{"id":9317,"date":"2012-11-02T08:41:54","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T15:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9317"},"modified":"2012-11-02T08:41:54","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T15:41:54","slug":"will-intransigence-win-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/02\/will-intransigence-win-votes\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Intransigence Win Votes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard some pretty absurd reasons for voting Republican, but that is to be expected.  There are no reasons for voting Republican that are not absurd.  However, I\u2019ve been hearing a new one, that argues, in effect, that folks should vote Republican, because they do not give a damn about the American people, and because Democrats do.  Paul Krugman explained it.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"2Filibastards\"If President Obama is re-elected, health care coverage will expand dramatically, taxes on the wealthy will go up and Wall Street will face tougher regulation. If Mitt Romney wins instead, health coverage will shrink substantially, taxes on the wealthy will fall to levels not seen in 80 years and financial regulation will be rolled back. <\/p>\n

Given the starkness of this difference, you might have expected to see people from both sides of the political divide urging voters to cast their ballots based on the issues. Lately, however, I\u2019ve seen a growing number of Romney supporters making a quite different argument. Vote for Mr. Romney, they say, because if he loses, Republicans will destroy the economy<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

O.K., they don\u2019t quite put it that way. The argument is phrased in terms of \u201cpartisan gridlock,\u201d as if both parties were equally extreme. But they aren\u2019t. This is, in reality, all about appeasing the hard men of the Republican Party<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

If you want an example of what I\u2019m talking about, consider the remarkable \u2014 in a bad way \u2014 editorial in which The Des Moines Register endorsed Mr. Romney. The paper acknowledged that Mr. Obama\u2019s signature economic policy, the 2009 stimulus, was the right thing to do. It also acknowledged that Mr. Obama tried hard to reach out across the partisan divide, but was rebuffed. <\/p>\n

Yet it endorsed his opponent anyway, offering some half-hearted support for Romneynomics, but mainly asserting that Mr. Romney would be able to work with Democrats in a way that Mr. Obama has not been able to work with Republicans. Why? Well, the paper claims \u2014 as many of those making this argument do \u2014 that, in office, Mr. Romney would be far more centrist than anything he has said in the campaign would indicate. (And the notion that he has been lying all along is supposed to be a point in his favor?) But mostly it just takes it for granted that Democrats would be more reasonable<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>] <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

I urge you to click through and finish reading Krugman\u2019s excellent piece.<\/font><\/p>\n

The bottom line here is this.  Democrats have been more reasonable, because they have been willing to cooperate to meet the needs of the American people.  Republicans, on the other hand, have been perfectly content to harm the American people to blame Obama for the consequences. The argument that voting Republican will end gridlock is probably false.  If Republicans are successful with this tactic, it will send a clear message to Democrats, that the only way they can succeed politically is to become just as intransigent as the Republicans have been to negate the advantage.<\/font><\/p>\n

The opposite of this reason to vote Republican is true.  The Democratic Party, that was willing to cooperate, should be rewarded for caring about Americans, while the Republican Party, that was not willing to cooperate, should be punished for the harm they have done to Americans.  The last thing American voters should do is send a message that sabotaging America is a valid way to make political gains.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"Vote_Check-mark_2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard some pretty absurd reasons for voting Republican, but that is to be expected.  There are no reasons for voting Republican that are not absurd.  However, I\u2019ve been hearing a new one, that argues, in effect, that folks should vote Republican, because they do not give a damn about the American people, and because […]<\/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-9317","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\/9317","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=9317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}