I know, we compromised some, but the comments over at Red State are positively delightful. Here is a comment with a couple of replies, below the toke exhalation:
Rich • 4 hours ago
Right now all that conservative 'unity' has achieved is consistent failure, the government spending bill, the debt ceiling, the payroll tax extension, the general election, the fiscal cliff - failure after failure after failure as Obama and the Democrats have successfully exploited the 'united' conservative wing to great effect through divide and conquer tactics.
I suggest a new agenda for fiscal conservatives should be to take a long hard look at themselves and decide whether conservative purity or conservative results is more desirable as right now they are mutually exclusive - the 'all-or-nothing' stance of the conservative wing of the GOP are being rendered irrelevant by the House operating effectively as a moderate-GOP/Democrat coalition on any issue of importance.
(I appreciate this is bordering on heresy but results speak volumes...)
(replies to this):
MiamiDave Rich • 3 hours ago
You ask our Party to choose between conservative purity and conservative results, but under this Speaker and this Minority Leader, our Party has had neither.
(love that last!)
Rich MiamiDave • 3 hours ago
Not the Party, the conservative wing - it is the lack of Party unity which is killing the House GOP right now and every crack that appears is being driven into a chasm by Obama and the Democrats.
No case more obvious than the failure of House conservatives to understand that 'holding the line' on tax rises, until Jan 1 2013 when they become tax breaks and so all of a sudden they are ok was an absolute political and PR disaster. Had the House GOP managed to come together, pass a Bill along the lines of Plan B but with real spending cuts attached then the ball would be back in Obama and the Senate's court as at least the House did something approaching reasonable. Or the comment elsewhere on here where all of a sudden Simpson-Bowles looks outstanding compared to what has been achieved here - but that was never going to pass because it contained the dreaded 'tax increases' despite being a credible bipartisan deficit reduction program.
As it happened, Boehner's attempt at herding cats failed miserably, the House lost any leverage or credibility in the fiscal cliff negotiations and have been left as nothing more than a rubber-stamp on whatever Obama and the Democrat Senate was prepared to pass.
I haven't had this much schadenfreude since the election. These are Red State posters writing this. I'm definitely of the opinion that we may have won this. Yes, it will rear its ugly head in 60 days, but perhaps some lessons have been learned and, as Senator Graham is on record as saying, Obama won this.