Trey Gowdy Quotes

A minority of newly elected ultra conservative Tea Party Republicans intimidated most of the main line Republicans by threatening to run against them in their primary elections. The result was that almost no legislation was passed and there was a constant drumbeat of attacks against anything the government was doing or might do in the future. Public confidence in government was driven very low, with only the public confidence in Congress lower. The Democrats who could accomplish very little in that circumstance became very unpopular while the Republicans were even more so. However, many Tea Party Republicans viewed that as a victory as their major objective is to enfeeble government—especially the Federal government.

The Republicans in the previous decades had gone so far to the right and were so opposed to anything the government might do, that they could not support anything that might be constructive for the country if it might look like the Government was capable of something positive. They accomplished almost nothing as a result, and the nation was gridlocked.

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 Republicans had, in the view of most Americans at the time, refused to pass the legislation to provide money for the government to function unless President Obama would cancel the Health Care Reform that was his major legislative achievement of his first term, and passed over the objections of most Republicans who claimed it was unconstitutional. Then the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of Obamacare, and the Tea Party Republicans pressured the regular republicans to shut down the entire government until the President relented and cancelled his own legislation. The American people resented this unprecedented of interfering with the Constitutional methods by which laws are passed, and after over a week of taxpayer additional costs for less service, the regular Republicans made a deal with the Democrats and produced a majority to reopen the Government.

The government was reopened when the more rational Republicans combined with the Democrats and voted the appropriations necessary to reopen the government.

At the time many of the Republicans wanted to solve the deficit by cutting non-defense and non-homeland security spending only and was opposed to any increase of taxes or any closing of tax loopholes despite the fact that taxes were at the lowest rate that they had been since before the Second World War. The Democrats wanted to increase taxes for the most wealthy Americans by repealing the tax cuts for the wealthy that the George W. Bush administration passed. They were willing to cut spending for the military but did not want to cut services for poor and middle class people—especially Medicare and Medicaid. The public was calling for a compromise and some Republican leaders said that they would agree to cutting a little less than they had originally insisted upon, but would not budget on repealing the tax cuts for the wealthy or in closing tax loopholes for corporations. This triggered the Clinton’s statement. While this quotation was an accurate description for Republican behavior at the time, historically it was not typical of Republicans before that time when the Republican and Democrat view of compromise