Where are GOP Moderate Activists? Please Step Forward!

When I first started this blog, I used to wake up in the morning trying to decide how I could annoy a liberal that day.  That is no longer the case -- the progressives make more sense then the hard right of the GOP in today's world.  The GOP has totally left me with their social issues being their #1 priority along with giving the Defense Department everything they want while at the same time wanting to cut the social safety net for seniors and victims of disaster.

Over the years always read the Media Research Center reports until I discovered they were not exactly telling the truth while researching what they had said before using it on here.  They were repeating the Fox News/Rush/Hannity Talking Points.   Started going to Media Matters and realized they were telling the truth as everything I wanted to use checked out.  One thing led to another and realized that the conservative media was feeding crap to listeners/viewers in order to suit their narrative that all Democrats are bad especially President Obama.  The conservative media was part of a scam on the American people IMHO just like conservative groups/think tanks have been lying and scamming to get people to donate to their cause when what they are saying is not factual.

My research day in and day out  has been enlightening to discover the so-called conservatives I once supported were dead wrong on the President.  They are still at it today this time on gun control comparing him to Hitler which disgusts me to no end.  Their lack of honesty and integrity is duly noted.  Chances of trusting them again are slim to none.  Some of the pundits/websites have zero ethics and will lie about President Obama never giving it a second thought.  I kept asking myself if they are that racist and unfortunately, I had to admit they were.  The sad part is that I think they would be treating a woman President exactly the same with their continual war on women as we are still seeing today.  A lot of today's conservatives seem to believe only in a white male dominated Country.

Guess you could say I took my blinders off discovering there is little if anything I support or respect out of the hard right GOP.   I consider myself a center right person who believes the economy would be much further on the way to recovery if it wasn't for the obstructionist House Republicans who refuse to work with the President unless absolutely forced by circumstances like the recent cliff negotiations.

I am a fiscal conservative who believes in a strong defense but not going overboard like Republicans have been doing since 2000.  Buying two new fighters, F-22 and F-35, was a huge waste of taxpayer dollars but made Lockheed-Martin and the subs very happy.  Even when Lockheed was behind schedule and over budget, the Chair of Lockheed received a $2M raise last year on top of his $25M+ annual salary.  Why are heads of defense companies paid such obscene salaries and get raises for failing?

Any GOP member of Congress who says you cannot cut Defense is lying.  There is so much waste in the DoD that it would make your head swim if you knew the facts.  That is my primary reason for supporting former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense -- he knows where the bodies are buried and how much can be saved by DoD.  Defense contractors through their GOP Senator mouthpieces are in an all out war to defeat Hagel.  Maybe they are afraid he will actually ask for accountability from Defense contractors and stop the sole source contracts to the big aerospace companies.  I have heard some dumb statements about Chuck Hagel coming from former friends like McCain and Lindsey Graham who are putting Party over Country once again.  Why is what I would like to know.  Who is pulling their strings?

Yesterday when I wrote my blog post asking Can the Republican Party be Saved was left with the sickening feeling that the GOP had gone so far right that there was no hope in bringing it back.  Lo and behold today, Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast has some good ideas in his article about using moderates to take the GOP back to center right.  He understands in order to make DC work you have to have two viable parties not just one.  One Party system doesn't work as whoever is in charge becomes very arrogant starting to believe they answer to no one.

The problem is with this group of Republicans in Congress is that they won't face reality the Republican Party lost big on November 6th as they are still behaving like they won everything.  That mentality leaves me stunned.

The question of the day is if there are moderates who are willing to work to bring the GOP back to the center along with big dollars for a campaign to start running more moderate Republicans who are fiscal conservatives and could care less about social issues.

Prefer no social issues even enter the discussion after learning the former VP candidate and current Rep Paul Ryan is co-sponsoring another Personhood Bill.  Economy is in the tank and social issues become front and center again along with Michelle Bachmann introduced as one of the first bills of the new House another bill to end Obamacare.  Still haven't recovered from her being named to the Intelligence Committee.  Boehner and leadership are idiots for putting her on Intelligence Committee who loves to grandstand as we saw in the Presidential debates.  Facts don't matter to Bachmann -- it is the narrative.  If I was the CIA, I would be extremely careful what I said in her presence.  Do I think she would run out to a microphone -- absolutely just like the GOP Senators have been doing on Benghazi.

The big question hanging over all this is: Are there even enough moderate Republicans around in America anymore? It depends on what you mean by moderate. I mean someone who is fiscally conservative and socially moderate, but more than that, who has enough of a civic-republican streak to want this warfare to end. I have to believe that there are millions of such people out there. They just have no one to report to, no place to go. If someone builds this, they will come.

Must admit I would hope that Tomasky is correct about the number of moderates but not holding my breath.  I come from a total Red State so hope of a moderate being elected is slim to none but why not try.  The OK legislature is so hard right in the OK House that even our Supreme Court routinely knocks down their bills including the one on Personhood informing the hard right that Abortion is the law of the land and they are infringing.  That sent shock waves through the hard right here but they will try again and put that Personhood bill over education or infrastructure.  I would be glad to sign up for a center-right campaign to elect more moderates but where are they?  You have to have a backbone and nerves of steel to oppose the hard right.

I agree with Tomasky's ideas:

You may roll your eyes, and yes, I readily confess that this is a big and very long-term job. But making the party as right wing as it is was a big and long-term job, too, and someone did it. Moderate Republicans, and even mainstream conservative Republicans who want to see Washington function again, should get together to form and fund a network of organizations that will pursue four goals: 

First, just make moderate Republicanism visible again. Launch a public awareness campaign. Get a television show. Or at least get a stable of people to go on the other shows. Let Americans know that the viewpoint even exists. 

Second, start an organization to recruit young people, activists of all ages, and potential candidates. Start college campus clubs and newspapers or magazines. Host big conferences in Washington and elsewhere. Give people a sense of an extant community. 

Third, start running some primaries against some hard-right people in districts where victory is possible. Admittedly, there are many states and districts where there’s no chance in blazes that a moderate could beat a conservative. Many state parties have been captured lock, stock, and barrel by the tea party, even in liberal states (Maine). But there are some places where moderates could win. And the tea party may be fading. 

Fourth, set up a big think tank in Washington to advance more moderate policy ideas and, just as importantly, to urge moderation in tactics as well—that is, more civility, such that every single vote isn’t a matter of warfare. 

Will Tomasky's ideas work?  IMHO, it is worth a try.

Wanted: Moderate GOP Activists 

by Michael Tomasky 

Jan 10, 2013 4:45 AM EST 

Nothing would do more to fix American politics than if wealthy Republicans bankrolled a network of moderate GOP organizations, says Michael Tomasky. I see that Brent Bozell, who never runs out of ways to spend rich conservatives’ money, now has an outfit called For America, which is mounting a pressure campaign against Mitch McConnell over his role in the fiscal cliff deal. The online ad buy will be targeted to Kentucky and will ask, “Mitch McConnell, which side are you on?”—that of socialism or that of Kentuckyism? What struck me when I read this was: How come there isn’t a group that is taking out ads against Rand Paul, McConnell’s junior colleague, one of just five GOP senators who voted against the bill, asking him which side he’s on—the side of bare-minimum fiscal sanity or the side of ruining the economy for the sake of making an ideological point? Of course there isn’t. But there must be. In fact there is nothing—nothing—our political system needs more than a strong and well-financed moderate-Republican pressure organization. 

Think about it. Why is our politics so stuck right now? Because one of our parties has gone bonkers. Oh, sure, the Democrats aren’t altar boys. Fine. But High Broderism is blessedly dying as more and more establishment types come to see that it’s basically the GOP that’s throwing the wrench in the works. 

Read More at The Daily Beast

Looks like Brent Bozell of Media Research fame has a new group who is now threatening Republicans they are going to be primaried like the threats coming from Club for Growth and the Koch's Americans for Prosperity.  These group along with the religious right and social conservatives have taken the GOP very hard right.  They are not about to give it up without a fight that will destroy what is left of the Republican Party IMHO.

Now to find some more moderate donors who would be willing to fund this effort.  Short of that a lot of us will be supporting more moderate Dems in 2014 to kick out the obstructionist Republicans from leading the House or taking the Senate who are adverse to the word 'democracy' with their House Hastert Rule and Senate Filibuster rules.  How many people in the Country understand how dictatorial today's GOP has become in the House with the Hastert Rule and in the Senate with the filibuster which goes far beyond what was intended?

In the House, the filibuster equivalent has been the Hastert rule, an informal Republican principle under which the speaker permits to the floor for a vote only bills that have majority support of the majority party. This has empowered the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. Speaker John Boehner ignored the Hastert rule in permitting the legislation that overcame the “fiscal cliff” to get to the floor. The bill passed with only 85 Republican votes, drawing most of its support from the Democratic side of the aisle. Boehner was then barely re-elected as speaker.

There are new rules to change the filibuster in the Senate but not holding my breath on that either.  Will the 113th Congress be as unproductive as the 112th?  Sure hope not.  My wish is that some common sense returns to Republicans in Congress but frankly I wouldn't place my bet on that either.  I think today's Republicans have the common sense of a gnat as their dealing with the loss on November 6th, 2012, was to push back more becoming more obnoxious especially on gun control.  Little hope for the Republican Party to see the light.  More likely a new centrist party will form as the Democrats sure don't want all of us center right people voting in their elections.

Stay tuned as the hard right gets even loonier and more obstructionist then last year the way they are starting out in the 113th Congress.

Preserving the Senate Rules

This Executive Summary from Senator John Thune (R-SD), Chairman of the US Senate Republican Policy Committee, details the extent these Democrats in control of the Senate led by Harry Reid will go to in order to pass legislation against the Rules of the Senate that are currently place. They are there for a reason but that doesn't make Obama's Democrats any difference as long as they can get their socialist agenda rammed through in the Senate like they do in the House. How do they propose to that? Permenantly change the rules of the Senate.

Any Democrat that backs this outlandish proposal needs to be defeated on November 2nd 2010, in November 2012, or November 2014 which ever date they are up for re-election. This group of 'dishonest' Democrats will lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. They could care less what their constituents in their states are saying as long as they can pass what 'they' deem is important to their constituents. They won't listen to phone calls, Town Halls, emails, faxes, or office meetings as they have the Obama agenda they are shoving down every one's throats and nothing else matters.

The idea that they want to negate the voices of the 60 million people who did not vote for Obama and the Democrats is so wrong that it defies belief.

To add to this we have a Republican Governor Charlie Crist in Florida who is throwing a temper tantrum that he is not winning the Florida GOP primary for US Senate who now wants to go Independent to run and make that a much harder seat to keep in Florida. We will keep it, but Crist belongs in the Democrat Party with his arrogance and non-regard for the State of Florida and the people who voted him as a Republican the privilege of becoming their Governor. Just like a Democrat he turns his back on the people of Florida for his own person wishes. With his going Independent, he must support the rules change like this or he wouldn't be running. He would be supporting Marco Rubio.

This may be the most important issue today in the Senate as the Obama Democrats attempt to permanently change the rules. When Republicans take back the Senate and we will, watch the Democrats squeal it is not fair if this is passed. That's how they work -- only what is good for them counts not what is good for the Country. That wasn't always the way in the Senate when we had honorable people serving. There is nothing honorable about most of today's Democrats in the Senate as they have demonstrated time and time again.

Getting more obvious by the day that Obama and his lapdog Democrat leadership have no regard for the Constitution. Obama unfortunately we can understand because he wasn't raised red, white, and blue American but Harry Reid? Obama was mentored by a Communist during his formative years and it shows. His friends have always been radicals and probably why no one at Columbia even remembers him.

This is why you vet a candidate for any office which was something the MSM did not do in the last Presidential election. Why because they would have been called racist like the rest of us that didn't support Obama because of his agenda, his lack of experience, and his associates? That race card is still getting played today, but it is not working like they want it to work. Most of us don't care what they call us today because we will continue to oppose the socialist agenda of Obama and his Democrat lapdogs in Congress.

Please call your Senators and tell them to oppose this tactic to overturn what has stood for over 200 years. There was a reason the Founding Fathers made two unequal Houses and now the Obama Democrats want to destroy that. Senator Thune is giving the facts of what the Obama Democrats are trying to do. It is now time for all of us to support him and the Republicans in the Senate to make sure this does not happen.

April 21, 2010

Preserving Senate Rules:
Guaranteeing All American Voices are Heard

Executive Summary

Not content with historically large margins and control of all three elected branches of
government, some members of the majority party now propose to gut the right to
extended debate. This right has long been the hallmark of minority power in the Senateand one that ensures bipartisan legislation that commands the wide support of the American people.

The Founders deliberately designed a system of checks and balances, one in which
minority voices play a prominent role in the political process. One aspect of this system is the unique nature of the United States Senate.

Two key features of Senate Rules are the right to amendment and the right to extended debate. Those rules help promote bipartisan and mainstream legislation, while tempering the potential excesses of one-party rule.

Frustrated by the Senate’s rules, the current majority repeatedly has used procedural tactics to limit the ability of the minority party to offer amendments or meaningfully participate in legislation. In fact, the current Majority Leader has used procedural tactics to block the minority from offering amendments more often than any Majority Leader in history.

Claims that the current minority is engaged in unprecedented obstruction cannot be
substantiated. The number of times cloture is filed or invoked is less demonstrative of obstruction than of an impatient majority bent on short-circuiting debate and eschewing bipartisan legislative solutions.

Several Senate Democrats, with apparent support from their leadership, have begun to push for a fundamental change in Senate rules. If successful, they would turn the Senate into a smaller House of Representatives, a body in which the majority party has almost limitless power.

These proposals are both unwise and lacking in historical perspective. When
Republicans gained a majority in the Senate in 1995, they voted to defend the rights of the minority party.

Background

In parliamentary systems, like that in Great Britain, the barest of majorities can control the
government with an iron fist. Not so in the United States, where the Framers designed a system
of checks and balances to guard against the tendency of temporary majorities to overreach and
do great harm to the Republic. They accomplished this by limiting federal power and dividing
that power between the three branches—Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.

Not content with these moderating structural designs, however, they went further. The Framers divided the Congress into two bodies—House and Senate—and built a Senate with features that
guaranteed that body would be less susceptible to temporary swings in public opinion: senators
would hold six-year terms, would represent an entire state rather than a single district, and would be chosen by the state legislatures (until the 17th Amendment, after which they were elected directly by the states’ citizens).

Some of today's Senate Democrats, frustrated that a majority as large as theirs still faces some
limits to its power, have begun suggesting that the rules of the Senate be changed to diminish the power of the minority and expand the powers of the current, and future, majorities. This hasty— and dangerous—proposal should be resisted, and rejected, by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.

Senate Rules Give Voice to the Minority

In the 2008 presidential contest, 52.9 percent of Americans voted for the Democratic candidate,
while a substantial minority of 45.6 percent—almost 60 million citizens—voted for the
Republican candidate.1 The presidency, of course, is a winner-takes-all contest under the
Electoral College and Barack Obama, the Democrats’ nominee, was duly elected. The voters
also sent substantial majorities of Democrats to Congress, both in the House and the Senate.

The House of Representatives operates under bare majoritarian rules. If America were governed by only the White House and the House of Representatives, the President and his partisan allies could enact any law they fancied, with little debate. The 60 million people who preferred another course would have no choice but to sit on the sidelines, waiting patiently until the next election.

As the Founders knew, however, our country works best when all Americans participate in
guiding the ship of state. For this reason, they designed a Senate in which each state, regardless
of population, gets equal representation, offering substantial protection for minority rights.
Moreover, by giving the Senators features like six-year terms, the Framers wanted to limit the
influence of temporary swings in public sentiment, ensuring that a broad array of Americans
support legislation. The result is that the most extreme proposals of a momentary majority can
be thwarted, or moderated. Because of the Senate, what becomes law is more likely to represent a mainstream consensus.

A legendary story has it that Thomas Jefferson once asked George Washington why the Framers created a second legislative body. Washington is said to have responded by asking 1“Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” “To cool it,” responded Jefferson. “Even so,” said Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”2 Whatever the historical accuracy of this story, it has a core of truth to it. Indeed, in the words of James Madison, one of the primary authors of the Constitution: “The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom” than the House of
Representatives.3 The Senate has always served as a moderating force in our national politics.

A recent example of how the Senate can work to improve legislation is provided by the 2007
Energy Bill, H.R. 6. The bill passed by the House contained massive tax increases and onerous
federal mandates. Although the House-backed version commanded majority support in the
Senate, a determined minority opposed the bill by denying cloture and insisting on extended
debate.4 Later, after the majority moderated the bill to remove the taxes and some of the
mandates, the legislation was reconsidered and passed the Senate by a large margin, with only
eight Senators voting against it.5

The Senate performs its unique function in American politics because it follows markedly
different practices and procedures than those of the House of Representatives. In the House, the
majority holds the power to set the rules for debate and can even decide what, if any,
amendments will be considered. The majority in the House also has the power to cut off debate
at any time. By contrast, the Senate has traditionally operated under the principles of unlimited
debate and a free amendment process. Many procedural steps in the Senate effectively require
“unanimous consent,” that is, all members of the Senate must agree to proceed. An individual
Senator often has considerable power to lodge objections and have his or her say. In short, the
rules compel senators to consult each other and achieve consensus.

One-Party Rule in the 111th Congress

Congressional Democrats currently have a 76-vote majority in the House of Representatives and, until recently, had 60 seats in the Senate. These significant majorities are far greater than any enjoyed by Republicans in more than 80 years. The solid majority control of the House has already allowed for rapid passage of a wish list of Democratic priorities, including a government takeover of health care, a job killing “cap and trade” bill, and other measures.

Under the rules of the Senate, majority leadership does not have the same ability to jam bills
through without any input from the minority. That has not stopped the current Senate majority, however, from using every procedural tool at its disposal to limit, and even shut down, minority
debate and input into legislation. These maneuvers include: bypassing the committee process;
blocking floor amendments proposed by the minority; and precipitously ending debate, as well as the use of the fast-track budget reconciliation process to pass healthcare legislation.
_____
1 http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2008/2008presgeresults.pdf
2 Richard F. Fenno, Jr., The United States Senate: a Bicameral Perspective (1982), at 5.
3 James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, June 7.
4 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00
213
5 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00
430

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