that they don't WANT it to end.
They are perfectly happy with a non-functional government, it's what they have wanted all along. The less that actively gets done, the happier they are.
Look at Jim Jordan - 16 years in the House, ZERO bills passed.
The incompetence is the point.
They sell their voters a vision of a swamp filled with child molesting, corrupt politicians and the they fulfill that vision once elected.
"Government is broken! Elect me and I'll show you!" ;)
I hate to say this, but doing nothing is the low bar, regressing a medium bar, and fascism the targer.
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I feel like they have gone too far off the deep end recently. You have to present some modicum of competency to get elected, usually, even if you just plan on shitting the place up.
Competent leadership went out the window with the rise of the Tea Party over a decade ago now and it's only gotten worse.
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They struggled to keep the government open and to keep the United States from defaulting on its debt.
Writer seems to misunderstand, it was never the goal of the Republicans to do either of those things. Those were threats they were making unless they got their way.
Frankly if Republicans are caught in a war, civil or otherwise, that they themselves started, they should just look to their role models through history for guidance. Lose the war, surrender, and maybe go out on their own terms in a bunker somewhere.
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Republicans Started a Civil War They Don’t Know How to End
Anybody with a tiny knowledge of American history will know how to end it. Just look at how we ended the American Civil War, and then do the same to MAGA. Appeasing them doesn't work. Fight them directly. Eject them from the GOP and force them to start their own party. Find your own people to run against them in their districts and campaign hard. Get rid of MAGA like the plague it is.
I'm sure they're afraid that Democrats will take advantage of the situation and gain more power. During the American Civil War, France invaded Mexico because it had the opportunity while the US was distracted. But the US had no choice but to focus on our own issues. All that other stuff had to wait while we sorted our own shit out.
The same thing goes for the GOP. They'll have to work with the Democrats to get anything done at least until they can sort their shit out. This is one of those situations where the moral solution aligns very well with the practical solution.
I mean I get what you're saying, but this was their solution. They aligned themselves with these nutjobs precisely because they saw the demographic shift in the US and feared they would never win another election. There is no second-place, as far as they're concerned. This is what 'at-all-costs' looks like. It was this or political irrelevance. Changing their values meant losing their identity, which would be equivalant to death.
Eject them from the GOP
this would require republicans to grow a spine (not likely given their opposition to stem cell treatments) or have a sense of basic decency, love for their country, all things we know the GOP will not manage any time soon.
We should reanimate Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and just turn them loose on the caucus.
If Lincoln was alive today, he'd be a Democrat.
After he fucking strangled Trump. For sure.
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You know when magas have been promising another civil war, I didn’t predict it was going to be amongst themselves like this. But they did warn us it was coming.
The moment they aired the clip of Gym telling the reporter, "The American people don't want us to work with the democrats" I laughed my motherfucking ass off. No, Gym. We want you to go away and some of you to go to jail for a long time because you broke your oath to the constitution and attempted to end it.
I mean, the only way for it to ever end was total fascist victory or total Republican destruction. There was no other endgame, and they had to know that. Which makes what they were hoping for obvious. Thankfully they were never going to win it fair and square, and their cheats aren't working for now. Hopefully this is the last gasp for the GOP.
So... If the GOP crumbles, do we get a new Left of Left I can vote for? You know, someone that actually wants to fund the elderly and healthcare and basic human rights, stop the war on drugs?
My "if I could wave a political magic wand" solution would be:
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The Republicans all but disappear. Maybe they would get 1% of the vote every election cycle, but nobody would take their candidate seriously. They'd get, at most, one piece per election cycle saying "looks like the Republicans are running a Nazi Klansman who wears his hood and waves around a Nazi flag at every event. And on actually important political news..."
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The Democratic party would split. One faction would be the Centrists. They would effectively be a "conservative" party in that they would be to the right. However, they would support LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, etc. They might not support universal healthcare via Medicare For All, but they'd want as many people to have affordable health care and health insurance.
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The Progressives would split off from the Centrists. They would push for things like Medicare for All and other major policy changes.
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First Past The Post would get replaced with Ranked Choice or Approval Voting so that third parties could thrive. I prefer Ranked Choice, but Approval Voting is likely easier for the masses. In fact, they pretty much use it all the time on social media. "If you want to vote for Jack Johnson, click the 'like' button next to his name. If you want to vote for John Jackson, click the 'like' button next to HIS name."
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I mean... democrats in aggregate are conservative as all fuck. Biden stated "things will not fundamentally change" which is as conservative a sentiment as anyone could say. Anytime anything that doesn't directly benefit the rich is proposed, democrats are lukewarm at best.
Seeing the Republicans self destruct in culture war garbage and just straight up bafflingly spiteful "policy" is amusing, but there's another effect of the Republicans' dick measuring contest to see who is more reactionary: They've gone off the rails moving right and democrats have been more than happy to shift into the moderate to center right voids that have been freed up. There is no viable left in this country. Bernie and AOC are not only outliers, but AOC in particular has blunted the more prickly parts of her platform and conceded quite a bit when it comes to votes and stances on policy.
AOC in particular has blunted the more prickly parts of her platform and conceded quite a bit when it comes to votes and stances on policy.
That's called "leadership". Politics is the art of the possible. It's not a feel good love fest where everyone hugs and agrees with you.
AOC and others have been very good at moving Biden to the left. This presidency has been one of the most productive for the left wing of the Democratic Party. They passed a single bill that cut prescription drug prices, funded climate change legislation, and funded the IRS to crack down on rich tax cheats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act
What more could they add? Everyone gets a puppy and can kick Clarence Thomas in the groin one time?
What more could they add?
Packing the court and ejecting the coup participants would be nice. Not to mention patching the holes the GOP poked in the ACA. Closing more tax loopholes for the 1%.
Beyond that? Medicare for all, UBI, an actual privacy law that does anything at all, some sort of legislation on police brutality and racial profiling, something to fix gerrymandering, a proposal to eliminate the Electoral College and First-Past-The-Post, a bill to end Citizens United...the FCC is actually moving forward on Net Neutrality now, so that's cool. But there's plenty more they could do.
and can kick Clarence Thomas in the groin one time?
Well hang on a second. I think we should hear the cons of this proposal.
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Since fascism has no endgame--only eternal struggle--it was more a question of the fascists destroying their own country or not before they get cleared out.
It wouldn't take much of a push for the GOP to crumble right now.
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“My vote counted less than everyone else’s vote,” said Don Bacon, an anti-Jordan moderate from Nebraska. “In America, all of our votes count the same.”
This is an ironic complaint coming from the Senator from Nebraska (population 2,000,000). His constituents enjoy Senatorial votes that are ten times more impactful than a resident of New York (population 20,000,000)
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The 1st American Civil War never ended, it just went cold for a few decades. It started heating up again with Nixon's "Southern Strategy", and has just been getting hotter ever since.
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Republicans, being hoisted: "wtf, that's MY petard!"
Can't we just move on without them? They're bad for America anyways.
He's not a "firebrand", he's a piece of shit
Republicans: Drain the Swamp... into Congress?
Have we ever had a government shutdown during a general election?
With how clearly this lays at the feet of the gop, how bad will this make them suffer if the government isn’t open during the election? What happens to the election even?
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epublicans
Are they generally rejecting their own “R” now as well?
Hah, nice catch. Fixed.
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Republicans have shut down Congress, this was their only goal, and they've been 100% successful in achieving it.
the only solution: fight to the death. let C-SPAN air it
Sell it pay per view and watch the national debt go away!
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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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