Face it, the republican establishment has no base anymore. A HUGE chunk of their core voters don't like them anymore. They're better off starting a third party. Ironically Democrats have the exact opposite problem, the establishment has a stranglehold on the DNC for better or worse.
shareI agree, the GOP is in a death spiral. Too many 80+ year-olds who have spent decades in Washington and for whom Congress has just become their personal country club. I'm no fan of Obama or his healthcare program but I give him credit for at least being able to achieve his objective.
share I think they all need to go (both parties) if they have served for more than three terms. Our Founding Fathers never meant for Congress and the Senate to be lifetime careers!
They intended for it to be a citizen government. Serve a term or two and then GO HOME! Or as my late (politically cynical) dad used to say, "Serve your term, steal what you can, then give someone else a chance."
I agree. We need term limits and age limits for all branches of government. Pols of both parties prove time and again that they cannot be trusted to exercise good judgement in this regard. Pelosi is clearly in the early stages of senility and McCain won't resign even though he has absolutely no chance of beating his illness and will be on the downward path until he passes.
Ginsburg is perhaps the absolute worst example of raging narcissism and selfishness overruling common sense and even her own sense of the public's interest. She is 84 with an extensive history of medical issues and yet refused to resign during Obama's term when she could have been guaranteed that she would have been replaced by someone who shared her ideals and who could have served for another 30 years or longer. If she dies while Trump is in office, the Court gets another Gorsuch. That's certainly fine by me, but it illustrates that this issue affects both sides equally.
I forgot about Ginsburg. I know the Supreme Court is a life time appointment, but those judges often allow their egos to override common sense. After a certain age you simply don't have the sharpness or mental acuity to do certain jobs. I'm sure those elderly judges have a slew of law clerks doing most of their work.
My mom is eighty and she asks, "WHY doesn't McCain hang it up already?"
She keeps saying that she can't do the things she used to do. After you reach an advanced age, you slow down. And she's still in good health.
I really hate the double standard too. Many jobs have mandatory retirement ages like airline pilots. I don't think anyone would want to be operated on by a surgeon whose health is as poor as McCain's or Ginsburg. But Washington has its own rules. Some of those folks hang onto those positions until the bitter end.
...when she (Ginsburg) could have been guaranteed that she would have been replaced by someone who shared her ideals..."
That's not true. When Scalia died, Obama was prevented from appointing another judge for an entire year.
Exactly. When Obama couldn't name a new SC Justice during his tenure, I knew the jig was up.
No matter how hard the Dems do things to make life better for the average person, the pubs are going to fight and hope their base follows. Working people are screwed these days, and pubs don't care while at least the Dems try to.
It is odd how well the most powerful players in politics have Americans who are the worst off believing that the Republican agenda is in their favor— and also that the democratic agenda is out to steal from them. Crazy.
I think politics is going through a cycle of change. What’ll come out the other side is anyone’s guess, but I don’t think a two party system fits this country anymore. Within the Republican Party alone there seem to be three or four very separate factions, and it wasn’t like this 20 years ago. Democrats, too, are split between extremes.
Each party has a minority segment that makes a ton of noise and pisses the other party. Under Trump I only see this getting worse. I wouldn’t mind 4, 5 or 10 parties. It’s impossible to split such a diverse country into just two parties.
Lobbiests and “news” media love the two party system. It lets them divide, conquer, distract and profit off it all. (Coincidently, I think lobbyists representing outsized corporate influence, and entertainment news/journalism that profits from division represent the two greatest dangers to this country.)
Trump wants people to believe that he’s against the above dangers, but he IS (and has embodied) precisely these corrupting forces his whole professional life.
Thanks for not telling me to Grow A Pair and not be a Whiny Whatever.
Sometimes i want to have a rational discord on the direction this country is going in, and some berserk pub starts ranting about growing a pair and being a whiny a@@ -- and it defeats the whole purpose for having a discussion.
It's just flame-bombs from the hard right. No serious discussion about policy - just belittling people you don't like. It's discouraging.