Doug Ose Quotes
What does it mean to have a Republican majority in the House? A lot of people think 'So what?' They should think again.
United States, Congress, House. Representative Doug Ose speaking on the Republican Majority. Congressional Record, vol. 149, 11 Feb. 2003, p. H394.
This seeming abnormality was the result of most of the House of Representatives Congressional Districts being heavily weighted to one party or the other, some the result of demographics and most the result of intentional gerrymandering by the politicians in the State Legislatures. The Republicans at that time were much better at this than the Democrats and very few of the districts were competitive between the parties. Many Democratic urban districts had small democratic areas of the suburbs added to them giving them a larger majority than they needed to win while taking them out of the suburban districts making them easier to win for the Republicans. The original Constitutional concept that the House represented the people proportionately was then undermined as the Republicans could easily win the vast majority of the congressional seats and at the some tome garner millions of votes less nationally than the Democrats,
This was the result of Gerrymandering over the last decade where the Republicans outmaneuvered the Democrats in enough states so that they could control the House even of the Democrats had a large majority of the votes for congress members. See {632784} for an explanation of Gerrymandering technique.
The historian was comparing Obama to other historical presidents who either had a majority of both Houses of Congress or had an opposition party that was generally quite cooperative and willing to compromise for the sake of running the country smoothly. At this point in time there was a Tea Party wing of the Republican that was particularly negative and obstructionist. They tended to threaten and intimidate the main stream Republicans who used the filibuster to block legislation the majority of Senators had voted for more times than all the other Congresses in American history. And that was only in Obamas first 6 years.
When Dole was the Republican Congressional Leader, the Republican Party had a spectrum of liberals and conservatives and Dole was considered to be at the conservative side. However, right wing extremists first gained much influence in the party and then gained control. They then tried to purge the party of those Republicans who were not as far right as they were and were successful in many cases. Liberal Republicans found themselves isolated and tended to retire, become independents, or switch parties. This drove the party even further to the right stimulating Dole’s quip.
The Tea Party Republican faction was opposed to government doing much of anything other than Defense and Foreign Policy. The regular Republicans saw a much more extensive and robust role of government though few did so to the same extent as Abraham Lincoln and the other founders of the Republican Party, and Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower the Republicans following in the Alexander Hamilton tradition.
Holman is commenting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal in which he is accused of multiple sexual assaults over 30 or more years and the lack of liberal and progressive outrage and passive acceptance of his behavior by large circles of people who knew.
Douglas Arlo Ose is an American businessman and politician who served as the U.S. Representative for California's 3rd congressional district from 1999 to 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party. On March 16, 2021, Ose announced his intention to run for Governor of California in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election of Governor Gavin Newsom.
