Dems don't realize they lost this fight...

[KeithKSR]

The Dems seem to be gloating a bit thinking they won the fight over the debt ceiling, government shutdown and other items at issue. But have they?

By essentially kicking the can down the road on the debt ceiling and government funding the Dems are dragging the issue where they do not want it, right into the kickoff of the 2014 campaign season where they have many moderates in both the Senate and the House who have precarious holds on their fragile seats. The seats will be ripe for more conservative candidates to capture in 2014. The tax season will reveal that many Americans will harbor more resentment over Obamacare when they find out that the March 31 deadline for Obamacare coverage is really more like January 31, because you cannot get coverage without a wait time.

The panel being appointed to negotiate the next phase of the debt process can only be a GOP win, after Reid and Obama have been obstinate in regards to any kind of budgetary negotiations. Obama and Reid can only look bad when the panel reaches an agreement that they refuse to go along with this winter.

The government shutdown, despite the administration's greatest attempts. simply had little effect on mainstream American; but did call more attention to the differences in the two parties when it comes to Obamacare. It is clear that the Dems own Obamacare, and can only get hammered over that issue. Unlike Presidential elections years the working class are those more likely to vote in midterm elections and right now it is the working people who are feeling the most pain from Obamacare with higher rates, and higher deductibles.

The greatest fear of the Dems has been the Tea Party, the administration without a doubt plotted with the IRS to block the Tea Party in 2012 and made it appear the Tea Party was fading. The debt crisis has witnessed the rise of the fiscally conservative, libertarian thinking Tea Party members and has highlighted their resolve to fix a broken government. The members of the Tea Party showed they had more strength than the RINOs or Dems.

The biggest losers are the entrenched RINOs, like McCain. Politicians across the polling board took major hits, with the exception of the guys like Ted Cruz who saw their popularity increase. Americans do not like leaders who are going to throw up their hands and surrender without a fight, they do like people who stand by their principles, especially when fighting for their constituents.

The winners among the Dems are some of the young moderates, like Joe Manchin. Manichin sought out solutions instead of acting like the entrenched ultraliberals, like Reid and Pelosi, who preferred to call names and demonize their opposition and refused to negotiate.

In the deal, the sequester cuts remain. The Dems wanted them gone, and didn't get that.

There was a change to Obamacare, though you can bet the MSM will gloss over it and the Dems won't mention it at all. Eligibility for insurance subsidies will have to be verified. Cheating the system has long been a DNC stonghold, they want people to cheat when voting, cheat when applying for government assistance, etc. The Dems find the verification process as hard to swallow as voter ID requirements (which always seem sensible to me).

[UKHistory]

The debt ceiling was raised and this nation does not have to default or determine if it can pay social security or VA benefits.

America won tonight. Putting off this disaster saved the country.

Sequester is in place. Hopefully the Congress can make some real substantive changes to the budget and end sequestration so as to cut constructively and not randomly going forward.

It should be elected officials who are making decisions about our budgets and this should not be delegated down to career Federal employees.

The sequestration, government shutdown and the threat to default are not examples of fiscal responsibility or legislative leadership. These are examples of a complete and total abdication of leadership on the part of the US Congress.

It doesn't speak well for the President either who was too inexperienced to elected to be as effective as he should have been. But shutting down the government is not governing.

The Tea Party is the single greatest threat to the United States since the former Soviet Union. In terms of a domestic threat to liberty, Ted Cruz and Tea Party are akin to the divisiveness of Joe McCarthy.

Throw in the NSA and Patriot Act that was started under Bush, flourishes under Obama and will only grow regardless under the next President, we are dire straits in terms of liberty.

But the ignorance of the Tea Party is not going save us. The lack of vision and statesmanship on the part of that group is sickening.

To be fiscally solvent, we need to reduce military spending; raise the retirement age for people born in 1971 and beyond from 65 to 68; and most likley reduce social security for Americans whose networth is greater than 1 million dollars.

Neither party looked great but it was moderates and it was Senators who saved this country from default.

I watched Tea Party People like Cruz and Barton and I am utterly dismayed that we as a nation have elected such people. They are an ignorant rabble.

God help us all if those are the people that middle America will continue to turn to as try and continue the nation that we love.

I am not for Obamacare and I am sure we can find ways to cut spending but threatening to default and coming across with such confidence that the US defaulting on it obligations to its creditors and to its citizens is horrifying in my eyes.

[CitizenBBN]

The Tea Party is the single greatest threat to the United States since the former Soviet Union. In terms of a domestic threat to liberty, Ted Cruz and Tea Party are akin to the divisiveness of Joe McCarthy.

Since I consider myself a tertiary member I'll have to disagree. Well I agree they're divisive, it's just that I think that's a good thing b/c being un-divisive is quickly destroying this nation and its people.

The "Tea Party" is a quasi-libertarian, Populist reaction to a 2 party system where neither party stands for limited government and individual liberty any longer. The greatest danger to this nation is the continued tolerance of that system which has put a socialist in the White House and is spending us into being a Third World nation.

I don't think this was the right fight for Cruz, framing it around Obamacare instead of spending the summer beating on spending cuts was a mistake, but dont' confuse different priorities with ignorance. Also don't confuse being willing to break the current "politics as usual" system as a lack of statesmanship. it's not lack of ability, it's a conscious choice that other things are more important and the conclusion that statesmanship has failed and will continue to fail to yield results.

"Statesmanship" was for sure not on display, the art of political maneuver, but don't think statesmanship is the goal of government or always desirable. It is not. The goal is individual liberty, and secondarily prosperity, for Americans, and the Founding Fathers were a long way from statesmanship when they organized an armed revolt to get it. There is a place for statesmanship, but there is a place for hard lines as well, all depends on the situation. Abraham Lincoln was capable of great statesmanship and also of swift and vicious action devoid of any statesmanlike characteristics, and as we near $20 trillion in debt and fully 50% of this nation being carried by the other 50%, the need for statesmanship is being quickly replaced by the need for more direct and decisive action.

"Statesmanship" has come to mean borrowing against our children and grandchildren b/c they can't vote and their parents are too foolish to know what they are doing to them, and it must stop. One side gets to spend on wealth redistribution if the other gets to spend on big business. It has to end. It must end, and the means for it to end are becoming more justified as the ends become more dire.

I find Cruz no more ignorant than Feinstein or Boxer or Reid or McCain. As I said I disagree with his focus on Obamacare at this point in time, but I don't disagree with his overall priorities or concerns about the direction of the nation. In the end he also agreed to not filibuster this deal.

Unlike you I hope we turn to more just like him, b/c what he is first and foremost is a wrench in a very broken system, one that needs to be stopped and rebuilt, by breaking it if necessary. I don't want to default on our debts, or even threaten it, but if I have to choose between those threats and simply going along with $30 trillion in debt and our nation destroyed by the victim society, I'll live with it.

It's easy to say "we should find better ways to address spending" but it's empirically proven to not be likely to happen via negotiations. We put sequester in place b/c the results were seen as so bad to both sides they'd be forced to use statesmanship and compromise to come up with a better deal. The only problem is that it was a pipe dream, it didn't happen, and the cuts kicked in. Why should we assume that this next round of "let's keep spending but only if we agree to get serious about spending" will be more successful than this last one?

I wish we had a great leader for the cause of Libertarianism, one better than Cruz or Paul, but I don't see one out there, and I'm not willing to let Obama turn us into a Third World nation just b/c I can't find a better one.

Tea Partiers have their kooks, just like every other political subgroup, but those of us willing to break some of the Washington machine to save the nation aren't ignorant rabble. Most of us just have this silly notion that this government is here to insure our personal liberty, and the pledge to do that is stronger than our obligation to pay bonds or be statesmanlike in our behavior.

To borrow from the film 1776: "We've spawned a new race here, Mr. Dickinson. Rougher, simpler; more violent, more enterprising; less refined. We're a new nationality. We require a new nation." That definition heralds a distinct lack of statesmanship and I can live with it just fine.

I, and many like me, are SICK to our eyeballs of working long hours to carry dead weight at the point of government guns and tax agents. We're sick of being told every detail of how we should live our lives in a nation dedicated to individual liberty and expression.

What you see in Cruz is the tip of a much bigger iceberg of frustration in this nation, a whole group of Americans who are reaching a real breaking point. I know very well what a default would do to our financial credibility, and I am glad we avoided default in this round of the war, but if you ask me if I'd accept default and all the damage it would do in order to end deficit spending in this nation or restore true privatized health care I'd do it in a New York minute. It would be worth the price b/c unlike you I have absolutely no hope those things will be achieved without real political pain of an event like this one.

Strategically i'd have let Obamacare go altogether other than trying to get verification for income and to make it apply to Congress and the White House staff. Both are easily defended politically, that's all I'd have asked for. Id' have instead focused on spending generally all summer leading to the debt ceiling issue, then I'd have done this cliff thing just like we did b/c I'm happy to spend a full year defining my side as the side of fiscal responsibility. Obamacare just muddied the issue for low info voters, at least for now, but the GOP conservatives are banking that Obamacare is a disaster and when it is the low info folks will see the GOP as having tried to stop it. I think they give low info voters too much credit, they don't remember what happened last month much less a year back. They needed to focus on spending and let Obamacare blow up, then just connect the Dem candidates with Obama b/c he's inextricably tied to Obamacare even among the drooling masses.

So I disagree with Cruz strategically, but I agree with him completely on his goals and priorities.

one last thought: your fear of default and what that will mean, don't you think all that same weakening of American financial influence and strength is happening as we spend to oblivion? If we do nothing we're going to end up in exactly the same spot as if we had defaulted today. Like smoking, we're committing slow motion suicide versus just shooting ourselves in the head, but we're headed to the same spot either way. Our "full faith and credit" will be just as eroded. Heck, our bond rating has already been downgraded, it's already tangibly provable that default is just the quick and nasty version of what we're already doing by going along and getting along in the Washington system.

[Darrell KSR]

Since I consider myself a tertiary member I'll have to disagree. Well I agree they're divisive, it's just that I think that's a good thing b/c being un-divisive is quickly destroying this nation and its people.

The "Tea Party" is a quasi-libertarian, Populist reaction to a 2 party system where neither party stands for limited government and individual liberty any longer. The greatest danger to this nation is the continued tolerance of that system which has put a socialist in the White House and is spending us into being a Third World nation.

I don't think this was the right fight for Cruz, framing it around Obamacare instead of spending the summer beating on spending cuts was a mistake, but dont' confuse different priorities with ignorance. Also don't confuse being willing to break the current "politics as usual" system as a lack of statesmanship. it's not lack of ability, it's a conscious choice that other things are more important and the conclusion that statesmanship has failed and will continue to fail to yield results.

"Statesmanship" was for sure not on display, the art of political maneuver, but don't think statesmanship is the goal of government or always desirable. It is not. The goal is individual liberty, and secondarily prosperity, for Americans, and the Founding Fathers were a long way from statesmanship when they organized an armed revolt to get it. There is a place for statesmanship, but there is a place for hard lines as well, all depends on the situation. Abraham Lincoln was capable of great statesmanship and also of swift and vicious action devoid of any statesmanlike characteristics, and as we near $20 trillion in debt and fully 50% of this nation being carried by the other 50%, the need for statesmanship is being quickly replaced by the need for more direct and decisive action.

"Statesmanship" has come to mean borrowing against our children and grandchildren b/c they can't vote and their parents are too foolish to know what they are doing to them, and it must stop. One side gets to spend on wealth redistribution if the other gets to spend on big business. It has to end. It must end, and the means for it to end are becoming more justified as the ends become more dire.

I find Cruz no more ignorant than Feinstein or Boxer or Reid or McCain. As I said I disagree with his focus on Obamacare at this point in time, but I don't disagree with his overall priorities or concerns about the direction of the nation. In the end he also agreed to not filibuster this deal.

Unlike you I hope we turn to more just like him, b/c what he is first and foremost is a wrench in a very broken system, one that needs to be stopped and rebuilt, by breaking it if necessary. I don't want to default on our debts, or even threaten it, but if I have to choose between those threats and simply going along with $30 trillion in debt and our nation destroyed by the victim society, I'll live with it.

It's easy to say "we should find better ways to address spending" but it's empirically proven to not be likely to happen via negotiations. We put sequester in place b/c the results were seen as so bad to both sides they'd be forced to use statesmanship and compromise to come up with a better deal. The only problem is that it was a pipe dream, it didn't happen, and the cuts kicked in. Why should we assume that this next round of "let's keep spending but only if we agree to get serious about spending" will be more successful than this last one?

I wish we had a great leader for the cause of Libertarianism, one better than Cruz or Paul, but I don't see one out there, and I'm not willing to let Obama turn us into a Third World nation just b/c I can't find a better one.

Tea Partiers have their kooks, just like every other political subgroup, but those of us willing to break some of the Washington machine to save the nation aren't ignorant rabble. Most of us just have this silly notion that this government is here to insure our personal liberty, and the pledge to do that is stronger than our obligation to pay bonds or be statesmanlike in our behavior.

To borrow from the film 1776: "We've spawned a new race here, Mr. Dickinson. Rougher, simpler; more violent, more enterprising; less refined. We're a new nationality. We require a new nation." That definition heralds a distinct lack of statesmanship and I can live with it just fine.

I, and many like me, are SICK to our eyeballs of working long hours to carry dead weight at the point of government guns and tax agents. We're sick of being told every detail of how we should live our lives in a nation dedicated to individual liberty and expression.

What you see in Cruz is the tip of a much bigger iceberg of frustration in this nation, a whole group of Americans who are reaching a real breaking point. I know very well what a default would do to our financial credibility, and I am glad we avoided default in this round of the war, but if you ask me if I'd accept default and all the damage it would do in order to end deficit spending in this nation or restore true privatized health care I'd do it in a New York minute. It would be worth the price b/c unlike you I have absolutely no hope those things will be achieved without real political pain of an event like this one.

Strategically i'd have let Obamacare go altogether other than trying to get verification for income and to make it apply to Congress and the White House staff. Both are easily defended politically, that's all I'd have asked for. Id' have instead focused on spending generally all summer leading to the debt ceiling issue, then I'd have done this cliff thing just like we did b/c I'm happy to spend a full year defining my side as the side of fiscal responsibility. Obamacare just muddied the issue for low info voters, at least for now, but the GOP conservatives are banking that Obamacare is a disaster and when it is the low info folks will see the GOP as having tried to stop it. I think they give low info voters too much credit, they don't remember what happened last month much less a year back. They needed to focus on spending and let Obamacare blow up, then just connect the Dem candidates with Obama b/c he's inextricably tied to Obamacare even among the drooling masses.

So I disagree with Cruz strategically, but I agree with him completely on his goals and priorities.

one last thought: your fear of default and what that will mean, don't you think all that same weakening of American financial influence and strength is happening as we spend to oblivion? If we do nothing we're going to end up in exactly the same spot as if we had defaulted today. Like smoking, we're committing slow motion suicide versus just shooting ourselves in the head, but we're headed to the same spot either way. Our "full faith and credit" will be just as eroded. Heck, our bond rating has already been downgraded, it's already tangibly provable that default is just the quick and nasty version of what we're already doing by going along and getting along in the Washington system.
That many words, and only one post?

Sucker! You will never catch me like that.

Sent using Forum Runner

[DanISSELisdaman]

Lol, I think we all gave up on that a long time ago Darrell.

[suncat05]

But did the Dems really lose? For now, no. But the mid-term elections are still over a year away, and with as many stupid low-info voters as there are who keep showing up at the polls and electing these phony political hacks who keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over again, in the end everybody lost. And will keep losing.

[Catonahottinroof]

This is the problem....in a nutshell. That and college students who have no idea of income taxes or real life financial pressures.


and with as many stupid low-info voters as there are who keep showing up at the polls and electing these phony political hacks who keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over again, in the end everybody lost. And will keep losing.

[badrose]

If amnesty passes, it's over.

[jazyd]

Thanks citizen, I agree but don't have that vocabulary. Lol

[jazyd]

By the way, if Cruz is eligible I will vote for him in a minute over anyone the dems can put up and most republicans. He framed it wrong but his message of spending is dead on

And the tea party is all about spending no more than we take in, get rid of fraud, control govern ant and holding politicians accountable for their actions. They are much more patriotic than all those liberal groups