You could always try reaching Mr. Boehner himself.

Erick, what is the math though? How many Republicans do we need to stand firm to stop the bill from passing?

maybe this is why we lose. Our side is full of gobbledegook buzzwords like “tyranny! Greece!” instead of substantial and reasoning argument and persuading.

Hannity and Limbaugh are who I blame.

Well, that’d only make me think he’s an opportunistic lightweight who manipulates everyone for his own ambitions, like John Edwards.

He has little in the way of actual substance, and where he does have it, it’s just what he thinks is enough to win votes. Other than that, he’s not really a follower, but definitely not a leader. Not a manager either. More of a community organizer. ;D

41-1! Even Washington Superman RG3 couldn’t help pull this one out for the citizens. This is a recipe for disaster in so many ways.

Winston Churchill would have had understood the GOP leadership well…
“Churchill: “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?” Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course… ”
Churchill: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?”
Socialite: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price”

Bring on the cliff. Maybe if things get tough enough people will be forced to make real, hard decisions about what it takes to maintain liberty and prosperity, because most seem clueless about it today.

..i must ‘soon’ show dicipline here, but i can’t immediately resist warning you that if you don’t move-along quietly now, ms.anncoulter will don black leather and squish your head like a bug. Now we must move on.

the White House staff is
saying that getting the GOP to break their tax pledge is, “One of the
most consequential policy achievements of the last couple of decades.”

Nonsense.

I don’t buy the “Republicans broke their last pledge and are on
their knees” meme. Taxing people more won’t fix our fundamental fiscal
issues and now Congress as a group has pushed our fiscal issues down the road again. But that road is quickly coming to an end.

The game here is one of musical chairs and the music will definitely
stop. But Democrats are hoping it will be long enough in the future that
people won’t remember it was them who stole their seat.

But the fiscal reality is that in the next few years something extraordinary will need to be done on spending. The question is not if, but where those cuts will come from.

The Achilles heel is that Mr. Obama is counting on revenues to pick up as the result of economic activity increasing. But that won’t happen with the burdens placed on our productive centers. He is trying to forestall the inevitable. But it is simple math, logic and economics of which he does not have a fundamental understanding.

Conclusively, this isn’t about Democrats or Republicans losing. I’ll leave that
gamesmanship for the ignominious, irresponsible people in Washington. It
is about how an entire country was lost late last night by those we
elected to manage our country.

This should not be remembered for the fiscal calamity it will
eventually become. It should more-so be recalled as the day on which
citizens forfeited their democratic republic and handed control to new
rulers. The sad part being that most people don’t even realize, or
perhaps care.

The citizens have unwittingly let democracy and liberty slip from
their hands for divisive politics which promise much, but will deliver
little- other than more misery and less freedom. Our future and our
children will be bleaker and less free because of it. We should all be
ashamed.

A lot of those people are in that situation involuntarily as a result of Obama’s economy. And others are there as a result of policies that republicans have supported over the years.

So yeah it ‘hurts’ when a political interloper like Romney attacks longtime republican voters in a stupid way that plays right into prog class warfare bs.

I truly wish he would. Although he did take a break from his campaign and returned to Washington last September to vote for the latest, six month stopgap Government funding bill, even though his vote was completely unnecessary.

Obama – 100
GOP – 0
American People – less than 0

That is the problem. No spending cuts. That is ALWAYS the problem. It is why we are so butt hurt right now.

In 2 months King Barack will be at this game again. America’s back will be up against the wall and the King will refuse to negotiate, instead, whining and crying to the world through the leftist controlled media that the GOP won’t cooperate with him, because, ya’ know, as King, it is Barack’s way or the highway. It is part of his grand scheme to destroy this country.
No pain, no gain. It is sad and sorry that our elected officials (I cannot bring myself to call them leaders), have gotten the country into this mess in the first place – ALL of them. But now that that have, if we do not swallow the bitter pill to make things right, things will only get worse. If the GOP had not painted themselves into a corner in the first place by pledging that there would be no tax increases, they might not look like such utter fools now, and we might actually have a combination of painful things that would actually get us out of the ravine that we are in.

Can you cite any case where real spending cuts occurred, period? The two are not linked..

We have no leverage. We own one half of Congress and that majority shrunk. We can’t exactly call the shots here. The only strategy is to cut losses and move along. The problem is that McConnell gave away everything

We should have been concentrating on two things: 1) Spending, and 2) minimizing the damage. Right now the Democrats now look like champions because they’re now the ones cutting taxes. As Dan McLaughlin warned us about, by going over the cliff we’ve now allowed them to move to our right on tax policy. That was idiotic. When you don’t have leverage, you get what you can and get out. Now we’re even further entrenched as The Party of the Rich.

And back to the other thread – what we SHOULD have been doing all along is to say “Fine, you want tax increases? Let’s jack ‘em ALL UP” …which, of course, is what the cliff did. I would have been fine with doing one thing and one thing only: permanent indexing of the AMT. The rest of the taxes could have stayed the same. We need a broader taxpayer base.

We basically got a second swipe at Plan B with the Senate plan.

We must let tax increases hit ALL Americans or see a consensus for cutting spending will never arise. As long as “someone else” continues to pick up the tab nothing will change.

Do it with the debt ceiling and sequester. Don’t do it with taxes. There is simply nothing to be gained by pissing away a chance to set the vast majority of the tax cuts (not just on rates, but on investments and asset transfers) in stone. Anything less gives the White House all the more leverage in the fight ahead.

Wrong. I said “spending cuts” and taxation are disconnected, and that was in the context of Congressional action. Don’t move the goalposts. Taxpayer thinking is entirely different from that of their alleged representation.

Even the mental midgets who voted for the Democrats should realize that when their taxes go up, they’re paying for something. That’s what taxes are. And I didn’t “complain” about the payroll tax. I merely pointed out that it is a tax increase.

Putting words in my mouth will end this conversation right quickly, and not in a way that you will appreciate.

Actually, the leverage next time will be better, as there will be no tax increases hanging over our heads. In two months, it’s all about spending and the debt limit. But…it would be preferred to fix it now.

Not just a couple of months. Try two days. We’ve already hit the debt ceiling. And then we’ll have the sequester fight in March. And we’ll be in a much better position than if we were forced to fight to cut ALL the Clinton era taxes. Think about it; what exactly is the left’s motivation to negotiate in good faith on taxes that up until financial crisis they were willing to let expire period? They’ll simply demand more spending and ride the tiger to oblivion; blaming the GOP every step of the way. Now is the time to lock in as much of those cuts as we possibly can without giving up the debt ceiling and sequestration. Those are the tools we must use to bury the Dems.

By Law and Constitution, No spending bill can be originated in the Senate, All spending bills by Constitution must be introduced into the House first, Then passed by the House, sent up to the Senate, For consideration and amendment, Then returned to the House for reconciliation, Reach final passage in both Houses, Before it can be sent to the President for Signature, Veto, or No Action.

It is time to re-establish the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land, and Absolute Law for the Federal Government.

If we can’t hold the line on debt, then this whole exercise is meaningless and we might as well preserve as much of the tax cut as we can.

In what world has increasing taxes ever constrained spending?

no, we have less leverage, because Obama can threaten to let the sequester cuts take place.

i wish, no one. I have relatives in Texas who think Hannity is Christ reborn, and the Constitution his Gospel.

Obama and the Democrats will no doubt find a way to bring tax increases into any discussion. We keep taking spending cuts off the table – why should the Dems fall for it next time? They’ll do some fake promised future spending cuts or bring the war “savings” into play as if it was real cuts.

I look at it this way – It seems that ending two-year-long “temporary” unemployment payments are off the table, after Obama has said he created millions of jobs and drove unemployment down to its lowest level in years. As usual, we let him have his cake and eat it too, as he gets credit for it both ways and we end up with more and more perpetual entitlements.

And where’s the advantage in that? Last I checked, we weren’t so much concerned with the trivial dent to the personal standard of living faced by the highest earners. We were most concerned with the impact on capital flow through the economy, specifically to small and new business. In that case, the question is this; do you prefer the economic impact of a 28 percent rate on long held investments, and lower take home pay for employees seeing their rates hiked by 3 points? Or do you prefer a 20 percent permanent cap on long held investments, and no change in employee take home pay due to earned income rates?

If the objective is schadenfreude, consider how transient such a thing is. Also, ask yourself how likely it is you’ll even get that much satisfaction.

Most would say “have at it, pal…they’re cuts”. There are no tax cuts or increases on the table if something gets passed now. So what’s the big deal about the sequester cuts? Yeah, they’ll be bad, but at this point anything is better than nothing. Those who supported riding over the edge with the cliff were just fine with the sequester cuts. Frankly, that’s the only part of it that I was ok with.

GOTV (or lack thereof) may have cost enough votes to win, but … the 2012 election should have been a cakewalk for Romney, given the state of the economy and the majority who hate Obamacare. The fact that it was even close, much less a Romney loss, speaks volumes about the mindset of this country. They voted for social democrats. They voted for giveaways. They now need to pay.

Why do you think Obama would own it? Why do you think the media would make him own it? Why do you think he wouldn’t do exactly what he says he’s done for four years and what he says he’s going to continue to do? The Democrats wouldn’t mind returning to the Clinton tax rates, especially if they can do so while arguing that they’re all in favor of a cutting taxes on *98 percent* of Americans. That’s an argument that, for better or worse, won in the last election. It’s a seductive one, and it costs the Democrats nothing to make it. We need to stop pretending that the threat of returning all rates to pre-2001 levels confers any advantage whatsoever. It simply doesn’t.

Fortunately, the Democrats suck at negotiating almost as bad as the leadership. We’re about to get the vast majority of cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 preserved in law permanently, provided we don’t do anything stupid. We’ll do that while preserving our two best weapons against spending–the debt ceiling and sequestration. We can still screw up, but I’d rather screw up with more money in my bank account than less. I’d rather try to improve on a 41:1 ratio than a 340:1 ratio.

If you choose to operate in that fantasy world, best wishes.

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Is-America-Still-a-Center-Right-Nation

Yep, in my fantasy land. Wisconsin elected a republican legislature and governor and maintained that party in power in spite of voting for Obama. And so did Michigan. In fact, Michigan passed RTW legislation, something that would have been inconceivable up to a few years ago.

So the reality is no where near as bleak (left) as some believe. Especially if you consider Obama a singularity, rather than the wave of the future.

Sorry, I do not think we should take this deal without amendments. Call me pessimistic, but I doubt the promises that we will deal with spending later.

If “conservative” means taking a 28 percent top tax rate on investment income over 20 percent and jumping rates on 98 percent of Americans–and getting absolutely nothing in return–we’ve got a problem.

Do you understand what it means to return to the Clinton era tax rates? It means that the Democrats will negotiate will demand *ever increasing* investment, business and top marginal tax rate increases for decreasing the middle class burden. It won’t stop at 39.6 percent at the top rate. It won’t stop at 28 percent on ordinary income. We’ll be negotiating a retreat from even the Reagan achievements, and for what? Because we’re too damned pissy about the election? Because we think we can’t do anything except pout? Because we’ve got this crazy notion–in defiance of all history–that the left can’t and won’t hang conservatives with their own failures simply because we stood out of the way?

We’ve got a choice. Take credit for preserving the vast majority of tax cuts; cuts Democrats wanted to rid in their entirety not even four years ago and sideline the class warfare argument. Or take the blame for a tax increase in a struggling economy. It’s a no brainer.

Let Obama crow about raising taxes. Let Republicans REMIND VOTES THAT OBAMA IS A BIG TAX HIKER who increased taxes in Obamacare, in this bill, and in other bills.

” the White House has designed this solely for purposes of getting the
GOP to break their tax pledge. Any way we play the game we lose.”

Correct. So make that the story. Republicans do NOT agree in principle to tax increases, but were and are willing to compromise in order to avoid something worse. We should not discount the fact that the GOP was cornered into this because we did not want to see tax increases on ANY Americans, Obama demanded increases on millions of Americans. The compromise has spared 99% from tax increases.

As for spending … this weak deal really did nothing posiitive, but nothing permanent either. THE KEY WILL BE REPUBLICAN UNITY AND STRENGTH. Dont become Obama’s foils again. There is no upside to the Republicans playing the go along game any more. What can he threaten Republicans with now? hold out for 3 for 1 spending cuts for any debt ceiling increase. Any discussion of ANY tax increases? OFF THE TABLE. Any reforms like loophole closure would be revenue neutral.

… oh, and NEVER have Obama ‘negotiations’ ever again. THEY ARE POINTLESS AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. What’s the worst that can happen? The key is to have a position that 218 Republicans can hold to, meaning both conservative and moderate Republicans will have to find unity.

“Actually, the leverage next time will be better, as there will be no tax
increases hanging over our heads. In two months, it’s all about
spending and the debt limit.”

Abosulutely correct, which is why the gnashing of teeth over this bill is misplaced. The GOP should have done a better job in negotiations, and what’s to blame is Reid’s usual “Plan R” ….

1. Do nothing until the very last minute, force the GOP to move.

2. write a crappy hasty bill that does the minumum acceptable to get GOP support.

It’s time for the GOP to play turnabout on the debt ceiling and budget on this. Wait until 24 hrs before. In NEGOTIATION DONT CHANGE THE GOP POSITION – NEVER WAVER. $3 in cuts – PLUS ADD IN 3X of whatever the tax increase was, PLUS stop the double counting. Play hardball. $4.5 trillion in spending cuts for $1.5 trillion debt ceiling increase.

Then at 24 hour point, write a bill that would get 10 democrat senator votes (and all Republicans to support):

Dump it on the Senate. Dare them to go over the debt ceiling.

“I just don’t know why we’d throw the leverage away like that.. and enter the debt ceiling flat footed.”

BECAUSE WE NEVER HAD THE LEVERAGE. WHAT LEVERAGE?

Obama wanted to raise taxes on the top 2%, and he had the polls on his side to demand it or attack the GOP for making us go over the ‘cliff’. He didnt want to pay any price to get there and when Boehner attempted something it got nowhere.

We need to stop beating up our Republican leaders to not doing the impossible. They were never going to get a good deal out of Obama. We have either a bad deal or no deal. They got some movement out of Reild ($450k) and a few other minor concession, but no real spending cuts. We should have done better, BUT realize that with all Americans facing tax hikes, there never was an acceptable ‘no deal’ outcome. We had NO LEVERAGE to demand more except the very stubbornness that would play into Obama’s political attacks on the GOP.

“If he does, let him.. let him wear it like a wreath.”

INDEED. We need to remind voters that these are the OBAMA TAX HIKES just like we had the BUSH TAX CUTS. That’s his agenda, and it would benefit the GOP if we kept making that point. Obama is a spendaholic, taxaholic and debtaholic.

It is a moot point, since it already passed. But at some point you have to draw the line. You cannot keep pushing spending cuts down the line. In negotiations, you try not to give the other side everything they want without concessions on their part. The Dems won all they wanted, we lost.

They’ll find a way to use it. Something like: “The GOP demanded protection for their rich buddies who could have afforded to pay a little more. We certainly can’t put any more squeeze on the people who can least afford it by cutting any of these lifeline programs as we fight our way out of the Bush depression.” You’ll have every liberal screaming that Obama already gave away the store by letting too many rich people off the hook and they will vote down every spending cut (except to defense). And the GOP will cave again.

you are okay with the defense cuts?

The Congressional Republicans should take a leaf from the Washington Red Skins. Last year the Skins were looosers, as are the Republicans. What did the Skins do? Changed leaders. Most times in the thick of things changing the QB throws off the other team and the team is at a loss as how to react. Each of the Republican leaders have lost each time they have negotiated against the Democrats. Bring on that new freshman leader!!! New blood is what we need.

Not preferrable, but if that’s all we get, so be it. We don’t exactly have the horsepower/majority to call the shots at this point.