Thursday, October 28, 2010

Off Topic: Political Stubbornness

“This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles.”

The quote comes from Republican House minority leader and would-be speaker John Boehner. He was talking on Sean Hannity’s radio program specifically about right-wing pipe dreams of overturning President Barack Obama’s history-making health-care reform legislation. But his statement encapsulates what has gone so wrong with American politics these days.

I have much more to say on this subject here.

3 comments:

Richard R. said...

Thanks for this, I wish more people could see through the wool many politicians are trying to pull. It's has seemed to me - and yes, I'm a Democrat - that since Obama was elected the Republicans have acted like pouty little kids, obstructing everything the other party has tried to do, Fighting and name-calling and following the Just Say No policy to anything they did not originate. Partisanship has gotten so important to the electorate that the purpose of government seems to have escaped them, and the far right "political analysts" who trumpet their fear-and doom messages for a lot of it.

Flip Dixon said...

A bunch of Democrats complaining about Republicans...don't see how this is much different from politics as usual.

J. Kingston Pierce said...

It's different, Flip, because of the magnitude of the problems that currently face the United States.

While Democrats under President Obama have sought to infuse money into an economy left sagging after eight years of Republican George W. Bush's laissez-faire and corrupt politics, and have struggled against knee-jerk right-wing opposition to provide assistance to people out of work, "tea bag" cultists and other "conservatives" insist on cutting off spending and trusting that "the marketplace" will somehow make everything right again. Republicans made that identical argument in 1929, and it's a good thing President Roosevelt didn't take their advice, or the country would have experienced a longer, even deeper economic depression.

It's amazing to me that some Americans believe Democrats should have fixed an economy in two years that it took Republicans eight years to undermine. The worst thing we could do now is start backtracking on efforts to stimulate and strengthen the economy through government action. But that's exactly what Republicans would have us do.

Cheers,
Jeff