Conservative Consensus

by Gaius PubliusWe don't need much comment here. Harry Reid has just said he will surrender to most things the Senate Republicans want to do, if they have the votes to do them. The Hill (my paragraphing):

Watch the video of Rachel above talking about what she called "a parallel universe in our politics." Towards the end she says that "Conservatives have built themselves a very popular, very successful media landscape that doesn't just tell conservatives things that they want to hear in terms of opinion; they just make stuff up. They make up news stories that aren't true. And when they are corrected in other places, they never disappear from the conservative media. And this is, increasingly, what American conservatives consume as their news diet. This is what they think news is.

Obama, Boehner and McConnell, political enemies, all feel they need to show the American people they can do something together that they can cooperate on. Remember Obama on Wednesday assuring the American people he heard us? "I'm eager to work with the new Congress to make the next two years as productive as possible.

​by Gaius Publius There will be much analysis of the 2014 election (including here), but I want to add a few preliminary notes of my own.1. DC insiders and corporatists have increased their hold over the House and the Senate. It took a joint, bipartisan effort, but the effort paid off on election day.

I think most Members of Congress, financed and sold out as they are to Wall Street, abhor the idea of going to war with the banksters over regulations. The finance sector spends more on bribing federal elected officials-- $663,265,994 last cycle alone-- than any other industry. And, although they give a bit more to Republicans, they give plenty to both corrupt Beltway parties.

When Boehner and Cantor offer a motion to suspend the rules and pass a bill, requiring a 2/3's vote for passage, it doesn't mean the bill isn't controversial; it does mean there's huge bipartisan support for the bill though. And, more often than not, it means lobbyists have greased the way for passage.

The Patriot Act should have been repealed the second the Democrats won control of Congress. Instead, many Democrats worked with Republicans to keep it in place. Same for FISA.