The Plan to Make America Fail Repuke Style

"So we just got out clocks cleaned in the last election, let's destroy America to get the White House back." The slash and burn politics of the Right.
Robert Draper Book: GOP's Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration


WASHINGTON -- As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.
The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."
According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.
For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.
"If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."
The conversation got only more specific from there, Draper reports. Kyl suggested going after incoming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes while at the International Monetary Fund. Gingrich noted that House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) had a similar tax problem. McCarthy chimed in to declare "there's a web" before arguing that Republicans could put pressure on any Democrat who accepted campaign money from Rangel to give it back.

The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily. The Republicans had agreed on a way forward:
Go after Geithner. (And indeed Kyl did, the next day: ‘Would you answer my question rather than dancing around it—please?’)
Show united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies. (Eight days later, Minority Whip Cantor would hold the House Republicans to a unanimous No against Obama’s economic stimulus plan.)

Begin attacking vulnerable Democrats on the airwaves. (The first National Republican Congressional Committee attack ads would run in less than two months.)
Win the spear point of the House in 2010. Jab Obama relentlessly in 2011. Win the White House and the Senate in 2012.​

"You will remember this day," Draper reports Newt Gingrich as saying on the way out. "You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown."
Draper's timeline is correct. On Jan. 21, 2009, Kyl aggressively questioned Geithner during his confirmation hearings. On Jan. 28, 2009, House GOP leadership held the line against the stimulus package (Senate GOP leadership would prove less successful in stopping defections).
The votes, of course, can be attributed to legitimate philosophical objection to the idea of stimulus spending as well as sincere concern that the secretary of the Treasury should personally have a clean tax-paying record. But what Draper's book makes clear is that blunt electoral-minded ambitions were the animating force.
Whether or not that's shocking depends on the degree to which one's view of politics has been jaded. What's certainly noteworthy is the timing. When Mitch McConnell said in October 2010 that his party's primary goal in the next Congress was to make Obama a one-term president, it was treated as remarkably candid and deeply cynical. Had he said it publicly in January 2009, it would likely have caused an uproar.
By extension, however, the Draper anecdote also negatively reflects on the Obama administration for failing to appreciate how quickly congressional Republicans would oppose the president's agenda.

 

I really don't think they had to try very hard lately. The IRS, Benghazi, coal, Keystone, fast and furious, Fiskar, Solyndra, etc. and so on are doing the job fairly well.

 

Fixed that for ya...

 

Ha! Ha!

 

Can't we agree that neither party is taking us where we need to go?

This forum seems more like a dodge-ball match than a place to share and explore new ideas...

 

Hang around yakpoo.

Occasionally there are brief periods of actual discussion.

 

Oh please.... this is a distracting thread I warned you folks about. Hook line and sinker hes gottcha......
Obamacare......Feds exempt themselves......IRS .....we dont want it......Unions......give us waivers.......cmon fools..........your argueing with mr nation about garbage......stick to the point.......he is a liar......zero credibility......like all liberals.......don't be fools

 

The conservatives on tbis site remind me of panty waste suckbags......suck the republicans news feed........go ahead.......lick Newts balls.....fuck you

 

Unfortunately, this site tends to sink to the level of the lowest discourse. It has for years. It won't change. You can blame either side you want or both. It doesn't really matter to them. Thank you anyway for the some of the bar raising you have done. I may not agree with your views but you present them in a civil manner. I wish we had more Right leaning folks like you here and less of the Tea Party types. It is what it is I guess.

 

This is an example of the absolutist view that basically paints all as either black or white and causes this site to not be a place to discuss issues but throw insults and hyper-criticisms at your foes. You can't have intelligent discussions with people that only see the world in absolute terms. I gave up a long time ago and just make fun of them for my own entertainment. I become as guilty as they do but when you are faced with only extreme views and absolutist opinions, what else is left? I think I liked it better when the moderators kept them in check but it took a lot of their attention and I think they pretty much gave up. Who wouldn't?

 

Anyway, you are right but then we would have to admit that our system is broken. Neither side is willing to see their own problems because airing them would only invite even more criticism from the other side. And let's face it, neither side has any shortage of criticisms to level at the other. It is introspection that is lacking.

I was talking to a friend this weekend about what I thought the Democrats should do to own the political landscape. They should split into the Democratic Party and the Green Party or some further Left political party. They should remain in lockstep until the election is over and then government by compromising with each other instead of with the Right since they would have a large majority. If the Republicans tried the same thing, they would have the two parties of Conservatives and the Tea Party extremists. Their numbers are dying and they'd eventually just disappear. Sounds like a plan eh?

 

Is that your mind?

 

He was just limiting his post to the words he thought you'd understand.

 

Please let him speak for himself sometime! I don't want to hear what he has to say, but it would be nice if he would just stop parroting you once in a while.

 

I have become a big fan of the "Jury Duty" approach to democracy. Your number gets drawn, you got to go to congress. Of course if you are really cleaver and can play the system and get out of it, that's fine because we don't want you there. I have not been impressed with what our best and brightest have to offer. Let's keep the rock throwing and mud slinging down to the local level where you can at least move across county lines if it doesn't suit you.

 

Please bend over and kiss me between the cheeks. You parrot lap monkeys have no business telling anyone how to post anything here.
Here's an idea parrot lap monkey, if you don't like my response...DON'T F'ING READ IT!!! Dumb ass!

 

Shut up, racist.