re: #67 DaddyG

re: #60 MarkAM

This is the dilemna that voters face. It is difficult to inspire trust by being the party that is misbehaving to a lesser degree. Right now the GOP is misbehaving to the degree they thing anti-incumbant sentiment will cover their tantrums. Which right now is a lot of coverage and a lot of misbehavior.

The Dems on the other hand acted like 51% of the electorate was a mandate to force their full agenda regardless of public input or sentiment.

I don’t believe that this means the Republicans have been secretly plotting to screw America since the 1960s any more than I believe that President Obama is a communist plant.

Politicians by their very nature are opportunists and panderers and we have rewarded this behavior.

Both parties are paying the price in popularity - but the populace is paying the most for our short sighted thinking and lack of participation during elections. The only way to reverse the political polarization and idiocy is by getting involved at a grassroots level and rewarding true statesmanship and good governance with re-election.

51% of the electorate? Seems to me that W and the Republicans acted as if that kind of margin were a mandate. Remember “political capital?”

Obama actually had one, closer to 53% and one of the larger popular majorities in recent years, not to mention control of both houses by a substantial margin.

I’m on the far left of the Democratic party and am very disappointed in their behavior, but to claim they didn’t have a mandate, whether or not they squandered it, is simply false.