Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
catwho wrote:
It is the middle ground.
How? How the hell can you declare something that is 5 steps past anything the GOP is willing to accept as the "middle ground".
If the GOP adamantly refuses to be taxed in any way to pay for health care for those who cannot afford it, well then there can't
BE any middle ground can there?
And if the Dems adamantly insist on forcing people who earn money to pay for benefits for those who don't, there can't
BE any middle ground can there?
See how it works both ways? Finding a middle ground means looking at the things that both parties agree on, instead of focusing on the areas we don't. What Obama did was deliberately push an agenda that he knew was partisan and he knew neither side could agree on and made that the centerpiece of his first 2 years in office.
That was his choice. That was the Dems choice. If he'd wanted to reach across the aisle, he could have actually had his party and the GOP sit down and look at issues like health care, the economy, energy policy, etc and find the areas where they agreed and move forward on those things. He not only did not do this, he did the exact opposite of this.
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There can't BE any compromise can there? You can't reach across the aisle if the other guys are walled up in their "no-fort" CAN you?
Sure. But do you see how this goes both ways? How does deliberately focusing on the aspects of various political issues that are the most partisan and the most divisive meet his claim of "bridging the partisan divide". There's a whole hell of a lot of governance that is not so strongly disagreed upon. He choose his agenda. Not the GOP. It's more than unfair to blame the GOP for the fact that his agenda met with partisan resistance. Did anyone think that it wouldn't? So doesn't that make him responsible for the partisan outcome?
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The current GOP is NOT representative of anything even close to the middle. How can you possibly rationalize otherwise?
Um... Because we exist in an adversarial political system? If the GOP were tomorrow to adopt a "middle position" on say funding for contraception, or gun control, or taxes, do you think that the Dems will then meet them in the middle? If you do, you are an idiot because that's not how it works. You take the far side and then compromise towards the middle (where you can) or find areas where you can agree when you can't. That's how the system works.
What the Dems did was make their own far left demands and when the GOP didn't agree, declared the GOP the "party of No", and then proceeded with their far left agenda anyway. Now, we can certainly say that if they had the political power to do so, then that's their choice. But if you buy the whole "GOP==party of no" line, you are a sucker. That whole bit was invented so as to preemptively distract you from noticing how partisan the Dems were being. See, by doing that, then every time the GOP opposes something the Dems are doing, it's not that what the Dems are doing is a monumentally stupid thing to do, but it's just the GOP being the party of no.
Which would be a clever bit of political razzle dazzle if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that most of what the Dems did in 2009 and 2010 was actually monumentally stupid. I can see being snowed by their BS at the time, but for anyone to still repeat that tired "party of no" line today just smacks of an amazing ability to bury your head in the sand.