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Cheer up, GOP (short article from Slate)

NAOS

Well-Known Member
Cheer Up, Republicans
You’re going to have a moderate Republican president for the next four years: Barack Obama.
By William Saletan|Posted Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, at 11:27 PM ET

Presidents Barack Obama, Richard Nixon, and Dwight Eisenhower
Photographs by Max Morse/Getty Images; AFP/Getty Images.
Dear Republicans,
Sorry about the election. I know how much it hurts when your presidential candidate loses. I’ve been there many times. You’re crestfallen. You can’t believe the public voted for that idiot. You fear for your country.
Cheer up. The guy we just re-elected is a moderate Republican.
I know how stupid that sounds. Barack Obama is the head of the Democratic Party. For five years, conservative politicians and media told you he was a raving socialist. In the heat of the campaign, when you’re trying to beat the guy, it’s hard to let go of that image of him, just as it’s hard for Democrats to see past the caricatures of Mitt Romney. But now that the campaign is over and you’re staring at a second Obama term, the falsity of the propaganda may come as a relief. By and large, Obama’s instincts are the instincts of a moderate Republican. His policies are the policies of a moderate Republican. He stands where the GOP used to stand and will someday stand again.
Yes, Obama began his presidency with bailouts, stimulus, and borrowing. You know who started the bailouts? George W. Bush. Bush knew that under these exceptionally dire circumstances, bailouts had to be done. Stimulus had to be done, too, since the economy had frozen up. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts. Once the economy began to revive, Obama offered a $4-trillion debt reduction framework that would have cut $3 to $6 of spending for every $1 in tax hikes. That’s a higher ratio of cuts to hikes than Republican voters, in a Gallup poll, said they preferred. It’s way more conservative than the ratio George H. W. Bush accepted in 1990. In last year’s debt-ceiling talks, Obama offered cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for revenue that didn’t even come from higher tax rates. Now he’s proposing to lower corporate tax rates, and Republicans are whining that he hacked $716 billion out of Medicare. Some socialist.
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Yes, Obama imposed an individual mandate to buy health insurance. You know who else did that? Romney. You know where the idea came from? The Heritage Foundation. Personal responsibility—insisting that people carry private insurance so we don’t have to bail them out in emergency rooms and hospitals—was a Republican idea. Same with Wall Street reform: There’s nothing conservative about letting financial institutions gamble with other people’s money in ways that would force us to bail them out again. Even Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal echoed the market-based emissions-control policies of the 1990 Bush administration and the 2008 McCain campaign. And last year, when the EPA proposed a new air-pollution limit, Obama ticked off environmentalists by killing it on the grounds that it might jeopardize the recovery.
Remember how Democrats ridiculed George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq? Obama copied it in Afghanistan. He escalated the drone program, killing off al-Qaida’s leaders. He sent SEAL Team 6 into Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden. He teamed up with NATO to take down Muammar Qaddafi. He reneged on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay. He put together a globally enforced regime of sanctions that is bringing Iran’s economy to its knees. That’s why Romney had nothing to say in last month’s foreign policy debate. No sensible Republican president would have done things differently.
Obama’s no right-winger. You might have serious issues with his Supreme Court justices or his moves on immigration or the Bush tax cuts. But you probably would have had similar issues with Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, or Gerald Ford. Obama’s in the same mold as those guys. So don’t despair. Your country didn’t vote for a socialist tonight. It voted for the candidate of traditional Republican moderation. What should gall you, haunt you, and goad you to think about the future of your party is that that candidate wasn’t yours.

co-signed,
NAOS
 
Obama will not eb a moderate republican. He does not have to worry about reelectiona dn I think he will really start pushing what he wants. He has no reason to moderate himself.

Take his comments to Russia about having more flexibility after the election. I appreciate the back handed compliments from Slate that are masked as reconcilliation but I'm not buying it.

Obama, Reid and Pelosi are not a moderate bunch. neither are the House repubs but don't try to convince me this administration is either.
 
pass me that crystal ball?

This is a statement about what Obama HAS been. I think that is pretty clear.

If you want to forecast the future, I'll put all my chips on the bet that he doesn't change much. He's already talking about the deficit and other financial issues rather than anything related to an 'entitlement'.
 
Their whole arguement is that since some republicans went agaisnt what they stood for republicans are supposed to be ok with it? Hogwash.
 
Their whole arguement is that since some republicans went agaisnt what they stood for republicans are supposed to be ok with it? Hogwash.

Republicans DID go against what they stood for. If they actually embraced what the party has meant, they would've chosen Ron Paul.
Hey..... maybe they would've even had a chance at winning.
 
Obama will not eb a moderate republican. He does not have to worry about reelectiona dn I think he will really start pushing what he wants. He has no reason to moderate himself.

That's seriously messed up. Can you name one other two-termed President that changed their positions radically in the second term? Why do yo think Obama is so different?
 
Obama has been moderate in a lot of ways. Yes, that doesn't mean his second term will be that way, but you can't deny his first term.
He continued so many of Bush's polices, and was aggressive on terror. Didn't touch the NRA. He was never the crazed socialist some of you made him out to be.
 
I believe Obama wants to get things done. I don't believe he thinks strong-arming the opposition is the way to get it done and has displayed that in negotiation or in the overwhelming majority of how he administered as president.

What Obama could do better is all the back-slapping and backroom dealing with the opposition that he poo-pooed 4 years ago. I think that's been a sorely missed component to his strategy, exacerbated by having people do his bidding at the ground level with congress.
 
That's seriously messed up. Can you name one other two-termed President that changed their positions radically in the second term? Why do yo think Obama is so different?

Well if I am wrong then Obama will prove me so. But I look at things like him blaming Bush for everything, his open mic gaffes, the ACA and I do not have high hopes for him being moderate when he wants something.
 
Speaking of being more moderate I'd love to see someone like Colin Powell (althought hes stated he doesnt want to run in the past) or Dick Lugar run for President.

These are republicans I'd take a seriously look at.
 
Speaking of being more moderate I'd love to see someone like Colin Powell (althought hes stated he doesnt want to run in the past) or Dick Lugar run for President.

These are republicans I'd take a seriously look at.


What about Huntsman?
 
I know some of my friends like him. I've seen one interview from him. Seemed alright in that.
Do you think he's similtar to the guys I mentioned?

He was by far the most open minded repub candidate. Not even close
I think you'd like him
 
He was by far the most open minded repub candidate. Not even close
I think you'd like him


I just remember hearing he was moderate, and in the interview I saw he said some nice things about Obama.

Seems like we can add him to the list. These are the type of people I want on the Republican ticket next time.
 
Obama will not eb a moderate republican. He does not have to worry about reelectiona dn I think he will really start pushing what he wants. He has no reason to moderate himself.

Take his comments to Russia about having more flexibility after the election. I appreciate the back handed compliments from Slate that are masked as reconcilliation but I'm not buying it.

Obama, Reid and Pelosi are not a moderate bunch. neither are the House repubs but don't try to convince me this administration is either.

A few questions...

#1 Aside from raising taxes on the rich, what "BIG" moves is Obama going to bust out? He campaigned on ending the wars, health care reform, and raising taxes. He accomplished 2/3 in his first term. Aside from repairing the economy and starting to pay down the debt, what big promises does Obama have left to fulfill?

#2 Oh come on. Obama isn't going to go from moderate to Communist in just a matter of months just because he doesn't have to worry about being reelected. Name (any) President in our history who was one way in one term and then pulled a 180 in the next because the worry of being reelected was relieved?

#3 Still talkin about Pelosi huh? What is the right's obsession with Pelosi? She's gonna lose her position now that repubs have won the House. Seriously folks, what is your hangup with her? It's like the right is amazed that a woman could rise in politics or something. Perhaps they should get over the idea that women should only be used for the kitchen and as baby makers and wake up and smell the coffee to the modern world.

it's so odd how repubs seem focused on a few people/topics while ignoring the big picture. Pelosi, Obama's birth certificate, and the Black Panther dude get farrrrr more attention from the right then I would have ever imagined.
 
One of the most read GOP pudits agrees with me...

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/765615079/GOP-cant-continue-to-alienate-Hispanic-voters.html

Perhaps Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election on Sept. 22, 2011, when, alarmed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry's entry into the Republican nomination race, he rushed to Perry's right regarding immigration, attacking the DREAM Act. He would go on to talk about forcing illegal immigrants into "self-deportation." It is surprising that only about 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Romney.

As it has every four years since 1992, the white portion of the turnout declined in 2012. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first person elected president while losing the white vote by double digits. In 2012 — the year after the first year in which a majority of babies born in America were minorities — Hispanics were for the first time a double-digit (10 percent) portion of the turnout. Republicans have four years to figure out how to leaven their contracting base with millions more members of America's largest and fastest-growing minority.

GOP needs to open that umbrella out to more than white Christian heterosexual males.

They can start with SENSIBLE immigration reform. Stop acting like you're going to deport all who have immigrated here illegally.
 
Hooray the Delusional Liberal Cockus meeting is now in session.

drinking-republican-tears.jpg
 
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