Government Shutdown Thread

[pollyannaish]

It's interesting because I see George Will as an elitist Republican.

 

In many ways, the GOP rank and file since Regan has become a more Blue Collar/Common Sense/Solidly middle class party.

 

The divisions we see today are often between the elites and the non-elites. That is why terms such as RINO are used without a clear definition, IMO.

 

It's not how you vote, or what you believe in as much as it is whether or not you have disdain for another group. ie: the gulf between Sarah Palin and George Will. If the two of them sat down and looked at policy, the only major difference would be in tone and style. Hardscrabble and elegant.

 

Elitist tend to have a gentler, inside the beltway approach that is currently tone deaf to the exasperation many of the rank and file are feeling. We are looking for a leader in a windbreaker to scrabble up a pile of rubble with firefighters, grab a bull horn and let the whole world know what we are feeling. Not a gentleman in a suit and a hard hat standing fifty miles from the mess behind a barricade who would like to debate using Robert's rules of order.

 

To be honest, we all want that sort of honest, gritty leadership right now. Even the left is begging for it. Not the aloof, better than thou approach too many leaders have.

 

That is actually what makes this shutdown so uncomfortable for certain parts of our party.

 

What I find interesting though, is that Obama is managing to create this same division in his own party. A quote in Twitter sums it up perfectly:

 

Of course, I want people to have health care, Vinson said. I just didnt realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.

 

I'm hoping that split continues. And we can heal

Our own.

[Chickadee]

Give Us This Day, Our Daily Senate Scolding
Senate Chaplain Shows His Disapproval During Morning Prayer

 

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: October 6, 2013

 

WASHINGTON — The disapproval comes from angry constituents, baffled party elders and colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. But nowhere have senators found criticism more personal or immediate than right inside their own chamber every morning when the chaplain delivers the opening prayer.

 

“Save us from the madness,” the chaplain, a Seventh-day Adventist, former Navy rear admiral and collector of brightly colored bow ties named Barry C. Black, said one day late last week as he warmed up into what became an epic ministerial scolding.

 

“We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness and our pride,” he went on, his baritone voice filling the room. “Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”

 

Then he turned his attention back to the senators. “Remove from them that stubborn pride which imagines itself to be above and beyond criticism,” he said. “Forgive them the blunders they have committed.”

 

Senator Harry Reid, the pugnacious majority leader who has called his Republican adversaries anarchists, rumps and hostage takers, took note. As Mr. Black spoke, Mr. Reid, whose head was bowed low in prayer, broke his concentration and looked straight up at the chaplain.

 

“Following the suggestion in the prayer of Admiral Black,” the majority leader said after the invocation, seeming genuinely contrite, “I think we’ve all here in the Senate kind of lost the aura of Robert Byrd,” one of the historical giants of the Senate, who prized gentility and compromise.

 

He tries to use his proximity to the senators — and the fact that for at least one minute every morning, his is the only voice they hear — to break through on issues that he feels are especially urgent. Lately, he said, they seem to be paying attention.

 

“I remember once talking about self-inflicted wounds — that captured the imagination of some of our lawmakers,” he said. “Remember, my prayer is the first thing they hear every day. I have the opportunity, really, to frame the day in a special way.”

 

His words lately may be pointed, but his tone is always steady and calm.

 

“May they remember that all that is necessary for unintended catastrophic consequences is for good people to do nothing,” he said the day of the shutdown deadline.

 

“Unless you empower our lawmakers,” he prayed another day, “they can comprehend their duty but not perform it.”

 

The House, which has its own chaplain, liked what it heard from Mr. Black so much that it invited him to give the invocation on Friday.

 

“I see us playing a very dangerous game,” Mr. Black said as he sat in his office the other day.

 

“It’s like the showdown at the O.K. Corral. Who’s going to blink first? So I can’t help but have some of this spill over into my prayer. Because you’re hoping that something will get through and that cooler heads will prevail.”