Stephens Wins House GOP Caucus Chair

7 thoughts on “Stephens Wins House GOP Caucus Chair”

1. Log in to Reply

2. from redstate

   1) People are not afraid of Socialism, it is an acceptable political outcome.

   Well, be honest. The voters have long supported socialism. This country was dominated for 50 years by the New Deal coalition, remember? The Reagan and Gingrich revolutions were never against the New Deal. They were against the Great Society. Thus, people have never opposed socialism for themselves. People have for decades wanted free public schools, grants to go to college, retirements, medical care, money to keep their businesses and farms afloat, etc. So in other words, Americans supported the socialism that benefitted them and people like them. They just opposed it for the other guy. The Great Society was easy pickings, because it went to a small segment of society that, let’s face it, most people didn’t like anyway. But the GOP never even seriously tried to cut off the spigot of the huge amounts of money going to “real Americans.” By contrast, the GOP actually gave away more money to their constituents than the Democrats ever dreamed of giving to their inner city base. Remember when Democrats were pointing out that “red state America” was a net economic drain while “blue state America” paid more taxes than they spent? It was 100% true, yet the next GOPer who stood up before his “real American” constituents of suburbanites and middle Americans and told them that they needed to get off welfare and stand on their own two feet would be the first. No, that was a message for the folks in Barack Obama’s inner city, not the Iowans whose economic boom the past few years has been totally due to the government funded ethanol industry.

   The GOP needs to come up with a “no socialism for anybody” message instead of the “no socialism for the people who we don’t like and don’t vote for us but plenty of socialism for ‘our types of people the real Americans'” message and actions that have dominated the GOP since 1980.

   By the way: small government Sarah Palin actually increased spending in her state. So why did we presume that she supported small government and less spending? Simple: because she is a Republican from a state that doesn’t have a Chicago, Detroit or Harlem in it. That is precisely the problem that I am speaking of.

   The one mistake in the post above is assuming that a country that likes “socialism for us” will support “socalism for none.” Even when they accurately see the problem, wishful thinking still rules the suggested solution.

   h/t to DailyKOS

   Log in to Reply

   1. Socialism – how many times do we Libs have to say this? – is the ownership of “the means of production” by the people.  That could include car factories and utilities.

      The Great Society was a fuller version of the New Deal.  The latter’s primary concern was rectifying the effects of the Great Depression ASAP.  And yes, some of that meant employment by the federal government and the setting of up social safety nets.

      If anything, I think our business-government relationship is more fascist than anything.  After all, corporations run Congress to a large degree and are the largest recipients of welfare, ‘scuse me, subsidies.

      Log in to Reply

      1. Obama did better among almost all demograhics over the last presidential election.   He won some, like college educated whites, that Republicans have been winning forever and improved the numbers among groups that he didn’t win over 2004 numbers. The country is moving away from the Rove right. Turns out people really DO want a change and can no longer be counted on to react like Pavlov’s dogs to the old buzz words and scare tactics.

         Log in to Reply

3. We Dems did the same stupid thing before we got Howard Dean and the blogosphere as a counterbalance to the DLC bozos who kept leading us to failure after failure.

   from DailyKOS (by the kos himself):

   Jonathan Martin:

   Two days after next week’s election, top conservatives will gather at the Virginia weekend home of one of the movement’s most prominent members to begin a conversation about their role in the GOP and how best to revive a party that may be out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue next year.

   The meeting will include a “who’s who of conservative leaders —  economic, national security and social,” said one attendee, who shared initial word of the secret session only on the basis of anonymity and with some details about the host and location redacted.

   The decision to waste no time in plotting their moves in the post-Bush era reflects the widely-held view among many on the right, and elsewhere, that the GOP is heading toward major losses next week.

   One of the topics of discussion will be how to fashion a “national grassroots political and policy coalition similar to the out Reagan years,” said the attendee, a reference to the development of the so-called New Right apparatus following Jimmy Carter’s 1976 victory and Reagan’s election four years later.

   I attended one of these for our side in early 2005, and the experience was so miserable that it ended up being a major inspiration for Crashing the Gate. It was full of the same progressive “leaders” who had gotten us into our predicament, and their solutions were the same bullshit that had gotten us in the mess in the first place. So I left that retreat even more motivated to wage war against our party’s political and issue-group establishment. Our victories in recent years have come, in large part, from our ability to bypass that crowd.

   Those early tensions are mostly erased, as a new balance has been struck by issue groups more and more aware of the need to be part of a holistic progressive movement, rather than focus obsessively and divisively on their own single pet cause. It really is night and day. But that didn’t come out of that conference. And it certainly wasn’t billed as a way to generate a new grassroots movement. The notion of having a bunch of top-down movement leaders create a new “national grassroots” operation by fiat from up and above, by the same jokers who created the mess the GOP is currently in, is pretty laughable.

   Log in to Reply

4. Did I miss something here?  Wasn’t Stephens already the caucus chair and Roberts challenged Stephens?

   Also might note that didn’t Stephens win her reelection with somewhere around 75% of the popular vote which had to include D’s and U’s as well as R’s?

   Did any D or other R come anywhere near that margin of win in a contested race in any part of the state?

   Log in to Reply

   1. and yes, she’s extremely conservative.  That was the point.  As for her race, she did do well.  Here are the top performers in the House:

      Mark Ferrandino 80%
      
      Jerry Frangas 81%
      
      Joel Judd 81%
      
      Terrance Carroll 79%
      
      Amy Stephens 76%

      Log in to Reply