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The real nature of Republican obstructionism

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When I recently commented to a liberal Facebook friend’s status update mocking the GOP, one of her ideological confrères (well technically a consoeur) quipped that the GOP was “The Grand Obstructionist Party, creating nothing but mayhem.”  Does seem this notion of the GOP as obstructionist is gaining traction on the left.

In a July 13 segment on Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and his no-new-taxes pledge, CNN’s Lisa Sylvester included this critique of the libertarian and his pledge from Michael Ettlinger of the Center for American Progress (CAP (tbg*)):

Grover Norquist is a big problem, but I think the people whose feet he’s holding to the fire are getting tired of it.

You know, we’re getting to the point where we need serious people to sit down and make serious decisions, and drawing really hard lines in the sand the way Grover does is hurting the country.

Ettlinger didn’t quite call Grover an obstructionist, but did fault him from preventing “serious people” (i.e., those who don’t want to rein in the federal government) from making decisions he deems serious (find federal solutions to all manner of societal ills.)  The pledge isn’t quite hurting the country as it is hurting Mr. Ettlinger’s plans — and those of the president — to expand the size of the federal government and the scope of its power.

Folks like Grover who draw a line in the sand when it comes to higher taxes seek to obstruct those plans.  So, if that’s what obstructionism is, I’m all for it.

*through big government.

Comments

  1. I guess everyone has forgotten the democrats obstructing republicans every chance they get. How about when democrats were screaming bloody murder for “shared power” back in the 90’s when they found themselves in the minority?

    I say let the whole house of cards come tumbling down. I’m against anything democrats want, especially new taxes.
    (Yes, that’s a period at the end of that sentence.)

  2. Many commentators and voters are condemning the politicians for bickering. But they are not arguing over which one of them gets to play with a particular toy for the next two minutes. They are arguing about issues of central importance in public policy. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP has never increased by as much as 5 per cent except in wartime, when politicians and voters on all sides agreed there was no choice. The battle over the debt limit is a battle over this fundamental issue. It will not be the last: the 2012 election will be another.

    More perspective here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/8660635/The-US-debt-deadlock.html

  4. “Confreres”? “Consouer”? I like to read your opinions, Dan, but sometimes your overwrought writing style is enough to drive me to distraction. As Strunk and White put it in their indispensable “The Elements of Style”,… “It’s in the dictionary, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

    I’m sure you’ll buy yourself a copy…”anon”.

  5. point taken, Draybee. I like the word confrere and use it frequently. Consoeur is not a word; I just put that parenthetical in an amusing aside since the person in question is female and the -frere suffix comes from the French word for brother.

    🙂