{"id":7782,"date":"2012-05-17T12:23:13","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T19:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7782"},"modified":"2012-05-17T12:23:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T19:23:14","slug":"the-dysfunction-is-republican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/17\/the-dysfunction-is-republican\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dysfunction is Republican"},"content":{"rendered":"

Common wisdom, along with most main stream media outlets, will tell you that Congressional dysfunction is a result of the unwillingness of both sides to compromise.  That is a lie.  In fact, for years one side compromised so much that the experience gave them hemorrhoids.  When they did give up virtually everything to make a deal with Republicans, the Republicans reneged.  Therefor, in Congress, the dysfunction is Republican.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"17Obstruction\"…Years of difficult politics and unproductive governing preceded America’s most recent crisis – the most serious financial crisis and economic downturn since the Great Depression. A signal was sent in 2008 by the voters, who elected Barack Obama by a comfortable margin and gave the Democrats substantial gains in the House and Senate. What the country didn’t get was any semblance of a well-functioning democracy.<\/p>\n

Republicans greeted the new president with a unified strategy of opposing, obstructing, discrediting and nullifying every one of his important initiatives<\/strong>. Obama reaped an impressive legislative harvest in his first two years but without Republican engagement or support and with no apparent appreciation from the public. The anemic economic recovery and the pain of joblessness and underwater mortgages led voters to "throw the bums out."<\/p>\n

The Democrats’ devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections produced a Republican majority in the House dominated by insurgents determined to radically reduce the size and role of government. What followed was an appalling spectacle of hostage-taking – notably, the debt ceiling crisis – that threatened a government shutdown and public default, and blocked constructive action to nurture an economic recovery or deal with problems of deficits and d<\/strong>ebt…<\/p>\n

…The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition<\/strong>. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>> <\/p>\n

A few days ago, Martin Bashir covered this story in two segments.  In the first he interviews Thomas Mann to explain how Republicans are to blame for hyper-partisanship.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In the second, Martin demonstrates the cost of Republican obstruction.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to be a frustrating year for those of us who want government to govern.  With the elections less than six months away, Republicans will continue to do everything they can to sabotage the well being of all Americans, except the 1%, in the hope they can get away with blaming Obama.  The worst thing Dem9crats can do is to bend over attempting to compromise with them, especially since they are currently demonstrating that Republican promises to abide by their agreements are lies.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Common wisdom, along with most main stream media outlets, will tell you that Congressional dysfunction is a result of the unwillingness of both sides to compromise.  That is a lie.  In fact, for years one side compromised so much that the experience gave them hemorrhoids.  When they did give up virtually everything to make a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}