out of touch republicans

gimmesometruth27

:fp: :fp:

seriously, these people are destroying the republican party. boehner and rand paul. one of their goals in this congress is the end abortion in america. i hope they keep campaigning on things like this because america is going to end up rejecting this party once and for all if they do not come back from the far right.

let's use this thread to post articles demonstrating out of touch republican legislators and their crackpot and antiquated ideas. i'll start...


John Boehner: Ending Abortion Is 'One Of Our Most Fundamental Goals This Year'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/2 ... 52597.html

As hundreds of thousands of people braved sub-freezing temperatures in Washington, D.C., on Friday to join the anti-abortion protest March for Life, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took the opportunity to reiterate his commitment to banning abortion in America for good.

Addressing the crowd at the National Mall via video broadcast, Boehner said it's time for anti-abortion activisits to "commit ourselves to doing everything we can to protect the sanctity of life." Step one, he said, is making permanent the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal dollars from being used to pay for abortions except in cases of rape or incest.

"For the new Congress, that means bringing together a bipartisan pro-life majority and getting to work," Boehner said. "In accordance with the will of the people, we will again work to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, formally codifying the Hyde Amendment."

Boehner said he will make it a national priority to "help make abortion a relic of the past."

"Let that be one of our most fundamental goals this year," he said.

The March for Life attracted a diverse crowd of young and old protesters from across the country. Hundreds of parents had bundled up their infants and toddlers and strapped protest signs to their strollers. Michael Kennedy, 33, and his wife Bethany, who is pregnant, drove their four children down from Westerly, Rhode Island to stand in 20-degree weather on the Mall.

"They're troopers," Bethany told HuffPost. "We felt like we have a responsibility just to be a witness to everyone else, to see that this is life, our children. We needed to be here."

Several lawmakers made it out to the protest to address the crowd in person. Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) touted a bill she recently introduced that would strip Title X family planning funds from Planned Parenthood, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) delivered a sermon that called for a "spiritual cleansing."

"Our nation is adrift, adrift in a wilderness where right and wrong have become subservient to a hedonism of the moment," Paul said. "I believe our country is in need of a spiritual cleansing."

He added, "We much preach a gospel so full of compassion, a gospel so full of justice that it cannot be resisted. Then and only then will the law again protect the innocent.

unsung

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

brianlux

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

:fp: Does everything have to be a gun thread these days?

brianlux

According to this article, many Republicans believe the Republican part is out of touch and needs to become more moderate:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... /?page=all

Viewed as out of touch, GOP gathers forces to plot rebirth

As House Republicans head to Williamsburg, Va., to talk strategy at their annual retreat, a top Democratic pollster warned Wednesday that voters think the GOP has fallen outside the mainstream on everything from taxes to gay rights.

Pollster Stanley Greenberg, a former adviser to the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, released a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll that found the GOP is losing ground with voters of all stripes.

“The fact is that we have a set of cultural and economic issues, and budget issues, in which [Republicans] are seen as extreme and out of touch,” Mr. Greenberg said.

The survey was released as House Republicans leave the media glare of Washington for two days in the historic town of Williamsburg, where lawmakers will talk about ways to reverse the party’s setbacks.

Republicans lost seats in November’s elections, then saw two major bills — the end-of-year tax increases and this week’s emergency aid for Superstorm Sandy victims — clear the House on the strength of Democratic votes.

In between, House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, had to outlast an attempt to overthrow him as the party’s congressional leader.

Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist who worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign last year, said the retreat gives lawmakers a chance to start laying the groundwork necessary to re-establish the GOP brand.

“Right now, we are caught in a vicious cycle of just reacting to events that happen in two-week increments. Instead, we have to look at our challenge of rebuilding in a much more comprehensive fashion,” Mr. Madden said. “What is the positive impression that we want voters to have two years from now, and then four years from now, when we have another presidential election?”

Mr. Madden said the GOP has drifted away from being the “party of ideas” since 2010, when Republican lawmakers rode an anti-Washington — as opposed to a pro-GOP — electorate into a House majority.

Last year, the party allowed itself to be pigeonholed as just “anti-Obama,” he said.

But recapturing momentum at the ballot box doesn’t mean abandoning basic conservative principles, Mr. Madden said. “Some people try to push the party toward moderating, but I don’t think it is a case of moderating. It is more of a case of modernizing the policies we support and how we talk about them,” he said.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, said the updated party message also must appeal to nontraditional supporters.

“If we look at polling, the Republican brand is in the toilet. Part of that is the ideas are not connecting with what we would call the mainstream of the moderate voters,” Mr. O’Connell said. “What they have to do is stop looking at the past. Ronald Reagan is dead. They have to start shopping for the future. I am the world’s biggest Reagan fan, but it is time to move on. You have to adjust to the times, and once you adjust, you have to set the path forward.”

Mr. O’Connell said the party could learn something from Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who said after the election that when it comes to thorny issues, such as immigration, political rhetoric is as important as policy.

“It’s really hard to get people to listen to you on economic growth, on tax rates, on health care, if they think you want to deport their grandmother,” Mr. Rubio said.

Mr. Greenberg’s poll shows that Republicans have an uphill battle ahead.

Among likely voters, 53 percent of respondents said they approve of the way Mr. Obama is doing his job, while 25 percent said they approve of the way Republicans are running the House.

On the issues of gay rights and tax rates for millionaires and corporations, more than 6 in 10 of the respondents said the Republican Party was “growing extreme and out of touch.”

More than 5 in 10 said the party was missing the mark in dealing with Wall Street regulations and climate change, as well as aid to the poor, immigration and women’s issues.

“There are a very large number of issues where they are seen as extreme,” Mr. Greenberg said in a conference call with reporters. He said the party scores best on how it has dealt with assault weapons and gun violence.

The poll of more than 1,800 voters and likely voters was conducted Jan. 10-14 and had a margin of error of 3.2 percent.

Democrats have had a field day with Republican struggles.

Rep. Sander M. Levin said this week that in his 30-plus years on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee he has never seen such a radicalization of the Republican conference, and blamed gridlock in Congress on the tension within the party ranks.

“I think that the results of that were shown in the difficulty that the speaker had in the last few weeks,” Mr. Levin said.

He added that he thought “in terms of mainstream America, that the Republican ranks have changed much more dramatically than … the texture of the Democratic caucus.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also blasted out a tongue-in-cheek email offering suggested retreat agenda items the Republican Party might want to consider to help “explain their extremism and dysfunction to the American people.”

The committee’s recommendations included: stop talking about “legitimate rape,” study Science 101 and practice interacting with women and minority voters.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... z2J6OSGs1n
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

gimmesometruth27

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

your thoughts on guns are noted. please do not derail the thread with the first reply.

unsung

brianlux wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

:fp: Does everything have to be a gun thread these days?

That's the left's excuse though. So much loss of life, so much potential lost. Same logic should apply here.

brianlux

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

your thoughts on guns are noted. please do not derail the thread with the first reply.

gimmesometruth27

:oops: :oops: :oops:

:fp:

this guy is a rep in my state...

Missouri Republican proposes bill to require teaching of ‘intelligent design’



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/24/m ... nt-design/

Legislation proposed in the Missouri House of Representatives on Wednesday would require schools to treat the theory of evolution and intelligent design equally.

The Missouri Standard Science Act states the theory of evolution must be taught side-by-side with intelligent design in public elementary and secondary schools. The bill also requires any textbook that discusses evolution to “give equal treatment to biological evolution and biological intelligent design.”

Proponents of intelligent design, a variant of creationism, believe the complexity of life cannot be adequately explained by natural processes such as biological evolution.

The bill was introduced by State Rep. Rick Brattin, and cosponsored by State Reps. Andrew Koenig and Kurt Bahr. All three lawmakers are Republicans.

Brattin introduced a nearly identical bill last year. He told local media outlets the bill was “just good science” and promoted “objectivity in the science room.”

Brattin, Koenig, Bahr and other Missouri lawmakers also introduced legislation this month that would encourage teachers to discuss the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of the theory of evolution. Critics said the law was intended to undermine scientific teaching by presenting evolution to students as if it was a controversial topic among biologists.

“It’s ironic that creationist strategies continue to evolve,” Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Scientific Education said. “At first, creationists tried to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools altogether. When they were no longer able to do so, they tried to ‘balance’ it with the teaching of Biblical creationism, or scientific creationism, or intelligent design. After the Kitzmiller trial in 2005, in which teaching intelligent design was found by a federal court to be unconstitutional, there’s been a shift toward belittling evolution — as just a theory, or as in need of critical analysis, or as the subject of scientific controversy.”

gimmesometruth27

unsung wrote:

brianlux wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

:fp: Does everything have to be a gun thread these days?

That's the left's excuse though. So much loss of life, so much potential lost. Same logic should apply here.

it is not the same thing.

this thread is for articles demonstrating how out of touch congressional republicans are, and how that is going to negatively impact their party. i am not going to debate you on your erroneous comparison of gun deaths and abortion.

gimmesometruth27

can't win the legit way, so let's rig the game.

First Thoughts: Changing the rules, not the party

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013 ... party?lite

Republicans in MI, OH, PA, VA are looking to change the Electoral College rules, not their party… The changes would give the GOP a HUGE advantage in presidential contests… But it would also present this dilemma for Republicans: It would speed up efforts to have the popular vote decide presidential elections…

By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Brower

*** Changing the rules, not the party: As the Republican National Committee concludes its three-day meeting in Charlotte, N.C., you’ve by now heard all the different ways Republicans are looking to improve their standing in time for the next presidential election. They want to do a better job reaching out to Latinos (see Jeb Bush’s WSJ op-ed), they want to soften their tone when it comes to social issues, and they want to narrow their technological and get-out-the-vote operation gap with Democrats. But here’s another way you might not have heard: Some Republicans are looking to change the Electoral College system in battleground states that Democrats have won in the last two cycles. As the Washington Post reports, Republicans in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia -- all controlled at the state level (in some form or fashion) by the GOP -- have proposed awarding their Electoral College votes by congressional district instead of the winner-take-all approach used by every state except for two (Maine and Nebraska). “No state is moving quicker than Virginia, where state senators are likely to vote on the plan as soon as next week,” the Post says.

*** That would give the GOP a HUGE advantage: The Republicans advocating these changes say they would give smaller communities more of a voice in presidential battleground states. But there’s a bigger story here: The moves would give the GOP a significant advantage due to the fact that redistricting has concentrated the Democratic vote to just a handful of congressional districts in these states. Take Virginia, for example: Obama won the state in 2012 by four percentage points and by about 150,000 votes -- and he took all of the state’s 13 electoral votes. But under the proposed changes, Mitt Romney would have won nine of the state’s electoral votes to Obama’s four. Put another way, if every electoral vote in the country was awarded by congressional district (plus two votes to the statewide winner), Romney would have defeated Obama, 276 to 262 in electoral votes (instead of Obama winning 332 to 206), according to Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz. And if only the states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin were changed to this system, Obama would have BARELY won, 271-267, Abramowitz adds.

*** The GOP’s dilemma: The current system vs. the popular vote: And this isn’t just coming from state-level Republicans. In an interview earlier this month with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus -- who’s expected to win re-election as RNC chair today in Charlotte -- appeared to bless these changes to the Electoral College system. "I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," Priebus said, but he also added: "It's not my decision that can come from the RNC, that's for sure." But these proposed changes are shortsighted for two reasons. One, the Republicans pushing them are all but acknowledging that their party problems heading into 2016 are so significant that they have to change the rules in order to win. In other words, they are throwing in the towel and trying to rig the system. Two, the proposed changes would only speed up efforts to have the popular vote -- and not the Electoral College -- decide presidential contests, because many would see that as a fairer system. So Republicans need to ask themselves this question: Do they want the current Electoral College system, or do they want the popular vote? And a final question here: Where are the big leaders of the party on this issue? Haley Barbour? Jeb Bush? George W. Bush?

unsung

brianlux wrote:

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

your thoughts on guns are noted. please do not derail the thread with the first reply.

I'm making a valid comparison on how much life is lost as compared to what the left perceives as the real issue. If you can't take honest debate don't create threads. Or at least state that you only want those that agree with you to reply.

Here are more stats.

In 2011 there were 2,513,171 documented deaths in the US.

.34% were gun related, about 8500.
.012% were related to so-called assault weapons, about 300.

By comparison 1,210,000 abortions were performed in the US in 2008.

Keep telling me that guns are the problem. You always say that a person is a law-abiding citizen until they use a gun in a crime. By that logic a dr is law abiding until he performs an abortion, now he is a murderer.


Rand Paul 2016.

gimmesometruth27

gimmesometruth27

unsung wrote:

I'm making a valid comparison on how much life is lost as compared to what the left perceives as the real issue. If you can't take honest debate don't create threads. Or at least state that you only want those that agree with you to reply.

Here are more stats.

In 2011 there were 2,513,171 documented deaths in the US.

.34% were gun related, about 8500.
.012% were related to so-called assault weapons, about 300.

By comparison 1,210,000 abortions were performed in the US in 2008.

Keep telling me that guns are the problem. You always say that a person is a law-abiding citizen until they use a gun in a crime. By that logic a dr is law abiding until he performs an abortion, now he is a murderer.


Rand Paul 2016.

says the opthomologist who was sued twice for malpractice...

we are not going backward and arguing settled law.

this is why the gop got their asses handed to them and will do it again in 2014. keep harping on abortion.

unsung

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

this thread is for articles demonstrating how out of touch congressional republicans are, and how that is going to negatively impact their party. i am not going to debate you on your erroneous comparison of gun deaths and abortion.

You mentioned abortion as an issue, I'm merely agreeing with you.

know1

All of Congress is out of touch. Let's vote them all out.

(although I happen to agree that we should end abortion)

EZ1221C

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

You can't spell crazy without R-AZ. What is the use of having high school students swear allegiance to the Constitution? They are graduating high school, not taking the oath of office for Congress.

Bentleyspop

unsung wrote:

brianlux wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

I'm making a valid comparison on how much life is lost as compared to what the left perceives as the real issue. If you can't take honest debate don't create threads. Or at least state that you only want those that agree with you to reply.

Here are more stats.

In 2011 there were 2,513,171 documented deaths in the US.

.34% were gun related, about 8500.
.012% were related to so-called assault weapons, about 300.

By comparison 1,210,000 abortions were performed in the US in 2008.

Keep telling me that guns are the problem. You always say that a person is a law-abiding citizen until they use a gun in a crime. By that logic a dr is law abiding until he performs an abortion, now he is a murderer.


Rand Paul 2016

:crazy:

usamamasan1

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

I have no idea what an assault weapon is. Who made that term up anyway?

Back on topic,abortion had killed 55,000,000 since roe v wade in 1973.
That's more dead than the population of California and New York.

brianlux

usamamasan1 wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

I have no idea what an assault weapon is. Who made that term up anyway?

Back on topic,abortion had killed 55,000,000 since roe v wade in 1973.
That's more dead than the population of California and New York.

According to wikipedia the number is 50 million legal abortions. But either way, if those had not been able to be done legally, how many women do suppose would have died or been seriously harmed by illegal abortions? Too many!

unsung

How much potential was lost with the loss of 55M people?

Or maybe it's just 20 rich white kids that have potential.

unsung

usamamasan1 wrote:

unsung wrote:

Abortion kills more life than any so-called assault weapon.

I have no idea what an assault weapon is. Who made that term up anyway?

Back on topic,abortion had killed 55,000,000 since roe v wade in 1973.
That's more dead than the population of California and New York.

Who knows. This topic isn't about guns though, it's about how Republicans are destroying their voter base while trying to defend life.

What also irritates me is that it forces me to defend Republicans.