Yeah, I've been hearing that from Washington insiders (journalists and Dem strategists) on TV news programs lately. These are people from the left on MSNBC, not Fox.
They claim Obama has very little leverage or influence on Dem legislators now, and those legislators are not looking from any help from him for the 2014 elections. Also, I sensed from their remarks that the Dems felt Obama didn't do much to help them in the 2012 or 2010 elections.
Obama seems pretty isolated.
Fern
They never had a supermajority.. unless you count the few weeks that kennedy was alive and a member that was kicked out of the democratic party.
There was also no "backlash." The Republicans have used record breaking fillibusters to the tune of 2x ever before.. they have never even tried to do anything about healthcare despite 12 years of control(they couldn't care less), so they definitely didn't want Obama to get anything accomplished.
Now there's some real Grade A cherry-picking.
General trends about groups aren't invalidated by a handful of counterexamples. Every single person here knows that the vast majority of opposition to gay rights comes from conservatives. I'm baffled that you'd even try to argue against that.
Are you seriously going to tell me that a Republican candidate for president in 2012 would have survived the primary process being pro-gay-marriage?
This place is like the Twilight Zone.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/31091/republican-support-for-gay-marriage-jumps-to-52-percent
That's apparently what I saw, but the title is a bit misleading:
I didn't see any numbers for all Republicans, i.e., a poll including those over age 50.
Fern
No cherry picking at all.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus voiced support.
"I do believe, and I still will tell you that our party believes, that marriage is between one man and one woman."
That position opposing gay marriage is consistent with most Republicans' views. Per an April NBC/WSJ poll, just 27 percent of Republicans said they favored same-sex marriage (versus 73 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of independents, and 53 percent of all respondents).
Gay couples in Britain won the right to civil partnerships in 2004, which granted them nearly the same legal status as married heterosexual couples while avoiding the controversial use of the word “marriage.” But Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative-led coalition have launched a historic drive to grant gay men and lesbians the option of also entering into civil marriages, touching off a surprisingly fierce uproar in largely progressive Britain and fueling a rebellion on the right as the party comes under heavy fire from traditional allies in the British clergy.
Yet challenging tradition appears to be exactly Cameron’s point. The proposal, put forward this month despite the lack of a strong clamor for marriage within Britain’s gay community, is nevertheless emerging as the cornerstone of a bid by the 45-year-old prime minister and other young leaders on the right here to redefine what it means to be a modern Conservative.
“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative,” Cameron said in a recent landmark speech on the issue. “I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”
-snip-
Where and when did he do that?
If conservative attitudes on gay marriage continue to shift as quickly as they have, marriage equality nationwide may well be on the horizon. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus voiced his own support after Portmans announcement. I think its about being decent, Priebus told reporters. Its about dignity and respect, that nobody deserves to have their dignity diminished.
What didn't he get that he said he wanted?
Oh, well if you deny it, then obviously it all disappears, right?
Let's recap. In a subdiscussion about how extreme the right has become in the US, someone said this: "The Conservative party in the UK lines up pretty well with Democrats in the US. David Cameron supports gay marriage for crying out loud."
The obvious general point is that British Conservatives are more like American Democrats than American Republicans. Gay marriage is offered as an example of this.
Your response? "Poor example. Dick Cheney has been publicly supporting gay marriage for years now. He's as right wing as they come. Then there are others like Chris Christie etc. who also support it."
You attempted to argue against a general point about Republicans as a whole by choosing two people whose views are NOT representative of the group and pretending that their minority viewpoint means anything about the group as a whole. That's cherry-picking. Textbook example.
-snip-
When it became clear that the UK PM did not have enough support from his own party, the Conservative chief whip, George Young, was forced to appeal to the opposition leader, Ed Miliband (Labour), who had been planning to abstain from voting.
He was supportive of Portman's decision. He did not express support for gay marriage. Furthermore, the quote and reference I gave is newer than yours.
-snip-
-snip-
Assad's position is threatened right now. He has one objective, and that is to stay in power. He wants the international community to remain neutral in this conflict. It makes very little sense for him to cling to these chemicals if there is even the slightest chance the US and/or France will attack, or even step up supplying arms to the rebels, if he fails to comply. His regime can make more chemicals years from now after the dust settles. Assad can't be trusted ethically, but he does seem like a pragmatist. I could be wrong, but I think his incentive here is to comply.
Russia Denounces U.N. Chemical Report on Syria
Russia sharply criticized the new United Nations report on Syria’s chemical arms use on Wednesday as biased and incomplete..
The Russians also escalated their critiques of Western governments’ interpretations of the United Nations report...
The Russian criticism came as the five permanent members of the Security Council began a second day of negotiations at the United Nations on a draft resolution aimed at ensuring the Syrian government honors its commitment to identify and surrender all chemical munitions for destruction..
Russian news reports quoted the country’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, as saying during a visit to Damascus that the Syrian government had provided additional information that showed insurgents used chemical weapons not only on Aug. 21 but also on other occasions.
“We are unhappy about this report,” Mr. Ryabkov said in remarks broadcast by the state television network, RT. “We think that the report was distorted. It was one-sided. The basis of information upon which it is built is insufficient.” He also said Russia needed “to learn and know more on what happened beyond and above that incident of Aug. 21.”
Mr. Lavrov, who brokered the agreement with Secretary of State John Kerry to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international supervision, said on Tuesday that there were still “serious grounds to believe” that the Aug. 21 attack was a provocation carried out by the rebel side.
The Russian position, despite evidence that others say is abundantly damning of Mr. Assad’s forces, appeared intended to sow enough doubt to call into question additional pressure on Syria’s government...
MSNBC is middle/right at best.
Reread it. Note is says he voiced his own support. That cannot reasonable be read to mean he merely supported Portman making a decision.
Fern
You cannot reasonably be using your attempt to parse an earlier statement he made as a counterweight to Charles' link that not only came later, but clearly and unequivocally stated Priebus' position.
He doesn't support gay marriage. End of story. There is no way to rationally deny this.
-snip-
Convince me that Republicans are generally in support of gay marriage, despite all the polling showing otherwise? Suggest that UK conservatives are anywhere near as right-wing as American ones, when Republicans want to pass constitutional amendments banning gay marriage while the leader of the UK Conservatives wants to legalize it?
I still contend you guys picked a poor example to prove your point.
That's kinda how I see it. Obama is yet another politician out of touch with how things are in the real world. When unemployment was over 10% he decides the biggest problem facing our nation is healthcare. When he was out pushing for businesses to pay higher taxes, or whatever the hell he was doing at the time, he decided the best way to do that is to ridicule business owners reminding them who built the bridges they drive over.
Sounds like you need glasses if that's how you see things.
Are you saying that healthcare costs were not one of the biggest issues we as a nation are/were facing?
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm
And the unemployment rate has never been over 10% in the last 10 years.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
Perhaps it's you who is out of touch of reality.