Several reports out late today place House Majority Leader Eric Cantor directly at odds with House Speaker John Boehner, a situation very similar to that voiced by our Republican Insider weeks ago in an update titled “Norquist Day” and a more recent update several days ago aptly titled “Tell Speaker Boehner he can go to hell”
(Speaker John Boehner watches as GOP leadership rival Eric Cantor speaks to reporters during a recent press conference)
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EXCERPT: (via The Washington Post)
House Republicans prepare for final passage of ‘fiscal cliff’ bill
…Among House Republicans, however, the measure at first appeared to run into strong opposition. The GOP held two briefings for its members on the bill. After the first, which lasted nearly two hours, Cantor emerged to announce his opposition.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Cantor “forcefully” aired his concerns during the closed-door session, during which other GOP members expressed grave doubts about the Senate agreement…Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who has opposed any deal to raise taxes, voiced support for Cantor. LINK
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Here is an excerpt from an earlier Republican Insider update from over a month ago:
Now that is the kind of non-leadership thing I was telling you about before that is killing the party, so if there is a revolt inside the party, maybe that would be a good thing. That possibility leads me to Cantor, who I know does not totally trust Boehner’s instincts or loyalty to fiscal conservatism. So there’s a whole bunch of us watching Cantor closely right now for any clues, but very little info is coming from his office which always means they are cooking up something. I wish I could tell you what that is, but at this point, nobody around me knows. Someone suggested Cantor was preparing to challenge Boehner for the Speakers position…LINK
And another excerpt from the most recent Republican Insider update of just over a week ago:
Remember what I said a month ago about the push to remove Boehner from his position as Speaker? That move has now turned into all out war.
…The fact this particular Congressman was even approached about supporting the Plan B option shows just how weak John Boehner has become among his own Republicans. January 3rd is the vote for Speaker. I am going to be part of an effort to see Boehner removed. LINK
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So what once appeared highly unlikely – a direct and forceful challenge to John Boehner’s position as Speaker of the House, now appears increasingly possible. (Though RI indicated it has not yet reached the point of probable) The risk to someone like Eric Cantor would be great if he were to in fact openly push to be made the next Speaker and failed. What is clear is that RI is now part of an effort to do that very thing. If there is risk to Eric Cantor – the risk to RI is likely far greater.
Dangerous waters on the Hill these days, but how refreshing is it to see conservatives showing some fight in them once again. Let’s hope it becomes the rule and not merely the exception…
UPDATE: House gives final passage to fiscal cliff bill
Final approval came in the House on New Year’s Night. The vote was 257 to 167. Early reports indicate Eric Cantor voted NO.
This outcome was predicted by RI as well:
Doesn’t mean the fiscal cliff stuff won’t turn into some kind of negotiation pledge with the White House. That is too far gone to stop now and the Democrats are obviously trying to use it as political leverage with the voters for 2014. That appears to have been the plan all along. Typical Obama bullcrap. LINK
To have 167 NO votes is a sign of serious weakness to John Boehner. Will Eric Cantor or someone else step up to challenge the Speaker position?
Let’s hope so. Republicans need to shed a bit of in-house political blood NOW, reorganize, and then focus 100% on taking back the Senate in 2014.
Good luck to RI in helping to make that happen. Hope to hear from you soon…
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THE MAN WHO CALLS HIMSELF OBAMA
Unreal! What’s to stop these spineless bastards from capitulating when debt ceiling negotiations start in a few weeks. Dems will run same playbook and media will follow script….Repubs cave in again.
Bill Kristol should be expelled from the Republican party for life after he’s encouraged Boehner to “say yes to the mess.” I stopped listening to that neocon years ago…I thought for sure that after the Bush fiasco and 2 Obama victories Kristol would crawl away somewhere. I was wrong.
Kudos to the few that voted against this.
We are being played
The truth about the Valerie Plame case. (10 years later)
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2013/01/01/the-truth-about-the-valerie-plame-case-10-years-later/
I caught that. Looks like your Republican insider delivered the inside details for us. I hope they do get John Boener out of there. We need a new leader in the house IMO. I can’t believe Paul Ryan voted yes to pass the fiscal cliff bill??? WTF????? Guess him and Romney really were made for each other.
From: The American Thinker dot com
January 1, 2013
The Socialist Mind Game: A Brief Manual
By Oleg Atbashian
We are being played; it’s time we learned the game.
Conservatives have their Constitution. Progressives have their Narrative. The current battle for America is between these two concepts, and each side uses different rules to fight it.
One set of rules is consistent with an unchanging objective: limited government and individual freedoms. The other side’s rules are as fickle as their goals, which are never fully disclosed beyond the equivocal references to fairness and hyphenated forms of justice. They will have to remain vague and deny their true allegiances until a time when American voters will no longer squirm at the word “socialism.”
And yet spotting them isn’t that hard. As a bird is known by his feathers, socialists are known by their Game.
First tried and mastered in the USSR, the Game has since been popularized around the world, assuming various forms, names, and colors — from red to brown to green. It is now taking hold in the United States under the blue web banners of Obama’s campaign infomercials.
The laws of society and human nature are such that socialism can only be achieved through a certain sequence of steps and manipulations. For instance, the only way to attain material equality is to confiscate someone’s property and give it to others. That necessitates a centralized mechanism of coercion, redistribution, and control. Such a system gives extraordinary corrupting powers to a small centralized elite, while turning the rest of the citizenry into a compliant, obsequious herd.
All those who claimed they can do it differently were doomed to retrace the same path. Once you unleash the ancient powers of collectivism, you have only two options: control the human herd or be trampled underfoot.
Drawing blood is always an option, but there’s also a “cleaner” way to control the crowds by manipulating their minds with the cattle prods of collectivist morals and a fictional narrative that supplants the reality.
Let’s call it the Mind Game of Manipulative Illusions.
The Game existed since Cain and Abel, but it developed into an art form in the 20th century, with the rise of totalitarian regimes armed with state-controlled education, entertainment, and the media.
For a dictatorship to run efficiently, a sufficient number of people must give the regime a moral license to rule over them. The Mind Game of Manipulative Illusions secures and extends such a license.
Even the Soviet Communists, with all their tools of repression and fear, with all their power over anyone’s life and death, were still pressed to play mind games to make the people feel good about the Party rule. Towards the end they went easy on the Game and relaxed their grip on the media, entertainment, and education, accepting the policies of Glasnost. Once they lost the ability to control people’s hearts and minds, they also lost their moral license and, with it, the country.
The Game can mutate and adjust to different cultures, but its basic rules always remain as follows:
Socialism is not just about taking away your money; it’s also about making you praise the takers as your saviors. You are expected to feel good about being robbed of opportunities, talents, and success. You must agree that “you didn’t build that.” There must be a popular consensus that the crumbs you are getting back from the government are a sign of caring and largess — not a meager fraction of your actual earnings. Last but not least, you must sincerely believe that those who are trying to protect you from the thieves are really your enemies and deserve to be destroyed.
Building up and maintaining such an illusion on a massive scale requires participation of the media, education, and entertainment industries in a coordinated, long-term propaganda campaign.
Once the illusion reaches a critical mass, those afflicted by it become immune to facts, numbers, or rational arguments. Confronting them with logic will only cause more resentment, name-calling and, sometimes, violence.
The little game of illusions that President Obama is running under the name of “tax cuts for the middle class” is part of the larger Game; it contains all of the above elements.
The plan is to pass yet another extension of Bush’s tax cuts – i.e., to keep the status quo for the most -while excluding families with a joint income of over $250,000. In plain speak, it’s a tax hike. But calling things by their real names would be against the rules; this isn’t how the Game is played.
This mass mailing from Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter shows us how to play it:
I hope you had a lovely holiday and all is well. I’m writing with a quick update on the “fiscal cliff” and how you can get involved.
Right now, President Obama is asking you to think about what $2,000 a year means to you and your family — because Congress needs to hear it.
The Senate has passed a bill that stops taxes from going up for 98 percent of American families, and asks those who can afford it to pay a little more. If the House follows suit, President Obama is ready to sign it as soon as it hits his desk.
If they fail to do so, a typical middle-class family of four will see their taxes go up by $2,000 in just a few short weeks.
President Obama is asking Congress to do the right thing and act before the New Year, but he needs our help. We’ve got a good track record here: When we make our voices heard and urge Congress to take action — whether it’s about health care,student loans, Wall Street reform, or “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — they listen.
Watch this new video about the President’s tax plan, and take a moment to share your story: What does $2,000 a year mean to you and your family?
Listening to Obama now, one could have never guessed that these are the same “Bush’s tax cuts,” against which he had vigorously campaigned in the past — just like one could have never learned from his previous speeches that the reviled “tax cuts for the rich” had been saving middle-class families as much as $2,200 a year.
Until recently, the $2,200 amount was treated as classified information, which the Administration and the compliant media deemed unfit for consumption by the unwashed masses. Now that Obama wins reelection and needs to postpone the economic disaster caused by his first term, he “declassifies” the previously subversive amount and parades it on My.BarackObama.com as a centerpiece of his new glorious campaign for the people.
Simply put, Obama first discredits his predecessor’s idea, then steals it, bundles it with a job-killing tax hike, and rebrands it as his own benevolent gift to the toiling masses. Judging by responses on Obama’s official blog, WhiteHouse.gov, and Twitter, many of his supporters believe they are actually getting something out of it — but in reality they are about to lose what they have due to the resulting cutbacks, layoffs, and price increases.
As the Game goes on, just feeling good about the imaginary gift is no longer enough. You are expected to participate in spreading this Orwellian fantasy by haranguing Congress with demands of a tax hike while calling it a tax cut.
Join the herd and you will experience the collectivist sense of belonging, entitlement, and empowerment by engaging in quixotic class-struggle against the mythical windmills and all those mean-spirited capitalists who are conspiring to rob you of the rightful $2,200 disbursement. Forget the phrase “policies that got us into this mess”; these policies are now all about “doing the right thing.”
You end up with a sincere belief that greedy corporations, Republicans, the Tea Party, and the rest of the profligates opposing Obama’s policies are the perfidious enemy who deserves to be punished and purged.
If you’re wondering what kind of ignorant, misinformed, and morally misguided fools would fall for this trick, look no further than Obama’s most recent 56% job approval rating in the midst of a needlessly prolonged recession. The White House propagandist Stephanie Cutter knows her demographic and constructs simple phrases she believes they can understand. However, one question remains: if the Obama voters are the best and the brightest half of this nation, why does Ms. Cutter talk to them in the tone of a condescending kindergarten teacher?
The Game has a part for everyone, from top to bottom. As the top players obtain unprecedented powers, those at the bottom get high on the palliative illusion of safety and well-being.
That illusion is as powerful as it is addictive; a mere exposure to facts of life will cause the addict to writhe in agony. It is truly the Oxycontin for the masses. No presidential candidate can win on the promise of withdrawal; those who feel entitled to a pain-free existence will only vote for better and stronger illusions. The more the addiction spreads, the slimmer the chances of a realist ever occupying the White House again.
This can last for as long as there are enough productive taxpayers to support the habit. Once they also get hooked, stop working, or the system runs out of resources, expect a fearsome, excruciating withdrawal of epic proportions. Until then, keep rational arguments to yourself unless you crave losing friends and alienating people.
If you tell them that there is no such thing as a pain-free life, they’ll think you are some sadistic fascist who thrives on pain and takes pleasure in hurting people.
The problem with that attitude is that pain is nature’s way to warn us of danger. If it burns, don’t touch it. If it hurts, don’t repeat it. People who are born without an ability to feel pain are incapable of learning safe behaviors and are doomed to live a short life of bumps, burns, broken bones, and worse. A pain-free society would be even less viable.
The real choice, therefore, is between the occasional sharp pain of individual effort and the dull, permanent pain of collective misfortune, since redistributive economies always end in misery, shortages, and corruption. Western Europe’s gradual introduction of socialism is directly proportional to its gradual economic and moral decline, as evidenced by violent riots in response to inevitable austerity measures.
In the U.S., the pain-free life will be even shorter if the country falls off a cliff.
When the painkillers become useless, The Game remedies it by directing the massive anger toward the opposition.
The perception of a relentless struggle with the opposition must be permanent and persuasive. Even in times of calm and prosperity the people must believe that the opposition is holding them hostage and only the firm, wise guidance of the People’s Leader is saving them from imminent ruin. When the opponents are too few, too weak, and too disoriented to put up a real fight, their power and influence must be exaggerated.
The Game has its logic: for socialism to work, there has to be unanimity and compliance. Dissent leads to system malfunctions, causing hardship for all those in the care of the state. That effectively makes the dissenter a traitor and a public enemy. The need to suppress opposition necessitates a totalitarian form of government. While we aren’t at that stage yet, the demonization of dissenters has already begun.
Until a time when the opposition can be eliminated completely, having opponents can still be useful: you can steal their ideas, take advantage of their desire to help the economy, and blame them for any of your own failures. In the meantime, certain rules must be followed to control the public opinion and, through it, the opposition itself.
Maintain the perception of being constantly under attack. Don’t examine the opponents’ beliefs, nor answer their arguments. Discredit any media channels that offer them a platform. Enforce the following media template: the opposition is evil, treasonous, unfathomable, and psychotic. They can’t be reasoned with. They are inspired by fascism and financed by a conspiracy of shady oligarchs. Defame their donors. Whatever the mischief you’re planning to pull off, accuse them of doing it first; then proceed as planned, describing your actions as a necessary intervention. And above all, ridicule, ridicule, ridicule!
Imagine a scenario in which a theoretical group of left-wing radicals takes over America by playing the Game as described; then answer this question: how would their actions be different from what Obama, the Democrat Party, and their allies are doing today?
The stated intentions and the feel-good, vague rhetoric are just words. If the result is the same, nothing else matters. We lose.
ATB….The battle for America is as simple as GOOD vs. EVIL…..Nothing more,nothing less.All else is pointless.People have got to choose which side they are going to stand with.Make no mistake about it.This battle and choice,,,is for your very soul…(as well as for America).
It would be really nice if Conservatives had their Constitution. But that is a fiction. Where is the call for a Drug Prohibition Amendment?
It’s absurd to think there’s real friction or a real clash of vision or principle between Boner and Cantor.
The people that Boner is now serving are the same people who’ve had Cantor waiting in the wings to replace him. It’s obvious Boner will have no confidence among House Repubics and will need to be replaced. Cantor will be presented as a change, but in reality will be advancing the same agenda as Boner for the same masters.
Yawn.
We’ve allowed this charade to play out by reading along in our “willing suspension of disbelief”, but it’s time we snapped to and get serious.
Let’s stop farting around here. We don’t need a third Party, we need a SECOND Party as what we have now is one-Party-rule with Dems and Rpubs as different faces of the same Statist monster. We already have the template from the 2010 Tea Party Uprising that can still be built upon. We know it’s going to happen eventually, and once it does we’ll wonder what took us so long so let’s do it now!
Tea Party now!
“We don’t need a third Party, we need a SECOND Party as what we have now is one-Party-rule with Dems and Rpubs as different faces of the same Statist monster.”
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Republican Party Will Betray You Every Time!
I nominate Sarah Palin for new Speaker of the House … would be worth it just to watch the heads explode across the Leftist spectrum (Democrats and RINOs) — but know that’s too sane to even contemplate, let alone happen.
L.I.B.
Lets.Institutionalize.Boehner.
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Light.Incinerate.Blaze.
– and –
Let.It.Burn
Cantor may not be Mr. Perfect but he is by far much better than Boehner. If Cantor was another Boehner, he would have voted in agreement with Boehner on this one. I’ve seen him disagree with Boehner before. He is usually right and Boehner is usually left of him. He may not be ultra-conservative, but he leans more to the right.
Agree 100%. Cantor is way more conservative than Boehner. And I have never seen him cry!
Sorry to say but these two are made from the same cloth. Same huge ego, same thirth for power, same disregard for the founding principles and the constitution, same powerful backup.
We are being played again.
Being served a milder version of disaster and beong told to shup up.
I have no confidence whatsoever in Cantor being even slightly better than Boehner.
How soon we forget. Please remember that Cantor is the go-to-guy by the FBI whistleblower who was concerned about the Petraeus investigation who in turn turned the WB back into the FBI. He IS NOT A GOOD GUY!!
I saw on one of the news programs this morning that Cantor was really upset with the deal Boehner was pushing. He was saying it during a meeting with a bunch of Congressman there. The guy was saying the Cantor and Boehner have really split on this issue and that there will be a lot of fence mending after this one. Looks like your insider nailed it UM.
OK, here is a novel idea for you RI:
What about sending real negociators to the table for change.
Who says that the Majority Leader has to be the one negociating?
What about asking real business men like Trump who are the best negociators in the US, hire them as temporary staffers or just plain temporary negociators and let the professionals to their jobs!!!!!
Maybe then, may be we would have results worth talking about.
Enough of these ego trips by so-called political leaders who have no real business experience or training.
Most of them were lawyers in their former life anyway. They never took any formal negociation training whatsoever. I can garanty you that. Been there.
But any MBA’s has. First year credits. Been there.