The Hoover Caucus

It seems to me that the GOP is signaling that it intends to obstruct everything right down the line.

I think they intend to basically sit everything out, without offering much in the way of their own ideas. And just blame the Dems for everything.

On the one hand, this is what opposition movements do a lot of. But on the other hand, this is a very serious recession of historic proportions. Hardly the time to for petty grandstanding. It just continues to emphasize the fact that the GOP is completely unequipped to deal with any problem that wasn't already clearly defined before 1994.

Heh, and here is David Frum(p) saying, irony-free, that Americans will be "receptive to a market-oriented [health care] system". The GOPs frankly revels in it's dead-end ideology. This after the collapse of this Second Gilded Age.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180043
.
Speaking of this ending era, a winning contestant for a contest at the The Nation to name this past era of excess, greed, and "profound irresponsibility" dubbed it "The Borrowed Times".
.
THAT is a good name and I'm hoping Joe that you and your Beltway buddies will cotton to it.
.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090202/name_our_epoch?rel=rightsideaccordian

One word that journos have deleted from their discourse...."how". Not one journo has asked "how" Boehner came up with his numbers. If they had he would look like the stunningly dumb dumb ass that he really is. He couldn't begin to tell you. If somebody were to ask him "how" the tax cut plan he and his ass hat cohort Eric Cantor will create or keep jobs again he couldn't give you any but the vaguest answer. And finally, if any of them were to ask "how" it makes sense to double down on tax cuts as economic stimulus after Bush's tax cuts brought us to this point in the first place you would get crickets. Of course journos nowadays hide behind the David Gregory rule, just reporting what is said without saying if its a lie or not. So why ask a follow up question that might actually reveal the Republicans to be a collective bunch of blithering idiots?
.
But here is the thing that journos aren't noticing, the Republicans aren't the only ones headed into the wilderness. The more they keep enabling those clowns the more regular people lose faith in the mainsteam media and the more you will continue to see them go under. At some point hopefully they will realize that the people didn't just reject McCaiin and Palin on Nov 4th. They also rejected the tabloid journalism that went on all election season.

The GOP's instant oppo to everything Obama has put forth on the economy and other topics is going to kill them in the end. The country (even Oklahoma conservatives if you beleive the Times) is behind Obama in overwhelming and historic numbers. Let Obama's stimulus get through, see if it actually saves the country, then have him own the success or the failure.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Is there a way we can fund a cruise to Alaska for Jennifer Rubin and John Boehner so that they meet Gov Palin and solve all the problems we have. Maybe they could hop over to Roosia?

"I suspect the G.O.P. will remain in the wilderness for as long as it thinks it can hoodwink the public with such slovenly thinking."
.

Well Joe, it was a good run, at least since Ronald Reagan trotted-out trickle-down "Voodoo Economics" and Star Wars missile shields - almost 30 years ago. Where the hell have you been?

"They assume a witless populace". Ya' think? Look at Palin. Look at Joe the Plumber/Reporter. The republican party has devolved into a group that relies on fear, intimidation and the fervent hope that the public is witless enough to believe anything they hear regardless of whether it is fact based or internet rumor. The intelligent members of the republican leadership know they aren't going anywhere without the support of evangelical base and they also know they are no longer appealing to the independents and moderates with the evangelicals calling the shots. What alternatives do they have left? They'll shout louder, wave their arms faster and let the spittle fly. Boehner is just playing to the base. If it's the only game in town, you play it.

Why does everyone assume the government can spend its way out of this deepening recession? Under President Obama, we're likely to see the national debt rise to at least $14 trillion or about a 32% increase over his first term. And, it's very possible that his 3.5 million jobs projection will be halved by the continued loss of jobs until the economy is stabilized, which may not come until early 2011. These are reasonable projections, and I for one don't see a problem with the Boehner's math given that it's unlikely that Congress won't appropriate much more than $850 billion that's being discussed for approval this year alone. In this context, Mr. Boehner's math may actually turn out to be conservative.

Posts such as this (e.g., Paul Krugman's post on inane WSJ editorials:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/shorter-wall-street-journal/) demonstrate how important blogs have become in debunking right wing nonsense, and why its purveyors are so desperate to discredit blogs as serious journalism.

Joe can try to parse it out whatever way he wants. The bottom line is that 825 Billion is a lot of money. And if you're going to make the argument that "jobs created" is a primary outcome, there's nothing wrong with presupposing what the return on investment is going to be. And something either makes sense or it doesn't.

joe, you're blaming the GOP for taking Team Obama at its word. They're calling it an economic stimulus package, talking about job creation, etc.
_
Team Obama is doing the same thing that Bush did -- repurposing their campaign promises as a response to bad economic times. With Bush, it was his fat cat tax cuts. With Obama, its his "greening" and "health care records" and "infrastructure" proposals, and his (ill-advised) "middle class tax cut."
_
And Team Obama won't admit what a very large chunk of the money is going toward -- reinforcing the "social safety net". Obama is afraid to describe accurately all the money going for food stamps and to keep state based "safety net" programs running -- he feels compelled to kowtow to the right wing in terms of his rhetoric.
_
This leaves him vulnerable to stuff like the Boehner BS.
_
Ultimately, the problem is that Obama is doing what "villagers" like you want him to do -- act all "post-partisan" etc. But what Boehner is doing is precisely what the GOP has done for the last three decades --- move the overton window to the right while idiot democrats who listen to the villagers like Broders and Kleins and Brooks "compromise" away everything the Democratic Party stands for.

.
Eeesh...it's like that "Obama's inauguration costs $160 million and George Bush's only cost $42 million" bit of misdirection going on.
.
JK: I'd hope that we'd have an intellectually responsible Loyal Opposition that will help hone the fat out of the Obama Administration's proposals..
.
Fat chance of that, Joe. True believers don't let things like reality or fact interfere with the way they like to see things.

So your solution is to...cut more taxes? Didn't we go down that road already? Hasn't trickle-down theory been disproven enough for you? If you want to be honest there JJ look at what can be trimmed from the federal budget one item at a time and stop painting with the Republican broad brush. You might discover answers to the problems with the goverment that actually are solutions rather than the bludgeons of blind ideology.

BTW kudos to Mr. Klein for acknowledging that intellectualism and Republican have been mutually exclusive for at least several election cycles now. When a government runs on faith rather than empirical evidence and established scientific fact, the end result is a distinct lack of sound governmental principles. Iran and Saudi Arabia find themselves in similar binds.

"Parse"? "Parse"?!? Isolation of "a primary outcome" justifies dividing the entire price tag by a selective metric? This is the sort of illogic that stands to anything but reason.
.
The only comparable analysis was that offhandedly given to Monty Python's King Arthur: "…and that, milord, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped."

[...] a good deal? Posted by Justin Fox | Comments (0) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This Joe Klein argues that the Republican talking point that Obama's stimulus plan will cost $275,ooo per new job created [...]

jjworleyeoe Says:
Monday, January 19, 2009 at 7:39 pm
"Why does everyone assume the government can spend its way out of this deepening recession?"

I love this idiots comment. No one is guaranteeing spending will get us out of a recession dummy. But just about every leading economist will tell you that spending IS the best option. Look, at the point we're at now, which, none of us have ever seen anything like this before in our lives, all we can do is make an educated decision and move forward. And if the experts are saying we need to spend to create jobs, and re-tool infrastructure, then that is what we need to do. And then be positive and hope for the best. Arguing for the sake of arguing does no one any good.

plukasiak...you're an idiot too. I love how you tell us what Obama is thinking and why he is not divulging things. How the hell do you know? Are you hanging with him? Ever spoken to him? Didnt think so. Quit being a bitter Republican and be an American. I am not Democrat or Republican. I am going to volunteer and do whatever I can to improve America. If 1/2 of American did the same thing I guarantee we'd be in a better spot 4 years from now. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, doing nothing and just criticizing. You're the reason people hate Americans.

I disagree with Paul Lukasiak about a whole bunch of things, but this is fairly accurate:
.
Ultimately, the problem is that Obama is doing what "villagers" like you want him to do -- act all "post-partisan" etc.
.
The only thing is, if it works, and Obama can successfully implement a real health care system (like Hillary's) by being dishonest and political in a way that the Village likes (and expects), then we're wrong, and he's right. The Overton window (or the sphere of legitimate debate) can wait while sick people get the medicine they need, as long as Obama doesn't actually go as far as to throw away the rule of law in order to placate David Brooks.

"And if you're going to make the argument that "jobs created" is a primary outcome, there's nothing wrong with presupposing what the return on investment is going to be."
.
And just how much is the cost per job created by the 6,900,000,000,000 dollars Benanke and Paulson have already handed out, eh, onlystandstoreason1?
.
Do that math!

Just to remind myself just how disconnected the Old Soviets, er, Republicans are, I listened again today to O'Reilly's interview of Obama.
.
More of the same, but hell, after a mass extinction like this last one, what better to do if you are a GOPer than to head straight for the crater...

Joe you lost me over FISA.

But you have at 'The Hoover Caucus'.

The only thing is, if it works, and Obama can successfully implement a real health care system (like Hillary's) by being dishonest and political in a way that the Village likes (and expects), then we're wrong, and he's right. The Overton window (or the sphere of legitimate debate) can wait while sick people get the medicine they need, as long as Obama doesn't actually go as far as to throw away the rule of law in order to placate David Brooks.
.
stuart, all true. It reminds me of something Tavis Smiley said on MTP. He argued that for Obama to be a Lincoln, he needs a Frederick Douglass. I can't imagine how Obama can please Brooks and implement progressive/rational policies on things like health care without being publicly pushed by a 21st century Douglass. He can't "unite" the left and right, and pursue "non-ideological" policies through compromise if there's no active left that that also needs to be publicly placated. Obama seems to have partly built his career on convincing people that secretly he agrees with them, but he needs to compromise with other people in order to make things happen and unite everyone. It's hard to see how that could work if there's no "other people" that Brooks perceives as being powerful actors in their own right. For example, much of the establishment support FDR attracted was in reaction to the perceived threat of socialism - the New Deal was perceived by those establishment figures as a necessary compromise in order to prevent the rise of socialism or communism.
.
IMO, this is why Amy Sullivan's post about Obama being the new MLK was absurd. He could use an MLK right now.

Evidently you thought the Republicans were going to change, too. Not much chance of that.

"They assume a witless populace."
.
They assume well...didn't you and your colleagues spend a couple decades celebrating mediocrity and the inherent wisdom of 'the regular guy'?

I'm with Stuart. I have no idea what Obama will actually do. But he will find it easier to do if he either conforms with or circumvents the Village. Circumvention would be via his email list.