What the hell is there even to negotiate??
The GOP have gotten everything they've wanted
No. The key plank of the GOP -- the one thing that binds every wing of the party together, moderates to Tea Partiers, interventionists to libertarians, really the party's
raison d'etre -- is opposition to the Affordable Care Act. As long as it is in place, the GOP have gotten crumbs at best. This is why the party was willing to shut the government down in the first place over it.
It's an utterly disingenuous tactic, and you're well aware of it, Vosem.
Republicans have been quite open that their 'goal', their best-case scenario, is to end the shutdown and defund Obamacare. There's nothing secretive or disingenuous about it, it is common knowledge.
Democrats aren't budging (so far) because caving to that tactic completely lets the Republicans off free from public outrage by reducing as much inconvenience of the government shutdown as possible, but still letting the Republicans grandstand over something that they're obsessed with on a level that no political party has been obsessed with anything in recent political history.
'Because it would be better for the other party' isn't a good reason to do anything and doing things purely to spite the Republicans isn't a road sane Democrats want to take. (As an aside, large parts of the Republicans have been doing this to Democrats recently; you can see it hasn't done these wings much good.)
Democrats had one request: a clean, simple, funding resolution to keep the government funded until the Republicans turn around and do this all again in however long it takes for the funds to run out, as they've been wont to do. No special funding, just funding the laws and the programs on the books. Republicans don't want to fund one of those laws, so they caused the shutdown, and now that they're getting all sorts of flak for it,
Up to here, a very accurate sum-up of recent history
they want to mitigate the pain caused by the shutdown they caused so the media can move on and the public can forget about it, but they can still hold up Obamacare.
Are you saying Democrats
don't want to mitigate the pain of the shutdown? And you have to remember that every individual Republican was elected with the voters of their district understanding that they would do anything within reason to hold up, delay, or remove Obamacare.
That is a large part of the point in their being there in the first place. If you proudly think that's an acceptable political move, and the fault of the evil Democrats for not gladly taking, you are a sociopath or completely ignorant.
It's acceptable, but it's not the Democrats' fault for not going along with it -- they, on the other hand, were elected and, with just a few exceptions, all promised to support and defend Obamacare. That's a large point of them being there as well.
There is nothing to negotiate.
...the alternative is literally waiting for Republicans to change their minds about Obamacare en masse. What do you think the likelihood of that is? Spoiler: Not high.
It's a law, and this is a funding debate, not a debate over a new health reform proposal.
True. Why is a funding debate less valid than a debate over a new proposal?
The time to replace the health care law was anytime in the last two and ahalf years+, and they declined to seriously do so.
Republicans haven't been elected to the House on platforms of replacing Obamacare. They've been elected on platforms of repealing it.
These constant "government by crisis/shutdown/temporary funding resolution" controversies have got to stop, are not how a country of this size and stature should be run, and is the fault of one group. Spoiler: It's not the Democrats.
OK, but that doesn't explain how you propose to end the shutdown.
What the hell is there even to negotiate??
How to end the government shutdown on some mutually acceptable terms...
What those would be, I don't know. But Republicans have at least indicated a willingness to try and find them, while Democrats have reacted by spitting in their faces.
There is one acceptable term: clean government funding, no strings attached. Republicans said no. That's the beginning and end of this debate. You are a crazy person.
I've explained already that this is anathema to House leadership; that the entire Democratic strategy consists of trying to bully the House into passing it, and that this is profoundly unlikely to succeed. Until/unless Democrats do agree on some other terms, nothing will happen. If that's what the Democrats prefer, that's their choice to make; it is in fact a choice they are making.
There is one sticking point that this shutdown revolves around and that is not funding Obamacare.
This is why Vosem's argument seems so hilariously stupid. He admits the Republicans caused this shutdown themselves by refusing to fund Obamacare, but a few days in, it's now the Democrats fault for... refusing to agree to funding everything but Obamacare. What?
It's the Democrats' fault for
not attempting to find some amount of common ground. Not believing any can be found is no excuse not to try.
What the hell is there even to negotiate??
How to end the government shutdown on some mutually acceptable terms...
What those would be, I don't know. But Republicans have at least indicated a willingness to try and find them, while Democrats have reacted by spitting in their faces.
No, the only goal is to get rid of Obamacare; an established law of the land, backed up by the SCOTUS and the electorate who re-elected the man who signed it into law.Getting rid of Obamacare is the best-case scenario and it's obviously the long-term goal; nobody is denying this.
To paraphrase Jon Stewart, the shutdown is being framed by the media as a game of chicken by both sides, when a better analogy would be one guy driving the wrong way in the right-side lane directly at the other car.
It still makes no sense to hope a collision happens because the other guy would be at fault if you're sitting in the other car.
Republicans know that Obama is not going to sign off on an Obamacare repeal, so continuing to force the issue is what is is prolonging the shut down.
You could easily reverse the names, replace "repeal" with "funding", at get a statement about as valid.
Bull-f[inks]ing-sh[inks].
What on Earth could motivate you to think that makes any sense?Err...facts?
On one hand, we have a party that refuses to repeal a law that has already gone into effect, and opposed a government shutdown to that effect.
On the other side, we have a party that is not going to sign off on Obamacare funding. This is valid insofar as it represents the truth, sure. You know what the rest of the truth is here, though? The President has signed off on it. The Senate passed it. The House passed it. The people voted in a Democratic majority last election partially in response to it. SCOTUS stated it was constitutional. Nowhere in there do the House Republicans have any mandate for their actions.
They all have mandates to whatever they ing can to get rid or chip away at Obamacare as much as possible from their own districts. If they don't do this, they risk being replaced by someone who will.
They're being obstinate. Sure, it's a truthful statement to state that their intentions are to derail funding. Now you tell me how their actions are justified.
The point isn't that the act of shutting down the government a few days ago was justified, because it wasn't. The point is that what the Democrats are doing right now by refusing to enter negotiations is just as unjustified.
This idea that the Republican Party is all of a sudden interested in "compromise"...hilariously pathetic.
It's obvious to anyone paying attention that it is extremely unlikely the Republicans (and the Democrats) won't get anywhere without one. The Democrats are trying to evade it, but that strategy doesn't look like it's getting anywhere soon.
