Erick,

It should be obvious. They will stand for anything! There isn’t an ounce of integrity or morality among them. They were dishonest when they created the fiscal cliff, they are now dishonest in the way they are trying to avoid it. They deserve all the blame they get. The only way to avoid even worse blame for allowing the country’s eventual demise is to force it to take the only medicine that will save it. But, they won’t. They are moral cowards and stupid jerks to boot! They would rather the country be destroyed than that the government have to tighten its belt. They would rather the country die in the long run than that they have to suffer in any way in the short term. They are despicable cowards, and deserve all the blame they will eventually reap. History will not be kind to them, and neither will the current media, no matter how much they grovel to it.

Dave…you have to blame voters too. Look at how Obama’s one Sandy photo op influenced people. People “forgot” the real Obama. We have lost our ability to think and are just attracted by the “shiny thing” de jour.

Right. Obama vows to veto any proposal that does not “raise taxes on the rich.” But the House has a veto, too. Nothing gets spent unless the House agrees to it. Republicans are weenies. Harry Reid said that the idea of working with a President Romney’s budget was “laughable.” He had no intention of being cooperative and NO ONE criticized him – it was just the reality Romney would have to deal with. What is Boehner’s reality?

As you say, there USED to be “clear and distinct Republican and Democrat positions”. That was before so many vowed to reach across the aisle and find common ground. When everyone meets in the middle, the lines that were once drawn become blurry. For the peacemakers here, not saying its good or bad, rather its just the way it is now.

He also had a photo op during the Louisiana oil spill debacle. You could feel the compassion as he strained to search the tide, beach and birds for any semblance of their once pristine states. We were all so moved. (cough) Let’s face it, he doesn’t do disaster well. And as Benghazi demonstrates, he doesn’t do terror or cover-up well. Our lack o’ budget shows he doesn’t do math well. The fence sitters and reasonable democrats have forgotten his shortfalls.

If Republicans intend to buckle (as they always do), they should at least try and get the credit for extending a compromise offer first. And no one pays attention to Bob Corker alone, or lots of old men saying that Obama has a mandate (wrong) and we should have more revenue (we would if they this administration did not stifle growth) and then jumping to the next question.

Please tell me and those here that this is still in writing/existing in Their Constitution in Mass.?
One of the reasons I come here still, {DisCus pest and some other annoyances} is to be Educated.
For what it might be worth 1stRichard you are my Golden Shiny Star Award Winner for this week.
How about a recco for some books about Coolidge? Anybody??
Me’s Needin’ some more edumacatin’………

Erick, I think you have identified the problem that gives me the greatest anxiety about the future of the United States. Neither Boehner nor McConnell appear to me to be leading either the Republicans or Conservatives. Add in Cantor, McCain and some others and it is hard to see solid leadership. They seem to be reacting to actions democrats the have taken. It is difficult to lead when you are reacting. The “fiscal cliff” is about the Congress and the Administration and their inability to balance a budget or curtail spending. My worries are how do we find leadership we can elect to office who have America’s and American citizens best interests at heart. I hear no discussions and see no plans on how we get ourselves back on track. After the November elections, who can conservatives trust? Scary times.

You’re absolutely right about that Tim! Which one of us doesn’t have some kind of skeleton in the closet, to be found out and aired by the media? Just have to keep trying new people until we get the ones we can trust! The ones we have in now are so corrupted and dumber than dirt!!

Boehner, Cantor, etc. represent all that is wrong with Washington and the GOP. They do not stand on any kind of principle. They are weak, cowardly, and only care about being re-elected. They will not even step forward boldly and propose a plan. All they do is react. Truly sad.

When will the House members rise up and toss Boehner out?

Obama is betting the Republicans will blink because they don’t want to
be blamed. Given we are talking about Boehner doing the negotiating-
that’s a pretty good bet.

But I would say- why? Why not let the
sequestration occur? Fiscal “Cliff”? Even that’s a misnomer. It is
frankly the only deal on the table which will produce meaningful cuts.
Are they the cuts we want? Do we want the tax increases?

No. Both will
be devastating.

But why won’t that be on the hands of Mr. Obama? Has
he articulated any cuts to entitlements, which are the drivers of our
debt problem? Let’s forget entitlements for a moment. Has Mr. Obama articulated any meaningful, achievable cuts at all?

Mr. Obama has already spoken of his desire to cut the military.
This produces devastating cuts- which he will own.

Tax increases? Well he said the “Bush tax cuts are “for the rich” (even though he extended them twice). Shouldn’t we simply see if what he stated is true?

We have a
spending problem, which is we spend too much. We don’t have a revenue or
more appropriately a tax problem. Does anyone think they don’t pay
enough taxes?

Even Mr. Obama’s “tax-the-rich” fallacy hasn’t been
adequately challenged. The taxes he is talking about the “rich” paying
would only close about 1/12 of the annual debt gap. Anyone care to ask
Mr. Obama how he plans to close the remainder?

Anybody?

If we
yield on new taxes, in an environment where those taxes will hurt the
economy and do nothing to address our spending problem- it will destroy a
core principle of the Republican Party. Mr. Obama ultimately knows this will take away a key Republican pillar and make us complicit in the coming fiscal destruction.

This is a time to distinguish ourselves and yet Republican “leadership” in Washington is nothing of the sort. They are absent in this entire affair.

Want to know why we lost the election Mr. Speaker? Look in the mirror at your own lack of courage, wisdom, temerity and yes, leadership.

They are Obuma;s little hand Puppets to play with. They are Disgraceful just like the Pretender in Chief. Any one with even a tad of Brain/ common sense can see through them. Down right Sick to watch their little responses.

I hope everyone out there realizes that this election was stolen through vote fraud, which is now permanently rigged into the system, especially through electronic voting.
How do you expect to ever regain power now? Wake up people. You have allowed your country to be stolen from you, and the ONLY way to get it back is through force. Get it? You’re in the jungle baby!

To be fair, our side has been calling the wealthy “job creators” for years. It’s probably the single worst euphemism in the past 25 years of politics. Nobody believes it. When people utter it, it is followed by groans and rolled eyes. Including it in an argument is self-discrediting. It isn’t even factually true as plenty of conservatives have long been saying.

“Increasing Revenue” is a pretty lousy euphemism too, but we should take the rhetorical high road, and jettison one created by some complete amateur message-control consultant that nobody believes, nobody likes to say and has long since outlived its shelf life.

I tried using “job creators” over Thanksgiving dinner. I was embarrassed as I said it. I made the point with facts, but nearly undermined it with a terrible phrase. It needs to go away and never come back.

I would agree with getting on with it except these things usually lead to tons of pain, war, dark ages, ect. We can still avoid all of that if for ONCE the Repubs would stand up and fight or JUST don’t do a thing. Let the Gov’t shut down and default. This is Obama’s mess let him deal with it by ACTUALLY proposing a solution IN WRITING that we conservatives can work with. I would say let Reid and Obama do their campaigning to the public and the Republican’s should do everything they can to avoid the media ect. Go long enough and like Ground Hog Day do your pop out just long enough to figure out if the children are willing to work with you or back into the hole we go.

With all due respect, my point isn’t about who is creating them. It’s about a lousy phrase. We’ll never win the argument if we “preach” in our own language, our own way of thinking.

My point is, in the process of convincing someone or making a case, neutral language, at best, is far more useful and convincing. A phrase like “Job creators” though? Attaching that to even the most eloquent of points comes off as insincere. That’s language for the converted, not for those on the fence.

And we’re not gonna win unless we get more converts and more people off the fence.

The lying, cheating, thieving scum in Washington with both Ds and Rs after their names stand only for themselves.

But what if all this terribly backfired?

You’re supposing that if we fell off the fiscal cliff as a country, there would be only downside for Obama. I think that’s wrong. I think it’s a bigger risk for conservatives than it is for him. I think by being principled absolutionists we’ll hand Obama a strategic victory that utterly dwarfs his election win.

The economic consensus about the Fiscal Cliff is, if we go over it, we’ll be in for six months of recession and one year of tepid growth (so just like now) before the economy adjusts to the new normal. But we’ll come out of it with a veritable flood of new government revenue. Our books will be back in the black in a matter of a few years… it makes the Ryan plan looks positively pedestrian.

Suddenly Barack Obama, having calculated that short term pain will lead to medium to long term gain becomes the President who fixed the federal books, all without the help of Republicans, who watched it happen.

You can pair that with what Debt Ceiling War II would may very well look like: Obama invoking the 14th Amendment and sidestepping Congress to raise the completely artificial “ceiling” anyway.

You see the problem? If Republicans… Conservatives… sit by and watch it happen why being the party of the principled “no”, we run a very real risk of handing Barack Obama a series of very significant victories, just in time for the 2014 Midterms, at a time, by the way, our electoral base is in decline and the oppositions is growing.

We’ll lose big. Bigger than 2012 election big. Democrats have robbed us – completely robbed us – of our reputation as the party of National Security. It’s going to take years to recover that, and probably a few major Democratic-sourced scandals too. Now they’re going in for the kill… robbing us of our reputation as the party of Fiscal Responsibility.

Principled “No’s” and letting the government shut down and default are precisely the wrong thing to do. The effects will be too short to win any kind of victory worth a damn, too mild on Obama and extremely painful on conservatives who will further discredit ourselves in the eyes of everyone EXCEPT ourselves.

We need to deal and win tactical victories. We need to defuse the bomb, because we’re the shield Obama will very successfully use when it goes off. If it goes off, he wins big… very, very big. If we deal, we in a single stroke go a long way to diffusing his most powerful, convincing and useful argument: that he can’t work with conservatives because of their innate intransigence and strict adherence to orthodoxy.

So I guess the question becomes, exactly how much short term pain is a lot of medium to long term gain worth to us? Personally, I say a heck of a lot. Conservatives are losing in a conservative country. The only way to get back on top is start planning long term instead of expecting a short term miracle. Did the “Reagan Revolution” not come after 16 years in the wilderness? And that’s far from the first time that happened, for either political party / philosophy.

maybe the coolidge way, via VP

Wow. I think for me I left the R party on election day too. I will continue to participate on a local level if only to have a hand in local GOP committee elections. that is it. I can’t wait to get a call from the RNC or the rest.

I see your point but no matter what happens the Conservatives are going to be blamed for everything anyways and we all know that in the end the collapse will be much worse. In reality it appears to only be 3 options here, 1) do nothing 2) be “bi-partisan” (give in to Democrats every demand as this is how it is going to happen anyways but Republicans will have finger prints on the deal) or 3) just say whatever you put in front of us we won’t stop or change it, just pass as is and then every second of every day make sure to remind everyone that this is the Democrat’s plan and thus their failure.

The liberals have been scheming and fighting for years…generations! What..we thought we’d win by simply voting in one election? Dig in, folks. We waited too long to start fighting back and now it’s going to take significant sacrifice and a prolonged determined effort to win. The sooner we start actually fighting, the sooner the war will be won. Whining about it in the meantime wont help.

So, where do we go from here?

Um so what will happen is they will raise taxes on the rich, which has been redefined down to 200k for Single people and you won’t see ONE spending cut, not one! The issues we face today will still be the issues of tomorrow and the money they just robbed from the rich won’t be enough but the issues will be even worse as more and more are driven into the 47% column. At this point the Democrats will come up with a new idea say like the VAT and/or 401k’s and they will just keep robbing us blind with taxes and regulations they are going to unleash on us will drive even more of us into the 47%. For the Love of Pete someone has to take a stand and say enough is enough. Seriously if they make the compromise deal they will lose for sure in 2014 and they would deserve it because they will get the blame for every thing anyways. Take for example those screaming about the Stimulus it’s not that it didn’t work it just failed because it wasn’t BIG enough in their eyes and it was the Republican’s fault for it being to small.

At this point I would take a 4 YEAR OLD over what we have been getting.

Calvin Coolidge? That’s interesting. The system in which he rose to power has changed so significantly, that it is highly unlikely he would ever rose to any prominent position under today’s system of elections. Kind of where RedState purists will be, sadly. The game has changed. The GOP doesn’t stand for thing the same way the Democrats don’t stand for anything. Money has completely corrupted the entire Governance system. I don’t know where things will go from here, but set of candidates that would pass the RedState seal of approval will go to zero.

EE, can’t say that I disagree, esp since I essentially advocated this in a 3am column Election night…also glad you took my early call for you to challenge Chambliss to heart. But hey, Saxby is no Foghorn Leghorn! Be cool to poultry – Gamecock.

I, too, am worried that too many Americans would blame us for going off that stupid cliff (thanks to a “perfect storm” of our education system, the out of control welfare state, and a complicit media), but there’s still a way around it. Oppose statism and collectivism at all times, but when faced with any vote to toxic for a “no” vote, don’t “pass it,” but ABSTAIN (or vote “present” or leave the House chamber, whatever). Let every bill harmful to our future pass with DEMOCRAT votes only (191-0 for example) . For the love of heaven, LET. THEM. OWN IT.

Republicans have done nothing (when they had the power) to stop the automatic increase in annual federal budgets, first implemented in the 1974 Budget Reform Act. Ever since all budgets increase by as much as 10% each year, regardless of revenue or necessity and if the budget is granted extra money during a particular year, that is the base amount to calculate the growth in budget for the next year! We would have done well to return to zero-based budgeting when the GOP was in power but the Establishment loves themselves the power of the purse and the Tea Party had not yet arisen. And now? How can we affect lasting change when there are only a handful in Washington committed to reform?
www.conservativemormonmom.blogspot.com

Stanley – vote the incumbents out. I agree but with certain exemptions. Rand Paul in the senate and the Representative from Kentucky. There are a few others from both Senate and Congress that would be keepers who ran as Taxed Enough Already candidates but Eric would have to provide a list as to who’s still left standing and who’s still voting strong T.E.A. Then we form up around them.

Just so you know, life expectancy for men without high school diplomas is 67.5. For those with college degrees, it’s 80. Increasing retirement age shaves off a couple years for those at the high end, and eliminates it entirely for a lot of the low end.

After listening to the Republicans crawl overthemselves as to who can give up more – more revenues, more of my freedom, while I see the real tail of the scorpion – the regulations about to sting – I’m clearly in the wrong camp.

I don’t know what the republicans are doing but I do know they will leave their Taxed Enough Already cohorts behind as they make a deal to vote something out of the House of Representatives w/the help of Democrats. That deal will be dead on arrival in the Senate because Reid will want MORE (isn’t that always the case?) and Reid will blame the republicans. Those that did vote for the “revenue” increase plus tax increase on the top 1% (millionaires) will then have that to contend with in 2 years as they get primaried.

Instead? If the republicans really have no backbone? Then just step aside and vote absent. Let the democrats OWN IT. The recession that will follow of taking the money out of the system and given to the government along with the unrepentant spending we will run up against the debt ceiling.

That’s the next fight. Which the republicans will cave to also.

Its relentless. The republicans won the congress and yet they think they lost.
I don’t understand what’s going on up there except they must be under some mental torture we haven’t heard about. Romney lost by 4million votes. And he lost because he wasn’t conservative enough!

Now we find out that Romney is going to lunch with Obama.
Why doesn’t that surprise me?
Its the worst thing Romney could do for Republicans. Give any help to the enemy.
Even a photo op.
It just demoralizes the base even more.
Can’t Romney just go away at this point or is he so narcissistic that he needs to be needed? Even by the guy who called him a liar.
Have a nice lunch Mitt.

We, the people who voted for you, now really know you for what you are.

Coolidge is one of my favorite Presidents and I collect books about him.

There are not many bios of Coolidge, and the ones out there are not much good as they generally misrepresent him and belittle his accomplishments. The best is probably Robert Sobel’s “Coolidge: American Enigma” which came out in 1998.

Coolidge wrote an autobiography in 1929 after he left the Presidency. It gives some insight into his principles and ideas. It’s worth reading if you can find it. Coolidge was an excellent communicator, contrary to the image created by left-wingers. He, not FDR, was the first President to use radio extensively. He used radio to educate Americans about conservative principles of government, economy, etc, somewhat in the manner of Reagan. He met with the press more frequently than any other President before or since.

If you can find it, a bio by R M Washburn called “Calvin Coolidge: His first Biography” is a great little book containing many speeches, letters, interviews in which CC outlines his philosophy. It was published in 1923 before Coolidge became President on Hadring’s death.

If you can wait a few months, the long awaited bio by Amity Shlaes will be out in Feb 2013. You can pre-order from Amazon.

And you wonder why Congress has such a low approval rating. Our Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves over what Congress has become.

Yes here it is

http://www.malegislature.gov/laws/constitution

Although distorted by amendments, the original constitution should stand with the federalist papers as original intent of our government, such as…

Article III. As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality….

Coolidge spent a lot of time in a bar by the train station in Holyoke Massachusetts according to most historians around here. It is up for sale and I suspect it if not sold and preserved it too will be gone. From what I have found on the subject Coolidge deeply admired Holyoke, I wrote a short bit about Holyoke here…

http://www.redstate.com/1strichard/2011/02/27/the-american-dream/

They are already exposed. That’s who the country put back in office.
Democrats are like the PLO. They’re not interested in compromise.

Maneuver for position- win a few, lose a few.
Stand on principle- never lose.

This. Notice that the Left hardly ever compromises on their idealogy. Why do we feel like we have to?

Of course, in that case, there’d be nothing stopping them from abolishing elections altogether, or allowing “affirmative action” in voting too.

Oh, yes, but people get the strange idea that welfare handouts and crony capitalism and one-time, limited and ineffective goodies are the same as what Republicans call “middle class tax relief”. They make it sound like they’re the ones pushing for tax cuts, just in a more responsible and fair way. Which is nonsense, of course, but people buy it. Same way they substitute “PAYGO” for Republican “spending restraint” and education spending for Republican “education reform”. That’s why the language of choice and ownership is so vital to fiscal Conservatives, and was embraced by Bush, to combine more liberal (classical) ideas with liberal (social Democratic) connotations. Yet, it’s hardly as effective as the Democrats’ rhetoric.

I’m sure that’s unconstitutional.

But they’d do much less harm, even with Reid in the Senate.

Good comment. The Court probably wouldn’t directly say an amendment was unconstitutional–they would just change the interpretation–like they’ve already done. You know Obama is keeping his campaign organization, Obama for America, running. Maybe he’s just planning to try and defeat as many Republicans in 2014, using OFA. Or, maybe there’s another motive. Let’s hope not….

As often the case, data can be manipulated to suit your point of view. I’ll wager the reason for the discrepancy is that many more of those without high school diplomas die relatively young, thus skewing the results. Those who survive young adulthood probably get a lot closer to the ‘educated’ expectancy, and would enjoy those benefits too. Then there’s the unhealthy lifestyle factor – with all the information today, there’s really no excuse there.

Similarly, you will likely find that in our grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generations, when few were college-educated, there was little difference in outcomes.

GREAT point.

There is absolutely nothing wrong is bargaining hard, but giving up as well as getting.

The fact is, Obama has pretty much every advantage, and he knows it. And they’re going to press it now more than ever. A year of “the principled no” has lead to what? An election where we were once projected to win seats and ended up losing them everyone? A House majority voted in by 600,000 fewer voters than the Democratic Minority?

It’s madness to stay the course and keep the same strategy, not only because it hasn’t worked at all, but also because Obama would be delighted if we did. It would confirm everything awful he’s ever said about our side.

If we go over the fiscal cliff, the economy will bounce back just in time for it to benefit Obama. He’ll get everything he wants from it: higher taxes than he’ll ever get through negotiations, military cuts he’d never get get. Entitlement cuts his party would never agree to.

If we stage another Debt Ceiling War, Obama will use his perceived mandate and political capital, invoke the 14th Amendment and lawyer up. He’ll take the side of the activist young President versus the villiany of the uncompromising old conservatives. Considering how much the last Debt Deiling incident seriously damaged our party, a reply where Obama uses the nuclear option would be catastrophic.

We need to deny him these very easy victories. With the fiscal cliff, he just needs to make any agreement he offers unacceptable to conservatives that he expects. We need to flank him… accept things he doesn’t expect, demand things he never thought we would. Otherwise we go over, and he’ll walk away in an even stronger position. With the Debt ceiling, this time, Obama has no reason to give as much ground as he did in 2011. If I were him… heck if any conservative President were him, they’d demand a high cost to NOT invoke the 14th Amendment We can’t give him the opportunity to. It’ll empower him further.

All I’m saying is lets turn two potentially major strategic victories for him into shared tactical victories by being unconventional in our negotiating demands and our eventual agreement. Otherwise the only loser in this is our party. It is going to take years to recover our National Security reputation (and don’t kid yourselves.. Benghazi bothers basically no one out side of the converted conservative already, which is far from enough). We fumble this and let Obama win he’ll take from us our fiscal moderation reputation too.

The theme of the Republican Party seems to be: “We’ll vote with the Democrats and beg the MSM to say that we’re not hostages of the Tea Party.”

I gave that option it was 3. Give him what he wants without changing ONE word of it, and then set up a press tent with daily briefs and report the results.

As for invoking the 14th Amendment, honestly at this point it doesn’t matter. We are going to implode either way unless they cut actual spending, not growth spending, actual spending. Obama has already empowered himself and at this point he will do whatever he wants without any repercussions whatsoever until at least 2014 and there is NOTHING we can do about it until 2014. Reid will not remove him so Impeachment is not going to happen and Holder needs to be in the jail cell next to him and 90% of the media are already pushing for him to go further. There is nothing we can do to Stop Obama from doing whatever he wants now. He knows it will take YEARS to get it to SCOTUS to overturn it but then he can just ignore them also. It really depends on how down for the fight is Obama, is he Castro type power hungry or not? Outside of shutting down Gov’t with the money we are pretty much at his mercy already.

So this made me think about some history, When Hitler had started the war the Germans who supported him were all living high on the hog and even as the war went on they were not suffering whatsoever in fact the exact opposite was happening, the Good times had finally arrived. Then came the point to where they couldn’t get their favorite food or such and they went hmmm, but hmm was all they did. As time went on and more and more resources were being pulled from the Civil sector to the War front then they started think well maybe this isn’t a good thing but then it was what can I do mentality and they went on with life except some did start waking up and became very scared for the future. It WASN’T until the complete collapse and the reports about the camps started trickling out that they then were against Hitler and trying to avoid any blame for what had happened in their name.

Lesson here is no matter what we think here if we are out numbered, outgunned and out positioned we will lose every time. We might help create the monster by being the opposition but I rather be in the crowd fighting against this stupidity then rolling along with it.

Time is up for the country, it is time to make the choice of hard times that are dictated on our own terms and livable or the really suffering and pain forced on us by others. Letting him win and all this other nonsense is a game to them, it is time for the people to face the consequences of allowing this to become a game.

Even your #3 won’t work because if things go south they’ll say the GOP held them back or it was still Bush’s fault. They don’t care how much they lie, and neither does the MSM.

Audit the fed.