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“Don’t Govern On Fantasies”: A Prove-You-Can-Govern Strategy Will Inevitably Divide The GOP

When high-mindedness collides with reality, reality usually wins. Remember this when you hear talk of making the next two years a miracle of bipartisan comity.

Begin by being skeptical of the lists of what President Obama and the now Republican-controlled Congress should “obviously” agree on. Notice that liberal lists (including mine) start with immigration and sentencing reform while conservative lists focus on free trade and tax reform. Surprise! The election changed no one’s priorities.

And don’t be fooled by anyone who pretends that the 2016 election isn’t at the top of everyone’s calculations.

With Washington now so deeply divided philosophically, each side is primarily interested in creating a future government more congenial to getting what it wants. Republicans want to win total power two years from now; Democrats want to hang on to the presidency and take back the Senate.

Therefore, don’t misread the internal Republican debate. It is not a fight between pristine souls who just want to show they can govern and fierce ideologues who want to keep fighting. Both GOP camps want to strengthen the conservatives’ hand for 2016. They differ on how best to accomplish this.

The pro-governing Republicans favor a “first do no harm” approach. Thus did incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wisely rule out government shutdowns and debt-ceiling brinkmanship. He’s happy to work with Obama on trade because doing so advances a free market goal the GOP believes in — and because a trade battle would explode the Democratic coalition. For Republicans, what’s not to like?

The more militant conservatives are more candid about the real objective, which is “building the case for Republican governance after 2016.” Those words come from a must-read editorial in National Review, instructively entitled “The Governing Trap.”

“A prove-you-can-govern strategy will inevitably divide the party on the same tea-party-vs.-establishment lines that Republicans have just succeeded in overcoming,” the magazine argued. Also: “If voters come to believe that a Republican Congress and a Democratic president are doing a fine job of governing together, why wouldn’t they vote to continue the arrangement in 2016?”

They’re saying, in other words, that spending two more years making Obama look bad should remain the GOP’s central goal, lest Republicans make the whole country ready for Hillary Clinton. This is the prevailing view among conservatives. McConnell’s main argument with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and his followers is not about ends but means. McConnell is no less focused than Cruz on bringing down Obama and discrediting Democratic governance, but McConnell needs to be more subtle about it.

Where does this leave Obama and the Democrats? The first to-do item on Obama’s list must be to repair his currently abysmal relations with his own party on Capitol Hill. He will need his party as the GOP goes after him in one “investigative” hearing after another. He also needs them if he goes ahead, as he should, with executive orders on immigration reform.

Obama has already drawn a red line on immigration from which there is no easy retreat. And exit polls explain why Republicans, particularly House Speaker John Boehner, have little reason to act before Obama’s gone.

Overall, 57 percent of voters favored granting illegal immigrants “a chance to apply for legal status,” while 39 percent preferred deporting them. But those who favored deportation voted for Republican House candidates by better than 3 to 1. Boehner won’t risk alienating this loyal group. Better for Obama to pick a fight in which he is taking action than to give way to passivity and powerlessness.

In the end, Obama needs to govern as best he can even as he and his allies prepare for the longer struggle.

Democrats were tongue-tied about economics in the campaign. They avoided highlighting the substantial achievements of the Obama years for fear that doing so would make them seem out of touch with voters whose wages are stagnating. But neither did Democrats come up with plausible answers and policies to win over these voters. They lost both ways.

A Democratic Party paralyzed on economics won’t deserve to prevail. The president and his party — including Clinton — must find a way of touting their stewardship while advancing a bold but realistic agenda that meets the demands of Americans who are still hurting. This encompasses not only defending government’s role in achieving shared growth but also, as Obama suggested Friday, restoring faith in how government works.

Solving the country’s economic riddle would be a much better use of their time than investing in the fantasy that McConnell and Boehner will try to make Obama look good.

 

By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 09, 2014

November 13, 2014 Posted by | Congress, Democrats, Republicans | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Most Terrifying Of All”: Is It Time to Be Afraid of Scott Walker?

One of the silver linings Democrats were looking for on Tuesday was the possibility that some particularly nasty Republican governors might be shown the door. The most repellent had to be Maine’s thuggish Paul LePage, who due in large part to an independent candidacy will enjoy four more years to embarrass and immiserate the people of that fine state. Far more consequential, however, was Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Having survived a close shave, Walker can now board a train of destiny leaving Madison and heading all of 300 miles southwest to Des Moines.

Of all the potential GOP 2016 candidates, Walker may be the most terrifying. Yes, it would be a calamity of apocalyptic proportions if Ted Cruz were to become president, but we all know that’s never going to happen. Walker, however, is a much more credible candidate. Ed Kilgore has some insightful thoughts:

But it’s hard to think of any of the domestic government priorities of today’s conservative movement—from election suppression to rolling back abortion rights to undermining entitlements to erosion of collective bargaining rights to an entire economic strategy based on making life easy for “job-creators”—on which Walker hasn’t distinguished himself, against enormous resistance. In many respects (as I argued in a TNR essay about Walker in 2011), Scott Walker is exactly what you get if you take southern Republicanism in all its sordid glory and apply it in a frosty and unfamiliar environment. So the man is going to have an instinctive appeal to conservative activists everywhere, and has an electability argument few can make.

It’s true—Walker could stand up in a Republican debate, look around at his competitors, and say, “All these guys say they hate labor unions, but who’s done more to hasten the death of collective bargaining than I have?” then repeat the argument on any number of issues. So one could certainly see him catching fire in the primaries.

But as Ed says, Walker isn’t exactly brimming with charisma. With prior GOP nominees, even the ones who lost, you could understand why they might have some plausible appeal to the general electorate. Mitt Romney was a handsome, can-do business leader with a record of working with the other party. John McCain was a mavericky maverick. George W. Bush was a good-natured fella who wanted to be “compassionate.” But Walker? He’s all hard edges and ideological search-and-destroy missions, leaving bitterness and anger in his wake even when he wins.

Of course, if you aren’t in Wisconsin you’ve only seen so much of him. Maybe in the long slog of a primary campaign, he’d reveal depths of complexity and charm that aren’t yet apparent. But let’s hope not.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 7, 2014

November 13, 2014 Posted by | GOP Presidential Candidates, Republicans, Scott Walker | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

   

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