So Are You Tea Party or Mainstream GOP?

Obviously, I am neither thank God! Which side are you on? Have some courage and tell us.

Establishment GOPers assail tea party on shutdown

THOMAS BEAUMONT, AP
7 hours ago


FILE - In this April 3, 2013, file photo, former Gov. Haley Barbour, right,...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — From county chairmen to national party luminaries, veteran Republicans across the country are accusing tea party lawmakers of staining the GOP with their refusal to bend in the budget impasse in Washington.
The Republican establishment also is signaling a willingness to strike back at the tea party in next fall's elections.
"It's time for someone to act like a grown-up in this process," former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu argues, faulting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and tea party Republicans in the House as much as President Barack Obama for taking an uncompromising stance.
Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is just as pointed, saying this about the tea party-fueled refusal to support spending measures that include money for Obama's health care law: "It never had a chance."
The anger emanating from Republicans like Sununu and Barbour comes just three years after the GOP embraced the insurgent political group and rode its wave of new energy to return to power in the House.
Now, they're lashing out with polls showing Republicans bearing most of the blame for the federal shutdown, which entered its 11th day Friday. In some places, they're laying the groundwork to take action against the tea party in the 2014 congressional elections.
Iowa Republicans are recruiting a pro-business Republican to challenge six-term conservative Rep. Steve King, a leader in the push to defund the health care law. Disgruntled Republicans are further ahead in Michigan, where second-term, tea party-backed Rep. Justin Amash is facing a Republican primary challenger who is more in line with — and being encouraged by — the party establishment. And business interest groups, long aligned with the Republican Party, also are threatening to recruit and fund strong challengers to tea party House members.
Tea party backers are undeterred and assail party leaders.
"They keep compromising," said Katrina Pierson, a former Dallas-area tea party organizer now challenging Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas in the 2014 GOP primary. "They all campaigned on fiscal responsibility. They just need to do what they campaigned on."
In more than a dozen interviews, Republican leaders, officials and strategists at all levels of the party blamed Obama for the shutdown but also faulted tea party lawmakers in the House, who have insisted that any deal to reopen the government be contingent on stripping money for the health care law.
An Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday showed why these party loyalists are so concerned: More Republicans told pollsters that the GOP is mishandling the shutdown than is handling it well. And among those who say it's being poorly handled, twice as many Republicans say the party is not doing enough to negotiate with Obama than those who say the party is doing too much.
Party leaders interviewed said the tea party's demands to defund the health care law — and the House leadership's willingness to follow suit — were distracting from what they said is the GOP's best strategy to recover from its 2012 losses: a focus on reducing long-term spending. They said defunding the health care law would not achieve that goal because the money was already flowing to the law.
"At the end of the day, you're fighting legislation that's already passed," said former South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson, describing the fight to defund the health care law as a lost cause.
Republican activists around the country also said in interviews that the shutdown — and House Republicans' demands — have deflected attention from problems with the launch of key parts to the health care bill.
Thousands of Americans were unable to shop for health insurance on the online marketplaces when they went live on Oct. 1 because of software glitches. And, these Republicans say, the GOP in Washington — and specifically tea party House members — got in the way of the troubled rollout, which the GOP could have seized on if the government were still open.
"We're not saying Obama is right. We're saying what Republicans are doing is wrong," said Matt Cox, a former executive director of Ohio's Cuyahoga County GOP. He said that instead of pursuing the shutdown strategy, Republicans in Washington could have passed — and taken credit for — a spending measure that kept dollar levels at those set by the automatic $1.2 trillion across-the-board cut approved last year, also called the sequester.
Generally, these Republicans said that because of the tea party's effort to defund the health care law, the Republican Party had missed an opportunity to hammer Obama after he hit a rough patch over Syria just a month ago.
Former Illinois state Sen. Laura Douglas wants to believe that the holdouts can win. But she has her doubts.
"My heart says, 'Keep fighting, don't give up,'" said Douglas, a resident of Quincy in western Illinois. "But my head says, 'If we keep this kind of thing up, we're going to get creamed next year.'"
Her worries are reflected in the AP-GfK poll. Roughly three-quarters of Republicans nationally said their party in Congress deserves a moderate degree or most of the blame for the shutdown.
Even among Republicans, those who don't support the tea party mostly disapprove of how the GOP is handling the budget issue. Just 17 percent of Americans overall consider themselves tea party backers.
And tea party allies are fighting back.
The Senate Conservatives Fund, an independent political action committee, has run ads asking tea party supporters to recruit primary election opponents for Republicans who voted for a measure that would have kept the government running with modifications in the health care law.
In South Carolina, Fairfield County Republican Chairman Kevin Thomas is among those on the side of tea party lawmakers.
"The only leverage we have is the budget," he said.

 

I side with the Tea Party...the only group concerned with doing the right thing and fixing our structural fiscal problems.

 

Why am I not surprised? If by "fixing" you mean having our credit rating downgraded, throwing the world into economic chaos, and making us the laughing stock of the western democracies, I can sort of live without that kind of "fixing". You can't even acknowledge that Obama has presided over the slowest deficit growth since FDR but you claim to be this uber-financial hawk. More like just another Tea Party crazy in my opinion.

 

The madness certainly has to stop...you're spot on!

 

UHM!?!? Our credit got downgraded under Obama's watch, not the Tea Party's. And it got downgrade because we were/are spending too much. Obama still want to spend more and the Tea Party want to cut spending. Think about that and just maybe it will sink in.

 

You are so dense.

A Standard & Poor’s director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default — a position put forth by some Republicans.
Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said.
“That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”

Now you idiots are going to get the U.S. credit rating lowered again and of course point the finger elsewhere. Your stupidity is unfixable while facts remain just as constant.

 

So that's a Yay for the Tea Party? You never so have the courage to just answer a direct question do you?

 

So you are saying debt is a good thing and cutting debt is bad? Somehow I have never heard of anyone defaulting by reducing their debt.

 

When Obama doubles the deficit, then is forced (via the Tea Party influenced Sequester) to dial back his excesses...you call that fiscal discipline on Obama's part?

Once Obama learns to genuflect, there won't be any "economic chaos".

 

People who refuse to learn from history are really not worth conversing with.
You WILL go down with the nut cases that you follow. I'm not going to miss by the way.

 

I bet you got beat up a lot in school.

 

Not at my size. But thanks for the concern.

 

I put the tea party in the same category as other extreme radical segments of otherwise ordinary ideologies, such as the Taliban. Any party that is open to regressing human progress and returning to some mythological golden age of suppressed human rights and isolationism is completely insane.

 

The Tea Party simply "progresses" it a different (responsible) direction. If I were you I would be scared of the Tea Party, too.

 

Since when has fiscal respopnsibility been considered "extreme"? Oh yeah, that's part of BO's new normal.

 

LOL!! I just read your hat...pretty good!

 

You may want to research deficit spending charts over the past 30 years. BO has been at or near the bottom of spenders. As for being afraid of the tea party, you are correct. I've seen what extreme fanaticism has done around the world and it's never good for anyone except those in power. If you want to read an interesting article on the psychology of extremism, read this ( not that your extremism will believe/understand/accept it): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-i-mitroff/republican-extremists_b_940509.html

 

I'll save you the seconds: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/09/03/yep-obamas-a-big-spender-just-like-his-predecessors/

 

Okay, let's say both sides share equal responsibility (and we can use whatever terminolgy or justification you desire)...the bottom line is that we are in nearly insurmountable debt and it's only getting worse.
So, we decide, when is enough enough?

 

No no, wait...I want to see how you guys formulated obamas spending as out of control compared to anyone else's. Please enlighten me here. Aside from that, I will admittedly agree, regardless of who is in the white house, spending needs to slow. That's something all parties should agree on....I hope.