Erick Erickson Quotes

Most American politicians and citizens, unlike DeLay, believe that arguing against the opponents’ political philosophy should be done with debate, civil argument, advocacy, speechmaking and writing and not by attacking opponents and confronting them whenever possible. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.

Under his leadership the conservative Republicans had attempted and failed dozens of times to repeal Obamacare which many Republicans campaigned against in the 2012 Presidential election which they also lost. The irony was that even if a repeal were to possibly pass both housed of Congress, President Obama announced that he would veto the repeal. This futile and repetitive wast of time took place where the House was so extreme that it originated almost no legislation that every became law. The conservative Republicans had opposed every attempt to provide a national health system since they blocked President Truman from it. Yet Medicare was passed and became one of America’s most popular programs. Conservatives blocked all efforts to expand Medicare to cover all Americans until President Obama in his first term passed Obamacare. Since then they made all these attempts to repeal it.

The historian was comparing Obama to other historical presidents who either had a majority of both Houses of Congress or had an opposition party that was generally quite cooperative and willing to compromise for the sake of running the country smoothly. At this point in time there was a Tea Party wing of the Republican that was particularly negative and obstructionist. They tended to threaten and intimidate the main stream Republicans who used the filibuster to block legislation the majority of Senators had voted for more times than all the other Congresses in American history. And that was only in Obamas first 6 years.

The threat was delivered to Mark Sanford a conservative Congressman from Southg Carolina, Sanford had stated that he would vote against Trump's plan for a replacement to Obamacare. He paid no attention to the threat and the intent of intimidating other Republican members of the House of Representatives failed, There were so many Republican defectors who would not vote for the bill that House Speaker Ryan, withdrew the bill at the last minute has the majority Republicans had so many defectors that the Obama Care replacement coult not possibly pass. This was a great blow to Presieent Trump and not President in history had been thwarted so early in his administration on a major bill. Worse Trump's own party contolled the majority and the entire party had run their campaingns with the "promise" to repeal ObabaCare. However when they tried to do it, they cound it was not so easy and even most of the conservatives proferred ObamaCare to the propsed legislation that the Speaker or the House and the Presidenet were advocating.

The Republicans wanted to repeal Obamacare but could not agree among themselves on a replacement. Their hyperpolarized posture would not allow them to work with the Democrats so the leadership drafted legislation that purported to be a plan to provide for American Health Care. But they could not get their own entire caucus to support it, and so it failed.

Many Republicans, having been mostly in the minority for decades had come to see their roles in Congress as doing whatever they could to attack and obstruct any Executive Branch initiative or activity. However the extreme Republican conservatives have generally also worked to obstruct centrist and liberal Republicans as well as Democrats.

Actually, the insistence on 60 days had nothing to do with having time of members of Congress to study the treaty and make up their minds. It was intended by the opponents of the treaty to give them time to whip up public opinion so such a degree that it might derail the treaty. But if they said that, and the President said, "No", they would lose. But couched this way, if the President refused, they could say that the President and supporters of the treaty were afraid that the public and the press as well as they would have the time to see the weaknesses and just wanted to "ram" the treaty through. So they either get the time or they create suspicion of the treaty in many minds. Unfortunately, what is good politics is often hypocritical and frequently intellectually dishonest.

In 2007 the Republicans, who were in the minority, began to use the filibuster to a degree that it had never been used. Within the single year of 2007 Republican’s filibustered 62 times, doubling the highest rate that had occurred before. A small minority of senators were able to block legislation that easily passed the House and was supported by the majority of senators and in some cases supported by the overwhelming majority of the American Public.

Democratic Speaker of the Oklahoma House Jim Barker was so heavy-handed that his own party members combined to unseat him:

At that time, the Republicans in Congress were able to block almost all the wanted by the Democratic President Barack Obama. Much of the behavior was motivated by a disagreement with the President’s proposals, but in many cases, the President had accepted and recommended what the Republicans had wanted (and in many cases had voted for earlier). The Republicans killed these proposals also going over the passive aggressive line that Wetzler had posited. Even when public opinion fell to less than 10 percent approval (lower than used car salesmen) for the Congressional Republicans, they were so locked in to the pattern of passive aggressive behavior, that they could not change.

The United Stats Senate until the hyperpartisanship and the Republican abuse of the filibuster in the early part of the 21st century, was considered by most, the greatest deliberative body in the world. In just a few years it became one of the most feeble.

Boehner’s Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. However the Democrats controlled the Senate and Obama, the president, was a Democrat. So while Boehner could block any legislation, he could not pass legislation that the Republicans wanted. So the speaker resorted to the tactic of holding for ransom import legislation unless the President and the Democrats would pass legislation that the majority of the public and the Democrats were against. In this case it was the debt ceiling limit. The United States spends money authorized by Congress and then has to pay the bills. When the country is growing, the government has to borrow money in order to meet its obligations and pay bills. Congress must authorize the increase in the debt limit. Boehner held the debt limit hostage until Obama would agree to spending cuts that were unpopular with the majority. A problem for the Republicans with this strategy however was that the government would not have enough money to pay the regular bills and the government would have to slow down. This was considered a most unpatriotic thing to do and one would put the United States full faith and credit at risk. Republicans justified it on the grounds that spending money as the government was doing was worse and therefore it requires extreme measures. This was not the only occasion where a political party put its ideology ahead of the welfare if the nation as a whole. But in those few past occasions the party doing this was not overt about it, and could never be accused of blackmailing. What made this quotation remarkable was that it was the first time that the politician was very explicit about the blackmail strategy. President Obama actually caved in a bit and compromised and reduced spending so the debt ceiling was raised. Earlier, President Clinton had the same tactic tried on him but he let the Government shut down, and after a few days, The political heat on the Republicans were so great that they had to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government.

President Obama was a true Constitutionalist who, unlike other modern presidents, truly believed that members of Congress had a right to express their views and act on them and the President should not retaliate against them for opposing him on major issues. Unfortunately, this was interpreted by most people as weakness. It also hurt his legislative initiative, as no one feared his retaliation or was intimidated when he asked for their vote.

He, in a speech to Parliament, had criticized the Iranian Judiciary on several counts, He was then reprimanded for doing so.

This was one of the worst Congresses in American History and had the worst productivity record—passing very few bills, and none of any significance. The anti-government, Tea Party hyper-conservative Wing of the Republican Party intimidated the Speaker of the House and they were opposed to any compromise at all on anything.

This appears to be the first time in American history where the losing opposition did not at least claim that they wanted to work with the elected president to better the country. In this case, the partisanship was so bad that the major goal of the Republicans was to do what they could to have the president fail in his first term. To achieve their objective, the Republicans opposed almost every presidential legislative initiative of Obama’s including those that they had supported in previous ones. In several cases, the President proposed to accept previous Republican programs and ideas, and must Republicans then voted against the proposal so that they could deny the president any legislative success even if it moved the Republican programmatic agenda ahead. The Strategy worked in the sense that that Congress passed fewer bills that any in history, but failed to keep Obama from a second term. While the voters were not happy that the President was not able to persuade the Republicans to compromise and pass needed legislation, enough of them realized that the Republicans were more responsible, and reelected the President. The constant opposition to anything Obama advocated and the drumbeat of accusations against him drove his public approval numbers way down. In the process the Republicans drove their own approval percentage under 10 percent. The Republicans followed McConnell’s leadership, hurt the President badly, hurt themselves worse, and hurt the country.