Ruthless is the word of the day

[really-looney]

I lifted this from a blog but after cutting I continued to read and move from link to link and forgot where it came from but the key word is ruthless. Speaker O'Neill was ruthless in his attack.

Instead, led by Tip O'Neill, the party waged a campaign of ruthless, partisan demagoguery that not only blocked the Reagan proposal but also drained the Reagan Revolution of most of its momentum and seemingly imperiled the entire GOP project



GETTING TO YES. For basically unrelated reasons, I've been reading a bit about the politics of the early 1980s, and there are some lessons there that, it seems to me, today's liberals would do well to learn. Many people are vaguely disconcerted by the "just say no" position on Social Security privatization. And on one level, rightly so. The program's not "in crisis," but it's got some long-term problems and it's substantially easier to improve things if you make the changes sooner rather than later. In that light, it's worth recalling that the 1983 bipartisan grand bargain on Social Security most emphatically did not come about because congressional Democrats demonstrated discomfort with Ronald Reagan's ideas while expressing a willingness to compromise.

Instead, led by Tip O'Neill, the party waged a campaign of ruthless, partisan demagoguery that not only blocked the Reagan proposal but also drained the Reagan Revolution of most of its momentum and seemingly imperiled the entire GOP project. It was then that the White House got interested in a compromise, and it worked out a reasonable personnel roster for a bipartisan commission to study the problem. They came up with some recommendations, which were then implemented, and everyone went home and fought about other things. The point, simply put, is that you only negotiate from a position of strength.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Any chance of resurrecting Tip O'Neil?

When did the dems forget how to fight?

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. kick

[really-looney]

4. Only been gone 11 years seems like longer

O’NEILL, Thomas Phillip, Jr. (Tip), a Representative from Massachusetts; born in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Mass., December 9, 1912; graduated from St. John’s High School, 1931; graduated from Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass., 1936; insurance agent; realtor; member of the Massachusetts state house of representatives, 1936-1952, and speaker, 1949-1952; member of school committee, Cambridge, Mass., 1946-1947; elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-third and to the sixteen succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1953-January 3, 1987); chair, Select Committee on Campaign Expenditures (Eighty-ninth through Ninety-second Congresses); majority whip (Ninety-second Congress), majority leader (Ninety-third and Ninety-fourth Congresses), Speaker of the House of Representatives (Ninety-fifth through Ninety-ninth Congresses); was not a candidate for reelection in 1986; died on January 5, 1994, in Boston, Mass.; interment in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Harwichport, Mass.

[MisterP]

3. this is why the DLC is so desperate to espouse "victory though surrender"

a glorious Thatcherite neocon-lib-imperial revolution can't happen with some Old Order Commie New Dealers standing firm and taking a stand; that's bad for their investments in privatizing megacorps.
Tally-ho, Shadowrun world and global plantation, here we come!