Why in the hell are the Republicans “seeking absolution” for trying to spread the truth. They need to man up against the liberal Dem idiots (redundant, I know). I will be voting libertarian from now on unless the woosy Republicans grow a set.

NOPE. We are done with tax hikes. With the Damocles’ sword of automatic tax hikes gone, there is NO reason to have any more tax hikes. EVER.

“The leverage we had was to force Obama to raise taxes on middle and lower class Americans,”

Our ‘leverage’ was the leftist wet dream of massive tax hikes AND being the tax collectors for Obama’s massive Government spending?!?!

Again we see the absurdity of attacking those who chose a non-ideal but not-horrible outcome by asserting that the horrible outcome would somehow end up golden.

“This is what happens when we refuse to stand up for our principles”
If your principles are “dont raise tax rates” well we saved 99% from that, and going over the cliff would have saved 0% from that.

” The leverage we had was to force Obama to raise taxes on middle and
lower class Americans, which he promised not to do, unless he would
extend the tax cuts for all”
He also promised TO raise taxes on the rich and was prepared with the media to blame the Republicans for tax hikes on the middle class … “See, they dont care about you, only I do..”.

We DO have leverage on the debt ceiling but we have to get away from the crisis mode that feeds Obama’s power. We need to pass $100 debt ceiling increase increments, each month, and each month put more into the ‘spending reductions’ bucket.

Put down the new RINO cant. Tax cuts and “protecting” them have not turned out to work the way Reagan intended, and indeed our continuing failures are at root the same failures he experienced as POTUS: the inability to cut actual government spending. He promoted tax cuts for 2 reasons, the second not less critical because it was second. First was to restart the economy, second was to trim the size of government. He knew he couldn’t pass actual budget cuts. Hell, he was barely able to get some window dressing in the form of reduced rates of increase. But he assumed that if through tax cuts he could limit the growth of spending at least that would help Americans keep more of their money. He assumed that debt increase votes would not always be automatic. Turns out that after a good Kabuki show they are. He was also before Bernie Madoff. And Congress is Bernie Madoff with a Constitutional protection from prosecution. It’s time to deal with that reality.

The “fiscal cliff” was about cutting spending, not protecting tax cuts. The Republican party failed when it took the dive to protect the tax cuts. Now as Benjamin Franklin once observed we shall find that those who are willing to sell out a bit of essential liberty to gain security they will find the deserve neither.

You’re delusional if you think threatening Obama with more tax hikes than he demanded will make him, or any of the people who voted for him, face up to the spending problem.

I am more convinced than ever that the main problem with the United States National Government (I refuse to all it a Federal Government any longer) is not the liberal members of the Democrat Party. They are now, and have always been, big government, tax and spend progressives. They need to be stopped as they have always needed to be stopped.

The problem lies with the elected Republicans. Most of them have lost the will to do the stopping. Each one who strays even one inch left of the center line or shows he is spineless (as with John Boehner and a number of the others in the recent “fiscal cliff” fiasco) needs to understand it means his/her replacement in the next election. It will take time but we can weed them out if we, the voting base, clean up our act and select our representatives based on actions, not their rhetoric.

Actions and rhetoric are indistinguishable these days.
After all, all they have to do is let 30 or so invincible RINOs vote with the Democrats, and then the rest of them make nice speeches and check off boxes to get a 90% rating on the scorecards, without actually standing up for real common-sense policy principles.

They’ll probably only stuff even more money into their pockets to “compensate”.

No, he was wrong. First, it is never, under our Constitution, right to single out one group for punishment. Whether they are millionaires or not is irrelevant. Second, the cliff would have been a better idea because it probably would have raised everybody’s taxes. This would have caused the everyone to lose in their paycheck, and they would have an incentive to look at what they voted for. When you mistakenly vote for tax-and-spend politicians, but have no negative consequences for the action, maybe there is even personal benefits from a tax-and-spend approach, then what is the incentive to seek change? Unless we all get our eyes opened to this farce of a political “leadership” (democrats & republicans) we will soon live in “a brave new world” (Aldus Huxley) sooner than you think. Democratic socialism is an evil that is introduced by “divide and conquer” through a system called democracy” or rule by majority. When you have bought enough votes from the masses with “other peoples money”, you are then the tyrant to the minority. We are not a democracy by our Constitution. We are a republic with equal rights for all, rich and poor. And in such a system, we all participate through f.ex. taxation. Rubio et.al were the heroes in this story, and in protecting our republic, their votes were preferable to sellout to a socialistic tyrant. Btw. the three different forms of socialism we are familiar with, national socialism, communistic socialism, and Obama’s and Europe’s current democratic socialism, are only different in the method of implementation. Once implemented, the interests of the state always comes before the needs of the individual. Freedom is then what the government thinks you can be allowed without interfering with their control. This is always true. Socialism is evil, pure evil, and ruins nations and individuals.

BS, pure and simple.

Raising taxes even more on hardworking people is never a solution to the growth in the entitlement class that voted for Obama. There are lots of people other than the group that was singled out who recognized the danger of this administration’s policies, and your alternative was to penalize them while pushing those at the borderline further into government dependency, without actually discouraging the dependent population that has always made up the bulk of the liberal vote.

Basically, what happened is that the constituency for big government became too big, allowing Obama to win, and your solution of hiking taxes across-the-board will only stuff more money into their pockets while taking more money from more other people. Basically, you’re doing nothing about the Democrat base, who don’t care at all about taxes, while warning our own base and the middle that since some of them didn’t vote for us, we’re showing them the consequences, which is a completely BS-y argument whether philosophically or politically or economically, largely because Obama ain’t gonna get the blame since people don’t like to admit that they were wrong. No one will ever buy that kind of nonsense from any party or movement or person or whatever.

Rubio et al were nothing other than grandstanders who voted for higher taxes and, by extension, bigger government and more welfare voters.

The 85 House Republicans did what was right, to choose the preferable alternative given the awful situation they were handed by the Senate.

So, pure and simple republican or conservative talk is BS. I am used to that term from liberals and even rino’s who have lack of abilities in expressing themselves in conversational English, In your case, however, I suspect it is only frustration.
Well, now to my response. I believe that, although you read my comment, you did not catch my point. I never considered that my my point would change one single liberal democrat, a few “blue-dogs” or Reagan democrats maybe, but not a single liberal. You cannot change those that have learn that everything is given to them if they vote for their “sugar-daddy”. However, “sugar-daddy” Obama was elected by less than 1/4 of the eligible voters. A “cliff-dive” would have awoken all sleepy people that work for a living as their taxes would rise temporarily, That is going to happen anyway, regardless of the cliff. A recovery process can start, and the conservatives need to take the ead, rally disgruntled, overtaxed citizens that have not participated in the election process for years. I am out of time due to another commitment, but I’ll try to end with a summary., And please be not concerned about republicans being blamed for the problems arising. They already are, thanks to the rino’s. The conservatives recaptures the party, rallies the taxpayers, and takes back the government under the auspices of taking all public service union power away, reducing taxes, repeal obamacare and other business unfriendly regulations. Putting the 14% of unemployed back into the work-force will change the tax base, and the problem with higher taxes will be temporary. There is no way to get this country back on track without paion, and yhe pain for 1% of high income makers, even if we took all they have, is only covering the current spending for 8 – 10 days. Also, in a new plan, dismantle several federal operations in educations, energy, and several other fields. Gotta go.

Schock may be the most talented GOP politician in Illinois [which may or may not be saying much.] He is contemplating a run for governor in 2014, and may well be the strongest possible Republican candidate. So, Erick, are you saying or implying that it would be better to run Bill Brady again, the guy who lost the “can’t lose” race against Pat Quinn in 2010?