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We Need the REAL Republicans Back

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Hopefully you know that this is a Left-leaning blog. On a whole range of issues, Texas Leftist espouses what most would consider to be “Liberal” values, and those values tend to be more on the Democratic side of the current political spectrum.

All that being said, I really miss the old Republican Party. These folks used to be real politicians, and they used to care about actual issues. The Reagan-era GOP had vigorous disagreements with Democrats, but at the end of the day, they got together, laid all of the harsh rhetoric aside, and came up with common-sense solutions to our problems. Sure, both parties have always had extremes, but there used to be enough sanity in the Republican Party to do the real work of government. This is not the case today, as the Republican party has devolved into a phony coalition between scared Republicans and TEA party members carrying the party name, which I prefer to call TEApublicans. Whatever you choose to call them, one thing is clear… the Republican Party as we know it is over. It’s this takeover of the GOP that has led to most of the dysfunction in Congress, and in many ways is the whole reason for the current government shutdown and default. Now that’s not to say that there aren’t still sensible people on Capitol Hill, but those precious few wouldn’t dare oppose the TEApublican caucus.

In the Senate, slightly more sanity abounds. But even there, most Republican members live in such fear of drawing a primary challenge that even they can’t always do what they know is best for their constituents. So we have to count them in the TEApublican camp too.

But thankfully, there remain a few people on the Right that have both common sense and political courage. In the midst of complete government chaos, Texas Leftist felt it was time to highlight said lawmakers, and remind readers that things don’t have to be the way they are now. One REAL Republican came to mind.

And that Republican is Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

To be clear, I don’t agree with Senator Murkowski’s views on everything, but I have often admired her courage on Capitol Hill. She’s on record wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act… we’re never going to agree with that. But what Senator Murkowski was not willing to do? Shut down the government because she didn’t get her way. Here’s a quote from the Fairbanks News-Miner…

“As bad as I believe this health care law is for our nation, shutting down the government means lost paychecks for gas, rent and grocery money for thousands of Alaskans who work for the federal government and vital services for our veterans, seniors, children and disabled,” Murkowski said in a statement late Monday. “My opposition to the Affordable Care Act doesn’t mean we stop legislating.

“We need to get work. Shutting down the government doesn’t help anybody — and it has a harmful ripple effect on the larger economy,” she said. “It is time for the president and Senate and House leaders to come together and find a solution to fund the government.”

Again, for the record, I support the Affordable Care Act and it’s implementation… I am not advocating Senator Murkowski’s position here. But I am thankful that she is courageous enough to stand against the TEApublican caucus and speak from a point of common sense.

Of course Murkowski has earned the ability to be independent. The true TEA party faction within Congress is a small number of lawmakers, but most Republicans will not oppose them because they fear a “nightmare scenario” of drawing a Primary challenger for the next election. In essence they care more about their own reelection than they do about what is best for their constituencies, which is why we’re in this shutdown/ debt ceiling mess in the first place. But that nightmare scenario is one that Senator Murkowski has already endured. In 2010, she lost the Republican Primary to Joe Miller, a TEA Party challenger and favorite of Former Governor Sarah Palin. Knowing now that Miller had the full support of the Republican Party establishment, almost everyone concluded that Murkowski’s political future was over. But they were wrong… Murkowski launched an historic write-in campaign to keep her seat, and won the election without even being on the ballot. Instead of being controlled by the voices of extremism, the Senator put her constituents first. Whatever your political ideology, you have to admit that it took some brass to do this. Brass that is decidedly missing from the TEApublicans of the 113th.

We spend a lot of time on the Left painting the GOP with one broad brush… all of them are terrible, all of them are intransigent, all of them are dangerous… and sure, a bunch of that criticism is deserved. But I suspect that if more people in Congress were like Senator Murkowski, the government would not be the train wreck that it is today. Let’s hope more messages like hers start to sink in. If they don’t, we’re all in trouble.

Thanks for the leadership Senator.

Houston Politics

Coalition EXPOSED: Post Cliff, The House GOP’s new reality

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Well, now we know. Thanks to tireless work on behalf of Vice President Biden, President Obama, and Congressional leaders, the big bad Fiscal Cliff was officially averted. After a rousing show of Senate Bi-Partisanship, the ‘Fiscal Deal’ was also approved by the House 257-167.

Most pundits today are talking about the deal, and about how “disappointed” they are, or about how “terrible it was for the country. But I’m actually very VERY happy about last night’s House vote. It may have been the best gift ever delivered to the Obama administration, and to the country. Here’s why…

All but 16 Democrats voted for the bill, and that’s as expected because Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has a great relationship with her caucus. We all knew that Speaker John Boehner’s caucus was split, with a majority of them oppsing him at every turn. But what we didn’t know until last night, was exactly where those fault lines lie.

Now we do.

Boehner’s decision to cave and bring the bill to a clean vote was a total game-changer for the White House and for Democrats. Of the 257 yes votes, 85 of them were Republicans. This is it!! This is the group of people that actually listen to the Speaker, and most importantly, are willing to listen to others and put country before party. The official roll call tells this tale like the best of political novels. For the first time since the “Hastert rule” was enacted, a party caucus was knowingly split up by its leadership. As a result, we now see the House GOP for what it really is… a two-party coalition in which John Boehner is actually part of the minority. On one side, you’ve got roughly 150 members that grab all of the attention, and on the other side you have 85 members that want to WORK. 85 members that are (at least briefly) capable of putting the interests of the country above the sanctity of their party.

Many of those members are what you’d expect… blue state Republicans like New Hampshire’s Charlie Bass, or those that have their eye on future offices like Illinois’ Aaron Schock, knowing that bipartisanship is a necessary step were he to run for Governor or Senator of a bifurcated state. And some of them were just people that actually respect Speaker Boehner’s leadership and trust the decision of the caucus… the “old school” politicians. After 3 years of the Tea Partiers hogging the spotlight, we were suddenly reminded that the GOP isn’t completely over-taken… at least not yet.

Now sure, out of those 85 some of them would never do this again. They would never join up with Democrats to help the President. But there’s likely a good 40 to 50 of them that the public can now target to get our government in the right direction again. And as long as Boehner keeps his Speakership in the 113th, Congress will be able to pass important things like Immigration reform and simplification to the tax code.

Republicans and Democrats will always have differences, but we shouldn’t be so far apart that we would allow our country to go to ruins. Sadly, that faction is alive and well within the GOP… some of them care nothing more for the well-being of the United States as long as their narrow viewpoint is advanced. But what we learned on the first night of 2013? That’s not all of them. There are still reasonable, hard-working, SANE people in Congress that want this country to succeed, and are willing to compromise even if they don’t always agree with the views of others. There’s still people in the House of Represenatatives that want to legislate, and not just waste people’s time.

In normal voting procedure, the Speaker of the House does not actually cast a vote. But sometimes, when they think it’s needed (like then Speaker Nancy Pelosi casting a vote for the Affordable Care Act), they will vote. Last night, Speaker Boehner cast a vote, eventhough he knew that enough of the other members of the caucus would join Democrats. He knew the bill would pass, but he voted anyway. Why would the Speaker do that?

If I were a betting man, I’d say that Boehner’s vote was a signal. He’s communicating to the President and Senate that he’s one of the “good guys”. Or at least that he’d like to be.

But in order to be a truly good guy, Mr. Boehner needs one other thing… COURAGE. One vote is simply not enough to save the reputation of the 112th Congress. And letting bills like the Violence Against Women Act and vital aid for Hurricane Sandy victims die in the House is not courageous. It’s wrong. I hope the Speaker finds more courage in the 113th Congress, and FAST.

Houston Politics

The ABCs of the GOP: D is for

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Distraction

The careful art of distraction has been a central tenet of the GOP campaign strategy. Modern Democrats aren’t as good at the “slight of hand” techniques, but Republicans have it down to a science. So let’s take a look at some of the more popular political distractions waged by the GOP.

Over the course of the Obama Presidency, this tactic has been used with tremendous success.

Believe it or not, Contraception used to be a widely supported issue among both parties. Many Republicans have been openly supportive of Planned Parenthood and family planning… including George H.W. and Barbara Bush, Richard Nixon, and yes, Ronald Reagan. We all know that Mr. Romney is a far cry from the days when he “sustained and supported” not only Contraception, but ABORTION(like the over-sized font there? Distracting, huh?). It wasn’t controversial at all, and candidates like Rick Santorum have always been considered “fringe” political forces. Mitt Romney was at one time in his life a Centrist, and occasionally he’s forgotten this. When asked about his views on a bill that would limit Contraception funding, this was his answer…

“I’m not for that bill, but look, the idea of presidential candidates getting into questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and wife—I’m not going there,”

Sounds like a pretty sane thing to say, right? Not anymore, at least by Republican Party standards. The GOP leaders decided that this year, despite decades of voting records to the contrary, Contraception was going to become a mainline distraction. Suddenly people are changing their positions and running to the Right. It leaves voters having to make a choice based on values, and not who would do a better job. They have been willing to sacrifice their own personal opinions or the dynamic views of their 21st century constituents in favor of that all-important directive… DEFEAT OBAMA.

Here’s why we just can’t get rid of Donald Trump. As Lawrence O’Donnell commented on his show, Trump is being used by Romney and the GOP to do the party’s “dirty work”. After all of the talk of birtherism in 2008, the GOP has revived it to be a distraction in 2012, knowing full well that Americans who voted for Obama last time think the whole thing is ridiculous. But the GOP needs racist and suspicious voters to stay on their side and be active. So instead of engaging on our nations most important issues, they continue to divide and distract by questioning the President’s legitimacy. Of course Mitt Romney’s father ran for President in the 60s and he was born in Mexico. Maybe Mr. Romney would like to explain why he thinks his father should have been President.

Wait, sorry, how did I drift over into that? What were we talking about again??

Perhaps the most controversial of distraction politics is the debt-ceiling debate… you remember right? The one where the GOP held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage unless Democrats agreed to near Draconian government cuts. It seemed ludicrous at the time, but the GOP fought hard and got much more of what they wanted than Democrats. Now this debate was and will be a distraction on a grand scale, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the American people. It’s actually about a debate within the Republican party itself. 20 years ago, there were too many level-headed people in Washington to be able to do something like this. Remember that most of the contention over the debt-ceiling in the final hours was between House Republicans. Boehner actually brought the bill up for several votes, only to have it fail by his own Caucus. When you have defeats on that large scale, it’s understandable that the party would rather wage massive distractions so that voters spend more time looking at the President’s faults, and maybe, hopefully forget how much of a mess the GOP has become.

But of course all of these distractions are much more than just insults lodged via Twitter or the latest fodder for Fox News. They are occurring among the 536 most powerful people in our country. If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, millions of people will lose money, some people will lose their job, and endangered seniors will have even harder choices to make as they near retirement. When you’re a nationally elected official, even the distractions could have major consequences. And in the case of the GOP, that is their intention. The debt ceiling distraction was designed to make our government operate at a continuous crisis point in order to weaken Obama’s ability to govern. It is MUCH more than ideological disagreements at play here. What the Republicans want us to believe is that the Democrats are unreasonable, but in reality they are the ones holding the government gun to our heads. Brilliant political strategist Dick Morris designed this playbook. He has experience on both sides of the political aisle, and back in 2011 he calculated the results of these fights with distinct accuracy. BTW, the BEST thing Liberals can do for themselves? Watch Newsmax TV…

There you have it… the exact motivations behind the debt-ceiling debacle, and why we’re about to fight it again. BRILLIANT.

So why do they even need all of these distractions in the first place? Do they really hate President Obama as much as they say they do??

The answer is coming up with letter “E”