The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

You need to get past this "The Establishment Knows What it Is Doing" meme you have been on for the past year. The Establishment has lost control. There is no grand plan behind the scenes...they are Nero playing the fiddle. Maybe if the coalition was still in tact you would have a point but it isnt. The people who hate The Establishment arent going back under their thumb.

The crazies and the outliers have realized they always had more power than they believed because they have the numbers and now they have money backing them too. The Establishment is like the Monarchy in England...just there because there is nothing else to do with them.

I don't think they're orchestrating it -- they did not want this to happen. But I think they are playing the cards they were dealt the best way they can. Politics is about getting what you can when you can, and that includes not letting a crisis go to waste. The GOP establishment is actually in an enviable position in this one respect: they can't be held responsible for what happens next. There are ways to use that to their advantage. The most obvious is to use what could be a coming Democratic 18-wheeler to behead the Tea Party. They can then use the debris without having to be bothered with the cray-cray leaders.

It's not ideal, but it's what they have right now. If the configuration changes, they'll change.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

I know it's not a popular idea among the liberal members of the board, but I do believe that we still need a conservative party with some semblance of power to keep the extremely far left ideas in check. Which isn't to say extremely far left ideas aren't good ideas. What I mean is unbridled liberalism.

I'd say we all agree with this; well, put it this way: if I agree with it, then seeing as I'm about 3 standard deviations from the board center point, about 99% of us agree with it.

The problem right now is we'd have to jump hard, hard left just to get back to the center. Left and right we've been living in Reagan's America since 1980. Those have been the ground rules. If we can get back to a semblance of balance between left and right, say, around the Eisenhower 50s, then the two parties are once again pulling from the center out. But right now the GOP is starting at the far right and pulling to the lunatic right, and that is in no way useful to the country, and is in fact a danger.

[Rover]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

You need to get past this "The Establishment Knows What it Is Doing" meme you have been on for the past year. The Establishment has lost control. There is no grand plan behind the scenes...they are Nero playing the fiddle. Maybe if the coalition was still in tact you would have a point but it isnt. The people who hate The Establishment arent going back under their thumb.

The crazies and the outliers have realized they always had more power than they believed because they have the numbers and now they have money backing them too. The Establishment is like the Monarchy in England...just there because there is nothing else to do with them.

Gotta side with Handy here. GOP is not good at thinking on the fly. Only reason why McConnell exists is because nobody wants his thankless job. If Trump gets crushed, what's going to happen is next Gooper will run on the same issues, but with a more polite personality. There's no way they go back to the grandfatherly country clubness of the 70's Republican party that Kep and others miss. Trump + Cruz have won 2/3rds of the primary vote. They ARE the party now.

[burd]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

I know it's not a popular idea among the liberal members of the board, but I do believe that we still need a conservative party with some semblance of power to keep the extremely far left ideas in check. Which isn't to say extremely far left ideas aren't good ideas. What I mean is unbridled liberalism.

I'm sure most would describe me as liberal, and I completely agree. The country needs a party that will advocate articulable conservative fiscal and even social policies instead of anti-intellectual fear-mongering that treats every voter like Joe the Plumber. If not, the idiocy we have seen in recent years will only increase the swing of the pendulum.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

Gotta side with Handy here. GOP is not good at thinking on the fly. Only reason why McConnell exists is because nobody wants his thankless job. If Trump gets crushed, what's going to happen is next Gooper will run on the same issues, but with a more polite personality. There's no way they go back to the grandfatherly country clubness of the 70's Republican party that Kep and others miss. Trump + Cruz have won 2/3rds of the primary vote. They ARE the party now.

If that group goes full bore (boar?) populist and starts wanting to nationalize the financial sector, they can call themselves the party but they'll have no money. They'll basically be a Le Pen white power party at that point, which can win nowhere outside the deep south and Great Plains -- a permanent, regional 30% party. That isn't going to happen -- political parties act like biological organisms that protect themselves from extinction. The GOP will eventually have to open itself beyond self-pitying under-educated fundamentalist whites in the same way that a person holding their breath must eventually take a breath.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

I'm sure most would describe me as liberal, and I completely agree. The country needs a party that will advocate articulable conservative fiscal and even social policies instead of anti-intellectual fear-mongering that treats every voter like Joe the Plumber. If not, the idiocy we have seen in recent years will only increase the swing of the pendulum.

The US needs a conservative party built around this guy, not this guy.

[French Rage]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

The US needs a conservative party built around this guy, not this guy.

Or heck, Goldwater. Reading "Conscience of a Conservative", while I'm not going to vote for that platform, at least it seems thematically consistent, compared to what we get nowadays.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

Or heck, Goldwater. Reading "Conscience of a Conservative", while I'm not going to vote for that platform, at least it seems thematically consistent, compared to what we get nowadays.

Goldwater looks like John Stewart Mill compared to these guys.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

To our attorneys: is there any way of shutting these freaks down and maybe sending the ringleaders to jail? To what extent is running a cult where your members are brainwashed prisoners criminal? Can you nail them on child abuse at least? Is there a legal way of busting them up?

[Rover]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

If that group goes full bore (boar?) populist and starts wanting to nationalize the financial sector, they can call themselves the party but they'll have no money. They'll basically be a Le Pen white power party at that point, which can win nowhere outside the deep south and Great Plains -- a permanent, regional 30% party. That isn't going to happen -- political parties act like biological organisms that protect themselves from extinction. The GOP will eventually have to open itself beyond self-pitying under-educated fundamentalist whites in the same way that a person holding their breath must eventually take a breath.

Frankly Kep one of your fears will come true, which is Wall St will start gravitating towards the Dems. Especially if Schumer is running the Senate (Chuck, not Amy) they already have a foot in the door of the Dems.

Now where we may differ is there's no way they'll have the same clout as they had with the GOP as the Lizzy Warren's of the world won't allow it. But they can try to mitigate things a little. A transaction tax might fly, while taxing them back to The Stone Age would get blocked for example.

But, there is no suppressing the Trump/Cruz vote in the Republican party. They're loud and proud and own the party. GOP is going to embrace populist nativism with an occasional neo-con bone thrown in (more torture for example). Ayn Randian Republicanism is dead.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

All over the Internet today that Mitch has admitted that the NRA is in charge of Supreme Court nominations on the GOP side. Good to hear.

[St. Clown]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

All over the Internet today that Mitch has admitted that the NRA is in charge of Supreme Court nominations on the GOP side. Good to hear.

Yeah, joecct brought us that same bit of news early this morning.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

Yeah, joecct brought us that same bit of news early this morning.

Oops. Sorry. I haven't read thoroughly and his post is cryptic.

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

Frankly Kep one of your fears will come true, which is Wall St will start gravitating towards the Dems.

This will eventually split the party. Agency capture is a feature, rather than a bug, of Republican administrations (because Republicans don't believe in government for any other purpose than gunboat diplomacy abroad and locking up non-whites at home). If that behavior migrates to the Democratic party then we'll walk. But it will take a couple generations and lots of things will change in the interim (for one thing, I'll be dead, which is something we can all look forward to).

The question for the immediate future is whether we can roll back Citizens United and McCutcheon and forever codify that the headnote in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific doesn't mean squat and corporations do not have 14th and 1st amendment constitutional rights and are not people. Without that, there's no campaign finance reform, and without that there's no way to stop runaway inequality.

[CLS]

Re: The Power of SCOTUS VIII redux: IX is being blocked by the Senate.

I'm sure most would describe me as liberal, and I completely agree. The country needs a party that will advocate articulable conservative fiscal and even social policies...

or where one who is conservative fiscally and liberal socially (or liberal fiscally and conservative socially) can fit, even if not comfortably, at all.