Well worth reading - "A Permanent Republican Minority" - Harold Myerson

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-building-a-permanent-republican-minority/2013/10/01/bde96d78-2ac7-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html

"For the third time in less than 20 years, congressional Republicans are bringing the nation’s government to a halt in an attempt to reverse the outcome of national elections. The first instance was Republicans’ shutdown of the government in 1995-96 (which, actually, was two shutdowns in rapid succession). The second was their impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Today, we’re slogging through the third — yet another shutdown.

Each instance had its proximate causes. In 1995, the GOP-controlled Congress, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, refused to fund the government after Clinton rejected its spending cuts to Medicare benefits and Republicans failed to muster the votes to override his vetoes. In 1998, the House, led by then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay, impeached Clinton for having sex with an intern but denying it to a special prosecutor (whose charge, uncovering Clinton’s alleged business scandals, had turned up nothing). This week, Republicans have shuttered the government to pressure President Obama to stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Repealing the health-care law would require either a Republican president or veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate, but Republicans failed to elect any one of these in 2012.

The punishment the GOP metes out never really fits the “crime” Republicans insist has compelled them to act. In rejecting the Republicans’ proposed Medicare cuts in 1995-96, Clinton was simply reasserting what had been national policy for 30 years. Republicans never convinced most ordinary Americans, much less constitutional scholars, that Clinton’s sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, and his denial of same, amounted to the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Founders said were grounds for impeachment. And it’s absurd to argue that Obamacare — modeled after a right-wing think tank’s proposal for a health-insurance program that left the private health-insurance industry intact — is a socialist threat to the American way of life. If Republicans truly believe that Obama must be forced to undo the socialization of medical insurance, they would demand the repeal of Medicare, not Obamacare.

So, what’s really going on? What’s behind this two-decade drive to employ the obstructive power of a governmental minority to undo the policies that a majority enacted or to unseat an elected president? Plainly, the gap between the Republican Party and the rest of the nation has widened. And as that gap has grown, Republicans have become more insular and more desperate — a toxic combination for a functioning democracy."

___snip________

much more.

[The Magistrate]

1. The Right, Sir, Does Not Accept Elections They Lose Are Legitimate

They do not subscribe to the tenets of Democracy.

In their view, an election is simply a device by which their natural right to rule is given the trappings of an expression of the popular will of the citizenry. It is not by any means a thing which could possibly put into power by the popular will of the citizenry anyone other than themselves. Any election result which does not ratify their holding power must therefore, by definition, be illegitimate, and they will not and by their lights should not recognize it as binding. When such a thing does occur, they must do their best to continue functioning as the true rulers of the country they know themselves to be, until such time as an election with the proper result can be contrived....

[Niceguy1]

2. many of our fellow

Progressives have the same feelings of illegitimacy when we loose.

[The Magistrate]

3. Spare Us The 'Both Sides Do It' Clap-Trap, Sir

"A Liberal is a man who won't even take his own side in a quarrel."

[Niceguy1]

4. constant calls of stolen elections

[The Magistrate]

5. Matched, Sir, By Absolute Lack Of Official Action

Which renders the squawkings meaningless, and no balance to what I have asserted truly about the right wing in our polity.

We will leave aside items such as the actual facts of the 2000 election, which was more or less stolen by a combination of deliberate acts by the Republican government in Florida and partisan disregard for precedent and election law by rightists on the Supreme Court, and facts of gerrymandering at present, which are such that though over a million more people voted for Democratic representation in the House, that body contains a majority of Republicans.

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. Not constant - only when warranted. n/t

[Melissa G]

8. This is a post?

Clarify what you mean. Are you on a democratic forum attacking dems and saying they are the same as republicans? If so, perhaps you have lost your way to where you intended to be?

If you need more education about which ways the the stolen elections skew, please visit the election forum archives.

[Niceguy1]

9. we as a gtoup aren't perfect..

we have our own conspiracy theorists, too. Our own tin hatters. Doesn't make me right wing to admit it...I dyoll vote democratic lol.

[yurbud]

10. a neoliberal Democrat wins a land side election then apologizes for winning and does what

the other guy would do--only with a veneer of platitudes instead of hate and fear.

[yurbud]

11. "feeling of illegitimacy" and actually obstructing government are quite different

[yurbud]

12. when did Democrats in congress obstruct Bush?

The grassroots could barely get them to give token opposition by marching in the streets and melting their phones, faxes, and inboxes telling them to stop Bush.

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. Absolutely and great point, sir.

My feeling is that the basis for reality for left-thinking people is reasoning, willing to accept change and grey areas. On the other side, it is all about belief system - and if it doesn't fit their particular paradigm, it doesn't exist or isn't legitimate.

It is troubling, and the only answer I can come up with is that "their" side continues to recede in numbers (which is inevitable due to demographics and age).