Gutless Wonders: Specter Admits GOP's Political Calculus On Stimulus Bill
By Nicole Belle Saturday Feb 14, 2009 11:00am
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama's stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.
"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'"
Specter, along with centrist Maine Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, joined with Democrats last week to move the stimulus bill forward. Specter said he doubted there would be any more Republican votes than those three Friday night.
"I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation," he said.
Specter was asked, How many of your colleagues?
"I think a sizable number," he said. "I think a good part of the caucus agrees with the person I quoted, but I wouldn't want to begin to speculate on numbers."
Gutless, gutless wonders....they allegedly agree on the need for the stimulus, but are afraid to stand up for what's right. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, I give you today's GOP. Explain to me why Democrats keep expressing the need for bipartisanship...
DCCC head Chris Van Hollen puts it into perspective (if only the media would actually frame it this way):
“Americans will hold House Republicans accountable for just saying no to saving and creating three to four million jobs and the largest tax cut in American history.
“House Republicans are fast becoming party of No-bama. Americans will hold Republicans accountable for being the party of no – no to President Obama’s economic recovery, no to children’s health care, and no to equal pay for women doing equal work.”
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This is the least of this scumbag's crimes.
re: Single Bullet cover-up.
The danger to Obama losing in 2012 is huge by getting this wrong, were sitting on a house of cards right now and there is a good chance it will crumble terribly before 2012 and the answer from China when that happens will be no more money.
Guess what party is going to capitalize on that?
They also thought throwing money at the problem would work, they just wanted to throw it differently.
You're pretty much correct but we/Obama/Democrats have to do what we think is correct. We can't act out of fear, we have to act out of conviction.
China will have to keep on buying because there is no viable alternative. They are between a rock and a hard place. If they don't buy our debt and we go under they are stuck with a lot of worthless paper. Aaand there is no place else for them to park their money. Think about it.
we should be very careful in thinking China won't shift gears, today they have no choice but that isn't going to last forever and at present we are not improving things, we are making them worse.
We had best get a plan to reduce our national debt and get back to sound money or this is all going to go boom in a bad way. At some point China will say enough is enough.
The 'Stimulus' is too small by a half.
The Bank 'Bailout' is too large by 100%.
The 'Bailout' which is over $3 trillion spent and $11.5 trillion committed is going to sink our ship and therefore the 'Stimulus' won't count for much.
It is critical to differentiate between the two.
While busy differentiating cut the MIC budget in half (at least).
When is the Treasury going to audit the bailed out banks books?
NEVER?
Specter knows he's got an election coming. In Pennsylvania. Steel Town. If he voted against it, he wouldn't have been re-elected.
He did this so he could/would keep his job. Nothing more.
Mudshark we posted at the same time. Check my link below, you sound like the type of America that believes the news source I linked to.
I sound like I believe Fox?
ok,whatever.
No, my point was that that is a steel producing area. You Know? UNIONS?!!?
Now really, that couldn't have been that hard to see. Could It?
That was a stupid remark.
Not so fast, mudshark.
Specter Vote For Stimulus Hurts Him Back Home
Just 31% of Keystone State voters say [they] are more likely to vote for Specter because of his position on the stimulus package while 40% are less likely to do so.
A look inside the numbers shows the problem for Specter may be even more significant. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Republican voters in the state are less likely to vote for Specter. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, just 27% are more likely to support the long-time incumbent while 48% are less likely to do so...
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I have no clue who Specter was talking about when he said "one of my colleagues..". Who knows, maybe it was his imaginary friend 'Mr. Torrance' or something, but it would be a nice thing to know before you called him (or them) a gutless wonder first.
It was Captain Tuttle.
I have no clue who Specter was talking about when he said "one of my colleagues"
You're right.
So here's a link to just that type of Republican Shadowfighting And they can't question it as it is from Fox itself.
I don't believe one word that comes out of this guys mouth. And neither should you!
Wow the republicans really do eat their own young! The ones in my link above are already calling Snowe Collins and Spector traitors! Right on their own front page. I wonder if this PAC is funded by same folks that are funding the SaraPAC and the SaraJoe '012 PAC! The last PAC was a jke, but can you imagine if they do promote those two in 2012?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQqbLLDC_I8
*
I always thought the blog name "Crooks and Liars" was brilliant. I laughed long and hard. The reward in the title is that O'Lielly and his ilk don't dare go after this site on air time -- it would be too embarrassing.
But I think that brilliance could be surpassed if someone started up a website titled "Gutless Wonders" to exclusively highlight the crimes of various congresspersons - dem and re-Thug alike.
Okay --- anyone listening?
*
.....we'll have to settle for Crooks & Liars.
I think you have hit the nail squarely on the head, Trittydi. If anyone is to blame for this mess, it's our "gutless wonders" in the house and senate. I support any move to expose, shame, or expel them, Dem-ogogues and Rep-rehensibles alike. Oh if only there was a way to throw them ALL out and start over!
In my PoliSci class in college, we had a text called "Why They Call It Politics." Our professor, a Dem campaigner and staffer in an earlier life, said the reason it's called politics is that if it was called it anything else, they would all be in prison. AMEN!
Anyone else out there listening? Let's get a movement going!Term limits (short ones) for ALL politicians, national elections for the house and senate, revoke their exemption from the laws they pass, and implement an oversight commission to monitor their actions. Anyone who votes "present", or misses a vote (without a damn good reason) is automatically out since it it their job to vote on all legislation. ANY ethics violation, or appearance of an ethics violation, is also gone automatically. We could throw in an IQ qualification to eliminate the complete idiots like Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters.
Remember, if a politician's mouth is moving, (s)he is lying.
.......somebody's brother doesn't exactly make him credible either.
if an elected official congratulates a colleage for voting for the bill and won't vote for it himself because he may have a primary coming up, he is more dispicable than Ann Coulter. Find out who this asshole is and expose him.
When you show me a politician who has never voted against a bill they secretly supported (or vice versa), in the name of politics, then you may have a point. Republicans in office must be terrified right now: they went from top of the world to powerlessness in only two years, and they have no idea how to recover from it. Voting out of fear, in this case, is understandable. Dumb maybe, cowardly maybe, but understandable.
And it doesn't even come close to Coulter. She's a bastard.
He has constituents he should be representing.
Henry Ford once said (something to this effect) that if the American people knew how the banking system operated there would be a nationwide revolt. The institutions that have reaped the most benefits from operating in and being "protected" by America seem to be the least patriotic and the greatest threat to our national security.
I don't believe that Osama bin Laden (OBL) and Al-Qaeda attacked us because they hate freedom. I'd venture to say that they attacked us because financial institutions and supra-national corporations (and a complicit US Gov't) have been screwing the rest of the world's population far worse than we are now learning that they have been screwing the American people. Unfortunately for us our Main-Stream Media (MSM) doesn't share with us the horrid details of what our most exulted institutions do to other less powerful nations and world citizens. But the media outside the USA does share what they know of "American Activities" and those people outside the US get upset with how our chase for the American Dream creates their subsistence nightmare (most Americans don't really understand how poor most of the rest of the world really is).
So OBL, coming from one of the most wealthy families in Saudi Arabia, gets sick and tired of how moneyed interests in the Western World (lead by the USA) run roughshod over the rest of the world. As a way to prove that the Western policy of greed and excess is hollow and based on a self-serving rapacious philosophy he says, "watch what happens if we take one swipe at the giant, their greedy, weak and meaningless society will collapse from within".
And here we are, collapsing from within. His plan was elegant. Their only costs were a few flying lessons, some box cutters and one way tickets for 20. All he had to do next was sit back and wait. The American Gov't, financial institutions and supra-national corporations did his work for him. And most importantly for him, it proved that our system is corrupt, self-serving and hollow. I suspect that the reason why there have not been more attacks is that it is much more powerful for him to have his followers watch us destroy ourselves from within; to watch our own gov't, our financial institutions and our greedy corporations to run our economy and national identity into the ground.
Which is why we need to come together as a nation and get our country back on track. Because if our economy collapses, the terrorists have truly won (and they did it the way they had planned to all along...let us collapse from within at the hands of "patriotic Americans").
It is ironic that the the republicans are the first to raise the "national security" flag but it will be their president and their congressional partisan game playing and stonewalling that does the work for OBL and Al Qeada. The Democrats need to start reframing this stimulus / financial-system-reform debate to a National Security issue: "If the economy collapses, the terrorists have won." Then maybe we will see some republicans crossing the aisle to come up with "real" working solutions to the economic crisis.
One such solution might be to implement a system like Salvadore Allende was trying to implement when our CIA helped assasinate him and installed Gen Pinochet (on Sep. 11, 1973). Allende was working with Stafford Beer (cybernetician and management science expert) to develop an economy that had less "human hands" at the controls. Much like the computer that now runs the engine in your car. Beer proposed a central computer that gathered data from "sensors" in the economy and then used a computerized economic modelling program to keep the system running efficiently and without the wild fluctuations that we live with. Learn more from Beer's books, Platform for Change, Designing Freedom, Heart of Enterprise and Brain of the Firm.
If the economy fails, the terrorists have won...
a cybertron?
I'm an auto mechanic that is used to diagnosing problems on a daily basis, then developing the most effective and economical solution and then implementing that solution with a set of tools that I have spent a great deal of time and resources to acquire.
Unike politicians, mechanics solve complex problems in real time and often with rudimentary tools, used parts and a constituent on a budget.
It is about time that someone (anyone) looks at the "system" that is in operation and takes the time to do some actual "diagnosis" before we try to implement a solution (don't you get a little perturbed when your mechanic wants you to spend money throwing parts at your car without actually knowing what is wrong with it?). Stafford Beer has done a great deal of work in this area "systemic and organizational efficiency" through his work with the Viable System Model. He even wrote a great book called "Diagnosing the System." His book "Platform for Change" was about the complete economic overhaul of the Chilean economy in the early 1970's. It wasn't perfect but it was a start and if we continue the development of these ideas we might have a workable solution that we can implement in a few years. Buckminster Fuller saw all this coming and wrote about it in some of his work (Critical Path, Grunch of Giants, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth).
I realize I posted this information earlier, but I had some spelling and grammatical errors that I wanted fix. Thanks for letting me try again....
Even without Spector's admission about his Republican colleagues, there was absolutely no reason to give the Boehner House Republicans or the McConnell Senate Republicans more time to read it and create more lies about it.
Their votes weren't needed, they had already decided last month they weren't going to vote for it anyway and, by everyone's estimate, this was an emergency situation.
Giving obstinate Republicans whose votes were not needed anyway another "48 hours" to nit-pick and lie about it would have been a total waste of precious time.
Absolutely correct!! You knew Boehner was not going to vote for it when he said "Oh my god" when the House bill came out a couple weeks ago. He acted as if he could not believe his eyes/ears when in reality we all knew what was coming and how big it was going to be weeks ahead of time. Boner has no credibility. The Republicans are going to do anything they can to try to make this fail. What they are so STUPID about is that if it does fail they will have NOTHING. Whatever is left over will not be worth fighting for. It will be chaos.
That is why we the people have to keep putting the truth out there for all to see. The GOP is angling for a 2010 return to congressional power and everyone knows it!
That's their job. Newsflash: the Dems are angling to maintain power in 2010! And Obama is planning on getting re-elected in 2012! :)
That's the essence of representative democracy: we use the carrot of elected office and the stick of electoral defeat to get representatives to pay attention to the will of the people. That's why we don't elect people to Congress for life.
As more moderates leave the Republican party, there are fewer moderates left to vote against the Club-for-Growth and other wacko candidates in the primaries, driving the party farther to the right and knocking off more of the moderate candidates, causing more moderates to leave the Republican party, and so forth.
It sounds like it could be a death spiral unless some charismatic forceful moderates come in and rip control of the party away from the wingnuts. And yet I have a hard time believing that either party could actually fail ("too big to fail"?), so I don't know what's going to happen. I suppose it's possible that the GOP could disappear, only to be immediately replaced by a party made up of Blue Dogs (who, without the threat of Republicans, would no longer need the support of the Democratic party). It's happened before in American history, but it seems like something that only happened in historical times.
i see many saying Obama has to get it "right". what is getting it "right"? who will make that judgement/call. getting this recovery bill passed this quick is an accomplishment as it is. i find often that people don't take into consideration that the economy could get worse. how do you measure that. in my opinion the stimulus is going to take awhile and it will help some more than others. there will be plenty of critics. i know Obama will be measured by this legislation/package, i guess i'm still impressed. every little so-called mis step is being dramatized to the nth degree. obama was handed a crisis that still hasn't been fully identified.......meaning there is more to come.
Geithner is convincing the G7 of the need for over 2 trillion just for the banks!
Oh and this just in:
Federal obligations exceed world GDP
Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAG...
Stimulate? Try bankruptcy protection. This isn't conspiracy theory or hocus pocus voodoo, this is actual economists being honest. Why aren't politicians stating any of this? Has anyone ever borrowed their way out of bankruptcy???
We had an exchange some of the basics previously here.
The US Government will not use accrual basis (GAAP) accounting because in politics one waits for the disaster to do something.
They will do means tests, raise the cap, raise the ages and patch it that way. People that are already receiving SS or already receiving their statements (55 I think) are the only ones that have numbers in print of what they will be receiving, maybe.
Everyone else will likely find it is not what they thought.
Fine that they might be held accountable for doing every thing they could to block recovery. But they should never, ever be able to get off the hook for getting us here in the first place. For me that seems to be an even larger crime.
Neither Bush nor any other Republican, including Rush Limbaugh, can spend a dime without the approval of our gutless, self-serving House of Reps and the U.S. Senate. The last time I looked, both houses were under Democrat control and have been since 1996. It really sucks how the Dems blame EVERYTHING on Bush and the Republicans, and take no blame for themselves! Even now, with the biggest spending bill in history soon to take effect, the Dems are laying the groundwork to shift blame if it fails, and I do believe it will. They are saying that a) the bill isn't big enough, b) that it may take a long time to take effect, and c) that there is a 30% chance they could be wrong about the bill stimulating our economy. This is nothing but a pork package that will only benefit Obama's campaign contributors and Nancy Pelosi and her cronies. It's spelled P-O-R-K, but the Dems pronounce it "Stim-u-lus." Now that this odiferous piece of legislation is passed, remember that the consequences, good or bad, belong exclusively to Obombus (he just bought into it) and the Democrats, so stop whining, hold your breath, cross your fngers, and wait and see what happens. If you are religious, you might try a prayer or two.
Obombus claims that all the economists support this spending package and they say this will save our economy. I submit that if you check it out, you will discover that the economists have missed EVERY SINGLE MAJOR ECONOMIC EVENT in the history of our nation. Ask any honest University economics professor and (s)he will confirm that. Harry Truman once said that he wanted a one-armed economics advisor because economists were always saying "But on the other hand..."
Good luck to us all.
The Republicans controlled the house from 1995-2007.
They controlled the Senate from 1995-2009 with the exception of 2001-2003 when control was split until Jim Jeffers (R-Va) in May '01 left the Rs, became independent and caucuses with the Dems.
As a former Pennsylvanian, I gotta tell you that though the state usually leans Democratic, it's a peculiar brand of moderate, begrudging, right-leaning Democratic.
The calculus gets complicated because Specter is a known name brand with a history of quixotic challenges to his party. He usually buckles when it comes down to a vote, but (like the recent situation) not always. This leads to a situation where he could easily fail in a Republican primary because he's offended doctrinaire party members, even though the new Repub candidate might not have a prayer statewide. But if he fellin the primary and if he pulled a Lieberman, I'd bet he'd have as much as shot at winning in the fall as either of his rivals.
"Americans will hold House Republicans accountable for just saying no to saving and creating three to four million jobs..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zx8DGD-Kn0
Assuming Specter is telling the truth (always a dicey assumption with him), then Republicans who are afraid to vote for Obama's bill because of their upcoming elections are doing so in deference to men like *Rush Limbaugh*, not their broader constituencies. The so-called "stimulus" bill has popular support.
They are afraid that they will be 'called out" by that enormous tub of guts on air and lose support among the far right in their home districts. There is a real shortage of courage among the Republicans. I've got to say that there was an equal shortage among our own Dems when it came to saying no to the war in Iraq. They all justify their actions by telling themselves that they can't do good things for their states or districts unless they get re-elected. But the real reason is lack of spine, combined with self-interest.
"Portraits in Courage, II" anytime soon.
yes to a needless, destructive and ill-planned war, yes to astonishing extra-constitutional power grabs for the Executive, yes to politicizing the DOJ, yes to ignoring laws you don't like, yes to calling political opponents 'traitors' just for disagreeing with you, yes to a 'my way or the highway' way of governing, yes to ignoring subpoenas from Congress, yes to placing an idiot as President and a Bond villain as VP, yes to placing political hacks in all sorts of places, yes to warrantless wiretapping and the constant fear-mongering of citizens, and on and on. GOP, you can shove it.
You said a mouthful! These repugs have done so much to ruin this country in the last 8 years it is absolutely incredible, but now they want nothing to do with helping get us out of the ditch they put us in. They are only worried if they can get re-elected so they can suck on the teat of the taxpayer for another term. May they all rot in hell!
"Americans will hold Republicans accountable for being the party of no – no to President Obama’s economic recovery, no to children’s health care, and no to equal pay for women doing equal work."
No, I'm afraid they won't. Most Americans will simply do what they're told. The real contest is in who does the framing of the message.
.
GOP calling card...
... Party first, F_ck the Country.
.
That's the same Motto for the certain Fraternity in a East Coast College.
twice in the past 24 hours. He's probably at some bible-study group right now.....or seeing his surgeon about a possible backbone implant. Whichever it is, I will send money, knock doors, mail mailers....whatever....to get Todd Akin, R-MO 2nd, out of office in 2010. He's weak and wimpy and should have been gone long ago. That he would vote against this stimulus bill in a relatively middle-class district is criminal. All around us jobs are disappearing in the Greater St. Louis Area. But rest assured, Todd is more interested in whether army chaplains can pray in the name of Jesus at interdenominational public events. Because THAT is the big issue that he worries about.
give Arlen a break. He's fighting cancer, he's about 80 years old, and he hasn't a chance in hell of being elected again here in PA.
He was a good DA in Philly a long time ago and has worked hard to keep his job in the Senate - vacillating is not easy ya' know?!
Over the past several weeks congressional republicans have proven beyond a doubt that they are gutless, ignorant, and unpatriotic. Instead of showing concern for our country during this time of grave economic crisis, they have turned their backs to an opportunity to be a part of the solution. I have never seen a more traitorous act. Democrats need to remind the voters of their actions in 2010.
Great. So they put their own political careers ahead of what's best for the nation. Just the kind of people we need representing us.
I'm an auto mechanic that is used to diagnosing problems on a daily basis, then developing the most effective and economical solution and then implementing that solution with a set of tools that I have spent a great deal of time and resources to acquire.
Unike politicians, mechanics solve complex problems in real time and often with rudimentary tools, used parts and a constituent on a budget.
It is about time that someone (anyone) looks at the "system" that is in operation and takes the time to do some actual "diagnosis" before we try to implement a solution (don't you get a little perturbed when your mechanic wants you to spend money throwing parts at your car without actually knowing what is wrong with it?). Stafford Beer has done a great deal of work in this area "systemic and organizational efficiency" through his work with the Viable System Model. He even wrote a great book called "Diagnosing the System." His book "Platform for Change" was about the complete economic overhaul of the Chilean economy in the early 1970's. It wasn't perfect but it was a start and if we continue the development of these ideas we might have a workable solution that we can implement in a few years. Buckminster Fuller saw all this coming and wrote about it in some of his work (Critical Path, Grunch of Giants, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth).
I realize I posted this information earlier, but I had some spelling and grammatical errors that I wanted fix. Thanks for letting me try again....
it's so sad the the republicans act like john mcgain. thank god a few arn't afaid to act. obama walked into this mees we are now in . who made the mess the republicans in office . john mcgain i feel the way he talks is still trying to run for office . hello we the people elected obama not you. at least obama is trying. what did bush and his higher up chenny do? it's about time we have a president that is for all people not the only rich like bush was. maybe just maybe we will have a honest goverment in which we haven't had in years .
JOHN MCGAIN NEEDS TO RETIRE. heck he didn't even know how many homes he owns
After Sh*ting and Rob*ing US blind, for 8 years, neoCONS don't have to suffer this Economic Disaster; they have the $$$$$ up to their belly full.
Mc and Grams needS to step down and retire; you are the reason we need these Stimulus Package.
Just by looking at this article, we can see what kind of Thugs they are.
They can always change the party which all of the Republican should do.
American Political system is clear. When there's a majority rule then we don't need the support from the other party. That's how the people voted and that's what happened and that's the way the American wants and get it. And we need more of it to get over this Economic Downward Spiral Downfall caused by 8 years on neoCONS rule with MC and Gramm's in power.
How about Federal Government install free solar panels or wind tunnel or geothermal for all the buildings and houses in the country. It would be a gift which keeps on giving as well as
achieving Energy independence and Reduce Global Warming. This is like the New Deal for 21st Century and economic stimulus for all; Free Energy. Solar, wind, geothermal is limitless, clean and free. Department of Power would install and maintain the system so it would become biggest job producing entity in history. But we need job to get out of this economic downfall in downward spiral. News of this nature would re-bound the economy in zippy.
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