GOP congressman: Republican Party has become too extreme, incapable of governing

[Landslide Lyndon]

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/07/31/gop_lawmaker_says_his_party_is_too_extreme.html

Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) blasted the Republican Party in an interview with the Syracuse Post-Standard, saying his party is "too willing to accommodate its most extreme members."

Said Hanna: "I have to say that I'm frustrated by how much we -- I mean the Republican Party -- are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes in this moment in history."

He added: "We render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides... If all people do is go down there and join a team, and the team is invested in winning and you have something that looks very similar to the shirts and the skins, there's not a lot of value there."

[Grumps]

Right......Dems don't operate that way! 

[opebo]

Right......Dems don't operate that way! 

Well, obviously not, Grumps - they pretty much operate the opposite way: the moderates in the party are catered to and the extremists (what few there are) are almost completely ignored.

[Torie]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

[Senator Sbane]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

[Senator Napoleon]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

Or the War on Women.

[Beet]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

Or the War on Women.

Or the continued denial of man-made climate change.

[Torie]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

Oh, I am sure that you could come up with some examples sbane. I was just wondering what Hanna considered "extreme."  Anyway, the tax thing is all mixed up and conflated between revenues, rates, dynamic versus static scoring, and on and on. A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes. It is kind of easy to yammer about "starving the beast" until you lock yourself in a dark room, and read polls that a majority of Pubs don't want any Medicare cuts, or SS cuts, or much of anything else that might inconvenience them. So the slaying of the beast chat is just for rhetorical purposes, as opposed to a serious policy stand. They are not any better at math than the Dems.

The other prong, where the Pubs are far more sound than the Dems, is the means testing of entitlements, which the Dems shy away from for reasons I will address in due course in a little essay that I plan to write, and bury somewhere around here.

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy. The "war on women" sling is a Dem sound byte. It came about because of this notion that contraceptive care should have no co-pay unlike most other forms of care, coming out of the mouth of a law student who will soon be making 150K per year. It was just bizarre.

[anvi]

A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes.

I'm glad to hear this, Torie.  But, try as I might, I can't find anything about the slashing deductions part in Mitt's policy agenda.  He gives me the impression that he wants to lower marginal rates to somewhere around where effective rates are now and then let everybody keep the bonanza of deductions too.  Those Pubs willing to sign off on trading rate cuts for deductions should have a chat with him!

http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

[Grumps]

lulz @ "the war on _____" 

[Torie]

A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes.

I'm glad to hear this, Torie.  But, try as I might, I can't find anything about the slashing deductions part in Mitt's policy agenda.  He gives me the impression that he wants to lower marginal rates to somewhere around where effective rates are now and then let everybody keep the bonanza of deductions too.  Those Pubs willing to sign off on trading rate cuts for deductions should have a chat with him!

http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

I have heard Romney say he does not want to cut government revenues, and hopes to increase them with a more robust economy. No, he has not said he wants to increase revenues net with static scoring. I don't expect him to during the campaign. Unpleasant painful little truths are not spoken about much in campaigns, because politicians tend to have a courage and candor gap. But that is what will happen. It has to absent a consensus on slashing entitlements more severely, which just isn't there - not even, as I noted, among Pubs.

[Invisible Obama]

Right......Dems don't operate that way! 

On average, Democrats have more moderate and actually tried to work with Republicans when they controlled the House. The same cannot be said for Republicans currently. You can't explain away everything by bringing up Democrats.

[Senator Clarence]

As if Booker and others who deviate an inch aren't whipped into shape by Emmanuel or Axelrod... it is the same in both parties!

[Grumps]

Right......Dems don't operate that way! 

On average, Democrats have more moderate and actually tried to work with Republicans when they controlled the House. The same cannot be said for Republicans currently. You can't explain away everything by bringing up Democrats.

I hate the pubs maybe more than the Dems, Dr.....but both suck and operate in similar fashion in my view.

[Beet]

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy.

Snowguy is incredibly smart, and he could probably out-debate me, but he is an outlier. The vast majority of published studies and experts in the field accept that the earth is indeed warming and that it is primarily driven by humans.

[Bacon King]

Regarding the relative extremism of the two parties in Congress:

Note that the Democratic Caucus's majority on the Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources is entirely at the whim of Joe Manchin, who disagrees with Democratic energy policy to such an extent that he literally shot a copy of the Cap and Trade Bill with a rifle for a campaign commercial. I honestly doubt that Congressional Republican would ever allow a member of their caucus to so overtly and publicly distance themselves from the party in such a manner, let alone hand that member the implicit authority to effectively veto any laws being considered on the topic he disagrees most with the party line.

[Torie]

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy.

Snowguy is incredibly smart, and he could probably out-debate me, but he is an outlier. The vast majority of published studies and experts in the field accept that the earth is indeed warming and that it is primarily driven by humans.

Splendid, but here is the rub. We don't know for sure if humans are doing the warming, we don't know if they are, how much they are doing, we don't know if the warming will be good or bad economically that the humans do, if they do any, and we don't know the cost of changing course, and whether it is even possible to change course. Beyond that, it seems silly for the US and Europe to go on this green crusade, while China and India massively expand their own carbon footprint, swamping and then some whatever marginal changes in fossil fuel consumption occur in Europe and the US. In short, we know so little (with cooked data and expanding heat islands and so forth causing us to know even less than we thought we knew), that throwing trillions upon trillions at it, often achieving nothing or next to nothing, other than enriching the politically connected,  seems quite nutter to me. As a lagniappe, I recall snowguy mentioning that some hole or other lacunae in the atmosphere or something, is inconsistent with the global warmists little models as to how CO2 is supposed to fry us up.

I am very proud not to be a greenie.

[Senator Sbane]

Pity that Mr. Hanna did not condescend to give us any specifics of his alleged ineffectual extremism of the Pubs.

How about the no taxes pledge?

Oh, I am sure that you could come up with some examples sbane. I was just wondering what Hanna considered "extreme."  Anyway, the tax thing is all mixed up and conflated between revenues, rates, dynamic versus static scoring, and on and on. A majority of Pubs in the compromise deal would sign off on more revenues vis a vis slashing deductions as opposed to rate hikes. It is kind of easy to yammer about "starving the beast" until you lock yourself in a dark room, and read polls that a majority of Pubs don't want any Medicare cuts, or SS cuts, or much of anything else that might inconvenience them. So the slaying of the beast chat is just for rhetorical purposes, as opposed to a serious policy stand. They are not any better at math than the Dems.

The other prong, where the Pubs are far more sound than the Dems, is the means testing of entitlements, which the Dems shy away from for reasons I will address in due course in a little essay that I plan to write, and bury somewhere around here.

The guy who mentioned climate change should have a chat with snowguy. The "war on women" sling is a Dem sound byte. It came about because of this notion that contraceptive care should have no co-pay unlike most other forms of care, coming out of the mouth of a law student who will soon be making 150K per year. It was just bizarre.

We will see. Of course there is no way to fiscal solvency without tax hikes and some entitlements/military cuts. Even cutting all deductions isn't some panacea since it could negatively impact the economy with a prominent example being the housing market.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Remember when the Koch Brothers and bunch of other climate skeptics funded the only credible source of denial (Richard Mueller) who then proceeded to confirm the worst fears of climatologists with the caveat that his findings predicted worse results than their climate models? The consensus is unanimous: anthropogenic global warming is real and is already creating severe problems. On top of the huge droughts that have been afflicting us over the past few years, southern Russia has consistently had precipitation problems and India is facing problems with their monsoon (as predicted).

You can try to wiggle your way out of this issue all you want because the results seem far-fetched and damaging to your ideology but the verdict is in: global warming isn't going away. If we put this issue off for another decade, the damage will be done and the positive feedback loop will run away from us. Minute amounts of methane trapped in the permafrost of the arctic circle are already beginning to be released, over ten years ahead of schedule.

Torie is ignoring the models and the findings:

[Senator Sbane]

Considering that we are in an el nino phase currently, it shouldn't be surprising if the monsoon isn't doing so well over India. Or let's take the drying of the western United States which will occur over the next decade or two. People will of course blame global warming while the PDO goes negative.

[Torie]

Climate change is an empirical issue, not an ideological one. Aside from his little "ideological" dig, TheDeadFlagBlues made his points well, but ignored the issue of the rapidly increasing Indian and Chinese carbon footprint that will continue. So the experiment we are undergoing will continue, and with more CO2 in the mix, not less. There is no escape from that. The case involving public policy regarding the issue of climate change, needs to revolve around the marginal utility of throwing trillions and trillions at the issue. In the end, what change can be expected that makes that "investment" worth it? 

[Joe Republic]

[insert relevant P. J. O'Rourke quote here]

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Climate change is an empirical issue, not an ideological one. Aside from his little "ideological" dig, TheDeadFlagBlues made his points well, but ignored the issue of the rapidly increasing Indian and Chinese carbon footprint that will continue. So the experiment we are undergoing will continue, and with more CO2 in the mix, not less. There is no escape from that. The case involving public policy regarding the issue of climate change, needs to revolve around the marginal utility of throwing trillions and trillions at the issue. In the end, what change can be expected that makes that "investment" worth it? 

This is why climate change is the most difficult public policy issue that has ever confronted the post-war consensus: it requires global cooperation at a nearly impossible level (the tragedy of the commons will sink all of us in the end), progresses at a snail's pace as far as the public is concerned so it will be a secondary issue until it's too late and it's tailor-made to exacerbate class conflict when discussed in the public sphere (reductions in carbon output hit the working class hard in their pocket book while they're also the most likely to be skeptical of the existence of global warming). I think we're doomed no matter what actions we strive to take.

At the same time, I'm disturbed by crass lies uttered by countless Republican politicians that claim that global warming doesn't exist. It's the most shocking example of the GOP's existence as a band of uneducated zealots who are unfit to govern. No mature conservative party acts in this manner.

[True Federalist]

The problem of getting the developing economies to get on board is one reason why I favor using a carbon tax instead of cap and trade as part of any approach to global warming.

First off, it minimizes the overall economic impact, provided carbon taxes are used to replace other existing taxes.  Secondly, it provides additional economic impetus to the development of low-carbon technologies that could be adopted directly by developing countries, thereby mitigating their carbon spikes.

[smoltchanov]

What Hanna says became true for both parties, but especially - Republicans. As of late it seems to me that they could change their name to something like Constitution party without changing a bit in program and candidates. In some cases (especially - in the South) their candidates are even to the right of "constitutionalists"