Ted Cruz telling the truth

Why make him veto bills? He’s not running again. Wasting the time passing bills that will be vetoed and that we can’t override is pointless. There’s zero political capital to be gained by doing that. It’s exactly the kind of political theater that Cruz was complaining about.

We have some power, but we don’t have enough to do whatever we want. We can control the agenda now in a way we couldn’t, we control the gavels and we write the legislation, but that doesn’t mean we get our way on everything. That takes control of the House, White House and 60 votes in the Senate. Until then, we have to compromise.

If you’ve crafted a way for them to stop it using the legislative process that doesn’t cripple the country, please feel free to let them in on the secret.

Don’t give Donald Trump credit for a bill that Duncan Hunter introduced – a bill that he also introduced last year while Donald Trump was still firing celebrities.

Trump had nothing to do with that bill being introduced.

Again, if you can’t pass that legislation, there’s no point in wasting time trying. It’s not as if this stuff is hard to figure out. If enough Senators tell you they aren’t voting for something, putting it up and watching it lose is pointless. That’s not lobbyists talking, that’s common sense.

McConnell doesn’t have the 60 votes he needs to pass what you want him to pass. Demanding that he try to do things he can’t do just makes him look weak, which puts us in a bad position vis-a-viz the Democrats.

Trump won’t be the nominee, because he’s going to flame out before this process completes. You don’t speak for the base of the party, just the folks who don’t understand what’s going on and are thus angry about it.

I know plenty about accountability. And what I know is that you don’t hold people accountable for things outside their control. This isn’t a situation where there’s a lack of principles or capitulation to the President or anything else. You’re complaining that McConnell can’t force through Obamacare repeals and the like, when you should know that he doesn’t have the votes, and has no viable way of getting the votes. Almost every Democrat who would have voted against Obamacare lost last year. The votes just aren’t there.

When you are actually in charge, have to make decisions about what’s best for the country and how to move the ball forward, these kinds of games are a sideshow at best. They make little overall impact, other than as fodder for a press release or a fundraising email. And apparently keeping the uninformed base happy.

In the end, though, they don’t actually accomplish anything, and the time spent doing them crowds out the floor time available for things that may actually pass or must pass. So you can keep throwing out your Tea Party buzzwords like accountability and capitulation, and the rest of us will let the Senate do it’s job and give McConnell the space he needs to actually accomplish something.

The “throw the bums out” mentality is a vicious cycle that never ends. The current leadership got elected with that mentality. The next leadership will, too. It’s inevitable.

They’re not excuses. They’re reality. And yes, it’s clear by those numbers (and I’m working on an article about the Pew study) that Republicans oversold what we could accomplish with control of the Senate.

What a 22% rating means is that people are expecting immediate results, and things don’t work that way.

No, what I call overselling is running on the idea that you could repeal Obamacare, stop illegal immigration, “stop Obama” or whatever else the bulk of our Senate candidates ran on during the last campaign if we took back the Senate.

We won every race we should have won plus a few but there was never going to be a legitimate shot at getting to 60 votes. Without that, getting anything accomplished in the Senate would require compromise. But we didn’t sell that to our voters, just that we could do the things they wanted us to do.

It was overselling. It’s been seven months and the things Republicans ran on haven’t materialized, so people are unhappy. And the demagogues in the party, like Ted Cruz, are content to blame the leadership as a way to increase their own personal power when they know that even with different leadership, the same problems would remain.

I opposed TPA and lobbied hard against it. Didn’t matter. And Boehner and McConnell didn’t get X million for votes on TPA. That was the total amounts they raised during the last reporting period. But if you honestly think that it took contributions to get Republicans on-board for a free trade deal – something that has been fundamental to the party for a while now – you’re not paying attention.

Let’s be honest – there wouldn’t have been any Republican opposition to a free trade deal if the President wasn’t a Democrat. There never is.

I’m not arguing with you on the trade deals, but hey – free trade is something you will hear coming out of the mouths of a lot of Republicans. That they took a vote in line with what they’ve been supporting for a long time isn’t surprise.

The Democrats compromise all the time. They never get everything they want. We wouldn’t have gotten the Budget Control Act and sequestration if they didn’t compromise.

Us not compromising won’t reduce the deficit or the national debt. Especially when us not compromising means we lose revenue generators like the Ex-Im Bank, which Cruz and others want to kill. The Bank actually makes money and saves taxpayer dollars, but we decided to kill it? You can’t complain about the debt and then cheer when your heroes kill a program that helps reduce it.

I have no idea how you keep your job, or if you even have one.

You have no idea what you’re talking about with Ex-Im, but that’s not surprising. And no, I’m not a socialist. I am, however, educated on these issues. You aren’t.

No, it will be people like you who do that.

I never could have guessed you were a Ted Cruz supporter.

Is being an ass one of yours?

It’s clear why people are supporting Trump. It’s obvious that folks are angry. The problem is that the anger is irrational.

It’s okay. I’m used to people who don’t know what they’re talking about trying to tell me what’s what. I work in politics, after all.

Being weak , being complicit is why Terry McAuliffe is in office today.
While { R } AG Ken was researching an investment in Star Scientific
his voters were cross referencing State violations with many other State Agencies .
State violations issued by one State agency may be checked at other State agencies to see if they are detecting these violators also , raise questions when they aren’t.
When Candidates are elected the duties of that elected official are now dictated by the party.
Example { R } Governor McDonnell sent a letter to DHS { politically crying } what do we do with the illegal aliens?
Well Bob The Dept. of Labor and Industry your appointed commissioner needs to get his head out of the party punch bowl and forward his violations issued to Unlicensed Contractors to the local Prosecutors.
We had what should have been a Republican dream in our previous Administration
turned out to be a nightmare.
http://watchdog.org/202012/subcontractors-shadow-economy/
Think your kids are safe at State Colleges?
Don’t believe JLARC Illegal Aliens do work on State Jobs , just as unlicensed contractors .
http://watchdogwire.com/blog/2013/06/26/illegalalien-convited-of-kidnapping-college-student-in-virginia/ { Attempted Abduction at VA. Tech June 2012 }
This scum was a unlicensed subcontractor also.

In a presidential election cycle forcing many members of the Democratic congressional minority who effectively camouflage themselves in the wood line on the issues recently exposed regarding fetal tissue sale for profit by a federally funded Planned Parenthood organisation out into the open by requiring a supporting Obama’s override veto seems to me to be common partisan politics. You may not care for the tactic or find it a distraction from the Ex-Im Bank renewal legislation appended to the transportation bill, as Speaker McConnell filled up the amendment tree exactly as former Speaker Reid did so many times in the past ((Sen. Cruz was quite correct about that point), but that there is zero political capital to be gained and that it would be pointless seems more a perspective a Democratic would take rather then a practicing Republican. I think I’ll go with Tip O’Neill and Newt Gingrich on this common political tactic both of whom were masters at it with the gloves off.

It’s a little more then theater it’s traditionally been a practice to manufacture political opponent sound bite ammunition for those policy stealthy individuals using this technique and we all deserve our holidays but this year’s non-legislative scheduled (not in session) consists of Feb 16 – Feb 20, Mar 30 – Apr 10, May 25 – May 29, Jun 29 – Jul 6, Aug 10 – Sept 7, Sept 23, Oct 12 – Oct 16, Nov 11, Nov 23 – Nov 27, Dec 21 – Dec 31. Their job is to legislate hard to see how you do that while not in session and they certainly aren’t devoting much of it to walking main street listening to the constituents, must be those lengthy local chamber of commerce strategy meetings, they do have a tendency to drag on time wise.

lol, yes I’m just another clueless git.

And the answer to the veto question is 4.