Month: August 2011

Chris Matthews’ Plan to Force Tea Party Republicans to Create Jobs

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here is a summary of Chris Matthews’ plan:

MATTHEWS: If some member of Congress refused to [approve the construction], put the heat on him or her. Make him or her defend that dangerous bridge, make them explain why it’s get better to not do job that government is there to do.
  1. Compile a list of all of the thousands of bridges in this country that are below safety code and organize the list by congressional districts.
  2. Publicize those dilapidated bridges and their exact locations in their communities in the congressional districts so that local voters are aware. Let parents, grandparents and concerned citizens see the danger the bridges pose to the next car or school bus that goes over them.
  3. Call on voters to demand that their member of Congress vote to fix the bridge so that it is up to safety code.
  4. Call a vote on the projects, one by one, if necessary, so that voters see where their House member stands.
  5. Each bridge repair project will create hundreds of jobs in the local community, which will spur job growth in related sectors.

While this would apply to every congressional district, it would pose a political problem for the dozens of Republicans in the House who are determined to sabotage the economy — the ones who are standing in the way of job creation — particularly Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and members of the tea party caucus she chairs.

Transcript:

[…]

Boehner’s Favorable Rating Drops 10 Points

Jon Ponder

A second national poll released after the tea party threatened to force the United States into default during the debt-ceiling negotiations finds voters holding an unfavorable view of the GOP tea party in particular.

The tea party’s favorability declined from six percentage points, from 37 percent in July to 31 percent now

On Aug. 5, a CBS/NYT poll found that 40 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the tea party, the highest percentage recorded since CBS/NYT started polling the question.

Now a CNN poll finds that the hostage-taking tactics of the Republicans and their dominant fringe minority may have taken a toll on their collective public support, according to Huffington Post:

[…]

Voters Don’t Choose Divided Government

Buck Banks

Voters don’t choose divided government. It’s chosen for them by a system, unique in the democratic world, of multiple overlapping elections held at different intervals in which different electorates fill different offices, none of whose occupants have ultimate responsibility. The electorate of 2008 chose Obama and the Democrats. The electorate of 2010 — consisting mainly of McCain voters, and smaller by forty-five million — chose the Republicans. Hardly anybody voted as they did out of a desire for ‘divided government,’ as opposed to a desire for a government that would embody their own political and ideological leanings.

— Hendrick Hertzberg, writing in The New Yorker.

The Line: Republicans Sabotaging Economy

Jon Ponder
  • Republican Party boss Grover Norquist in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
  • Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
  • Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein on June 30: “So when the GOP’s economic policy team sat down to make the strongest case they could for growth-inducing deficit reduction, they recommended a mix an 85:15 mix, not a 100:0 mix. And then, when the Obama administration agreed to an 83:17 mix, the Republican leadership walked out of the room and demanded that taxes be excluded from the deal altogether. How do you negotiate with that?”
  • Right-wing cheerleaders Neil Cavuto and John Stoessel on Fox Business News last week: “I would welcome a downgrade, Cavuto said,”I really would. I think it would be the pain from which we have a gain.” Stoessel agreed, “Maybe that would wake people up.”
  • Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. last weekend: “It’s a thought you just don’t want to believe in, because that would be [horrible] … But every day they keep giving us more and more evidence that there’s no choice but to answer the question ‘yes.’ They give us no choice but to come to [the conclusion that Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy].”
  • Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks in July: “If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern. And they will be right.”