When President Obama takes to the podium to deliver his second State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, he’ll face a decidedly more Republican Congress than in 2010. He’ll also have new House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) looking over his shoulder instead of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
To help diffuse partisan tensions at the 2011 State of the Union address, members of both parties are calling for mixed seating at the event. ABC News took note yesterday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her support for the proposal. House majority whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) also likes the idea, according to Politico. They aren't alone.
Having Democrats and Republicans sit side by side would be a symbolic showing of bipartisanship at a time when Americans are demanding more cooperation between the two major parties. It's just what the doctor ordered.
Partisan rancor hit an all-time high at the 2010 State of the Union address, when Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) famously shouted the words “You lie!” at the President.
Last week, CNN reported that one gun distributor had gone so far as to engrave the phrase on semi-automatic rifle part. The part is no longer for sale, much to the relief of Wilson. Maybe sitting beside a Democrat will make the South Carolina Republican think twice before opening his big mouth this time around.
If the republicans do create another disturbance you can expect them to fall in line and defend the offender as they always do. I'm hoping for a night of good behavior. These types of outbursts are degrading for the whole country not just the republican party (as if you could degrade a republican).
TV Guide has the 2011 State of the Union scheduled to air on all of the major television networks, as well as on CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and MSNBC.
ACV Democratic News
GOOD-BY JOE
In a message to supporters Joe Lieberman announced that he's ending his Senate career, quoting the Old Testament. "I have decided it is time to turn the page to a new chapter, and so I will not be a candidate for re-election to a fifth term in the U.S. Senate in 2012," he wrote. "The reason for my decision, after 40 years in elective office, is best expressed in the wise words from Ecclesiastes: 'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.' For me, it is time for another season and another purpose under Heaven." ACVDN applauds Joe's decision.
Joe Lieberman will not run for reelection in 2012, Connecticut Democratic sources revealed. Joe Mentum has run out of steam and Democrats welcome the ending of his four-term Senate career. Two prominent House Democrats, Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney, are eyeing a bid, with Susan Bysiewicz, a thrice-elected former secretary of state, also jumping into the race.
Lieberman, who lost a 2006 primary to netroots insurgent Ned Lamont, announced his retirement on Wednesday. "Senator A Connecticut Democratic insider said that Courtney, Murphy and Bysiewicz all benefit from a Lieberman campaign. "They would raise so much money, they'd get a ton of enthusiasm and a ton of earned media," he said. "I don't think he has a path to victory at all, period. That said, a Democrat has a better chance of winning against, say, Linda McMahon alone than Linda McMahon, Joe Lieberman and a Democrat."
Both Courtney and Murphy have reached out to the Connecticut labor community to gauge support for a run and, say two different Washington-based Democrats, each is all but certain to make a bid.
"My interest in running for Senate in 2012 is well known in the state, and I expect to announce my decision very soon," Murphy said. "All I can say now is that this is going to be a pretty busy few weeks."
A well-sourced Connecticut blogger first reported that Lieberman would announce his departure. Lieberman's staff has been notably silent about the Senator's plans, and D.C.-based Democrats say -- as of Tuesday afternoon -- they have no clue what his thought process is going into tomorrow's announcement. Local press, however, has also reported that the Senator will announce that he won't run for re-election. "You can bet the farm" that Lieberman won't seek a fifth term in 2012, a Democratic insider close to the Senator told the Hartford Courant.
Lieberman made a decision about his future over the holidays which he plans to announce on Wednesday," a Lieberman
spokesman said. In 2006, Lieberman ran under a party he created called Connecticut for Lieberman. Anti-Lieberman activists, however, have since taken it over. In other words Connecticut for Lieberman is now Connecticut for Anybody But Lieberman. So Joe is faced with the realiziation that nobody wants him and so JoeTirement looms.
As Lieberman deliberated, the new chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said that the party would consider supporting Lieberman if he returned to the fold. Sen. Murray needs to get her hat adjusted and let Lieberman go his merry way. Joe the Democrat supported Republican Party Candidate John McCain in the last Presidential election. The quicker Joe disappears the better.
"This is first a Connecticut decision. It's a Joe Lieberman decision and we'll work our way through all of that," Murray
said. "He and I have chatted a number of times." Sen. Murray the power of your chatting ability is next to zero if Joe is the evidence you present of its usefulness. The Democratic Party should have ejected Joe two years ago and all of his committes should have been stripped. If you folks in leadership don't maintain order in the ranks there will be none. An orderly well run party doesn't happen all by itself, the active hand of leadership is needed. I've got three words for you, Let Joe Go.
Lieberman serves as a repository for the anger progressive Democrats have for centrists in -- and out of -- the party, and
some would like little more than to unseat him at the polls. The feeling of ill will is mutual: Lieberman said during the health care debate that one reason he opposed a Medicare buy-in compromise was that progressives were embracing it.
Lieberman's participation in the race would have drawn national attention -- and money -- to the Connecticut race, leaving his political adversaries hoping that he would run.
ACVDN Bottom Line. Joe was a self centered, petty prick. He opposed a Medicare buy-in compromise because progressives were embracing it. He turned his back on his party and supported the opposition at election time. He was a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention. His action on the Medicare buy-in caused damage to over 100 Million Americans. Joe thought he was much greater than he really was. His feelings were bruised by not being chosen by the party to run for president. Joe is like a clump of dog do you step in. You slide your foot around in the grass and clean your shoe as best you can but the smell lingers on for awhile. That is Joe Lieberman. Good Riddance.
ACV Democratic News
The Republicans got their symbolic victory in the House on health care. But with Speaker John Boehner’s repeal effort is going nowhere fast.
In a move that, with any justice, would enshrine the notion of “Kabuki Democracy” in the nation’s consciousness, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives engineered an entirely symbolic 245 to 189 vote to “repeal and replace” the Obama administration’s health-care reform plan with unnamed and so far secret “free-market solutions” to control health costs and expand coverage.
They’re calling it Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, and almost nothing about the melodrama on the floor of the House that passed it was on the level. Most obviously, the vote will not, in anyone’s imagination, lead to the repeal of the bill, as Harry Reid has made it clear the Senate will not be taking it up, ever. This is just as well with the Republicans, however, as they have not bothered even to begin crafting an alternative. “I don’t know that we need artificial deadlines set up for the committees to act,” Speaker John Boehner said. “We expect them to act in an efficient way, allowing all of their members on their committees to be heard, both Democrats and Republicans.”
Nor would it be accurate to term what happened on the House floor to be a “debate” by any of the known definitions of the term. As Ezra Klein observed, “Each representative gets a minute to speak before they yield the floor…No exchange of views. No probing of weak arguments. Just a lot of quick and poorly written sound bites, one after the other, over and over again.”
It’s hardly a wonder that no minds were changed. In fact the “repeal” side appears to have given up ground. Republicans had hoped to secure a significant number of Democrats to join them in this exercise but managed only three.
Suzy Khimm notes, this means “10 House Democrats who voted against the original health-reform bill refused to repeal it today.” This may have something to do with the fact that suddenly, Barack Obama is popular again, with more Americans approving of his performance and more seeing him as a political moderate, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. In the survey, 53 percent said they approved of the job Obama is doing as president, which marks a rise of eight percentage points from December, a jump of nearly 20 percent. And remember, this is with unemployment still stuck at 9.4 percent and likely destined to fall.
And while it’s true that about as many Americans tell pollsters that the law should be repealed as say it should be retained—another recent Journal/NBC poll shows 46 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “not so strongly” oppose the repeal, compared with 45 percent who either “strongly” or “not so strongly” favor its elimination, while another poll finds an even 39-39 percent split on the question, the “repeal” side has the fanatics on its side. Some 34 percent say they feel “strongly” that the law stinks while only 29 percent feel “strongly” the other way around.
But digging down even inches below the surface, one finds a panoply of positions at odds with the Republican “repeal at
any cost” position. For instance, when pollsters working for ABC News/Washington Post asked opponents of the health-care law to name their preferences, only 26 percent said they really wanted repeal. Others wanted the law expanded or reformed or scaled back in specific areas. In fact, the number who wants the law expanded is just about equal to the number who wants it repealed.
Democrats know this, and know that repeal is extremely unlikely to take place. New York’s Rep. Anthony Weiner tried to turn it into a drinking game: “You take a shot whenever the Republicans say something that’s not true.”
They also know that now that the law has been passed, a great many vested interests—interests with powerful Washington
lobbies—are not interested in having all the planning and investment they have done on that basis thrown into question.
Neither, presumably, will the estimated 129 million Americans with pre-existing medical conditions likely be supportive once Democrats start accusing their opponents of looking to throw them to the mercy of an all-but unregulated insurance industry. We will see how serious the Republicans are when it comes time to cut off funding for the bill many months from now.
In the meantime, the entire exercise raises the question of who is really running the Republican Party. After all, who benefits from this vote? My answer would be conservative Capo de tutti capi Roger Ailes and Fox News. They get days and days of free programming and pretend debate with congressman after congressman expressing the same talking points that viewers hear on a daily basis from Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, and Palin.
Plenty of free outrage will be on display, and Stewart and Colbert can rerun it as parody the following night. (Remember all those folks who think the law really, really stinks. Well, they all watch Fox…) Meanwhile, the folks on Fox can pretend, with Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, that (all of a sudden) it is an outrage that the Democratic Senate is playing a dysfunctional role in our democracy. “The American people deserve a full hearing,” Cantor said, “they deserve to see this legislation go to the Senate for a full vote.”
Nancy Pelosi’s House majority passed fully 300 bills that, as David Weigel reports, “never got anywhere in the Senate,” and that was under a supermajority of the same party. Now all of a sudden one meaningless bill is bottled up and it’s a national emergency.
Still, it will sound just great on Fox News…over and over again.
ACV Democratic News
Seriously, why would anyone vote against healthcare reform?
ReplyDeleteThe repeal of health care is just more evidence of the retarded right
ReplyDeleteThe GOP put on a show for their base. When will they get to work doing something that might actually benefit somebody. Will the 60 tea party members of the GOP allow republicans to function?
ReplyDeleteNo one should profit off the life and death of American Citizens, these insurance companies are dispicible and the politicians who cater to them are worse. Health care should be Not For Profit. There are politicians on all sides who have sold their souls to the insurance companies. But lets get real almost every republican (90 plus %) is in the pocket of the insurance lobby. As votes are forced on health care you will see the GOP start to split because money can't keep them in office, the simple vote of the people still determines who will serve. I know the voters will acknowledge that health care needs reform and that all people need health care. That simple awareness cannot be far off.
ReplyDeleteRelying on Fox News for truth is like bottling piss and selling it as champagne, even republicans have taste buds. They choose when to use them, when to swallow and when to spit.
ReplyDeleteIf your argument on health care includes the President's middle name, some complaint about him not being a Christian or the expression of your desire to see his birth certificate you might be a ignorant, tea party, far right, bible thumping, conservative, redneck, right wing, nutjob, more commonly called a republican. Dam! thats good, I could be a profiler for the FBI.
ReplyDeleteRemember when republicans represented the working man and worked hard for things that helped the average citizen? NO, I don't either because it never happened. Republicams have always been corrupt money grubbers controled by big business.
ReplyDeleteThe GOP would have faded away but for the Democrats supporting civil rights. Opposition ouright and hidden to the civil rights agenda renewed the republican party. The GOP is the destination of choice for all manner of bigots today and they make no bones about it.
If the hidden soft spoken hate of the republican party isn't enough for you then you can join the tea party section of the GOP and be a all out screamer. What we really need is not more civil language but more civil political parties. What is gained by talking nicely about republicans when they are nothing but hate filled thugs. The quality of the language is not the problem the quality of the people is.
Joe Lieberman is being replaced by Joe of West Virginia as the knife in the Democrats back. Its funny there are always people who want to be a member of a party or group but don't support the beliefs of the party or group. When old Joe from West Virginia needs something watch how cosey he gets with the party.
ReplyDeleteObamas speech was good and the best part is this year there were no jack-holes screaming insults from the audience.
ReplyDelete