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The GOP-led House is in disarray and focused on all the wrong things. They couldn’t even get a bill to fund the Pentagon through a procedural vote because five of their far-right members revolted. And now Speaker McCarthy has pulled the continuing resolution to fund the government, one that was hammered out by the different factions this weekend, from any consideration because it also doesn’t have the votes.
Instead of doing their job and passing a budget—one they already agreed to earlier this year—they are preceding with an impeachment inquiry into President Biden because the Orange Guy insists he shouldn’t be the only impeached candidate up on stage. The hearing will now happen just two days before the government shuts down because they don’t have a budget in place.
This is the GOP in a nutshell, folks. Paralysis, political theatrics, and chaos.
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I have no love for the GOP my friend, but you are criticizing them for doing the one thing the democrats arent doing and should.... Vote their conscious rather than just agreeing with the group.
We **want** politicians who are there to vote whats right, not what their party tells them to vote.
That depends on what they think is right. If someone is voting for terrible things, I'm not going to admire them for it because it's what their conscience tells them. I care somewhat more about what the politicians are voting for, than about whether they are showing an Independent Spirit by doing it. I'm fine with pols following the party line, if that line is actually good.
If a small group of Republicans is willing to harm the nation as a whole if they don't get to gut education, social services, food safety, etc, that is decidedly not what I "**want**" in any sense.
> That depends on what they think is right. If someone is voting for terrible things, I'm not going to admire them for it because it's what their conscience tells them. I care somewhat more about what the politicians are voting for, than about whether they are showing an Independent Spirit by doing it. I'm fine with pols following the party line, if that line is actually good.
If you think independently and make good decisions, and that just happens to be in agreement with the party line, fine I have no problem with that.
But when its clear you are following the party line for sake of following the party line, espcially considering how poor a job the party is doing, then yea we have a problem. The problem is, I cant rely on you to make the right choice should the party become corrupted, so its not a good safeguard.
The democrats sadly have shown a pattern of voting the party line for the sake of voting the party line, group think has become very central to both parties, though moreso to the left it seems (based on george's post)
Thinking independently and making good decisions are not necessarily correlated! People can independently come to extremely bad conclusions.
I'm just saying that the quality of the decisions is far more important than whether they are arrived at independently.
Certainly if the group is going in a bad direction, then independence is good. But it's good because it increases the odds of getting to a good place, not because of some inherent virtue.
We have a very concrete example here, where a few "independent" Republicans are holding the government hostage because they want to gut important programs.
This may be "independent thinking" in some sense, but there's nothing good about it. They have diverged from the (bad) party line, in an EVEN WORSE direction.
Actually its proof of the opposite.
So you are saying there is a good bill being proposed with good programs and the reason it was held up is because the republicans were split 44 (in favor) - 5 (against) and that is the fault of those 5 free thinkers. Meanwhile the democrats all 48 voted against the bill because they all stick together and tow the party line and see it as a GOP proposed bill.
So why are you blaming the 5 free thinkers in the GOP for stopping the bill rather than the 48 democrats who arent free thinkers?
Sorry the logic isnt following.
What? No. There are bipartisan spending bills that have passed the Senate with like 90+ votes. The GOP, which controls the House, has not introduced those bills, or anything else reasonable, despite there having been an agreement basically to do exactly that the other week. The only thing the extreme right has allowed to progress through committee has been junk including new abortion and trans care restrictions and like that.
The Democrats in the House can't just vote for a bill that hasn't even been introduced; that is not how it works At All.
I think your mental model of how the government actually works is a little oversimplified? We can both agree that it SHOULD be simpler and more sensible, but it's not.
Now if you're mostly just saying "would that we had people as willing to cause trouble for good as these extreme Republicans are to cause trouble for evil", I agree with the sentiment! :)
I just don't think willingness to cause trouble for what you believe is a virtue in itself; it depends what you believe in.
@georgetakei
> What? No. There are bipartisan spending bills that have passed the Senate with like 90+ votes.
We arent talking about bills, you are talking about this one which supposidly is a great bill and these 5 GOP people are ruining it
> The GOP, which controls the House, has not introduced those bills, or anything else reasonable, despite there having been an agreement basically to do exactly that the other week
Wait so now your saying the bill isnt reasonable? Soooooo... arent you saying that those 5 independent thinking GoP members stopped a **bad** bill from passing... ok so why are you saying independent thought is a bad thing, isnt this an example then of the independent thought of members of the GOP being a good thing since those 5 people just stopped this bad bill from going through?
It makes no sense, you are attacking them at being at a standstill for disagreeing, yet, dont actually want the bill to pass and literally all of the DNC agrees with these 5 GOP members and yet... somehow its a bad thing they dont all agree... man this is making me dizzy.
> The Democrats in the House can’t just vote for a bill that hasn’t even been introduced; that is not how it works At All
What, there was just a procedral vote, in the house, to introduce a bill. That vote was conducted by the house which consists of GOP and Dems.... of course the Dems get to vote when introducing bills... then they vote again when it gets to the sentate to pass it.
> I think your mental model of how the government actually works is a little oversimplified? We can both agree that it SHOULD be simpler and more sensible, but it’s not.
Pretty sure its not, I could tell you step by step the process to get a bill passed. This is the first one where it gets introduced int he house and involves votes from both sides to introduce it.
> Now if you’re mostly just saying “would that we had people as willing to cause trouble for good as these extreme Republicans are to cause trouble for evil”, I agree with the sentiment! :)
I mean that part is fairly valid, doing good and independent thought are obviously both criteria. With the democrats and the republicans doing evil not much else matters. But that doesnt make independent thought any less of a required virtue (along with goodness)
"We arent talking about bills, you are talking about this one which supposidly is a great bill and these 5 GOP people are ruining it"
No, that's what YOU suggested, and I said "What? No.". I hope you're arguing in good faith here! There isn't just a single bill involved, and Congress doesn't actually work the way the little "how a bill becomes law" pamphlets say.
The 5 extreme Republicans are preventing the bipartisan bills that have passed the Senate, and could pass the House, from being introduced in the normal process. If the Democrats tried to introduce them on their own hook, every Republican would vote against them, because it would threaten their control to let them do that. And if Mitch forced them to a vote over the objections of the extremists, there would be a similar revolt.
If you don't understand how that works, I sympathize, but I assure you it's not "the House Democrats refuse to vote for the bipartisan bills that have passed the Senate just because they would have a Republican label on them". Some Democrats have been trying to persuade Mitch to introduce them and let them pass with broad D support, but so far he doesn't have the spine.
Here's an article that goes into some of that:
https://www.axios.com/2023/09/18/mccarthy-democrats-spending-bills-avert-shutdown
And sorry, not "Mitch", I meant "Kevin". I can't reliably spell either last name, but apparently I can't keep the first names straight either. 🤪
(And it's also not just 5 Republicans; that's the number that voted against the procedural thing to advance even their own DoD funding bill. But there are more than that keeping McCarthy from sticking to the bipartisan agreement, threatening to remove him as leader if he proposes anything a Democrat will vote for, etc. The party is a mess. And "independent thinking" isn't helping. :) )
> And it’s also not just 5 Republicans; that’s the number that voted against the procedural thing to advance even their own DoD funding bill.
I mean its the only one we are discussing here at least. Anything said here was largely about this bill and this vote.. other incidents may be valid but not what has so far been discussed is all.
> But there are more than that keeping McCarthy from sticking to the bipartisan agreement, threatening to remove him as leader if he proposes anything a Democrat will vote for, etc. The party is a mess. And “independent thinking” isn’t helping. :)
What you basically just said was, a bunch of GOP people are pressuring McCarthy if he doesnt "tow the party line", and somehow GOP members who do not tow the party line (will vote against the party) are the problem? Sounds to me you jut gave yet another example against your own argument.
