The Republicans and Democrats are both "in power," obviously, given that the Republicans control the White House, but the Democrats control the House and Senate.
With that in mind, here's the New York Times on McCain:
The nominee’s friend described him as a "restless reformer who will clean up Washington." His defeated rival described him going to the capital to "drain that swamp."” His running mate described their mission as "change, the goal we share." And that was at the incumbent party’s convention.
After watching two political conclaves the last two weeks, it would be easy to be confused about which was really the gathering of the opposition. As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment.
You would think that the author would at least mention somewhere in this article that the Democrats control both houses of Congress. You would be wrong.
I agree that voters perceive the Republicans to be "in charge," in part because barely half even know that the Democrats control the Congress. But the Times piece presents things as if it's not just a political problem for McCain, but logically problematic for a Republican to run as a reformer who will clean up Washington. Even though Capitol Hill is, and is very likely to remain, a Democratic stronghold, according to the Times, the Democrats are the "opposition party." (see also Shales in the Washington Post). Anyone want to bet on whether the Times will have a story on how problematic it is for Barack Obama to run as a reformer when he is a Senator and his party controls the Senate?
6 years congress.
i love how republicans are running away from their record.
Why ?
Why don't they run on their achievements?
Party of past, the 5th wheel in American progress, that's what GOP has become....
Moreover, what we are talking about here is not an election for who should control Congress, but rather a Presidential election.
"I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger."
Which seemed to point at the republicans in general (My coworker, a Biden fan, didn;t think it was clear either, but, then again, I like mccain, so I could be reading that into a context rather than it actually being there.
To a certain extent, you are right, McCain certainly can run as someone seeking to reform Republican Government, and there have been many statements to that effect. They have gone much further than this though at the RNC. The most ridiculous line to this effect was by Mitt Romney who, after the last 8 years of Bush's war on terror, contrasted the Republicans to the Democrats stating that the Democrat where the party of Big Brother.
The rhetoric of feigned confusion on the blog is sickening at times.
Who appointed those other two justices? (Ginsburg and Breyer were appointed by Clinton) Or is one of the following not a Republican: Ronald Reagan (2 appointments still on the court), George H.W. Bush (2 appointments still on the court), or George W. Bush (2 appointments still on the court)?
We noticed the same thing in the post-speech discussion on PBS with Shields and Brooks, esp. with Shields who obviously knows that the Democrats own the House and Senate.
Is it possible that Democrats are so frustrated at not being able to just pass whatever they want that they don't think they're really the majority party in the Legislature? It hadn't occurred to me that might be so, but if it is, it's disturbing.
If John McCain becomes President... that will, uh, stay exactly the same.
The House has a Democratic majority.
The presidency is under Republican control.
So I guess the NYT article could have been more accurate by saying, "As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to regain the House, even as their party controls the presidency and is tied in the Senate."
Better?
Out of the 9 Justices, 4 of them, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts are safe Republican votes on most issues. Three, Stevens, Ginsburg and Souter, are safe Democratic Votes. Of the remaining two, Kennedy leans toward the Republican side and Breyer leans Democratic, but both have been known, particularly in the past few years to switch sides. This doesn't give the Republicans a lock on the Supreme Court, but it certainly gices them a large advantage.
Breaking it down, the GOP controlled the White House for all eight years and the Congress for six of the eight years.
The Times' point--both in the story Bernstein complains about and in this editorial--is a fair one even though the Democrats did control Congress by a very narrow margin the past two years.
What do you do when the media points out that you can't run on your party's record because that record is atrocious and that you're pretending your party wasn't in power in an effort to coopt the popular cry for change? You scream media bias, of course. Step up GOP hack David Bernstein.
Why does no one acknowledge that it is the DEMS who are unable to use their bare majority to change Republican policies?
Sure, back in the day it was the Republicans who failed to drill for oil. But now it's the Democrats!
And ages ago it was the Republicans who failed to properly regulate our borders. Now it's the Democrats!
And the economy! I mean, after 6 years of the Republicans, now we get to blame the Democrats for not turning things around!
But no one seems to acknowledge the serious changes that already happened in Congress! The only real change would be a change BACK to Republican rule.
Laugh out loud funny.
So I guess the Republicans haven't really controlled the Senate for that long then, right?
By the way, why the short memory on Tom Daschle being majority leader (June 6, 2001-January 3, 2003)? (he was the guy who "rushed" the USA Patriot Act and the Iraq AUMF through the Senate after all...)
Republicans controlled both house of Congress, for most of the last eight years, and the White House for all of it. For Republicans to campaign on a promise to "throw the rascals out" and reform Washington is beyond ludicrous. Indeed, Romney took the prize by railing against the liberals running Washington, but he had plenty of competition.
These guys really have gone through the looking glass.
As an aside, it's interesting that the NYT has just sent a bunch of investigative reporters north to Alaska to check out Palin. (Which they should by the way) Funny that they never did the same thing in Chicago to BO.
The Republicans are from heartland America, and while confused by big-city politics, their spirits are pure and they will reform Washington, led by Integrity-king McCain, whose thirty years of reforming experience has really cleaned up American politics!
They should send McCain to Chicago when he's done in Washington!
The perception that Republicans are in charge is not caused by people being unaware that politicians having the affiliation of "Democrat" are more numerous in Congress.
It is caused by the bully pulpit and the presidency as an institution in the post-Roosevelt era of American politics.
Just as one does not see a corporation governed more by its directors than its CEO, Americans rightly perceive that the presidency is the lead policy organ in American governance. This is not merely a perception; it has a good deal of truth to it.
Regards.
The Onion has it covered.
This is another one of those false ideas running around the internet. James Jeffords switched parties in mid-2001, and Republicans did not retake the Senate until the midterm elections. So it's not 6 years Congress, but 4 1/2 years. For two years Democrats will have controlled Congress, and for a year and a half it was divided.
Really, David, c'mon. The article's about the presidential election. Here's the lede (as you quote):
This a dog-bites-man story. As the story goes on to say:
McCain has the politically unenviable task of running a presidential campaign against the backdrop of the perception that his own party, headed by the almost-totally-absent-from-the-convention current president, screwed the pooch. The fact that the Democrats enjoy a majority in the current House and a majority? in the Senate is not germane to the story in the Times. As I read the piece, it's about McCain versus the Republican establishment.
So what would President McCain do to clean up Congress? The president has the power of the veto. Is there some other power the president has over Congress that I'm missing?
Given that McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time in 2007, what exactly would President McCain change?
There is a big difference between controlling the Presidency, controlling the House, and controlling the Senate a filibuster limitation and just controlling the House and the Senate with a filibuster limitation.
Under the first circumstance, you need to get an extra 10 votes in the Senate from the other side to pass legislation, and even if you can't, you still have plenty of power with the President.
Under the second, you have to either get 10 extra votes in the Senate and the President on your side, or 17 extra votes in the Senate, plus 73 extra votes in the House. If not, you basically have the power to subpoena people and complain.
Which of these two scenarios sounds like more power?
What it really comes down to is that most Americans are not happy with the state of the Nation. For the most part, whose policies have resulted in this state?
Bill Clinton.
Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain were both Tories (or Conservatives), but I think it was clear that the replacement of Chamberlain with Churchill represented a sea-change in British policy with respect to dealing with Germany and the war. Churchill could rightly claim that for years he had advocated a different policy than the leadership of his own party and that he represented a major change in policy.
There are many conservatives who, while they admire the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror, are sorely disappointed in what they view as a sell-out of conservative principles in other areas, such as profligate spending, etc. It remains to be seen if John McCain can reclaim these conservative principles. But you can't blame him for trying.
That's a defensible position if the bias slants both ways. It doesn't It's never the Republican party ID of a scandalous politician being dropped--that only happens to Democrats.
That's a defensible position if the bias slants both ways. It doesn't It's never the Republican party ID of a scandalous politician being dropped--that only happens to Democrats.
Power to do what, exactly?
Appoint judges?
You do realize it is incoherent to argue that the Democrats don't really control the Senate because the Republicans can fillibuster, while ignoring the fact that the Republicans never had a fillibuster proof majority, right?
No I wouldn't. Try to find a mention of the party to which the ex-Mayor of Detroit belongs.
Try looking at the 3rd word from the end of the second sentence.
Is it too much to ask that conservative ideologues learn to read?
Moreover, the corruption as exposed has been largely Republican: military no-bid contracts... scandalous accounting of money disbursed in Iraq... politicization of the bureaucracy, including the Justice department... rushing into war based on bogus evidence... Abramoff... Cunningham... Alaska... not to mention the sexual hypocrisy of 2 sitting Senators and Mark Foley... editing scientific reports by politicians... these are all Republicans. Earmarks and pork are a bipartisan disease, but you'd have to have your head in your posterior to believe that the corruption in Washington is simply a matter of whomever is in the majority at the moment. The 1995 Congress was not the same as the 2005 Congress.
As far as Obama as reformer, he did author a piece of legislation that became law in the Senate. Besides, he has made McCain-Feingold, the libertarian favorite, obsolete by building his war chest without having to suck up to corporate interests. If that model can work at the Congressional level, the level of special interest influence will diminish. No Republican can take us there in the near term, and none seems interested in trying.
This, too, is absurd. Stevens and Souter are both Republicans.
And since when is a Supreme Court decision "Democratic" or "Republican"? They are constitutional, and should remain hat way, despite the efforts of politicians (and some internet posters) to bring them into the party line.
Well four years ago, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid gained power in the House and the Senate, respectively.
(May reply to that question is "Yes." Fortunately, I have been able to answer "Yes" every four years going back to 1980. In 1980 my answer was "No"...thank you President Carter.
You forget the primary rule about judicial decisions: if the decision agrees with the conservative view it is a sound piece of reasoning based on the law; if the decision agrees with the liberal view it is the result of out of control activist judges.
Ah yes, because of course that can't possibly mean any justice is liberal!
Stevens and Souter are both Republicans.
See comment above.
By the way, why do you think you're not talking about what they actually belive and have written, but who has appointed them?
Want to take a stab at that, champ?
Name away, silly.
I love this:
Lastly, the Democrats aren't a voting block. Being the majority party in a chamber doesn't mean that you always have a majority willing to push through each and every policy of the leadership.
But don't worry, the Republicans have controlled the Senate for 6 of the last 8 years!
Again, it is no longer possible to parody you people.
So it is more "truthy" this way?
You managed to respond to one sentence of my post entirely missing the rest of it. I understand that the Republicans have never had a filibuster proof majority, but needing to peal off 10 Democratic votes in the Senate, when those Democrats can still claim that they voted against the bill, just for an up or down vote is significantly easier than overcoming a veto.
Further, if you think that the President's only real power, without Congressional approval is appointing judges, you haven't been paying attention for the past century. At the very least, the President has almost carte blanche over foreign affairs, which is very significant in a time when we have two wars going on, and even more significant when you have a President who has spent the last 8 years tryign to define everything as a foreign affairs issue, because it is somehow tied to terrorism. Additionally, the President gets to appoint the entire executive, which has a hell of a lot to do with how the laws on the books are enforced. Finally, the bully pulpet is far from insignificant. If Bush wants to, he basically can get all of the networks to break away from normal coverage and show him speaking. Do you think that Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid can do that? of course not.
The Constitution may not have given the President much power to act unilaterally (although certainly more than it gave Congress), but the Office of the President sure has managed to gain those powers over the past 230 years.
Apparently it makes you feel good to label decisions you don't like "liberal" or "left" or "Democratic." That's your opinion (with which many disagree). The fact is that 7 of the 9 justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are Republicans appointed by Republican presidents. Facts always trump opinions.
Sure the article could have thrown in that the Democrats did take back Congress recently, but unless you either assume the reader has a working knowledge of the powers of the various branches of government, or go on a long tangent about why this has not significantly changed the fact that we are working from Republican policies, this will be misleading. Particularly because most people who would have a working knowledge of the powers of the various branches of government would also know that the Democrats have gotten a slim majority in Congress recently, this sort of comment would be at best unnecessary, and possibly misleading as to the overall truth of the situation, and therefore either should not have been included, or at least need not have been included.
Really. In that case I can confidently say that no matter who wins the election, he will submit no earmarks.
Oh, wait...
That means Republican control of the Senate under GWB actually started in January 2003.
Political ignorance.
Now he's going more populist than usual, and embracing his habitual alienation. The simple truth is very few GOP pols on the national level can claim that same level of membership-yet-not-a-member separation, and McCain just happens to be one in a year populism came back into vogue.
IOW, the NYT is willfully ignoring McCain's carefully earned reputation on the matter.
No need to guild the lilly. The Court is generally 5-4 conservative on the big civil cases, though Kennedy is kind of a political crazy-car at times.]
You're willfully ignoring the fact "that McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time in 2007." As PC pointed out.
Regarding Souter, this line from his wikipedia entry is telling: Souter spoke of his admiration for the conservative Justice John Marshall Harlan II of the Warren Court during his confirmation hearings. Far from being a conservative, in his dissent to the denial of cert in Poe v. Ullman, Harlan II set the court on the path to recognizing reproductive freedoms in Roe v. Wade.
PC is quite right to claim that neither party controls the Senate, with Reps and Dems tied at 49-49. While the socialist Bernie Sanders is aligned with the Democrats, the ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman clearly is more at home with the Republicans, because he endorsed John McCain over the Democratic candidate.
What does it mean to "vote with Bush"? If Bush was a Senator, he'd have a voting record, and you could compare his with McCain's and figure out how many times they voted identically.
Also, what are the corresponding numbers for Obama and Biden under whatever method produced the 95% figure?
Two years ago (2006 elections).
Indeed, the president is merely a neutral bystander that never tries to push an agenda. He simply signs or doesn't sign (it's a coin toss I hear) any legislation that comes across his desk.
That information is provided at the link I posted earlier.
The ZOG.
Duh!
The NY Times claimed it ironic that Republicans were presenting their ticket as anti-establishment when, in fact, the Republican party "heads the establishment."
But clearly, the Republican Party doesn't "head the establishment." It heads the executive branch. And the Democratic Party currently heads the legislative branch. (I think we can all agree that neither party heads the judicial.)
So if we're going to discuss which party is the "Establishment," it's really kind of a tie, although we can debate the varying powers of the different branches that would make them more establishment-like.
Kudos to the author for pointing this out.
Senator McCain's party is the party in power in the presidency and they are running for president.
That said, I still think DB's point has some validity (indeed I had the same reaction myself when I read the article).
This is totally ignorant. The POTUS is the chief executive of the government, meaning, he's the CEO of the executive branch bureaucracy. With the exception of agencies like the Federal Reserve, which are designed to be insulated from political pressure, the President can issue executive orders that have the force of law to direct the bureaucracy to interpret and implement a law in a specific way. If there is one thing bureaucrats are terrified of, it is not following procedure -- and the POTUS has great power in shaping those procedures. The President appoints the heads of the executive departments, and the Senate defers to the President and confirms the vast majority of his nominees.
Some agencies have a culture that is in favor of activist government, but the Bush administration has spent the last 8 years inventing and applying political litmus tests at the expense of basic competence, most notably at the DOJ and EPA. Futhermore, some agencies have a culture distinctly favorable to GOP policies, especially at DOD. When the DOD and State collided, who won? The liberal bureaucrats? No. Cheney and Rumsfeld won. The GS 15 and 16s at DOD aren't generally liberal. Whistleblowers like the Army comptroller general have been rousted from government.
Government bureaucrats, no matter their political persuasion, only have so much discretion. They follow things by the book. The book -- the law -- is a combination of Congressional statutes written over the years (not just the current Congress) and executive decisions by the President and his appointees. No, they do not have the power to fire lower level bureaucrats, so it isn't like a private business. (Thank goodness. Read James Q Wilson, a true conservative, about the absurdity of that comparison). Yes, there are people in the bureaucracy who can use their limited discretion to affect or subvert executive initiatives. But this is not your father's bureaucracy; the GOP Congress has stripped many agencies of the discretion they had (e.g. OSHA) and the President has had 8 years worth of ideologues at the top of most every agency.
No, no, no. Lillies don't have guilds, only apples and oranges have guilds. Lillies have fleurs. Or maybe they are fleurs; what do the French know anyway?
To say the Republicans are "in power" is to ignore reality. I agree with DB - the author of the article was being disingenuous.
The problem is that a lot of the Republicans cozied up to the public trough with the Democrats after they captured Congress in the 1990s after the Democrats having a lock on it for most of the previous 60 years. Sens. Trent Lott and Ted Stevens, Reps. Tom DeLay and Dan Young, etc. are prime examples. From the point of view of a Republican reformer, they are no better than the Democrats, and probably even worse because of their apostasy.
The Democrats, of course, nominated candidates who have no problem with pork barrel spending - though Hillary! seems to be better at it than either Obama or Biden. And it is this sort of corruption that McCain has long opposed, and Palin fought against in Alaska (at least to some extent). Bringing home the bacon is fine if it is your own Congresscritters, but bad when some other state gets it. And a lot of people are tired of this.
It is this crusade against Congressional corruption that is a big part of what is galvanizing a lot of the Republican base right now. (Ok, there are also plenty of values voters excited about having a strong pro-life woman on the ticket who doesn't just talk the talk).
If what the populace wants is change, what sort of change are Obama or Biden offering? More government corruption? There are a lot of people out there, as evidenced by Congress' likely record low approval level, who are loathe to trust Congress with any more money until they can honestly spend what they are taking from us already. And, it is these voters that this "reform" candidacy is targeting.
Apparently it makes you feel good to label decisions you don't like "liberal" or "left" or "Democratic
Huh?
Um, it is entirely reasonable to read a decision and conclude that "liberal" logic led to it. Especially when the liberal justices wrote the opinion or concurred with it.
Now you can sit there and pretend Justice Kennedy is a "Republican" which is meaningless and in fact you can not possibly know, but it that is all you are doing, pretending.
And there is a reason for that.
And DB is correct in his media criticism. The NYT skewed the facts to fit an op-ed. Not very honest. And I don't DB is a pimp for McCain either; he has a good ombudsman's eye for media bias that manufactures reality to fit a column. It's one thing to avoid facts in support of your point and is another entirely to create a fact to support your point.
Are the democrats responsible for the outright corruption of late (see Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Abramoff et al. And, please, don't even start with anecdotal evidence of democrats getting busted. Until you can come up with a list to match these: http://senate2008guru.blogspot.com/2007/08/ republican-culture-of-corruption-2007.html, don't waste your breath)
Are the dems responsible for torture? warrantless wiretapping? wrongly political hiring? cencorship of scientific (global warming) or budgetary (medicare) data to advance political points, etc. etc.?
If that's what you believe, please list and provide citations for the specific criminal acts of the democratic congress in the last two years that needs reform.
<blockquote>
Now you can sit there and pretend Justice Kennedy is a "Republican" which is meaningless and in fact you can not possibly know, but it that is all you are doing, pretending.
And there is a reason for that.
</blockquote>
The reason is because it is a fact. I quote:
<blockquote>
In his years as a private practitioner in San Francisco and Sacramento, Kennedy was an able lawyer of <b>conservative</b> inclination and <b>Republican</b> Party affiliation, as was his father. . . . Like his father before him, Kennedy was a <b>Republican</b>. . . . Nevertheless, in the early 1970s he was asked to serve on a commission to draft a tax-limitation initiative known as Proposition 1 for Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. Although the ballot proposition failed in 1973, Kennedy had impressed the Reagan camp with his constitutional expertise. . . . His <b>conservative</b> philosophy and his <b>Republican</b> party affiliation led to Kennedy's first judicial appointment. In 1975 President Gerald R. Ford appointed him to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. . . . Although appointed by a President who was both <b>Republican</b> and <b>conservative</b>, Kennedys tenure on the Court has seen him take a somewhat mixed path. Kennedy's philosophy seems to be <b>conservative</b> and libertarian. . . .
</blockquote>
http://www.answers.com/topic/anthony-kennedy
Again, facts trump opinions.
No need to guild the lilly.
No, no, no. Lillies don't have guilds, only apples and oranges have guilds. Lillies have fleurs. Or maybe they are fleurs; what do the French know anyway?
What the "French know": The Lilly Guild holds its office space under a Fleur de Lease.
My perception of GWB's tenure as President sees phases. We have phase one, characterized by feces-flinging over Florida. Whatever. Phase two, characterized by responses to 9/11 and sucking up to Dem congresscritters. See NCLB, etc. Phase three has gone on for a long time and revolved around Iraq, justifying Iraq, feces-flinging over Iraq, and shocked surprise over Iraq. My perception of Congress during that time also sees phases. Phase one, feces-flinging and whining about Florida. Whatever. Phase two, whining about sharing power and fighting over obscure procedure rules. Whatever. When control of the houses shifts to a different color of monkey, the feces-flinging continues. Whatever. At the end of the fight, the water hole is full of feces.
I am a news junkie and a rabid partisan and I can't stand this anymore. Who has the time and energy? Doesn't anybody have a day job? As a colleague observed one late afternoon "This is all so... high school."
Since Demorats decided that they would filibuster every nominee they didn't like. See also Bork, Robert.
Sure, the Rethuglicans controlled the Senate; Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee, just to name a couple of real reliable conservatives...
And of course the unelected bureaucracy, comitting treason by outing CIA agents (Richard Armitage, remember), disclosing classified programs to the Slimes, etc. Doesn't do you any good to get laws passed if unelected, union organized, liberal civil servants can decide not to implement them.
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