John McCain considering seeking reelection in 2016

Here’s the audio:

The Story:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday that he is considering running for another term in 2016, when he would be 80 years old.
“I’m seriously thinking about maybe giving another opportunity for you to vote for or against me in a few years from now,” McCain said on KFYI-AM in Phoenix. “I’m seriously giving that a lot of thought.”
Asked by host Barry Young to clarify if he was saying he might run again, McCain said: “That would not be wrong.”
The New York Times’s Mark Leibovich, who is in Arizona following McCain, first tweeted the news.
McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, is in his fifth term. He has never taken less than 56 percent of the vote and easily dispatched a primary challenge in 2010 from former congressman J.D. Hayworth.
If he runs again, McCain will likely find himself targeted by tea party groups.
via McCain considering seeking reelection in 2016.

I really do not know much about Arizona politics and so, I cannot comment on whether John McCain would win or not in a primary. So, I will refrain from commenting on that one. However, I do believe that this might be an indication of the panic of the Republican Party establishment towards the Tea Party House members like Ted Cruz. As it is right now, we have the chamber of commerce and business groups wanting them out. This might be an extension of that.

As Ron Paul pointed out, when it came to America’s occupation of foreign lands; there is a simple thing called “Blowback.” Which is a negative reaction to someone’s actions. In this case here; the Tea Party House members overreached and had a horrible strategic plan. Ted Cruz, and House members shut down the Government. However, they did not have a plan; and they played the wrong game. Which, of course, put the establishment Republicans in a dire panic; not to mention the rest of the House.

So, now, you have establishment moderate Republican types, like John McCain; who put in a good lifetime of service and was ready to call it a good run and shuffle off to retirement —- actually rethinking that a bit, and wondering if he should stick around least the Tea Party crazies try and strike again.

This is why, if you are going to try and play a political game like the one Ted Cruz did; you need to have a real game plan in place and it is quite obvious to this writer and many others; that Ted Cruz simply did not have that sort of a game plan in place. It was massive overreach and screw up on his part. Furthermore, it very much could have hurt his standing for the 2016 election.

Obama rejects House offer to end shutdown

Remember the possible deal that I wrote about? Well, no dice says Obama.

Via Politico:

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.
There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.
With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.
After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.
“I was happy to see the Republicans engaged in talks with the president, the House Republicans. That’s over with. It’s done. They’re not talking anymore,” Reid said. “I say to my friends on the Republican side of this Senate, time is running out.”
House Republicans are, for the first time, acknowledging that reality. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told the closed meeting of GOP lawmakers that, “Senate Republicans need to stand strong and fight,” according to sources in the room.
“It’s all good,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) said. “It’s now up to the Senate Republicans to stand up.”
House Republican leaders met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Friday to receive a briefing on the state of play in the Senate.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are circulating a 23-page draft bill that would increase the nation’s borrowing limit through January and reopen government until March.

Meanwhile the House Republicans are not too happy. Via NRO’s Corner:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan lashed out at Senate Republicans for interfering with the House GOP’s talks with the White House to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling, suggesting his colleagues on the other side of the Capitol were betraying Speaker John Boehner.
“They’re trying to cut the House out, and trying to jam us with the Senate. We’re not going to roll over and take that,” Ryan told reporters. When asked if he felt “double crossed,” Ryan said “you look at the facts and draw your own conclusions.”
Senate Republicans, led by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, are negotiating with Democrats on a package to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling into next year with relatively modest concessions for the GOP.
Ryan said House Republicans only learned the details about the plan this morning, and added that he strenuously objects to it. When asked which parts of the plan he objected to, Ryan said there are “too many to go into.”

Two things here:

I do believe that Paul Ryan just took the bait of the Obama administration to divide and conquer the GOP.
This is not a good way to get elected in 2016 as President. Ryan must have forgotten the 11 commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

Either way, I believe this is going to drag out for a very long time.

Hmmmmm: NSA Director Alexander Admits He Lied about Phone Surveillance Stopping 54 Terror Plots

Looks like the Obama administration is continuing with the same stuff that the Bush administration did.

Quote:

The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted before a congressional committee this week that he lied back in June when he claimed the agency’s phone surveillance program had thwarted 54 terrorist “plots or events.”
NSA Director Keith Alexander gave out the erroneous number while the Obama administration was defending its domestic spying operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. He said surveillance data collected that led to 53 of those 54 plots had provided the initial tips to “unravel the threat stream.”
But Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday during a hearing on the continued oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the administration was pushing incomplete or inaccurate statements about the bulk collection of phone records from communications providers.
“For example, we’ve heard over and over again that 54 terrorist plots have been thwarted by the use of (this program),” Leahy said. “That’s plainly wrong,” adding: “These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all thwarted.”
Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection.
via Controversies – NSA Director Alexander Admits He Lied about Phone Surveillance Stopping 54 Terror Plots – AllGov – News.

New lies for old. There is no difference anymore. Hence why I am not voting Republican come 2016, unless something changes drastically on that side of the fence; and I know darned well I am not voting for a Democrat, ever again. 😡

Video: Republicans are turning on Ted Cruz

As I wrote on here before — twice, the Republican picked the wrong game to play here and now, they’re paying for it. Not to mention that the Republicans have been utter hypocrites on the entire Obamacare issue.

The Story:

A Republican congressman said Monday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is largely responsible for the first government shutdown since 1996.
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that while he believes many individuals are at fault, including President Barack Obama, he said Cruz and others who bought into the quixotic campaign to defund the Affordable Care Act “took a lot of folks into the ditch.”
“But if I had to cast blame anywhere, I would say it was Sen. Cruz and those who insisted upon this tactic that we all knew was not going to succeed,” Dent said. “What he did essentially, Sen. Cruz, basically, he took a lot of folks into the ditch. Now that we’re in the ditch, you can’t get out of the ditch, the senator has no plan to get out of the ditch, those of us who do have a plan to get out of the ditch and will vote to get out of the ditch will then be criticized by those who put us in the ditch in the first place.”
Dent said that he will continue to urge House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to bring a “clean” continuing resolution — one that includes no language to undermine the health care law — to a vote.
via GOP Rep Blames Cruz For Shutdown: ‘He Took A Lot Of Folks Into The Ditch’ (VIDEO).

The White House blinks?

(H/T Ace)

Depends on who you ask.

Via HotAir.com:

After weeks of insisting it won’t negotiate on either the budget or the debt ceiling, a top White House adviser said this morning that Barack Obama would sign a short-term lift in the latter to gain more time for a longer-term agreement.

Via WaPo:

President Obama would accept a short-term increase in the federal borrowing cap , rather than one lasting a year or more, a senior White House official said Monday. The statement was an acknowledgment by the administration that it may not be possible to reach a deal on a long-term increase in the debt ceiling before a critical Oct. 17 deadline.
Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said members of Congress ultimately have the responsibility to decide how often they want to raise the debt ceiling, although he argued that an extended hike is preferable. …
The Treasury says it will run low on cash in as little as 10 days, placing the nation at risk of a historic default. Some Republicans have suggested that if Congress can’t reach an agreement by Oct. 17, they might try to forge a coalition to support an interim measure to increase the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling for as little as six weeks.
Sperling’s comments Monday suggested that the White House would accept such a measure. The statement was notable because administration officials had rejected a short-term debt ceiling increase during a similar impasse in the summer of 2011, when the White House insisted that the debt limit be increased to cover borrowing through 2012.

Boehner is staying on message. Check out this video via CNN, and notice how they attempt to make the Republicans look like the bad guys?:

National Journal explains why Obama and the democrats have to work with the Republicans:

Obama has at least two incentives to talk. First, there is the matter of optics. Voters want to believe that their leaders are open-minded, a trait they particularly expect in a president who promised to change the culture of Washington. Obama simply undermines his credibility by stiff-arming the GOP. Their obstinacy is no excuse for his. During the last protracted government shutdown, President Clinton talked almost every day with GOP rivals Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.
Second, Obama has an opportunity to deftly steer an embattled and divided GOP away from Obamacare and to an issue worthy of high-stakes negotiations: The nation’s long-term budget crisis. While it’s true that the deficit has dropped in recent months, nothing has been done to secure Social Security and Medicare beyond the next 10 years. Punting this red-ink quandary to the next president would mar Obama’s legacy.
In April, I wrote that both the White House and the GOP House had incentive to strike a deal that would both raise taxes and trim entitlement spending. The story traced the outlines of such a deal, but the moment was lost. Boehner doesn’t trust Obama and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. Obama doesn’t trust Boehner and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. The House speaker reportedly raised the idea of a so-called grand bargain at a White House meeting last week, and got laughed at. That is the exact wrong response.

So, we’ll see. Hopefully this shut down ends quickly. As I am sure these people; like my friend John —- would like to get back to work. I say this because of this right here: I am all for political principles. However, stopping Government for the sole purpose of furthering those principles is just unacceptable in the real world. James Antle has it correct; Republicans need to play the long game, and not this sort of stupidity. It is only hurting people that have nothing to do with the political process.

There is a fine line between political principles and blatant idiocy; wise is the man that knows the difference between the two.

Excellent Reading: Jim Antle asks: “What’s Wrong With the Republican Right?”

This is some excellent reading here. I just wish more of the Republicans AND Tea Party types would read it and listen:

No longer will it suffice for Republican politicians to come to Washington and compile respectable, or even stellar, ratings from conservative groups. If federal spending is ever to be restrained as the baby boomers enter retirement, we will need politicians who are willing to employ unconventional methods in the fight.
Conservatives need rebels and boat-rockers, not conformists and time-servers. So I argued in my recent book on the political prospects for limited government. Sen. Ted Cruz would seem to fit the bill. The Texas Republican has been a one-man demolition crew, aiming his wrecking ball squarely at Capitol Hill’s customs and conventions.
But, surveying the scene in Washington, is Cruz an example of the old saying about being careful about what you wish for?
via What’s Wrong With the Republican Right? | The American Conservative.

One part that I really like in particular:

To be sure, in politics it sometimes pays to consider the long game. Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide in 1964, giving the Democrats the supermajorities they needed to usher in the Great Society. But in time, the GOP became Goldwater’s party to a far greater extent than Nelson Rockfeller’s.
Ronald Reagan lost the fight against the Panama Canal Treaty, just as he failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 or 1976. But Reagan’s subsequent victories are remembered long after most of those who had earlier beaten him were forgotten.
It would be premature to count Cruz out over a fiscal impasse that has yet to reach a decisive conclusion. But it might be worth asking a few hard questions.
Is the current confrontation likely to reverse or materially change the Affordable Care Act? Is it moving public opinion against Obamacare or against the Republicans? What is it accomplishing?
Perhaps if the answer is simply that it is raising Ted Cruz’s profile, it will still benefit conservatives over the long term. Since Goldwater and Reagan retired, the right has long lacked figures who can compete on more or less even terms with the Doles, Bushes, McCains, and Romneys of the world.
But it should not simply be assumed that this answer is good enough. Conservatives once fought Republicans whose “dime store New Deals” were only incrementally different from what the Democrats proposed.
Over time, they began to rely on things like American Conservative Union scores to assess lawmakers’ fidelity to principle. Groups like the Club for Growth emerged, challenging the business interests that had traditionally run the Republican Party for influence in the primaries.
Today it is no longer enough for most conservatives to have a Republican who will vote with them most of the time. Conservatives insist on politicians who will fight when it counts most. And they realize that some fights—Obamacare, the Wall Street bailout, the Gang of Eight immigration deal—matter more than tax breaks for hedge fund managers.
There is one more step in this evolution: evaluating whether conservatives are actually producing results. Too often, conservatives measure that by the volume of liberal outrage a Republican political figure inspires.

I believe that every last person that even remotely thinks about getting into politics of any sort; ought be tied to a chair and forced to read that part right there until he can recite it by memory!

I suggest you go read the rest of that one; it’s good. I don’t want to quote the entire thing here. We need more thinkers and less reactionaries in that party. Plus too, I said the same thing, when it comes to the long game. Jim Antle gets that; and that’s a good thing. 😀

Republican Hypocrisy on Obamacare?

Hmmmmmmmm…..

Via the Nation:

Even before President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Republicans were vowing to repeal it. It’s no wonder, because polls showed that the basic elements of the ACA were quite popular, and there was a real danger that it would become more so as people found out that the plan denounced as a “monstrosity” by the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not trample on their liberties so much as help protect their health. Desperate to avoid this, the GOP-controlled House has voted no fewer than thirty-seven times to repeal Obamacare in the three years since it was enacted.
Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents.
As I reported here last September, Congressman Paul Ryan, who as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 called for its repeal, sent a letter requesting ACA money for health clinics in his district two years earlier. The Nation has obtained documents revealing that at least twenty other Obamacare-bashing GOP lawmakers have similarly pleaded for ACA funds on behalf of constituents. Among them are Kristi Noem, a Republican lawmaker from South Dakota likely to run for the Senate next year, as well as Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has been touted as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016.
In one of two letters sent by Portman to the Department of Health and Human Services, the senator requested ACA funds to help a federal health center in Cleveland, where the money could help “an additional 8,966 uninsured individuals” to receive ”essential services,” in his words. In Noem’s case, the congresswoman requested ACA funds to construct a community health center in Rapid City to provide primary services to the uninsured. Both Noem and Portman won office in 2010 campaigning vigorously against the law and have since worked to repeal it.
Though notably less transparent, the behavior of these GOP lawmakers parallels that of GOP governors like Arizona’s Jan Brewer, who blast the president’s health reform package while embracing the millions in Medicaid funds that it provides.

Here’s the letters, read it and weep for that Party:

This is my problem with the current state of the GOP

In a earlier posting, I wrote some stuff in anger. Now that I have calmed down a bit. I have more to say.

Basically what I have to say is this: For all intents and purposes: I am finished with the GOP on a National level. They are not a conservative Christian party in my humble opinion anymore. If anything they are nothing more than an “Democratic Party Lite” type of a party. From this moment on, I will voting whatever third party I feel matches my own personal convictions.

It looks like the Republican Party might just end up making Ted Cruz the face of the GOP in 2016. I hope that I am wrong about this, but if I know politics like I do; the GOP will pick someone who is a reflection of their base and a reflection of current political winds. The GOP tried an establishment candidate twice before and they lost — they will not do this again. It is not that I do not like Cruz, I just believe that he wasted a good deal of time and taxpayers money grandstanding on a losing bet.

It is very strange what is happening in the GOP now. There are two factions: One faction is the Cruz faction that some call extremist. The ones that call him this are those that believe that Big Government Conservatism is a-okay; but I digress. The other faction is the old Neoconservative Big Government Conservative wing of the GOP. Both factions are entrenched and both factions are quite well funded. Both factions are working out of concert with the other.

As a result of this, Obamacare is going to get funded and we are going to get stuck with it. That is, unless the house of representatives does something and I mean something bold. However, the realist and the common sense part of me, sees this comment by President Obama and knows that he is correct:

I don’t know how I can be more clear about this: Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions. No one gets to hurt our economy and millions of innocent people just because there are a couple of laws that you do not like. It has not been done in the past. We’re not going to start doing it now.
I’m not going to start setting a precedent, not just for me but for future presidents, where one chamber in Congress can basically say each time there needs to be a vote to make sure Treasury pays its bills, we’re not going to sign it unless our particular hobby horse gets advanced.
Imagine if you had a Republican president and a Democratic speaker, and the Democratic speaker said, well, we’re not going to pass the debt ceiling unless we raise corporate taxes by 40 percent or unless we pass background checks on guns or whatever other list of agenda items Democrats were interested in. Does anybody actually think that we would be hearing from Republicans that that was acceptable behavior? That’s not how our constitutional system is designed. We are not going to do it.
The American people have worked too hard to recover from a bunch of crises _ several of them now, over the last couple of years, inflicted by some of the same folks in Congress that we’re talking about now _ to see extremists in Congress cause another crisis. And keep in mind, by the way _ this whole thing has to do with keeping the government open for a few months.

~~There is video of it on CSPAN, but for some reason, I could not cut it up and embed it here.~~ I guess someone at CSPAN must read my blog. Because here is that video:

That part that I bolded and underlined? The President is absolutely correct about and I hope like the devil that Ted Cruz and the Tea Party house members read this; and remember it. If they set a precedent, the Democrats will exploit it to their liking once they are in office. So, I would be really careful and really think long and hard about what they are about to do in the House.

Interesting Reading

I think everyone should go check out Erick Erickson’s piece called The Disconnect.

In it, Erick explains the huge disconnect between the GOP Establishment and the Conservative grassroots. It is a good read; and I am not saying this as a Paleo-Conservative laughing at the neoconservatives either. I found the article a very good read.

Check it out!

Ace has a rather good point

About the GOP:

But Cruz can’t drop the filibuster now because the go along, get along GOP would kill him for dropping it. Now they get to kill him for keeping it. Nice game they’ve got going on.
One thing we shouldn’t kid ourselves about is that if the House passed a clean CR and then included the delay plan in their budget ceiling bill it still wouldn’t have the votes in the Senate and we’d still be in the position of having to find them by having the House play chicken not with a government shutdown but with what would be called “defaulting” on the full faith and credit of the United States.
Given the level disingenuousness in the delay camp’s hits not on Obama or ObamaCare but the Devil known as Ted Cruz I’m seriously doubt they would do what they claimed. Right now it seems like one big shell game to avoid actually fighting against something they all claim to be against.
You know why Cruz is so popular? Because he’s actually fighting. Maybe it’s a losing fight, maybe it’s a fight to raise money (though let’s not pretend he’s the only one doing that) or to raise his popularity (the sight of professional politicians accusing anyone of self-aggrandizement is too precious) but at least he’s fighting.
Something I think we should all remember is that when the GOP had the House and the Senate before we never saw this kind of fight from the GOP. We saw a slightly less robust rush to bigger government than we did under the Democrats but we never saw Denny Hastret, Tom “There’s No Fat Left To Cut In The Federal Budget” Delay, Trent Lott and Bill Frist just muddle along without any energy or drive to bring the federal government under control. The professional Republican class wants to say, “hey we need more votes to do anything”, well a lot of us remember when you had more votes and not only did you not do anything, you made it worse. Remember “Pork Busters”? Yeah, we didn’t love you then and we don’t trust you now to do the right thing.
via Why It’s Called “The Stupid Party”: GOP Turns Fight Against The Horrors Of ObamaCare Into A Process Story.

Dare I suggest that the GOP has not been truly Conservative in years? Their addiction to spending and their foreign policy proves that.