tv Cross Talk RT October 11, 2013 5:30pm-6:01pm EDT
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political stalemate or systemic breakdown the standoff consuming the american power elite reflects a country and political culture is deeply divided on the surface about budgets deficit's and borrowing caps go a little deeper and the issues like legitimacy in competence and institutions can be clearly seen is america suffering from a crisis of vision. cross-talk america divided i'm joined by patricia narrow in washington she's a senior fellow at the world policy institute also in washington we have alan lipman he is a distinguished professor of history at the american university and author of white protestant nation and in new york we cross to d.d. banky she is the g.o.p. strategist and blogger all right crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in any time one patricia if i go to you first in washington what the hell is going on in the united states it looks like a replay of the beginning of the civil war agree or disagree. oh
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well that's one way of putting it but yeah i think you know we're looking at a congress right now there. really isn't considering the american people at all they're just considering you know their own agenda which is to block or stop anything the president wants to do also confine any reach are eliminate a lot of the reach of the government but i think during the shutdown they found that they need some of the government as they keep defense open and keep other parts of the government open and you know i think they have to get out of this ideological you know standoff and back to supporting the u.s. and the americans ok patricia i can't stay with you what is the ideological divide then you said it's ideological to explain to my audience what that divide is. well you know it's pretty it's this idea of being more of a federalist mentality basically saying that you know we don't need to spend so
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much money on the government we don't need the government in our lives we don't you know want them to have so many programs and put so much money in you know and in helping education or health care or any of these we can do all of these things ourselves you know and i think what's happening here unfortunately is that we're seeing people with a lot of money and power manipulating this kind of idea that they want limited government so they can have more latitude to do you know business and take advantage of the employment sector and you know so this is counterproductive for all of us here ok deedy i have a suspicion you disagree go ahead yes i completely disagree far as saying federalists well yeah you know i think most americans do not want the government and their life so much in it you have to understand obamacare is the most sweeping program policy maybe ever and so many americans their poll every day that they don't want it they don't like it it's a mess now they can't even make it work so of course the republicans are standing
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strong because they're listening to their constituency because they don't want to bomb a care ok good i'm glad they're fighting for that because i don't want to bomb the care either and i can run our economy we have crushing debt and since president obama has been there it's been a stalemate in washington he is the problem he's the problem alan is he the problem because it looks to me it looks to me that this is one final push one final push against the new deal and the great society the last stand go ahead. yeah you're absolutely right and you know that the affordable care act is not even close to the most sweeping legislation we ever had doesn't compare for example to so security of the civil rights act of nine hundred sixty four and what's really going on whatever you think about the affordable care act it's the law of the land it went through both houses of congress signed by the president approved by the supreme court and there are constitutional mechanisms if you want for repealing or modifying it but
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what's going on here is they're trying to use something that has the republicans that has nothing to do with obamacare and that is funding the government and using that to try to extort changes in obamacare and get around the constitution and the remarkable thing here is number one the republican party claims to be the party of the constitution we do nothing that isn't authorized in the constitution where is this authorized in the constitution secondly this has nothing to do with limited government the republicans and conservatives as i wrote in my book white protestant nation have nothing to do with limited government the biggest builder of government and history of america is the most conservative president george w. bush they just want a different kind of government one that emphasizes the military the police restrictions like controls on abortion that's more restrictive of our personal
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freedoms than anything the democrats have contemplated so this whole thing has got to be seen in the bigger picture ok patricia you see it looks like you are agreeing ok do you agree or disagree because it doesn't have anything to do with obama or bush this is what i'm getting at it's a system here go ahead patricia well yes i think it is the system i mean the republicans came into office right after the first election of the president and you know determined to block in and sideline anything that he tried to do you know there are plenty of. people here in washington who can support those allocations but you know this is you know if they care at all about the system and the people they should do exactly what was just sad is is go through the system and go through the legislative process to figure out how they need to change or repeal or or add or make this law better or the system better and if i could say one more thing look you know if you don't want. health care is one of the most important things in this country and. people are dying by the thousands because they don't have it and i you
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know i can't agree with the fact that people don't want it or they want it or they don't want to because we can't tell at this point whether or not that's the case and you know thousands of people are trying to sign up for it now and thousands of people who do you know in the country want to have health care and. you know the government is not running this first of all and second of all even if they were we have tri-care for the military that's working phenomenally well and nobody has a problem with that and the government runs that health care system ok d.d.a. know if it's about obamacare and about obama why doesn't the republican support obamacare because it's so bad it's terrible legislation let it fail it in the midterm elections will be swept into power that's a good strategy if you're a republican leader a lot of people had that strategy and a lot of people feel that way but those of us who do not feel that after it's in there and in their solidly we'll never get rid of it and we think it will destroy the economy and there are so many hidden taxes so many problems that's why obama himself he keeps delaying all these parts of the program because they're bad
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they're not working and the reason for that is because they're afraid they're going to lose the senate so what we've got to do is republicans we've got to hold up as much as we can when you sit and win back the white house to stop this disastrous policy ok you don't want to be for an artist you know well if you look at i actually agree there was the question of debt it looks like the republicans want to make the issue obama but through all of this. the republicans have become the problem that's the perception go ahead that is the problem. first of all every time there's a major social change the right wing claims it's going to destroy the economy we've heard that the soul security act is going to destroy the economy we heard that medicare was going to destroy the economy we heard that medicaid is going to destroy the economy we heard that the americans disability act is going to destroy the economy and in fact after every one of these acts the economy got a lot stronger so they're really really crying wolf here but politically the
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republicans are slitting their own throat because they don't understand history every time either party has tried to push a constitutionally dubious means of achieving their ideological agenda against public opinion it's been disastrous for them this happened to the democrats in one thousand thirty seven when even the great franklin delano roosevelt couldn't push his court packing scheme through a democratic congress and it really hurt the democrats politically and of course what happened to the republicans in one nine hundred ninety five one nine hundred ninety six when did gingrich shut down the government and it contributed to the rehabilitation of president bill clinton and his reelection the republican party's esteem in the eyes of the american public has fall into an all time historic low in the gallup poll ok wait the eight percent ok because a g.o.p. strategist i'd like you to reply to that the republicans looking pretty bad right now just because i only heard i don't hear things cutting out so i'm not sure
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exactly what you said but i want to say this i did work for president bush making it a fine job and i think that blame the republicans completely ridiculous now i will give you that you know they're public and democrats together are d.c. is a problem in general i mean i think most americans when you poll them that they think that washington in general said republicans get blank they don't get all the plan that's ridiculous obama and painter and harry reid everybody thinks that they just cannot get along and right now they can't we are to stay on the one. want to point out though as president clinton was able to reach across the aisle and make it work so did president bush but president obama is a problem he will not work with the republicans and right now the american people reject obamacare i don't know what polls you're looking at but people don't like obamacare and i'm hoping that when this forward and all these problems continue they're going to say you know i forget this is democrats will win back the senate we can go back to maybe a country that we don't have crushing debt that we cannot sustain patricia but it looks good looks like to me that the republicans tend to can take the answer yes
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that's the perception least outside looking in what answer what i mean i'm going to patricia here compromise because obama is all about compromises before even negotiates it's remarkable patricia go ahead. he's you know he's compromised quite a bit i mean i'd like to go back to you know the point the point of us in this debt has to do with two wars it doesn't have to do with affordable health care and we can't say if this act is working or not because it hasn't quite frankly even started yet and you know i mean the senate has offered to pass to put a clean bill for a vote in the house and the house has agreed to it and then they turned around and deny it because again they're holding a legal legislation a law that's already been passed hostage now look you know if they don't like this and they don't want to fight it they have every right to and i agree one hundred percent washington is having huge problems and it's not working very well and it hasn't been for quite some time probably since these two wars started and we got
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a president that people decided they wanted to just block at every stand but you know i mean the bottom line here is that this is you know this is our country this is the united states of america we are americans we need to work together to figure this out we don't need to shut down and punish families punish people because if we don't like some law that's already been passed we have systems for this and we have to decide how to work through those systems and talk to each other and get them done if if the president doesn't want want to talk to congress why is congress they using that as an excuse not to let me jump in here hopefully we're going to get one short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on america divided state with our.
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led. to more news today violence is once again flared up look these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations are all today plugged. the be looking it was terrible a problem very hard to take a look at long here is a plug hat that has sat with the earthquake there's no lens let's plug.
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to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to mind you we're discussing the political impasse in washington. ok alan i think about to you in washington let's take a look at the tea party because it looks like that's the biggest problem for the republicans right now and i'll tell you i started out by asking the question of you know we going back to the american civil war it seems to me that there's
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a small number of people critical people that just simply do not recognize the legitimacy of barack obama's presidency you know this is something tragic in american history when that starts happening when you don't recognize the legitimacy of the person in the office you may not like the person but you don't even recognize the legitimacy that's kind of this is one of the deadlocks in american political culture today do you agree or disagree with me. i gotta agree with that completely and that's really frightening that's why you see it's actually a minority within a minority it's the far right wing of the tea party wing of the republican party that's really holding our government and perhaps our debt obligations hostage to their own ideology what ever you may think of the affordable care act that has nothing to do with funding the government or meeting our debt obligations that's why the democrats can't give in because then any party which has control of any
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part of either house could use the debt ceiling or the funding of the government as a gun to try to shoot down any piece of legislation they don't like but there is this faction within the republican party that they see obama as a communist some even call him the anti-christ it's that extreme and they are willing to go around the constitution go around their own ideology in order to oppose what they see as the centerpiece of the obama agenda the affordable care act is another thing going on here the republican party's future is very grim demographically their base is white protestants as i noted in my book that is the most shrinking part of the american electorate the rising part of the electorate is racial and ethnic minorities and the non-religious so the republicans time is numbered in trying to do everything they can with every tactic they have to try to
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advance their ideological agenda while they still have a modicum of power we see that in washington and we see that in the states with things like voter suppression laws with things like extremely restrictive anti abortion laws they want to kind of go out like a supernova supernova deeding you know what about the appeal of the radical right the tea party folks in congress here because they can't get elected on a national scale. i mean are they giving up on national politics because i mean mitt romney is the most mediocre republican you could ever come up with and he couldn't get elected and moving extremely to the right is not why well look i respect that the tea party is doing i mean they're standing strong i mean this policy is bad i'm in a container to say that because most americans think so and i'm sorry it really is connected to the debt and it is connected to the economy and this is supposed to be the collective oh you have all these young people buying take care of the olders and you said to earlier professor about this is not a sweeping
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a lot of course it is i mean i don't you know look i was i was a history major to you so i understand i know my history a little bit and i understand the. you know what f.d.r. tried to do but remember too that there have been some bad laws look you say it's a law the lamb but it is a bad law and we and our country and other countries have had bad was so it needs to be changed before it cemented in you say it's a law the land however the president himself keeps changing things now to go back to the tea party look back in the day seven hundred seventy six the patriots seem to be like they were the rebels while they were you know and it was the loyalists that would go along to get along look i don't think we can go along to get along right now i think our country i don't want to be a socialist country i want to be a republic i think we're on the verge of changing that and i don't want that i don't want a liberal country i don't want socialism and i don't want to be like europe quite frankly i want to be the nine states of america. patricia it's good stay with the absurdity of the right obama isn't anywhere close to being a socialist he is a lot over the last maybe the middle of the really and this is. where you can
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establish now there's a me. you know what i mean regenerated in the heritage foundation this was the original play by their carriage and. it wasn't that it was all so look they. went to a thousand now i know where it came from so i mean that's that's like that and i think that's a start it got way way way bigger way worse bloated i mean we don't want this. health care americans don't want it i don't know what you're looking at but yes i am i don't people do not like obamacare they don't use it commissioners are sort of like change and want you to jump to jump and patricia. yeah i'm i'm really kind of astonished about how we can come to all of these conclusions without even having moved forward or having a you know thought critically about what's going on you know you're making conclusions that this is going to be the end of america before it's even started you know this health care type of provision was quite successful in massachusetts i
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lived there for you know through my college and graduate school years and it worked very well there and it's not socialized medicine at all it's just the fact that somebody again by its health insurance coverage from or from blue cross blue shield or somewhere else and it's a managed by those companies they just have to get it that's all and in fact i think this is good for the economy because it actually gives a more you know. more basically. you know it provides a more competitive industry where you know being in new york i was paying you know one thousand dollars a month and other places i pay less and i mean it's no one's managing my health care other than these companies and it certainly isn't the government and i just have the opportunity to buy it from private industry and let me go back to allan here in washington well you know it still gets back to obama it seems to me in this
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is he's a lightning rod for the right here why does he have to keep battling things that were already accomplished in his first term i don't understand that. it's it really is hard to understand and the american people don't understand it twenty four percent of the american people approve of what the republicans are doing in congress right now this tactic that d.d. is so strongly supportive of what ever you think of the affordable care act the american people don't want the republicans to be doing this and also polls in competitive districts shows that this has thrown almost every race against the republicans in competitive districts and may well cost them the house of representatives so you're right how do you explain such a strategy that seems absolutely counterproductive it is this irrational hatred you wrote it he's a socialist which is so ridiculous we can argue pro and con the affordable care act
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from now to the end of time but it is not even close to socialism it's not even close to what the liberals want it is preacher isha so eloquently pointed out so there is you're right there is this blind belief that obama is this communist this socialist he's not legitimate he wasn't born in the united states you name it there is this belief on the part of the hard right that there was something illegitimate about obama and we're willing to abandon all right here and stick constitutional principles in order to oppose him as long as that let me i'm going to obviously going to d.d.'s behind of a cunt like the one to find your mom how can a final bamma be a winning strategy for the republican party moving forward i i don't see the math out there i don't understand the strategy and it's all negative all the way through the math in his thirty's right now as approval rating is the lowest ever and i think the worst president we've ever had in our country because we have this crushing debt people are not happy with obamacare i mean telling box area i mean
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over and over again i mean and then we have trends in terms of dollars of debt and it gets a problem seems like you just pass the buck i mean it really i don't know where you are getting that obama's. it's all about the republicans people are not happy with washington d.c. let granite unlike you all i will admit that there were there people are not going to the public and they're not happy with democrats all i'm saying is during this presidency there's been more of a stalemate in problems than any other time certainly with president bush and president clinton ok you know patricia i kind of like that you know passing the buck because obama got stuck holding the bag here over because of what's been done for the last fifty years sixty years in the united states and he got caught with it ok i don't see it as being different parties involved here it's more a way of governing the economy in foreign policy we haven't mentioned that too much here but it's just he got caught with it and now hard decisions have to be made well yeah i mean we've gone into debt because we've had two wars over the last twelve years and one in iraq and afghanistan in case we've forgotten about that and
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that seems to have been forgotten by you know a lot of the tea party members those who support that supported both of those wars that that we're in a lot of this debt crisis because that trillions of dollars and supported by none of our allies like the previous wars which you know i think we should think beyond or and i think the international community understands that and i think you know speaking of foreign policy i think the globe is pretty shocked at what's happening here and the stalemate in our government i mean a part of something the president might even said recently we've gone through coups in haven't had to deal with this kind of behavior so you know i think we need to take a deep breath and start rationalizing you're right no one likes washington but washington needs to get a grip and understand how it needs to serve the american people not itself and that's the bottom line you know how and that's a very good point because i think you know we again you could look at republicans and democrats but i mean there's just a process itself is breaking down i mean take people taking each other hostage we
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hear this kind of language right now i mean this is very different than it was thirty or forty years ago we could reach a hand across the aisle now this is a big stake. you know who is the biggest loser the american people you're absolutely right about that and you know this kind of you know absurd rhetoric you hear from the right he's a socialist you know he's responsible for a lot of debt the biggest spender in history is not barack obama was george w. bush it wasn't just the wars he he's the biggest spender the biggest bureaucracy builder in addition to the wars and also deregulating which created that economic crisis so all you know we can debate these things but to call obama a socialist to have all this you know exterior rhetoric doesn't help a i want to be fair to everybody i want to go to going to last twenty seconds last word go ahead yes because it's good that he's colony and that's all right i'm not going to say that i really think it's good for us to take a look at the issues now and now congress and obama have forced to take
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a scalpel and take a look i hope it works out but i have to tell you i think republicans need to stand strong for what they believe in because where the right ones particular topping are running out of time and i have a lot of discussions like this i want to thank you both many thanks to my guests in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here as you see you next time and remember crosstime rules. you know the one. i think. they would like to do it if you could you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because
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a free and open press is critical to our democracy albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our crowd simak know we've been hijacked by handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers one still just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem to try and rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing and if i ever feel ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. i know c.n.n. the m s n b c news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close and for the truth and might
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think. it's because one full attention in the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on here. at our teen years we have a different pretty. good though because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not going to look. at. you guys stick to the jokes i will hand over the stuff that i've got to. the standoff consuming the american power elite with lex a country and political culture is deeply divided on the surface about the budget step this is and borrowing times to go a little deeper and the issues like legitimacy and competence and institutions can
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be clearly seen is america suffering from a crisis a vision. of the. guys i'm at a martin and this is breaking the sat so tampa bay local news just came out with a stunning report apparently and recent flight from d.c. to orlando hosted what can only be described as a terrorist dry run take a look at how they figured it out. crewmembers say that shortly after takeoff a group of four quote middle eastern men caused a commotion the witnesses claim one of the men ran from his seat in coach toward the flight deck door he made a hard left and entered the forward bathroom quote for a considerable length of time well let me get this straight a guy that may have been arab booked at the bathroom minutes.
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