Margaret Carlson Quotes

Dana Ruth Schwartz. The Republicans who had control of the House of Representatives were reaching the end of the fiscal year and had not yet passed a budget so the government would have to shut down in a few days. They had a very strong position if they wanted to blackmail the Democratically controlled Senate and the Democratic President. The majority of the Republicans decided that they wanted to use the Blackmail tactic, so they passed a budget that they knew the Senate and the President would reject and then the Republicans could hold out for their ransom demands. However, when the Republicans met to decide on what they should demand they neither could agree in what or the timing of their tactics. They had launched a major attack without having a clear objective, an exit strategy or even an alternate if they did not succeed.

The 2014 House of Representatives was probably the worst in American History. The Republican Speaker of the House did not have any control over the Tea Party wing of his caucus, but they controlled him in most instances. Even when he made bargains with the President and the Democrats, he could not get his caucus to go along. Almost no legislation was passed and the few bills that were passed were symbolic, were never considered by the Senate and the President did not even have to exercise his power of veto during that Congress.

In 1912 TR lost the Republican primary election because of archaic rules that gave party regulars overwhelming power relative to ordinary Republicans with whom he was be far the most popular. So Roosevelt ran for President on the Bull Moose Party and proved his point be outpolling the Republicans. However the right wing was split and Woodrow Wilson became President by a plurality.

When Lyndon Johnson was elected Vice President he, as the former Senate Majority Leader, wanted to lead the Democratic Senate Caucus. Gore objected because he thought that violated the separation of powers between the Executive and the Legislative branches, and he wanted the Senate to be independent from the administration. Despite Gore’s objection, Johnson was elected.

Sanders was an avowed democratic socialist and was elected as such. He went on to become a Senator. Cunningham went to Federal Prison, the most corrupt Congressman in American history.

See {622997} for more on Platt,

President Ulysses S. Grant is

In 2012, the Republican party had shifted to the right and was split between two factions. None of the 4 leading candidates had the support of a majority of the activist Republicans who vote in Primary elections. The then started to vie with each other for the most conservative elements of the party and did so by attacking the other candidates, making moral pronouncements and attacking President Obama. None of them offered any positive programs or solutions to the problems they claimed existed, and the attacks on the others were always that they were “really not conservative” and “could not get elected.” The result was that all the candidates negatives rose.

At the time Congress was gridlocked in bitter hyperpartisan conflict. Most people called for more comity and bipartisanship and most politicians wanted more bipartisanship but blamed the other party for the rift. Mourdock,arguing for less bipartisanship and no compromise defeated Richard Lugar in the Republican Senatorial Primary election. Lugar, one of the most respected and effective Senators was a statesman who worked with any and all to find effective compromises to reach national solutions. The nation was so politically polarized that the Republican Indiana voters ousted one of their most senior senators because he was effective at developing national solutions. See {626717} and {302706} for other Mourdock outrageous comments. While this rhetoric won in the Primary, it lost him the general election in a state where Republicans had a strong majority and should have had the seat.

The Republican candidates were campaigning for the Primary election in Illinois. Lincoln was the first and the greatest of the Republican Presidents and a great liberal. The Republicans used to be the more liberal of the two American major parties and even referred to themselves as “radicals.” However the political parties flip flopped over time and in the 2012 primary campaign the Republican candidates were outdoing each other to show who was the most conservative and could trash liberals the most. Pointing out this contradiction between the politics of the first and most popular Republican President and the then current crop of contenders was a little embarrassing to some Republicans and a powerful anti-current Republican message to independents and Democrats.

Mackey had taken a position that coincided with most Republicans and conservatives on the issue of CEO compensation. See {630245}. His opponent therefore assumed he was a Republican and called him such. This was his reply.

This practice to try and derail bills they objected to emanated from the hyperpartisanship of the time. The conservative base of voters so opposed the legislation that they would not punish and not vote for a member of Congress for deliberately lying as long as the lies contributed to the conservative political ideology. Some of the members had this as a justification for lying in this way: “These provisions are exactly what the Democrats would add as an amendment or by regulations if they could. It is important that the voters know that they will do if the legislation passes and realize that they people who support this terrible legislation really desire to socialize the American Economy.” Often, they would base their judgment about what the Democrats wanted by taking a single statement made by someone at the extreme left and claim that that was Democratic party thinking. The tactic worked in a number of cases, but not with Dodd-Frank which passed despite a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Some of the extreme liberals in Congress then started to use the techniques in the House of Representatives where they were in the minority.

The Hapsburg Empire involved Austria, Hungary as the major cultures and then dozens more including Roman Catholics, several Eastern Orthodox from different cultures, Protestants of various sects, Jews, Muslims all speaking many different languages. The Republicans had the Tea Party, Christian Evangelicals, economic conservatives, cultural liberals, gays, anti gays, small businesses and huge corporations.