How can anyone, after 8 years of Bush, want to govern as if the minority party didn't exist

Can you think of ANYTHING that energized our party more than the feeling that we'd been IGNORED for eight years? And now some of you are advocating that Barack Obama be the left's answer to George W. Bush--surrounding himself with left-wing Yes Men who will pass through far-left policy that completely disregards anything approaching consensus.

Gee, I happen to remember what it felt like to be the member of a party that wasn't allowed to participate in that consensus. I see how it has all but ruined this country by increasing partisan rancor and ensuring that NOTHING gets done.

We have to realize that this country is comprised of people who are usually suited between the two extremes. It is their votes that politicians cater to in every election and the quickest way to lose them is by pretending that the base constituency's voices are the only ones that matter.

The CHANGE that Obama seeks is one of unity. One of cooperation. NOT one where he will kowtow to every whim of the left's agenda. So it's time for people to get used to that. I know we don't like Republicans, but they are still here. And we NEED dissent to keep us honest.

The quickest way to rouse a political movement is to minimalize the opposition and shove them into a corner, and tell them that they don't matter. If you don't want the GOP storming the political landscape in 4 years, then it might be prudent to include them in our government.

the Repukes won't be interested in cooperation.

Not the party.

Okie dokie.

The ones who accepted that our candidate was a communist socialist muslim terrorist who was going to steal all their money and give it to Those People while handing our army over to bin Laden? Yeah, I want to marginalize them.

Jesus. I'm making a call for people here to have a little perspective, and you're proving my point.

And back it up with some evidence.

to answer my question.

Given that the vast majority of their representatives in Congress are rightwing whackjob theocratic nutbags, I do indeed want to marginalize all of them - them being their representatives, or at least that vast majority of them. If these 57M grow tired of electing rightwing whackjob theocratic nutbags as their representatives and start instead electing actual moderate Republicans, thus reversing a trend that has been going the opposite direction for the last 40 years, then some sort of consensus politics is possible.

No one is really advocating what you are attempting to use for your straw man.

Now even if you were correct, how would you suggest bringing in the freeps who do not want to play at all.

that sick fuck Nixon, how can anyone not understand that the Republican Party is not interested in anything remotely resembling responsible cooperation, but are instead a bunch of conniving scheming backstabbing motherfuckers who will take any opening you provide to hurt you and get some advantage over you?

What fucking consensus are you talking about? What planet? What parallel universe? Be explicit.

Just like the Bush cabal did to the 59 million who voted for John Kerry.

What they don't get to do at all for at least the next two years is govern from the House, the Senate, or the Executive branch. They still get to govern from the Judicial branch, and they still get to obstruct in the Senate. That is the way our system works. It is all full of checks and balances that do not require us to invent new ones all on our own.

Sadly, so many in our party refused to actually come out to vote and the REAL "minority party", the repukes, ALWAYS had their base turn out and encouraged independents to do the same in support of them to take them over the hump every time.

I think the key here is not to continue to pander to the opposition and their views but to actually argue why ours are better for the country and bring the country back from the brink of fascism. "Including them in our government" should not mean having the lunatic fringe dictate the terms. Sorry but that is not going to happen. But the definition of things and control of the message MUST come from our party and not theirs. Bring THEM around to what we believe in and argue vociferously why and how it can help them as well.

when they were the majority. Do you ask an arsonist for help putting out a fire?

If there are any republicans left that believe in the traditional ideals of the Republican party, then common ground is possible with them. For the most part, they want a lot of the same things we want, they just disagree with how to get there.

But with corporatists and neocons, I see no goddamn good reason to include them. The neocons have had 8 years to destroy this country, and the corporatists have had 28. Unless we undo the damage done by BOTH, we'll never restore this country.

But I am for allowing some form of cooperation between the parties. If anything, this will ensure the stability of the Democratic majority for long into the future. My point being that if we begin to treat the GOP the way they treated us, it's going to bite us in the ass.

But even then, they aren't to be totally trusted. They are setting their sights on 2012 already and the MSM is going along with them. Now this is happening in less than a week after Obama was elected.

three tops if you count Specter, and I don't. There are a very small handful of moderate House Republicans.

The rest of that party is represented by nutbags, freaks, loons, rightwing theocrats and general asshats.

Where the heck is this purported common ground?

Obama said it best when he reached out to McCain supporters and said he would be "their President too."

It's a complete repudiation of the Bush political philosophy.

The toxicity and corruption rampant in the current Republican Party is a fine reason to quarantine them from legislation as much as possible.

I don't quite go that far in my own opinion, though. My first choice is for a Democratic Party with spine to lead the GOP toward progressive or populist measures, and away from the lure of Big Money. This would make both parties better, and the nation more secure.

Isolating Republicans could energize their supporters, of course, but this effect can be minimized if Democrats will govern for us rather than for the corporations. Really, Dems need to focus on this strategy, and bring along however many Republicans they can. Foot-draggers stuck in the last century (or two) should be left behind, though.

Why screw up deliberately just to accommodate a bunch of marginal thieves? NO! Fix the mess they made right this time.

What now, she wants to do nothing for the 2012 election??? Enough with the bullshit. Kucinich should be Speaker.

:thumbsup:

:thumbsup:

I still remember the excesses of GOP not informing Democratic committee members about meeting times and locations until the last minute, not allowing minority party to ever schedule conference rooms, etc.

Just a horrible, horrible memory.

K&R :kick:

want and they will _still_ whine about being overlooked and dismissed.

FAUX outarge, it's what they do best.

I'd agree with the OP 100% otherwise.

There are a few moderate Republicans who play well with others, and I certainly hope Obama works with them. The problem is that they aren't the ones who bloviate on Fox or get their constituents howling for red meat.

There is no end to the gall these people have.

They take everything to the extreme.

Look at them having the nerve to argue that the President and Congress should not be the same party. It was fine and right for THEM.

the funneling of money to the top 2%? The preemptive wars? The attempts to establish theocracy? The intentional bankrupting of the government? How about bigotry or repression, those are good ones? Maybe the strident anti-intellectualism and the disregard for education? Do we need more open hostility to science? Maybe we could use less self determination? Perhaps we should allow our infrastructure to totally collapse? How about we put poorly equipped troops in the field and give our veterans substandard care?

What are we suppose to be working together on? Pretending that the Republicans aren't toxic is pretty optimistic to say the least. The best we can do is bleed off the RINOs and keep on rockin'. Surely anyone that has been paying attention since Gingrich and friends took Congress, knows what the Republican gameplan is and should be well aware they haven't even pretended that they are going to do anything differently.

Going into this assuming the Republicans have learned their lessons and we have magically turned the page because the adults are in charge again has joined the willfully ignorant-the Pollyanna wing.

Give them no more rope than it takes for them to hang themselves as they always do and then have a tight grip. To tell the truth, the longer we pussyfoot with the treasonous party the longer real conservatives and their principles go without a voice.

No reason to appease them with bipartisanship.

This country needs REAL liberalism - NOT DLC NEO-LIBERALSIM.

The majority of Americas support Universal Health Care, the majority of Americans support more environmental protections, the majority of Americans want to get out of Iraq. Both the Republicans and the so-called "centrists" oppose the majority on these issues. The center is not always where people assume it is, and there is no reason to move to the right.

The fact is if you govern with a super extreme agenda that ignores half the nation then you won't be in power for very long.

That's why the republicans lost, we ran more moderate candidates who people could agree with more, and who could win by big margins (like Warner).

Virginia is the perfect example of this in play. Democrats there run moderate liberals and centralists, and look at all the wins we've won at the state level there lately. In 2001 we won the governor's mansion, and our moderate governor became extremely popular. In 2005 we got another moderate democrat in the governor's mansion. In 2006 we ran a former republican who had become more liberal and disgusted with the republican party over the years for the senate (Webb). Webb won his narrow race, in part because he was an appealing moderate to a state that was growing much more moderate. In 2008 the republicans failed to adapt to that moderate reality, and selected a caucus system to pick their senate nominee, guaranteeing the far right winger former governor Gilmore would get the nomination instead of the moderate guy who had won in a swing district that few other republicans could hold. Warner crushed his far right wing opponent by a 2 to 1 margin.

You may point back to times in history to justify why we can elect extremists and keep winning, like after the reconstruction when the at the time highly liberal republicans completely ran over southern democrat Andrew Johnson who became president after Lincoln died. But the fact is the reconstruction was a special time, when the south, the most heavily democratic states, were not included in the legislature, and the highly liberal northerners didn't let them back in right away. The fact is that the public in the north even had started to grow tired of the tyranny of super extremists in congress governing.

Susan Collins, John McCain etc all will have roles in an Obama Presidency. People willing to play ball will.

McConnel and his counterparts in congress...not so much.

Pals around with terrorists, he's a socialist redistributor McCain? Why?

after his party throws him under the bus for this election.

Lest we forget Senator Clinton and President Elect Obama said some not nice things about each other once upon a time...I think they'll be working together

Please explain how to "cooperate" with a party that is against civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, privacy rights, health insurance rights, habeas corpus, etc. etc. etc., and is for war? Whose rights and lives would you suggest compromising on?

I find it VERY odd how so many posters are so determined to cater to repugs when they have show over and over that the only thing they believe in when it comes to dems is a scorched earth policy.

shit they have done in the past 8 yrs.

and that sword isn't going to become a plowshare again until the current conservative political machine is dismantled and the GOP starts to promote candidates and views that are far less extreme than the ones they do now. Simple as that. I don't want to see a single republican to the right of a centrist like Bill Clinton given anything other than the time of day. If they don't like this, there are other fields of endeavor to explore outside of politics. I'm sure there are plenty of right leaning centrists eager to take their places and start working with us on our terms.

This modern strain of conservative ideology is virulent to the body politic and goes against the founding principles of our government. If the GOP want to be part of the future, they are going to have to modify their views to fit the current reality. If they want to join, then they must learn to play ball by our rules. If they don't, they can watch from the bleachers. Elections have consequences.

You want compromise? So do I. I want a compromised GOP. Sound good to you? It's music to my ears.

sounding music to my ears, too.

What we need, however, is to find as many avenues as possible (perhaps using the Obama grassroots organization to figure out ways to use us, the volunteers,) to help the salvageable supporters of these toxic politicians the to see the light.

As the OP implies, the smaller the number of those who must be marginalized, the smaller the size of the potential retributive backlash. And, yes, I am making this all up, including at least one of the words, but what the hell...

at what the Palin types are doing to their party. You make a very, very good point in this regard. However, I think it is possible and healthy for Obama to reach out to the oldstyle Republicans.

There aren't many left in government, but there are some. McCain passed over some good ones when looking for a VP. All Obama has to do is keep reiterating what is healthy and what is not, and be very clear about the TYPE of compromises he is willing to make.

I'm so glad we didn't elect an ideologue.

Individual Republican Senators and Representatives with whom we disagree on nearly every issue, we can still find common ground on something. It's from that point of agreement that we can work toward our goals. Polarization, or ideological shunning is counter productive to the hard work that lies ahead. We have a country to save.

Part of our success in this election was voter's repudiation of the vicious, crippling partisanship in Washington.

By bringing them into the process, however, co-opts a large part of their defensiveness.

Kudos! :patriot:

of Constitutional restraint from our leaders and our basic constitutional rights. There frankly is no such thing as far left government in the United States or a far left segment of the Democratic party. That was simply an idea to fool Americans into accepting far right ideology where American ideals of separation of Church and state, a commonwealth, checks and balances, a pragmatic rather than ideological approach to economics, and inalienable rights were to be scrapped. Their politics of division and false patriotism pitting American vs. American must be resisted with quiet determination.

that would be considered "far left"? For a post about policy, yours is weak on specific examples.

I have no interest at all in becoming the democracy-hating bastards they were. As much as we hate to hear it, democracy requires some strategic and well-thought-out compromise and I admire that Obama wants to be president for ALL of us. I support him in that goal. I don't think this means we compromise on our deeply-held convictions, either. It means we need to listen to genuine concerns from the other side of the aisle and try to find ways to work with them.

We shouldn't kow tow to ourselves?

meanness. Those who aren't mindfully cruel, the ignorant, don't realize they vote against their interests, aren't aware that they probably agree with most of the Democratic Party platform. It's the Repub politicians who need to go. Their true "base" is those people Bush refers to in that clip in Fahrenheit 9/11.

I'd prefer that the Democratic Party became the new right, and that a new Progressive Party, the Green Party, or whatever filled in the left.

cannot fight extremism without creating extremists - it is polarizing and dividing.

This is no reason, though, not to prosecute the criminals who disregarded our Constitution and laws.

All the pundits were saying Bush almost certainly had to include Democrats in his cabinet and they were even predicting who he would appoint. With the election so close they said he had no choice but to work with Democrats and build a truly bipartisan government. Remember that? I even believed it for awhile.

Then the very first thing he went and did was appoint John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Remember your outrage at that? Things went downhill from there.

You are a bigger person than I am, calling for bipartisanship. I think the flaw in your logic is believing republicans are reasonable, rational, sane individuals. That somehow if Obama reaches out to them they'll reciprocate, or be grateful, or remember in years to come. These people will work tirelessly to bring down Obama's administration just as they did Clinton and no amount of "reaching out" will make a lick of difference with them. If you think ANYTHING Obama does will instill any kind of fairy tale spirit of unity and cooperation then you're naive.