The House will pass immigration reform as long as it includes 5:1 in spending cuts. ($5 in cuts for every Mexican not deported)

Well, yeah, but but gay marriage something something threat to freedom!

Not to mention gay marriage something something Newt's third hetero marriage is under attack.

Replace 'Republicans' with 'Democrats' and you have an excellent summary of Obama's ascent to the presidency.

What Wall Street regulation or election reform are you attributing to Obama? His record on civil liberties is poor as well; the fact that he failed in different areas from Bush isn't really a consolation.

Then they must not want to win the presidency. With changing demographics, being a bunch of white racists just ain't gonna win them enough votes.

What do you have against traditional marriage.

Well, one has to cut through the denial they've built up first. See Karl Rove on election night for a prime example, along with the other pro-Romney pundits just prior to the election.

Their way of changing with the demographics is to simply gerrymander. As that is starting to become more transparent, they are slowly coming to grips that they'll have to appeal to brown people. But just enough brown people to win and with minimal effort of actually, really representing them. Most of what I read is they're trying to appeal to get elected, not to create unity within the country. I have yet to hear a speech, sincere or not, about any intention creating solidarity among everyone.

b

Republicans as a whole dont have a single goal. The local Republicans inc Representatives in the House dont really have to worry about how bad it looks to completely shut down civil rights such as access to abortion and other women's healthcare or pass clearly unconstitutional laws such as SB1070 and the vaginal probe bill. This is made especially apparently when you gerrymander the system so you can lose the popular vote in the state and take a majority of the House seats. Even Senators are worried about being primaried if they are not crazy enough regardless of how conservative they are in general crafting just one bill with across the aisle support can be a death sentence.

So yeah, while the "Republican Party" wants to move to sanity to increase their chances of taking the White House there is a huge amount of push pull involved and anyone strong enough to take a stand and talk sense is generally marginalised.

I pretty much agree with this too. However, I think you left something out.

The MSM doesn't just do what they do randomly. And they don't do it to get more readers/viewers etc. They do it to get more $$$ from the sponsors. And let's remember that people own the MSM. I'd say...

Major Sponsors+MSM owners --> MSM --> ditto-heads,etc --> pols.

I think you're generally right on, Phil, but there are also GOP politicians from liberal states who don't need to go into crazy mode to win. I think the 'crazy' states are the ones with crazy people. And you can't change that.

The safer the district, the crazier the elected official. That goes both ways, obviously, and it's why there haven't been a lot of centrist African American politicians, historically. The ones that do get elected tend to come from gerrymandered districts that group together as many black voters as possible, so there's no need for them to reach for votes from anyone other than hard-left black voters.

Obviously the same thing happens for a lot of the rural white conservative crowd.

2008 was going to be a democrat regardless, after 8 years of bush/republicans getting their way on all the big things; new wars and massive tax cuts, ect. I know many conservatives hate that people made a big deal out of obama being black and a charismatic likable leader. And think it's some big insight that he wasn't able to change everything ingrained over decades in our system in one term, since our government is designed to, in fact, change slowly. So fu obama for not changing everything.

But that doesn't explain how after 4 years of extreme obstructionism from the right, with the stated goal of making him a one term president, he was able to get re-elected vs the most moderate candidate of the gop crop.(huntsman doesn't count, he was never in it.)

The fact Huntsman was never in it should speak volumes.

b

A more moderate candidate like romney or huntsman can only win the gop primary with the elites in support (the rove machine et al.). Someone like santorum could potentially win with just enough gop primary base voter momentum, but not a romney or a huntsman. And the Rove element choose Romney over Huntsman to be their winnable candidate early on. Newt even said rather frankly that Romney beat him because he had more billionaire friends.

Sounds exactly right. It was obvious from the beginning that Romney was anointed one. He had everything going for him, except that he was Mitt Romney.

Don't know that Rove is going to be the frontman for the money guys after lighting a match to $300,000,000 last time.

This is somewhat true but there is a significant difference in the honestly in which the parties project this. Looking at spending trends by president it's clear that neither part is against spending or against increasing spending. The difference is the republicans flat out pretend to be against spending on principal when they aren't in the white house, which is about as intellectually dishonest as you can get.

The Democrats aren't against big government spending, and they don't pretend to be against big government spending when a republican is president, they do however disagree with how and where the money is spent. Which is fairly reasonable. The democrats that were against the Iraq war didn't argue that it is wrong because the government has no right to spend this kind of money, they said it would be a foolish way to spend government money, amongst other objections.

Had bush instead come up with some trillion dollar 21st century infrastructure modernization plan or what not, i think a lot of democrats would have taken the proposal seriously.

Vaguely saying we have a spending problem needs to go. Going forward we have a healthcare spending problem.

Why don't republican says that we have a healthcare spending problem?
The ones that listen to rush/hannity/savage, yes. But there is plenty of mainly evangelical voters that will stay home without their social issues.

100000% agree.

I agree with this, but the Republicans would say the same thing. (The Democrats just spend bad, we'll spend right when we get in there)

I agree with you that the republicans have no plan for actually fixing the issues. They seem to be happy yelling about them, which is why I'm not 100% convinced they actually wanted to win last election.

Nothing would make me happier in 2014.

Ironically, the Mexicans seem to be just as, if not more, xenophobic and racist as the white southerners. How much racial diversity is there in Mexico? There is no black community in Mexico to speak of, and this is probably not a coincidence. And Mexicans gangs have been reportedly committing various hate crimes and intimidations of asian and black families in areas of LA, because (LoL) THEY are the one's concerned about keeping it "pure."

In fact, if we looked at white southerners or midwesterners during the 1950's, we might be able to describe them as "Mexicans" in a certain sense. Just say "No hablo" and "No comprende" with an Alabama Southern drawl and you'll notice it just feels right.

Anyway, when did Mexico ever elect any liberal or progressive leadership? And most of them still have the church up their bum. Democrats seem to assume they are liberal because they have brown skin, but they will eventually be very likely to vote for conservative "family values," aka for authoritarian rule, dissolving the barrier between church and state, diminishing women's rights, outlawing gays, massive deregulation a rigid social hierarchy and class system, etc.

In any case, the Republicans are talking out of both sides of their ass on the immigration issue, as are the Demorats, because both sides collect a huge amount of lobbying dollars from farm companies etc who make virtually all of their profit from buying and selling black market illegal labor. They ruthlessly exploit the "illegals" from Mexico for sheer profit, and nobody anywhere near the top actually wants the flow of illegal labor/people to stop, or for it to be regualated and have a light shined on it through a "path to citizenship." In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for "immigration reform" LoL

You're confusing spin with reality. Check the numbers, Obama has lowered spending, even more than Clinton did. Both Bush's obviously spent a ton, both in Iraq and elsewhere, and the Bush prescription drug entitlement adds a trillion+ to the deficit, literally, while Obama Care actually reduces the deficit by approximately 100 billion.

This is a good point, however I feel some progress has been made. Torture has been stopped, and the drone problem has been addressed. The patriot act etc should be addressed as well; unfortunately, however, in the future as weapons become more and more dangerous and compact (chemical, nuclear, biological, plastic guns, remote explosive devices, computer viruses, etc) the sad fact is that government will have to be able to monitor people MORE not less, because the simple truth is that there are terrorists out there. Now it looks like we're gonna have to add the NRA idiots to that list as well.

The financial deficit is really ginned up for the uneducated masses. I mean jeez, 12 years ago there was a SURPLUS, and the first thing the Republicans did was disperse it so as to create a deficit. Also, most people don't understand cost of capital and how debt works, or what the deficit actually is. The fact is that America is the wealthiest country on Earth, and can generate tons and tons of value. Yes there will likely be a degree of inflation, real estate will soar, although gold will likely go down, unfortunately for all the Beck and Limbaugh investors, who in any case have invested is sleazy Florida-based "gold stock" instruments that are worth jack-****. Jobs will go up, solar power will take off, new industries will spring up, prosperity, revenue, deficit comes way way way down.

I scouted around some of the more fringe conservative blogs and forums. Wanna know what the "hot" meme is? The "conservatives" are bemoaning the fact that the economy is about to take a massive upward swing, and that Obama will get credit for it, when it is actually Boehner and Ryan's heroic efforts that should be given credit.

Trust me, the Republicans may eventually win... but their party as currently constituted will not do anything good. They will in fact set to work asap on screwing everything up and reversing all of the good progressive that Obama has made--EXACTLY like Bush did after Clinton.

We might not have to worry about it though, because the Republican party is really two parties right now, and will have to officially split into two parties or else become totally ineffectual.

Are you kidding?

Romney set a record for lying and dishonesty. In fact we can probably credit Romney with making it obvious that Republicans will say or do anything to get in office and can't be trusted to do anything they say. Romney was more of a liar and a phony than Larry Craig and Ted Haggard combined.

Just consider the 47% comments, then he comes out and "clarifies" and doubles down on them, then he comes back out and says he never said that, never meant that, was taken out of context... then he gets taped again doubling down and saying the exact same thing again. That's called lying, my friend.

The auto bailout stuff was an absolute joke, almost like a hoax or something. He's out there literally trying to take credit for the auto bailout, and saying that he supported it and helped engineer it the whole time, when there is literally a New York times article floating around from 2010 that anyone can google, written by Romney, titled in huge letters "Why we should let Detroit go Bankrupt."

Then in the final days of the campaign, he's out there lying saying that he saved the auto industry and Obama is taking all the American GM jobs to china. Then he says he didn't say that but runs a commercial which says it.

Then Paul Ryan is fake washing clean dishes (the full tape of that is scary good, if you've never seen it).

And on and on and on and on. Even during the debates Romney was just a such a "I know you are but what am I" ****faced liar and obfuscator, that the American public didn't get any meaningful dialogue on the issues whatsoever.

Why? Because the Republicans have a plan for you, but it is not anything they could publicly speak about or that they would want you to know about.

Maybe, but only if you consider Bush's super high unprecedented (and supposed one-time) level as "normal" and go from there. Agree with you as always about how bad Bush was. I would wait until Obamacare actually reduces the deficit by 100 billion before we add that to Obama's column.

At least with Obama, we're spending (slightly) less on killing people and more on actually helping people in the country. Being a super-leftie at heart, I don't have as much problem with that kind of spending.

I have to disagree here. The drone problem has been addressed? By approving drones over US airspace? Did they stop droning people across the globe and I somehow MISSED it? The PATRIOT act keeps being re-approved, now by the very people who said they would kill it when Bush was in office. Add to that the NDAA and other power grabs, and I happily lump Obama and Bush together in this regard. (I do agree about future weapons, although I think that no amount of government intrusion will solve the problem)

If the republicans think the economy is going to take a massive upward swing, that will simply extend their on-going streak of Being Wrong About Everything*.

I do agree they have to change, I just think it will happen a lot faster than people think, and possibly by 2016. (Although I think the kind of Republican who would get elected would be somebody like Gary Johnson, who would ignore the social crazies)

* - All bets are off if we come up with some new kind of invention that drastically changes the world, like the internet boom of Clinton's

And what's the plan exactly?

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D?