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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. :) )
On the subject of "why don't the Democrats just vote for it?" From https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/19/house-republicans-spending-vote/
"That scene was remarkable to veteran lawmakers who have never seen the minority party provide the votes to pass the rule vote, and it greatly irked the far-right wing of the conference, who have since pledged to oust McCarthy if he leans on Democrats again. That perspective has forced Republicans to only pass bills through their narrow-ranks."
That is, the party is so unstable that if McCarthy allows to the floor anything the Democrats will vote for, especially if it wouldn't pass otherwise, he may be replaced by someone who will promise not to do that.
> On the subject of “why don’t the Democrats just vote for it?”
Why do you keep putting quotes around things I never said and dont paraphrase my position in any way accurately?
I said if its a good bill they should vote for it. If they dont then they, as hundreds, are to blame far more so than 5 GOP members. If its a bad bill then those 5 GOP people did the right thing and had a good outcome, yet somehow they are still the bad guy.
> That is, the party is so unstable that if McCarthy allows to the floor anything the Democrats will vote for, especially if it wouldn’t pass otherwise, he may be replaced by someone who will promise not to do that.
Yup, a great example of the harm of group think. Another example that argues against your case.
"Yup, a great example of the harm of group think. Another example that argues against your case."
Um. But the people doing it are the people that you started off praising for doing what they thought was right, and independent thinking. But now it's group think? I think we're sort of going in circles now. :)
> Um. But the people doing it
No their not. The people doing it is the whole of the GOP, which i have never praised for independent thought as a whole. I did praise a very very small group (5 people specifically) for engaging in individual thought on a single occasion and pointed out the value of independent thought.
I hinted at (and now am explicitly stating) that I do generally see marginally more independence out of the GOP than the democrats, and this property is good however, so lets get that out of the way.
It seems you struggle a lot in our conversations with absolutes. The DNC is like 100% groupthink all the time, GOP is like 98% group think almost all the time. This may make the GOP more indepdent relatively, and that property is a good thing. But it hardly means they are free from group think, just maybe slightly less of an issue is all.
> are the people that you started off praising for doing what they thought was right, and independent thinking.
The 5 people out of 200 something, sure, but they are hardle the ones responsible for how the GOP as a whole acted
> But now it’s group think?
Nope nothing changed the GOP is still more than capable of group think just cause they have 5 members who on one single occasions demonstration a hint of independent thought
> I think we’re sort of going in circles now. :)
We arent, but I can see why you might think that :)
> Okay. :) Maybe it’s that you tend to focus on small specifics, and I am more out in the generalities.
Actually I was kinda thinking the opposite lol.
While im focusing on the general idea of independent thought as a desire quality among many in a good politician... you seem to be focused on these **specific** politicians and if they are good people simply because they were the example that initiated the thought.
> The people who voted against that rule (because the bill didn’t cut enough) are a subset of the people who are threatening to remove McCarthy if he puts forward a bill that might pass with D votes.
Yes an extremely small subset (5 people out of 210+)
> And those two things are part of the same crazy swing of the GOP to the right and to obstructionism.
You tried to use the fact that I said 5 people out of 210+ were independent thinkers against me when I said something all 210 people did was an act of group think.
Do you not realize that 5 people can act independently as part of a group of 210+ people who act according to group think? Do you also not realize why it seems quite strange when you objected to the fact that I pointed that out?
> I guess there is a sense in which the votes against the rule were “independent thought”, and the pressure on McCarthy not to compromise an inch is “group think”
That too... the group overall will act in group think because thats still pretty common in the GOP (despite being slightly less than in the dems). So there will be plenty of examples of group think for the GOP as a whole even when a small number might dissent from time to time.
but also the fact that im not implying everyone is independent all the time. Even these 5 people who were indepdent in this one case I'm sure will tow the link the majority of the time. They are just slightly more capable of being independent some of the time, thats all.
> I just don’t find it a very interesting sense, I guess, since I see both things as part of the same overall phenomenon, being done by the same basic group of people.
Thats because your still focused on the specific (these people and if their good people or whatever) rather than the general "is individual thought a desirable trait in a politician who has all the other desirable traits a politician should also have"
@georgetakei
It is not 210+ Republicans who are threatening to remove McCarthy if he puts forward anything that will pass with Democratic votes. It is a specific nasty subset of the house GOP, and the votes of those 5 members on the Defense appropriations bill rule were part of the same overall movement. Describing the one as "independent thinking" and the other as "group think", when in fact they are part of exactly the same overall phenomenon, is not IMHO useful. They are not two distinct and different things; they are two visible symptoms of the same underlying thing.
> It is not 210+ Republicans who are threatening to remove McCarthy if he puts forward anything that will pass with Democratic votes. It is a specific nasty subset of the house GOP, and the votes of those 5 members on the Defense appropriations bill rule were part of the same overall movement.
Thats fair, you'd have to quantify the actual number... but either way this is pretty irrelevant to my point and simply a tangent anyway.
@freemo
Okay. :) Maybe it's that you tend to focus on small specifics, and I am more out in the generalities.
The people who voted against that rule (because the bill didn't cut enough) are a subset of the people who are threatening to remove McCarthy if he puts forward a bill that might pass with D votes. And those two things are part of the same crazy swing of the GOP to the right and to obstructionism.
I guess there is a sense in which the votes against the rule were "independent thought", and the pressure on McCarthy not to compromise an inch is "group think". I just don't find it a very interesting sense, I guess, since I see both things as part of the same overall phenomenon, being done by the same basic group of people.
@georgetakei