Thursday, January 28, 2010

Something caught my attention tonight

I'm not really a "party man." I'm registered as a Republican, simply because my state has closed primaries, and I want to be able to influence what candidates I see on final ballots. That said, I like most Brand R politicians about as much as I like most Brand D politicians. Which is about on par with how I feel about used car salesmen, journalists, and hippies.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here comes the rant.

I'm seeing a huge number of people on the left saying we need to "ram through" certain bills and initiatives. Really? Ram through? That implies force, and lots of it. Is your proposal so weak that it can't stand on it's own and gets the votes it needs on its merits? My Dad taught me when I was young that if I needed to force something to make it work, odds are that something was wrong with what I was doing.

I'm dead certain that pols on the right are just as guilty of using persuasion, force, and dirty pool to get legislation passed. Washington is, after all, an equal-opportunity clusterfuck. But I don't ever remember seeing John Q Republicanpartyminion stating openly that certain bills needed forced through the Congress, especially not on the scale I'm seeing with the current D agenda.

If I'm wrong, please tell me. Specifically, I'd like to know which pieces of legislation Republican supporters were advocating "ramming through," not just arguments made by one or two ultra-right whackjobs (I'm discounting Fred Phelps, Chris Buttars, and their ilk on the whole, as being borderline nucking futs.)

Lokidude

1 comment:

  1. Okay, I'm just going to go off the top of my head. You can google the actual articles.

    Here's my list of Bush's "push throughs":

    1. Anti environmental regulation in 2004 (I think that was the year) - this was a last minute push through he used ALL of his presidential power to do so.

    2. The Patriot Act. Politicians got the actual "act" in their offices at about 11.45 pm the night before they were supposed to vote. Then lobbyists did the rest of the work, the act sailed through. Most politicians now admit that A) they had no time to read the bill and B) they didn't read the bill because they had no time to read it because... ta da... bush pushed it through.

    3. Bush also used his uh... influence to "push through" many budget decisions. Hey, look how the economy ended up because of that. Wow, what a man.

    4. I will drop a good quote before I end this list (which could go on for days):

    President George W. Bush has promised to --push through-- legislation that would give legal status to some of the millions of illegal migrants working in the United States but says this must be matched by tighter security on the border with Mexico. He was speaking at a summit with the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, and the Canadian leader, Stephen Harper in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

    So yes, republicans have both done and talked about "pushing" or "ramming" through pieces of legislation. It happens EVERY presidential term, to say that republicans haven't openly done it like democrats currently are is just plain ignorant....

    yeah I realized that probably came off offensive and I apologize in advance. The good thing is we can still be friends even though we completely disagree with politics....

    No harm no foul... (I hope).

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