allentown wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Leadership needs to have some means of discipline. I wish he could do worse.

Leadership needs to primary these guys and let them know that even if they win their primaries, there won't be any party funds coming their way. The party has made noises, but not followed through, even with the two God-loves-rapist fools from the past election.

I don't think primarying them (with a few exceptions) is a realistic possibility so it's not much of a threat. A lot of these guys beat incumbents or more establishment backed candidates in the primaries, and don't feel like they owe anything to the national party. They have more pull in their districts than any national GOP figure does. You could tell them they aren't getting party money for general elections, but most (like most house members) aren't in significant danger of losing to a Democrat, and the few who did have races could get enough grassroots money to make up the difference. Controlling committee assignments is a big weapon though. If you don't want to be a team player, you're not on Ways and Means or Financial Services or Banking or anything that really matters. Another idea might be telling them they will be opposed by the RNC/NRSC in any competitive primaries if they try and move up to the Seante. A lot of these guys have sights on higher office, and that can be a real threat if they back it up.

It depends upon which of these guys we're talking about. Certainly some are from extremely conservative districts with a huge Republican majority. Others have won because the right-fringe of the party has come out in primaries and the moderates have not. In these districts, the party can mount a voter turnout effort in the primary in order to remove a few extremist annoyances. The knowledge that the primary threat cuts both ways would have a most salutory effect.

Both parties have at least reasonably good voter-turnout efforts in general elections. For the Dems, this is less true in off-year elections, but the Reps due a good turnout job in the general election year-in and year-out. If the traditional party types want to stop losing out to their party's fringes, then they need to also do voter turnout in the primaries. Currently the primary turnout is about half that of the general election, even when there is a fairly heated primary contest. The parties don't do the turnout effort now for the primaries, because it costs $. I think they will eventually decide that it is worth the effort to gain back some measure of control over who their candidate is for the general election.

The Republicans have enough members of House now that this probably isn't on the top of their to-do list, but they have certainly lost control of the Senate because of unelectable Tea Party candidates being selected in the primaries. The Dems had the DLC effort to take back the party from the fringe. We've still got some fringies, but the centrists are in control. The Republicans would be well served to do something comparable. The big business side of the Republican party isn't going to hang with the crazies forever. They went all-in Repub this past presidential election and got their heads handed to them.

You over-estimate how much denial of the traditional committee perks will affect the tea-partiers. They will glory in their exclusion and use it to fund raise. You only need these committee posts if you want to legislate. They really don't, at least not on economic issues. They gain support by throwing bombs and screaming to their supporters. The last thing they want or need is insider status. That is one prime reason that Boehner has so little control of them. They are thrilled that he made a deal without them. The deal had to be made and now they have no fingerprints on it and can use it as one more stick to beat the establishment Republicans.

You make some good points, and the threat of a primary can be worthwhile I guess even if it doesn't have much of a chance to succeed.

The party is definitely doing a lot of thinking on how to fix the primary thing, focusing on the Senate level. Long write up in Politico yesterday talking about how establishment linked outside groups are going to focus more on primaries.

isn't there a point at which even reactionaries with more dough than they know what to do with get tired of being used as retirement funds by pinheads like dick armey, jim demint, and dick morris?

so when Barry responds to Team Pumpkinface's screeching insistence on entitlement cuts to the horizon by telling them "fuck y'all, here's my jobs creation right now programs instead", how will they spin their indifference to growing the economy?

Also, next time stroke-staring Mitch McConnell wonders aloud when he's going to lead, Obama should lead with a left to where that owl-pussed codger's balls would be if he had any

Chuck Hagel?

doubling down on drones with the pick of John Brennan for CIA.

Hagel's a decent choice for defense, i think. seems like he knows his stuff and also admits his failures, which is important.

Sweet more drones...flying unmanned surveillance aircraft equipped with missiles over sovereign countries...with the result often being several civilians killed along with the bad guy. AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

Roger Dorn wrote:Sweet more drones...flying unmanned surveillance aircraft equipped with missiles over sovereign countries...with the result often being several civilians killed along with the bad guy. AMERICA #$!&@ YEAH!

yea not happy

As an aggressively gay man, I'd like to say that I have absolutely no problem with the Chuck Hagel nomination.

I'm all for done strikes on high value targets. Collateral damage is sometimes justified, but the escalation is ridiculous. Farting in the face of the first rule of international politics is bound to bite us in the ass at some point.

it's the signature strikes that are the main problem, and the double taps.

in the end, kerry/hagel/brennan is pretty decent.

I'm pleased with the Hagel pick less because of him--though he seems okay on balance, and that the fucking neocons loathe him is a big point in his favor--than because it suggests the admin might try to cut the beyond-insane military budget. Hagel won't be pushing for new dumb wars, and without that and given all the other pressures on spending, reductions seem likely.

one would hope. if everyone is crying crocodile tears over the cost of programs that help everyone, one would hope we cute defense. one. would. hope.

i can't quite figure out whether jonathan alter is a twit or a twat.

dajafi wrote:I'm pleased with the Hagel pick less because of him--though he seems okay on balance, and that the #$!&@ neocons loathe him is a big point in his favor--than because it suggests the admin might try to cut the beyond-insane military budget. Hagel won't be pushing for new dumb wars, and without that and given all the other pressures on spending, reductions seem likely.

Guy on NPR was more or less accusing him of being an antisemite because he won't go all WHOHAH on Iran

Freshman Rep. Tom Cotton is making a splash. He came out with statements on gun control (he will never vote for any restrictions on access to weapons and says that there is a 9-1 ratio against any such discussion), sees a need to deal with immigration — but in small steps that avoid granting legal status or citizenship to people here illegally (i.e., there is no position on legalization, only a return of illegals to their country on origin and allowing for application for citizenship - ala Mitt's plan), and, scariest to me, he would like to default on the national debt so that the US can course correct.

He might be one of the elected officials who thinks that the 1995 Government shutdown did some miraculous good and trimmed government, but having lived through that it wasted untold amounts of money and moving to essential staff introduced significant mission and security risks that are not public knowledge (as I said, I am not sure he is one of this group, but he would have been 18 at the time). Packaging software and systems engineering programs to be held in hibernation with no idea who would do the work someday, assuring the current systems were as stable as possible, performing any maintenance tasks with no idea when the next maintenance cycle would happen, making good on the contractual requirements as these are not contract identified tasks, and then rebooting was hardly cheap. What happened operationally with so little support was also ugly as the bare minimum meant that the bare minimum was accomplished. Getting back to an operational posture cost time and money including overtime or engagement of specialists to return to full productivity. Lastly, the nation was not engaged in various active wars in 1995.

Cotton is no Southern fool. He has a Harvard/Harvard eduction before returning to Arkansas. He is also a veteran serving and being deployed as a Reservist. Of note, he is not even terrible out of touch with the party, although this might sound like he is on the radical edge to some, he is rather mainstream (jh - would you agree).

The point of this posting is that if you were hoping for a renewed spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship, it is unlikely.There is an interesting article that talks about this in Politico that I read as fact checking what I heard during my morning routine. The article goes into other things as well, in particular how Cotton materialized from nowhere with the financial backing of the Club For Growth.

cotton was 18 in 1995 so he probably doesnt know much about the shutdown.

thephan wrote:Freshman Rep. Tom Cotton is making a splash. He came out with statements on gun control (he will never vote for any restrictions on access to weapons and says that there is a 9-1 ratio against any such discussion), sees a need to deal with immigration — but in small steps that avoid granting legal status or citizenship to people here illegally (i.e., there is no position on legalization, only a return of illegals to their country on origin and allowing for application for citizenship - ala Mitt's plan), and, scariest to me, he would like to default on the national debt so that the US can course correct.

He might be one of the elected officials who thinks that the 1995 Government shutdown did some miraculous good and trimmed government, but having lived through that it wasted untold amounts of money and moving to essential staff introduced significant mission and security risks that are not public knowledge (as I said, I am not sure he is one of this group, but he would have been 18 at the time). Packaging software and systems engineering programs to be held in hibernation with no idea who would do the work someday, assuring the current systems were as stable as possible, performing any maintenance tasks with no idea when the next maintenance cycle would happen, making good on the contractual requirements as these are not contract identified tasks, and then rebooting was hardly cheap. What happened operationally with so little support was also ugly as the bare minimum meant that the bare minimum was accomplished. Getting back to an operational posture cost time and money including overtime or engagement of specialists to return to full productivity. Lastly, the nation was not engaged in various active wars in 1995.

Cotton is no Southern fool. He has a Harvard/Harvard eduction before returning to Arkansas. He is also a veteran serving and being deployed as a Reservist. Of note, he is not even terrible out of touch with the party, although this might sound like he is on the radical edge to some, he is rather mainstream (jh - would you agree).

The point of this posting is that if you were hoping for a renewed spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship, it is unlikely.There is an interesting article that talks about this in Politico that I read as fact checking what I heard during my morning routine. The article goes into other things as well, in particular how Cotton materialized from nowhere with the financial backing of the Club For Growth.

He's my representative. I've met him, and he's the most socially awkward politician I've ever met. The fact that he seems to have no interest in the actual 4th district may be a problem going forward, but word is he's considering a run for the Senate in 2014.

TenuredVulture wrote: The fact that he seems to have no interest in the actual 4th district may be a problem going forward, but word is he's considering a run for the Senate in 2014.

But his basis of opinion is communications from his constituents... so Cotton has already mastered the first step of political success, grabbing the spotlight and making some sensational noise without respect for fact.