“Bringing The Shutdown Logic Home”: The Government Shutdown Crowd Has A New Target, John Boehner
The long knives are out for John Boehner on the right – again. National Journal’s Tim Alberta has a must-read today on a conservative plot to oust the House speaker next year … or put the squeeze on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor … or something.
According to Alberta, the frustrated right numbers in the “several dozen,” with the ringleaders all hailing from the House Liberty Caucus, from which came the core of the dozen GOP’ers who voted against Boehner for speaker last year. Alberta writes:
The conservatives’ exasperation with leadership is well known. And now, in discreet dinners at the Capitol Hill Club and in winding, hypothetical-laced email chains, they’re trying to figure out what to do about it. Some say it’s enough to coalesce behind — and start whipping votes for — a single conservative leadership candidate. Others want to cut a deal with Majority Leader Eric Cantor: We’ll back you for speaker if you promise to bring aboard a conservative lieutenant.
But there’s a more audacious option on the table, according to conservatives involved in the deliberations. They say between 40 and 50 members have already committed verbally to electing a new speaker. If those numbers hold, organizers say, they could force Boehner to step aside as speaker in late November, when the incoming GOP conference meets for the first time, by showing him that he won’t have the votes to be reelected in January.
They’re not gunning for Boehner alone. They’re pissed at Eric Cantor because he moved the Medicare “doc fix” through on a voice vote a few weeks back, a move which had the pragmatic virtue of passing needed legislation without forcing members to go on the record casting a vote which could have proved potentially troublesome in a primary. In short, Alberta writes, “conservatives find fault with the entire leadership team.”
So what’s the plan? They haven’t found someone to run against Boehner yet (conservatives like Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling and Ohio Rep. Steve Scalise aren’t interested, Alberta reports) and while “privately they define success as vaulting one of their own into any of the top three leadership spots,” they also tell Alberta that scenarios like Republican Study Committee Chairman Steve Scalise running for whip – which is, you know, one of the top three leadership spots – “would hardly qualify as the splash conservatives are determined to make.”
In short conservatives are all riled up and determined to make a splash; they’re eyeing a nuclear option – blocking Boehner from another term as speaker – but don’t have a clear end-game beyond that. But they’re pretty sure one will materialize when their opponents inevitably fold in the face of their show of will. They’re definitely going to make a splash because they’re really, really determined.
Does any of this sound familiar? It should – it’s the government shutdown logic transferred to the Republican civil war. The right wound itself up about Obamacare and then shuttered the government without a clear plan other than that Obama was going to inevitably fold in the face of their Keyzer Soze-like superior show of will. However it turned out, they were going to get something big out of the whole affair because they’d tried really, really hard. (“I don’t think our conference will be amenable for settling for a colletion of things after we’ve fought so hard,” New Jersey GOP Rep. Scott Garrett said at the time.) How’d all that turn out?
The tea party right’s problem here is that they echo chamber themselves into badly overestimating their leverage and end up with little more than egg on their collective faces. See the paltry dozen votes they managed against Boehner last time, for example, or the outcome of the government shutdown.
We’ll see. Maybe the wingers really will be able to produce 50 anti-Boehner votes and shut down the House. Or maybe they’re basting too long in their own tough and angry talk. Again.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, April 10, 2014
“How Conservatives Are Destroying Capitalism”: The GOP Is Working Nonstop To Exacerbate The System’s Worst Excesses
I’ve written before about how Thomas Piketty’s great new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made free-market conservatives distinctly uneasy. Perhaps for the first time in the post-war era, a genuine American socialist movement might be on the horizon, thanks to growing awareness both of rising income inequality and of a system that is flagrantly rigged in favor of the financial elite.
Paradoxically, conservatives are more responsible for this socialist resurgence than anyone. By fanatically opposing the kind of mild — and yes, socialist-tinged — reforms that would make capitalism more tolerable for the most vulnerable in society, conservatives are stoking a leftist bonfire.
Some conservatives, like the reformist Michael Strain, seem to grasp the problem. But most appear to exist in a kind of time warp in which the Soviet Union still exists and leftist ideas are obviously self-discrediting. Jim Pethokoukis gave us an example of this at National Review:
Thanks to Piketty, the Left is now having a Galaxy Quest moment. All that stuff their Marxist economics professors taught them about the “inherent contradictions” of capitalism and about history’s being on the side of the planners — all the theories that the apparent victory of market capitalism in the last decades of the 20th century seemed to invalidate — well, it’s all true after all. In their progressive hearts, they always knew it, knew it, knew it! The era of big government is back! Let the redistribution commence! [National Review]
Sorry, Jim, jeering just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Take it from someone who had no stake in the intellectual arguments that dominated the postwar era. When I graduated from college in 2008, the American economy was hemorrhaging 600,000 jobs per month. The country was undergoing a crash course in subprime mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps. Aggregate demand was collapsing, and liquidity was freezing up. The appropriate response would have been to spend like a drunken sailor until unemployment was restored, then cut back slowly and start paying down accrued debt. Thank God we were about to elect this Obama fellow, because he knew what he was doing, right?
Wrong. We did pass the (badly underrated) stimulus, but the likes of Paul Krugman were howling themselves hoarse that it wouldn’t be enough to restore full employment. He was, of course, completely right.
Unemployment rose steadily, peaking at over 10 percent before coming down with agonizing slowness. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of newly created wealth went straight to the rich. If all of this isn’t indicative of an enormous failure of capitalism, then I don’t know what is.
Then the Left watched with increasing horror as the entire United States political mainstream turned from stimulus to austerity, abandoning a job that was not even half-done.
Then the Republican Party — which not even two years before had proposed its own $713 billion stimulus — won a sweeping victory in the 2010 midterms, and with a crazed messianic fervor dedicated itself to making everything worse as fast as possible. They demanded Herbert Hoover–style austerity and repeatedly held the government’s credit rating hostage to get it, which they succeeded in doing (abetted by Democratic “moderates,” to be fair). As a result, we’re well past the halfway point of our first lost decade with no end in sight.
Current political debates, while not quite so mind-blowingly bizarre as those in 2010–11, are still striking in that even political moderates are willing to toss millions of the most vulnerable people overboard for very poorly defined reasons. Unemployment isn’t even close to low, and yet repeatedly discredited inflation paranoiacs are, again, cooking up highly suspect new reasons to crush wage growth.
In short, political elites have been doing all they can to convince lefties that Marx was pretty close to the mark on that whole rich-exploiting-the-poor thing. Republicans in power are against even the mildest moderating structures to keep the middle class and poor from being left behind by galloping inequality; instead, they are for obliterating what inadequate protection we do have and for savage austerity that would increase the population of desperate jobless.
Every new Paul Ryan budget — all of which openly gut safety net programs — is another bundle of kindling on a potential leftist bonfire.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, April 10, 2014
“An Authoritarian System”: If God & Founders Solved It All, Why Bother With Democracy?
There’s an interesting op-ed up at WaPo today from Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossman arguing that conservatives are only “obstructionists” insofar as “most policies under debate are liberal,” not just now but for decades.
Grossman is implicitly illustrating a point about “constitutional conservatism” that I’ve often tried to make: If the divinely inspired Founders pretty much figured out the ideal governing model for all time (except for that troublesome bit about slavery), then all political controversy involving the limitation of absolute property rights and states’ rights is illegitimate and should be obstructed. This means that strictly speaking the “constitutional conservative” vision is perfectly compatible with an authoritarian system in which “illegitimate” policy options are off the table.
I’m not accusing such conservatives (much less Grossman, who doesn’t Go There at all) of advocating an authoritarian system, though proposals like the Cut, Cap and Balance Constitutional Amendment do indeed seek to permanently proscribe a significant part of liberal social and economic policies. But if conservatives sometimes seem cavalier about respecting democratic norms, including the right to vote, there’s your explanation.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April9, 2014
“Faith, Family And Libido”: Louisiana’s McAllister Says He’s ‘Fallen Short’
When politicians get caught in extra-marital dalliances, there’s usually a controversy that follows a predictable trajectory. There are the allegations, followed by denials, then apologies, all wrapped up in humiliation. These messes usually last several days, if not weeks.
Rep. Vance McAllister, a Louisiana Republican who’s only been in office for about five months, truncated the lifecycle considerably yesterday, going from revelation to contrition over the course of an afternoon.
A married House Republican, who ran on a devout Christian conservative platform, apologized Monday after a video surfaced that reportedly shows him kissing an aide.
“There’s no doubt I’ve fallen short and I’m asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve,” said Rep. Vance McAllister in a statement. “Trust is something I know has to be earned.” He added, “I promise to do everything I can to earn back the trust of everyone I’ve disappointed.”
The extra-marital romance was first uncovered by a local outlet, the Ouachita Citizen, which obtained a video of McAllister kissing an aide in his district office in late December – about a month after the congressman won a special election in his Louisiana district.
The exact nature of the relationship is unclear, but it’s worth noting that the aide was reportedly removed from the congressman’s payroll “during the past 24 hours.”
Complicating matters a little more, it appears the aide and her husband were generous McAllister campaign contributors.
As a general rule, I tend to believe these incidents are private matters, but the standards for scrutiny change when hypocrisy is involved.
For example, when Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was caught hiring prostitutes, the political problem had less to do with his behavior and more to do with the fact that Vitter ran as a “family values” conservative, urging voters to elect him in part so he could champion traditional morality.
Personal mistakes are one thing; hypocrisy is something else.
McAllister, a married father of five, has a similar problem: “McAllister cited his faith, family and hard work in ads run during the campaign last year. His wife and kids were featured prominently in the ads as well.”
On his campaign issues page, the Republican puts “Faith and Family” on top, touting his family’s membership in a local Baptist church, and citing his values as an explanation for why he “opposes President Obama’s policies of bigger government.”
Looking ahead, the congressman will reportedly seek re-election. In the interim, it’s unclear if McAllister’s personal missteps will run afoul of the House GOP leadership’s “zero tolerance” policy on lawmakers and ethical lapses.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 8, 2014
“In Florida, Anything Can Happen”: Vampires, RINOs And Things That Go Bump In The Night
From the state that gave us Katherine Harris and Mark Foley came news this week that a vampire is running for Congress.
This particular bloodsucker — actually, he does role-playing as a vampire after dark — is trying to defeat Rep. Ted Yoho in a Republican primary in central Florida. The fanged contender believes Yoho — a tea party conservative — is a liberal who has “embarrassed” his constituents.
Speaking of embarrassing, the SaintPetersBlog Web site reported that this challenger, 35-year-old attorney Jake Rush, has moonlighted as a participant in a Gothic troupe engaged in “night-to-night struggles ‘against their own bestial natures.’ ” Rush, a former sheriff’s deputy, issued a news release.
“I’ve been blessed with a vivid imagination from playing George Washington in elementary school to dressing up as a super hero last Halloween for trick-or-treaters,” Rush’s statement said, adding that he also is a “practicing Christian” who “played Jesus” in a church play.
Running for office in the Sunshine State poses some unique problems for vampires, not least their difficulty of campaigning in daylight hours. Yoho will probably keep his seat, particularly if he remembers to wear garlic.
But the Rush candidacy reminds us of an important truism in politics: In Florida, anything can happen.
For more evidence of this, consider what is happening next weekend on Amelia Island, not far from where Jake Rush and the other undead play. There, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy will speak at a fundraiser for Republican moderates. In today’s Republican Party, moderates are less popular than vampires, so it is extraordinary that these two young leaders, who have assiduously courted the tea party the past five years, are willing to associate themselves with those the tea partiers deride as RINOs, Republicans in Name Only.
“It’s great news,” says Steve LaTourette, who runs the Republican Main Street Partnership and is a board member of its offshoot political action committee, which is hosting the gathering at the Ritz-Carlton. “The fact that they want to come is very encouraging as a centrist Republican. . . . That they at least want to break bread with us I give them credit for, because they’re certainly getting attacked for it.”
That they are, in the blogosphere, on talk radio and even in fundraising pitches from tea party candidates. “Next weekend, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and 25 other members of Congress are flying to Amelia Island to collaborate with a group dedicated to defeating conservatives in Congress,” conservative pundit Erick Erickson harrumphed.
Actually, House Speaker Boehner has addressed the group before but will be on foreign travel this time. More significant is the first-ever attendance of Cantor, who has been seen as a potential threat to Boehner from the right.
The presence of Cantor and McCarthy shows their increased confidence in defying the purity demands of organizations such as the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and FreedomWorks. You can’t get much more defiant than siding with LaTourette, who, in a Post op-ed in September, likened 30 to 40 conservative Republicans in the House to trained monkeys, writing that “the monkeys are running the zoo.”
LaTourette, a former (moderate) Republican congressman, thinks it’s a sign of things to come. He noted that of the 10 Republican House members targeted for primaries by the Club for Growth’s “primarymycongressman.com” project, nine belong to his organization. “We’re not going to lose anything,” LaTourette predicted. He noted that conservative groups have gone from saying “they’re going to kick our ass” to saying “we’re going to win one.”
It’ll be a long time before the 52 House Republican members of the Main Street group gain any real power, but from Florida anything seems possible. Florida has given us everything from former representative Allen West, the most militant of conservatives, to Rep. Alan Grayson, the most strident of liberals. Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor who lost a Senate bid as a Republican and then as an independent, is running for governor again — as a Democrat — and just might win.
Florida, too, gave us Republican Rep. Trey Radel, who recently resigned after a cocaine arrest, and Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney, who succeeded Foley after the congressional-page scandal by promising to restore family values; he lost the seat after it was reported that he paid a staffer $121,000 to keep their affair quiet.
Now Florida is giving us vampires, RINOs and other things that go bump in the night. It is fun to believe they might be real.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 4, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 