The GOP’s Slip Is Showing
Finally. After a year of artful camouflage and concealment, Republicans let us glimpse the rift between establishment pragmatists and Tea Party ideologues. There may be hope for the republic after all.
Forty Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), joined Democrats in voting for compromise legislation providing a two-month extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut. The bill passed 89 to 10, the kind of margin usually reserved for ceremonial resolutions in favor of motherhood. Senators clearly were confident that House approval would quickly follow.
But it didn’t, because Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) couldn’t get his Tea Party freshmen to go along. The result was a kind of intramural sniping among Republicans that we haven’t seen in years.
“It angers me that House Republicans would rather continue playing politics than find solutions,” said Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts.
The stalemate “is harming the Republican Party,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
“Are Republicans getting killed now in public opinion? There’s no question,” said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who urged House Republicans to just “get it over with.”
But Boehner hung tough, not out of principle but because he had no palatable choice. He didn’t dare bring the Senate bill to the floor for a vote, fearing that non-Tea Party members of the GOP caucus might defect. So he did nothing for four long days — and let the Republican Party be portrayed as so out-to-lunch that it would blithely raise taxes on 160 million Americans. The week before Christmas. As we roll into an election year.
The thing is, this portrayal is quite accurate, at least as it pertains to the Tea Party faction. More sensible Republicans have been so eager to take advantage of the Tea Party’s energy and emotion that they have essentially allowed the inmates to run the asylum. You will recall that it was the GOP, led by the Tea Party types, that threatened to send the Treasury into default last summer rather than approve a routine and necessary increase in the debt ceiling.
In the current imbroglio, nothing resembling a principle was involved. Boehner said that House Republicans wanted to extend the payroll tax cut for an entire year, rather than just two months. But even if you accept his claim at face value, it ignores the fact that the two-month deal was approved by the Senate for one reason only: to allow time for negotiation of a one-year extension.
In other words, the measure that House Republicans were so reluctant to pass, or even vote on, was crafted as a step toward the specific outcome that House Republicans claimed was their goal.
Boehner’s calls for compromise were absurd. The Senate bill was itself a bipartisan compromise, reached after tough bargaining and many concessions. Democrats abandoned their proposal for an income tax surcharge on those earning more than $1 million a year. President Obama accepted a rider forcing him to make a decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project before the November election. Republicans had already won the negotiation — until zealots in the House threatened to scuttle the whole thing.
McConnell maintained a steely silence until Thursday, then built a ladder for Boehner to climb down. He proposed that the House promptly enact a “short-term” extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance while working on a one-year measure. Within hours, the House caved.
This glimpse of honest debate among Republicans won’t last long, I predict. They’ll try their best to resume the practice of absolute anti-Obama unity, which has worked quite well for them. But no one can erase what voters have seen this week, and it wasn’t pretty.
There are only two possible reasons for House Republicans to behave the way they did. Maybe they are so blinded by ideology that they no longer care about the impact their actions might have on struggling American families. Or maybe their only guiding principle is that anything Obama supports, they oppose.
The week’s events offer a lesson for Obama, too. One reason for all the Republican angst was that public opinion has become more sensitive to issues of economic justice. This may be partly due to the Occupy protests. But I’m convinced that Obama’s fiery barnstorming in favor of his American Jobs Act has played a big role. People are hearing his message.
The president has been on the offensive. It’s no coincidence that, for the first time in quite a while, Republicans are backing up.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post,December 22, 2011
The House Republican Payroll Tax Cut Train Wreck
I recently brought my two-year-old son to see the National Christmas Tree, which resides on the Ellipse, just south of the White House. At 26 feet and 4 inches, it’s big but honestly somewhat underwhelming, having replaced a 42 foot spruce first planted during the Carter administration which was toppled by high winds in February (conservative metaphor alert!).
Fortunately my son didn’t pay any mind to the tree’s size, as he was held rapt by the model train sets arrayed around its base. He wasn’t even especially concerned that one of the trains had gone off its rails and lay on its side in the grass.
Liberal metaphor alert: Before the National Christmas Tree lay the National Train Wreck. Is there a more apt analogy for the Tea Party Congress?
Take the drama this week focused on extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. You know the contours: With overwhelming bipartisan support, the Senate passed a two-month extension in order to buy time to work out a longer-term agreement. House Speaker John Boehner reportedly called the bill a “good deal” and a “victory.” But by the next day, Boehner’s Tea Party-dominated caucus had yanked him back onto the reservation. The new party line was that a two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday was simply insufficient, that only a full-year extension, a version of which the House had already passed, would be acceptable. (This despite the fact that as recently as 2009 more than 50 House Republicans were saying the way to “effectively stimulate” the economy was a payroll tax holiday of … two months.)
Keep in mind that Republicans don’t actually favor a full-year extension. For example, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, who chairs the House GOP’s campaign committee, told the Los Angeles Times in September that it is a “horrible idea,” adding that Republican House candidates would have no problem making the case for letting the tax cut expire altogether. It turns out they really do have a problem making that case, so last week they pivoted by passing their year-long extension, which had poison pill riders attached to it (drug testing for unemployment recipients, for example, because in this economy if you’re jobless it must be because you’re high). They apparently finally ran up the white flag yesterday, more or less accepting the Senate bill.
If this scenario seems familiar—House Republicans playing, as Florida GOP Rep. Thomas Rooney put it, “high stakes poker” in an effort to push their extremist agenda, with the stakes being the economy and people’s livelihood—it is. We’ve seen this scenario play out again (see the near-government shutdown in April) and again (recall the unnecessary debt ceiling crisis in August). The big difference is that even Senate Republicans are fed up with their wild-eyed, Tea Partying House brethren. “It angers me that House Republicans would rather keep playing politics than find solutions,” Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown said after the House voted Tuesday to reject the Senate’s bipartisan bill. “Their actions will hurt American families and be detrimental to the fragile economy.” Nevada GOP Sen. Dean Heller said the House maneuvering “is about political leverage.”
Brown and Heller are the two Republican senators facing the toughest re-elections next year and so by necessity have a keen sense of what independent voters want. That they are taking such strong stances distancing themselves from the House reflects the fact that swing voters have had it with the Tea Party House lurching from one manufactured crisis to the next. The fact that House Republicans finally surrendered to political reality is almost irrelevant—just the fact of contriving another fight reinforces the public’s near-unanimous disapproval of Congress, its GOP members especially.
Only 11 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a poll released this week by Gallup. That’s lower than any such figure since Gallup started tracking congressional approval in 1974. For the year, Congress has an average approval rating of 17 percent, also a historic low. A Pew Research Center poll also released this week showed that 50 percent of voters (another record) believe that this Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses.
And this isn’t a case of a pox on both parties. While Democrats are not liked, voters have a special distaste for the GOP, according to Pew. By almost two-to-one (40 percent to 23 percent) more voters blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for Congress’s lack of accomplishment. Voters also see the GOP as being more extreme (53 to 33 percent), while they say Democrats are more willing to work with the other side (51 to 25 percent) and are “more honest and ethical” (45 to 28 percent).
The big beneficiary of the Tea Party Congress’s tone deaf overreach, and specifically its incoherent approach to the payroll tax cut, has been President Obama. His job approval wallowed in the low 40s for the last few months, but polls released this week by ABC and CNN showed his rating ticking back up to 49 percent. “President Barack Obama’s approval rating appears to be fueled by dramatic gains among middle-income Americans,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “The data suggest that the debate over the payroll tax is helping Obama’s efforts to portray himself as the defender of the middle class.”
Defending the middle class is the kind of political sweet spot which wins elections. To the extent House Republicans are not only ceding that ground but practically inviting Obama to occupy it, they are victims of a train wreck of their own devising.
And the wreck in front of the National Christmas Tree? As I looked on, another pair of visitors climbed the fence and set the train back on the tracks. I like to think voters will do the same next November.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, December 23, 2011
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah: The Snowdog – by Jacquie Lawson
Although we all have our different ideologies, preferences and opinions, we are all a part of “America The Beautiful“. There is no place like home. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa. I wish you all the very best in the coming New Year.
The Snowdog – animated Flash ecard by Jacquie Lawson
Originally Posted December 24, 2009
Mitt Romney’s Limited Understanding Of “Jobs”
Mitt Romney seems to think his strongest issue in a general-election race against President Obama is jobs. I’d argue he has that backwards.
In an interview with TIME Magazine’s Mark Halperin, Romney said, “I know that the Democrats will try and make this a campaign about Bain Capital…. 25 million people are out of work because of Barack Obama. And so I’ll compare my experience in the private sector where, net-net, we created over 100,000 jobs.”
“I’ll compare that record with his record, where he has not created any new jobs.”
This detachment from reality fascinates me, so let’s unwrap the argument.
First, the confused former governor believes 25 million people are out of work “because of Barack Obama.” If Romney can explain why Obama is to blame for a recession that began in 2007, I’d love to hear it. For that matter, the economy lost 3.6 million jobs in 2008 — the year before the president took office. How exactly is Obama responsible for that, too?
Second, Romney now claims to have created “over 100,000 jobs” at his vulture-capitalist firm. Romney also appears to have made this number up out of whole cloth. Indeed, two weeks ago, when Romney’s Super PAC ran an ad claiming he “helped create thousands of jobs” as CEO at Bain, Super PAC officials were asked to back that up with evidence. They refused.
Third, it’s remarkable that Romney is only willing to compare his “experience in the private sector.” What about when Romney was willing to put his experience to work in the public sector, during his one term as governor of Massachusetts? Romney doesn’t want to talk about it for a reason — his state’s record on job creation was “one of the worst in the country,” ranking 47th out of 50 states in job growth. It’s one of the reasons Romney left office after one term deeply unpopular, and why his former constituents don’t want him near the White House.
And fourth, Obama “has not created any new jobs”? The ease with which Romney lies continues to be disconcerting.
With one month remaining this year, the U.S. private sector has now added 1.67 million jobs in 2011, well ahead of last year’s private-sector total of 1.2 million, and the best year for businesses since 2006. Since March 2010, American businesses have created 2.9 million jobs.
I’d encourage Romney to consider this chart showing private-sector job growth by month since the Great Recession began…
…and this chart showing private-sector job growth by year over the last two decades (and 2011 isn’t over yet).
Reporters really need to brush up on this stuff. When Romney lies to their face — which seems to happen just about every day — they should be able to push back with reality.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 23, 2011
Oh, Please: The Hypocrisy Of Gingrich And Romney
To use the adverbs of which he is so fond, it is magnificently, fundamentally, literally ironic that Newt Gingrich, the master of slasher political rhetoric, is busy mewling over those meanie attack ads being run against him.
And to employ Mitt Romney’s favorite piece of management-consultant speak, with regards to those terrible, horrible nasty outside groups, it’s a bit rich for the former Massachusetts governor to bemoan their existence and assert that there’s absolutely, positively nothing he could do to get them to stop.
How dumb do they think we are?
Gingrich has long been a leading advocate and practitioner of the full-throated political attack. His current ads may be all warm and Christmas cozy, with syrupy music in the background, but his lifelong modus operandi has been to demonize opponents, not simply differ with them.
In “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” a guide produced by Gingrich’s GOPAC political action committee, fellow Republicans are advised, “Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. . . . Remember that creating a difference helps you.” Among the Gingrich-suggested words: “radical,” “pathetic,” “sick,” “traitors,” “steal,” “corrupt” and “disgrace.”
Gingrich didn’t stop at hurling words — he launched a first salvo in the ethics wars that ended up consuming him when he filed a complaint against then-House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Tex.
He was also a pioneer in the use of outside groups to buttress his political prospects. See GOPAC, above, and the investigation that ended up with Gingrich agreeing to a reprimand and a $300,000 fine.
So forgive me if I have a hard time generating any sympathy for the now put-upon candidate when he whines about the onslaught of negative attack ads being run by outside groups supporting Romney and others.
“I object to negative smear campaigns,” asserted Gingrich, master of the negative smear campaign. Boo-hoo-hoo.
Not that Romney deserves any sympathy, either. The explosion of super PACs, Romney said on MSNBC the other day, has been “a disaster” that “has made a mockery of our political campaign season.”
Really? I don’t recall Romney having anything critical to say about the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which ushered in the era of super PACs permitted to make unlimited expenditures on behalf of favored candidates. In fact, Romney told the Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald’s editorial board last month of the justices’ ruling: “I think their decision was a correct decision. I support their decision. I wish we could find a way to get money out of politics. I haven’t found a way to do that.”
More to the point, if Romney believes that super PACs are such a problematic development, could he explain what, precisely, he was doing speaking at events sponsored by Restore Our Future, the super PAC run by former Romney aides and now responsible for the barrage of negative advertising against Gingrich.
“We really ought to let campaigns raise the money they need and just get rid of these super PACs,” Romney said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Well, showing up at their events is a rather odd way to achieve this.
Then there is Romney’s phony claim that he can’t say anything to disavow the super PAC advertising for fear of being sent to “the big house” — as in, “My goodness, if we coordinate in any way whatsoever, we go to the big house.”
Oh, please. It’s illegal for the Romney campaign to coordinate with the Romney-backing super PAC, but those rules are porous enough to have allowed, for example, Romney to speak at a Restore Our Future event.
But the question posed to Romney was merely whether he would call on the super PAC, as Gingrich had demanded, to stop the negative advertising. “I’m not allowed to communicate with a super PAC in any way, shape or form,” he claimed. But nothing — nada, zilch — would prevent Romney from disavowing the advertising or calling on the super PAC to cut it out. Which, of course, he won’t.
This may sound a bit harsh, but, really, these two candidates deserve each other.
By: Ruth Marcus, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 22, 2011
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