The House

Discussion in 'Elections' started by Riz, Oct 24, 2008.

  1. Gamecock14

    Gamecock14 Member+

    May 27, 2010
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    If I get this right... The freedom Caucus.. and it's 40 members ...from predominantly rural / rural suburban areas of the country...are controlling the future actions of the House. There are 247 Republican Members of the House.

    I understand the 218 votes required. But still 40 people with that influence is crazy.
     
  2. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That's not really what's going on. Think of this like a 3 party parliamentary system. Then think of the Dems as a center left party, the other GOPs as a center right party, and the Freedom Caucus as a far right party. The 40 only have that power because the other 395 allow it.

    It would be a simple thing for the two centrist parties to compromise and come to an agreement and pass all manner of things. Usually these grand coalitions don't undertake any major new initiatives. They either come together to deal with a particular crisis, or they bide time and keep the trains (figuratively) running until the next election. And I think both scenarios apply. We need to pass the budget and raise the debt limit. (Arguably, we really REALLY REALLY need to eliminate the ability to use the debt limit as a doomsday device in budget negotiations.) And, we're going to have a presidential election next year.

    But the US has never used that model at the federal level, and I don't know that it's ever been used at the state level. I know that pork and perks are used to pick off a few members of the majority party in order to enable the minority party to run things at the state level from time to time. We had that in NC about 25 years ago. But what we'd be talking about here is an ideological agreement, not personal ambition.

    The GOPs would have to offer the Dems something...maybe committee parity. That's such an un-American way of doing business I wonder if the GOPs could ever make that kind of mental leap.

    But here's the kicker. We're in an environment where the 3 GOP leaders for president are all complete outsiders, anti-establishment types. We're also in an environment where GOPs across the spectrum have been lying to their voters about what is and is not possible. They lie to them about global warming, they lie to them about death panels, and on and on and on. I wonder how many of the around 200 mainstream GOPs who would be in this coalition are in districts that have been gerrymandered to the point that they're blood red.

    See, that's the irony. We're here in large part because of the conservative media echo chamber, and the powerful, powerful gerrymandering from the 2010 census. Those mainstream Republicans went along with both every step of the way. Now, they can't govern because of it. Many, many, many of them would get primaried out a la' Eric Cantor if they went along with such a scheme. The best they can manage in the GOP presidential race is, apparently, Marco Rubio.

    They enabled this creation, and now it's destroying them.

    The House self-destruction is like Trump...it's funny as shit right now. But pretty soon, if it doesn't fix itself, it ain't going to be one bit funny.
     
  3. MasterShake29

    MasterShake29 Member+

    Oct 28, 2001
    Jersey City, NJ
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If the House used either preference voting or voted in rounds where the lowest finishing candidate was eliminated each time, this scenario couldn't happen. But that ain't American so we have this.
     
  4. VFish

    VFish Member+

    Jan 7, 2001
    Atlanta, GA
    Club:
    Atlanta
    The should use the system that the Catholics use... lock them in the basement of the Congress and don't let them out until they signal they have elected a new speaker by sending a puff of white smoke up the chimney.
     
  5. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Pole vaulting? Isn't that what got McCarthy in trouble?
     
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  6. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Exactly. The Republicans are out of control, they cannot realistically be described as a majority party at this point. But as long as both the Democrats and Republicans refuse to acknowledge this, and continue to playing the two party system games, then the minority Tea Party will have power. For example, they just might have the power to shut down government. If enough Democrats would have agreed to vote for McCarthy instead of presumably voting for Pelosi for speaker, then maybe we would get a Republican leader who wouldn't try to shut down the federal government. But the Democrats are happier watching the Republicans implode, even if it risks shutting down the federal government.
     
  7. Minnman

    Minnman Member+

    Feb 11, 2000
    Columbus, OH, USA
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So it's the Dem's fault that the Reps couldn't get McCarthy nominated as the next speaker?
     
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  8. uclacarlos

    uclacarlos Member+

    Aug 10, 2003
    east coast
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    Thanks Obama!
     
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  9. American Brummie

    Jun 19, 2009
    There Be Dragons Here
    Club:
    Birmingham City FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The Democrats didn't recruit these firebrand politicians to run in 2010 or 2014. They didn't tell the Republican base that Obama was the Antichrist. They didn't say Obamacare would be a disaster. They aren't told by their voters not to compromise. Whatever mistakes the Democrats have made - and there are many - this is not one of them. If the government shuts down for a few weeks and the outcome is a Democratic House and Senate, then I'll gladly accept some short-term sacrifices in exchange.
     
  10. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You're probably going to want to expand on this point. :D

    In all seriousness, that's the issue with the IOKIYAR, both sides do it BS. The MSM narrative is that the Dems are EXPECTED to unilaterally concede. The GOPs are EXPECTED to indulge every batshit crazy thing that comes down the pike.

    I'll bet the Dems would agree to vote for McCarthy* if the GOPs gave them a little something. Wouldn't have to be much, just a little somethin' somethin'. The GOPs can't do that, though, because they'd all be primaried.

    *If you believe the media reports, that still wouldn't have made a difference. The GOPs have made the internal decision that they don't want to try to run the House by excluding the nutjobs, they don't want to pass things with those not in the Freedom Caucus. I guess that's the Dems' fault too. :rolleyes:
     
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  11. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Of course the establishment Republicans are at fault to a large extent. Given the current political climate they are being put in a difficult position, but they are largely to blame for helping create the current political climate.

    But the Democrats also have to work within the framework of the current political climate. At this point, until the balance in the house changes, everybody has to understand what can and can't be done given the expectations of the electorate. We have after all a representative system of government in which our representatives have to listen to the people.

    In terms of concessions, sometimes the Democrats and the Republicans seem to be speaking a different language when it comes to concessions. When you say "give a little something" I think they are trying to, and it's costing them a lot, but the Democrats won't see it, or maybe it is politically advantageous to them not to see it, even at the cost of maybe a government shutdown.

    For example, given the current political climate, when Boehner says that he will not shut the government over the issue of planned parenthood, that to him was not just "a little something" but a huge concession with huge political risks and implications, and I think making that concession combined with the response to it from the Tea Party and the lack of response from the Democrats is one of the biggest factors that ended up causing him to resign. I'm sure that you must be aware that, right or wrong, for many people in the US abortion and the killing or destroying (whatever you want to call it) of the fetus is an extremely sensitive issue that matters deeply to many Americans, and they see it as a sanctity of life issue, and they look at the whole planned parenthood thing from that perspective.

    So it was indeed a huge and very difficult concession for Bohener to make, and I think it ended up costing him his job. It is possible that one of the main reasons McCarthy refused to take the job may have been over having to make that same concession and dealing with the political cost involved.

    While it's true that the Republicans exploited the issue politically by making a huge deal of what one person may have said in one tape, the issue behind it is one that is real and is very divisive in America. If the Republicans were indeed to take it out of the table as Bohener said, it is from their point of view a huge and politically very costly concession. And yet, the Democrats don't see it as a concession at all. They continue with the mantra that the Republicans are not conceding anything, and they see the Planned Parenthood issue as a political opportunity to let the Republicans implode and as a chance to be able to insult them (and in the process insult the deeply held values of many Americans) by calling them nutjobs and batshit crazy over it. And their response also contributes to the current political climate that may perhaps lead to a government shutdown.

    That's the point I am trying to make.
     
  12. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    My understanding is that Boehner resigned because the Freedom Caucus was going after him, and/or he was just tired of dealing with the bullshit. The Dems had nothing to do with it. Do you have any specifics on that? What should the Dems' response have been?

    Besides that, I have not heard of anything the GOPs offered the Dems. EVERYthing I've read about this latest battle is that it's intra-party. You should look up the Hastert Rule. It's still in effect. And so long as it is, in my opinion, any blame put on the Dems is ignorant at best.
     
  13. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    I think for starters you can have moderate Democrats and Moderate Republicans reach out to each other and meet to set up a framework to agree to vote for a candidate for Speaker who will not shut down government. If neither party has taken the initiative to do it - and I obviously don't know if they have or not and neither do you- then I would say that both parties are to blame if the government does shut down.

    I still think eventually an agreement will be reached and there won't be a shut down, but all the posturing, finger pointing, and insulting the other side is helping increase the divide and making it more difficult not just to avoid the shutdown but to govern in general. Nancy Pelosi's talking-point response to Bohener's resignation is a good example of it. All she saw in his resignation was a chance to take a cheap shot at Republicans.
     
  14. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This right here is where your scenario completely collapses. Eric Cantor was by no means a moderate, but he still got primaried and defeated due to his willingness to compromise.

    With all due respect, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Yes, the House Freedom Caucus comprises about 20% of the GOP caucus. The reason they have so much clout is that the other 80% is scared shitless of being Cantored.

    Argie, we can't really have a discussion on this stuff if your context is a world that doesn't exist except in the imagination of No Labels, and the context for the rest of us is the world of objective reality. We just can't.
     
  15. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    I think your view is one-sided. I hope your partisan attitude is not a reflection of the attitude of most democrats and republicans in congress, including those who are there as my representatives, because if that was the case then there would inevitably be little if any hope for compromise.

    I could be wrong, but maybe it takes a foreigner coming from the outside without deeply held partisan allegiances to see the whole picture better. I do think you have some insight when you say we should look at the tea party republicans as sort of the equivalent of a third party in a parliamentary system. If both democrats and republicans in the house start analyzing it that way a bit more I think it will help.

    We'll see what happens, and I'm going to be watching to see how my own representatives choose to represent me. Especially since, given the demographics in my district and state, they'll probably be representing me for a very long time regardless of what happens.
     
  16. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Tom Cotton is proposing Dick Cheney for House Speaker. Yeah, that sounds like a plan to compromise. :rolleyes:
    Again, it ALREADY is the DEMONSTRATED attitude of Republicans in Congress. I can't understand that for you. You have to understand it for yourself.

    *I* remember and understand the history of sequestration. You, obviously, do not. If you did, you'd know that the whole plan was to booby trap a short term deal with the understanding that the booby trap was so severe that the two sides would be forced to compromise later. The Dems were willing to do so, but the GOPs, led by Ted Cruz, decided to blow shit up and see what happened. That's history, that's objective, that's factual. Shit, the GOPs at the time bragged about what they'd done. Were they ********ing lying?
     
  17. uclacarlos

    uclacarlos Member+

    Aug 10, 2003
    east coast
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    This is the start of your problem. Anybody remotely moderate is vilified. Dude... GOP voters rejected a conservative former governor of UTAH in 2012 b/c he was too liberal.

    Let that sink in.

    And now extend that to the House and even the Senate.

    ANY Republican who does so will get primaried by a far-right candidate.

    The entirety of Boehner's speakership has been dedicated to that strategery, and it's why he's being FORCED TO STEP DOWN.

    You take away those 40 votes, and the GOP has no power.

    Watch:

    House vote on Puppies Are Teh Awsum:

    Reality Caucus: Yeh, 205
    Democrats: Ney, 189
    Freedom Caucus: Ney, 40

    229: puppies are NOT teh Awsum
    205: puppies ARE teh Awsum

    Puppies lose. America loses.

    Um. The Dems are just sitting back doing nothing while the GOP takes potshots at themselves.
     
  18. American Brummie

    Jun 19, 2009
    There Be Dragons Here
    Club:
    Birmingham City FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Except that his main reason for resigning is that he no longer felt comfortable passing legislation with the help of Democrats. If you look at all the previous fights, the Democrats ended up helping the GOP leadership pass legislation.

    The problem was that Boehner had 247 seats in the chamber and in order to get anything passed he needed at least 77 Democrats to go along with anything he wanted done; the Freedom Caucus is about 50 members and they were gonna vote lock-step against any Boehner-led agenda items.

    ASF, I get that you don't like brinksmanship, but you're looking for it in precisely the place it isn't. You're asking the Democrats to a) vote for a Republican for Speaker to bolster Boehner or b) just try harder to pass Republican-led bills. That's absurd.
     
  19. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Yes. That's exactly what I said.

    And I don't disagree much with anything you just posted. My point is in addition to all that.
     
  20. Minnman

    Minnman Member+

    Feb 11, 2000
    Columbus, OH, USA
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Dems shouldn't come within 100 miles of this situation. It's not their responsilibility.

    Beyond that, I find it interesting that so much attention is being paid to these 40 Freedom Caucus members, as if the rest of the GOP House Caucus was, in some way, moderate by comparison. I forget who it was, but someone in here posted a graph about the relative liberal-ness and conservative-ness of the Dem and Rep Members of Congress, with the most dynamic change having been that Reps have gotten dramatically more conservative in recent decades. There used to be some overlap between conservative Dems and liberal Reps, but that overlap no longer exists. Not saying the Freedom Caucus nut jobs aren't messing things up, but the Republican's real problem is that there are probably far fewer true moderates in the House than those 40 members who make up the Fredom Caucus. Most House members are quite conservative, with the caucus itself holding far more conservative policy positions than most Americans.

    There are more than 40 Reps in the House who seem intent on destroying the federal government that, in theory, they were elected to manage.
     
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  21. American Brummie

    Jun 19, 2009
    There Be Dragons Here
    Club:
    Birmingham City FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    [​IMG]

    Assuming (as I do not) that the DW-NOMINATE measure of ideology is static (it is from about 1964 on in a lot of ways, so you can discount the early lines to some small degree), Democrats have moved from about -0.03 in 1945 to -0.4 today, while Republicans have moved from 0.2 to 0.55 today. The members of the House Freedom Caucus range anywhere from about 0.7 to 1.0 on the scale. Visit www.voteview.com to learn how DW is calculated.
     
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  22. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Destroy? Reduce, maybe. You may disagree with a reduction, but the idea of reducing the role of the federal government does not equate destroying it anymore than the idea of increasing the role of the federal government means creating it.
     
  23. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    No. I am taking the analogy brought by superdave that we should look at the tea party as the equivalent of a third party in a parliamentary system, and running with it.

    Obviously in the short term the rise of the tea party hurts establishment republicans more than democrats, because it is the establishment republicans who are losing seats to tea party. That is why republicans are more concerned about the tea party at this point than democrats are. (or terrified, as a poster put it).

    But in the long term the phenomenom can hurt democrats more, because in reality the views of the tea party are further away from those of the democrats than those of the republicans, so to the extent that the "third party" gains ground, it is the democrats who should worry more.

    That's why my point is that instead of laughing and ridiculing they should be thinking of an alliance with more moderate republicans in order to help diminish the power of the tea party. And if they don't do that, if they sit back and watch, then in my view they will share some of the blame for the rise of the tea party and its effects.

    I used the stoppage of government as an example because it is one potential effect, but it's obviously not just about that. By not trying to work to try to isolate the tea party I'm not saying that they are to blame as much as the republicans who created the conditions that led to the tea party, but I still think they are to blame some. And in the long term it could hurt them more.
     
  24. American Brummie

    Jun 19, 2009
    There Be Dragons Here
    Club:
    Birmingham City FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    In a parliamentary system, parties are even more unified and less willing to work with each other. Grand Coalitions in the Israeli or German style are rare precisely for this reason.

    Assume a three-party system: Democrats, Moderate Republicans, Fuckin' Crazies. They are arrayed along a single-issue ideological spectrum like so. C means the center, or the median attitude in the country.

    |-------------D----------C----MR--------FC-------|

    Broadly speaking, no single party can win on a vote. However, two parties can unite to pass a bill. So factions produce legislation over and over again, hoping it will attract enough people from the other two parties to win. The problem is that whenever a party introduces a vote, all one party has to do is slightly tweak the proposal to make it better, and it instantly becomes better for two parties and worse for one. For example:

    |-------------D----------B1--B2--MR--------FC-------|

    The Democrats propose B1, which is appealing to Democrats and Moderate Republicans. To counter, Fuckin' Crazies introduce B2, which is slightly more appealing to Moderate Republicans and themselves. Then Democrats would introduce something else, and it goes on forever. The problem with this is that eventually, legislators produce things they prefer less than their original proposal, leading to transitive and acyclic preferences. In other words, chaos. This is harder to explain in a single-dimensional space, so I've linked to a multidimensional graph that shows how chaos can occur.

    That doesn't happen in the United States, or Great Britain, or Israel, or New Zealand. The reason why is very simple: agenda-setting. The theorem I'm deriving this from says that there can be chaos only when there is no dictator controlling the very process by which legislation becomes a bill. The Speaker of the House is such a dictator. S/he comes in, points to the status quo, then to a new bill, and says "you either prefer the status quo or a new bill." Then the legislature votes, and we get a law or no law. Chaos disappears.

    The problem with letting the Democrats and moderate Republicans merge together is once the speaker's job is defined by appealing to two parties, any space on the line between D and MR in the lines above is "in the winset," i.e. there are sufficient legislators indifferent to any two proposals to induce chaos. Once there, Democrats could (and would) demand increasing and increasing concessions to maintain unity until we're right back to square one.

    Parties that do not get along, parties that never cross lines to vote, parties that automatically condemn the other side's legislation...THAT is the hallmark of parliamentary systems. If you want compromise and unity, you want a two-party system. And to do that, you need to kick out the crazies who the moderate Republicans recruited in 2010 and 2014 in order to win.

    So in the short run, the Democrats and Republicans would induce chaos. In the long run, we'd be right back where we are. Even if the crazies "gained ground," they wouldn't gain enough ground to upset the dynamics of the two-party system. Just aren't enough of them.
     
  25. russ

    russ Member+

    Feb 26, 1999
    Canton,NY
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah,but if we could disarm the crazies,the sane parties could work without fear of being killed.

    Wait,which thread is this again?

    And wait,no left crazy party in the USA?4 reals?
     

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