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They decided to obstruct everything that Obama did and promised he would achieve nothing. Of course they couldn't deliver and no wonder people are angry..
Quote:The popular storyline goes that voters are seeking political outsiders this year in their frustration over a government where the legislative gears are frozen and nothing gets done. What that storyline forgets is that this gridlock was by design, that GOP leaders held a meeting on the very evening of the president's first inauguration and explicitly decided upon a policy of non-cooperation to deny him anything approaching a bipartisan triumph. The party followed this tactic with such lockstep discipline and cynical disregard for the national welfare that in 2010, seven Republican co-sponsors of a resolution to create a deficit reduction task force voted against their own bill because Mr. Obama came out for it. They feared its passage might make him look good.
Trump and the disintegration of the GOP - Baltimore Sun
Quote:If he was for it, we had to be against it." -- Former U.S. Sen. George Voinovich quoted in "The New New Deal" by Michael Grunwald The "he" is President Barack Obama. The "we" is the Republican Party. And it is not coincidental that as the former pushes toward the end of his second term, the latter is coming apart.
Trump and the disintegration of the GOP - Baltimore Sun
Quote:In the book quoted above, Michael Grunwald distilled the GOP's thinking as follows: "As long as Republicans refused to follow his lead, Americans would see partisan food fights and conclude that Obama had failed to produce change." Republicans and their media accomplices buttressed that strategy with a campaign of insult and disrespect designed to delegitimize Mr. Obama. With their endless birther stupidity, their death panels idiocy, their constant budget brinksmanship and their cries of, "I want my country back!" they stoked in the public nothing less than hatred for the interloper in the White House who'd had the nerve to be elected president.
Trump and the disintegration of the GOP - Baltimore Sun
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Quote:Ronald Reagan used to describe the Republican Party as a kind of three-part coalition. Each part was primarily motivated by its pet issue: national defense, free-market economics, traditional values. Together these comprised a "three-legged stool" that supported the party. Saw off any of the legs and the stool collapsed--taking the party down with it. Trump makes no sense when viewed through this lens. He doesn't know enough about foreign policy to count as being strong on national defense. He's not a free-markets guy at all. No one would mistake him for a social conservative. So how can he be so popular?
How the Republican Party imploded - Business Insider
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Quote:Republican voters have good reason believe American politics is truly broken and something precious about this country is on the verge of being lost forever. They have been told that, again and again, by every leader and pundit in their party, for years. They were told that by Mitt Romney, who said we are "inches away from no longer being a free economy." They were told that by John Boehner, who won a House majority based on the promise that he could repeal Obamacare even though he knew nothing of the sort was true. They've been told this by writers like Kraushaar, who even now argue that Obamacare was an epochal abuse of the political system that set the country — or at least the Republican Party — on a path to ruin. And those are the sober, establishment-oriented figures I'm quoting. What GOP voters have heard on talk radio has been much, much worse.
Obamacare didn’t pave the way for Donald Trump. The GOP’s response to it did. - Vox
Quote:Republicans have worked for years to radicalize their base against Obama, to persuade them that something truly different and terrifying is going on, and in that project they have enjoyed a catastrophic success. Now elite Republicans are panicking as they watch their base turn to different and terrifying kinds of politicians in response. But even as the strategy of calculated hysteria destroys them, they can't seem to stop arguing that the Obama era — as represented, in this case, by Obamacare — has been a scary aberration in American politics.
Obamacare didn’t pave the way for Donald Trump. The GOP’s response to it did. - Vox
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Quote:Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are both left of center, but there is visible ideological distance between them regarding the scope of government. The distance between John Kasich and Ted Cruz is harder to spot. All the remaining Republican candidates want to cut taxes for the wealthy, defund Planned Parenthood, and resist minimum wage hikes. They even all agree on building a wall on the border with Mexico. So why is the Republican Party the one that’s on the verge of cracking up?
The Case for Shutting Down the Republican Party | New Republic
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