Tag Archives: Ted Cruz

Quote of the Day

“If the latest round of polls is accurate, Democrats will lose nearly every competitive Senate race, giving Republicans full control of Congress for the first time in 10 years.

This is excellent news for Democrats.

Instead of another two years of the same old gridlock that has turned voters off of both parties, Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap opera hit peak suds.

In the House, the Boehner vs. Tea Party plot line will heat up, as several anti-Boehner party rebels are expected to win seats now held by more genteel Republicans. The Senate may end up more like a classic sitcom: Can two grandstanders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz run for president at the same time without driving the majority leader crazy?

The inconvenient truth for the Republican Party is that it’s not ready for prime time, yet it’s on the verge of fully sharing with the president the responsibility of running the country.”

Bill Scher, “Good News Democrats, You’re Going to Lose!,” Politico

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/good-news-democrats-youre-going-to-lose-111467.html#ixzz3EpMWX08G

Quote of the Day

“The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be [Hillary] Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.”

If Hillary in the WH is good for the Hamptons oceanfront crowd, why would those of us in the Holiday Inn crowd want her?  Bill Clinton’s deregulation policies bear as much blame for the financial meltdown as do Bush 43’s.

Debt Ceiling Done

The Senate passed the debt ceiling bill, 55-43.

The procedural vote to move the bill forward took an hour as they were having trouble getting to 60.  Eventually, 12 Republicans joined with all 55 Dems, so that there were 67 votes to end the filibuster.  Despite the primary challenges they face, both Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas were among the 12..

If Not Christie, Who?

From “How Bad Does the GOP Need Chris Christie?  Really Bad,” Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast

“[The GOP has] reached the point where they almost have to have a Northeasterner like Christie to run for president, just as they had to settle for Romney last time. They’ve let their party go so far off the deep end that practically no Republican officeholder from any other region of the country could appeal to enough moderates in enough purple and blue states to win back the territory the party ceded to the Democrats in the last two elections.

“Remember: the Republicans come into the next presidential election with 206 reliable electoral votes from states their nominees have won at least four of the last six elections. The Democrats’ corresponding number is 257 (just 13 shy of the victory threshold). These tallies leave five states on the table: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada. …

“So the establishment isn’t going to give up on Christie easily. And of course he can enjoy the benefit in these next weeks and months of becoming a more sympathetic figure to the hard right than he’s ever been, because all he has to do to please that crowd is carry on about how the East Coast liberal media are trying to do him in. And it may just work.

“But ultimately, facts are facts. And if the facts finish him [Christie] off, and the GOP is stuck with Cruz-Rubio-Paul, or even a right-wing governor like Scott Walker, the establishment will be reaping what it’s spent the Obama years sowing: a party that cares more about feeding its base’s fever-dreams than being nationally electable. And that’s where things stand, as Christie begins a term that there’s a sporting chance he may not even be able to finish.”

I’d say much more than a sporting chance.  I think it’s a question of when, not if, Christie will resign.

Quote of the Day 2

“This is what the Republicans who follow the Texan Cruz worry about: if struggling middle-class and working-class whites (especially in the South) see the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, then the Republican Party’s southern strategy will collapse.  Here’s the thing: Only by keeping white Republicans angry at the federal government can they keep their fragile coalition together.”

Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, “Ignorant Tea Party outrage:  Sarah Palin’s latest Obamacare lie,” Salon

Truth of the Day

From “U. S. Fringe Festival,” Thomas L. Friedman, NYT:

“In other words, the only thing standing between mainstream Republicans and a hellish future of kowtowing to Ted Cruz, never seeing the inside of the White House and possibly losing the House is President Obama’s refusal to give in to the shutdown blackmail that Cruz % Co. have cooked up.  The more pragmatic Republicans, who know that this is a disaster for their party but won’t confront Cruz & Co., have settled on this bogus line:  ‘Well, sure, maybe Cruz and the Tea Party went too far, but it’s still President Obama’s fault.  He’s president.  He should negotiate with them.  He needs to lead.’

“President Obama is leading.  He is protecting the very rules that are the foundation of any healthy democracy.  He is leading by not giving into this blackmail, because if he did he would undermine the principle of majority rule that is the bedrock of our democracy.  That system guarantees the minority the right to be heard and to run for office and become the majority, but it also ensures that once voters have spoken, and their representatives have voted — and, if legally challenged, the Supreme Court has also ruled in their favor — the majority decision holds sway.  A minority of a minority which has lost every democratic means to secure its agenda, has no right to now threaten to tank our economy if its demands are not met.”  Italics in original.

We currently have one party that is promoting its ideology and another that is promoting its insanity.  Not good, people, not good.