“In A State Of Classic Denial”: The GOP Leadership Has Become Completely Delusional
You have to wonder if the GOP leadership has begun to lose touch with political reality.
They are laying out a series of demands that Democrats must meet in order to avoid a shutdown of the government — or an economic disaster that would result if the government defaults on its debts and refuses to pay financial obligations. Everyone acknowledges that either of these events would have dire consequences for the entire country and its economy.
Why do they believe that Democrats have a greater self-interest in avoiding these dire consequences than they do, when they themselves will be blamed? That makes no political sense.
And there is little question they will be blamed. The polling has made it clear for some time that most Americans will blame the GOP if either of these catastrophes ensue — and the focus of that blame will shift to the Republicans more and more as the days pass.
From a purely political point of view, it’s as if your opponent in a war threatens that he will blow his own head off if you do not surrender. What?
Maybe they assume that Democrats care more about the economy of the United States, the jobs of their fellow Americans and the availability of public services than they do — but that is not a message you’d think they would want to send to the voters.
And they are forgetting something else. The political situation has fundamentally changed since the last debt-ceiling crisis in 2011.
In 2011, the Tea Party leadership of the GOP was coming off a big win in the 2010 mid-terms. Last year their positions were once again tested in the General Election, and they were rejected by the voters.
Second, in 2011 President Obama could ill afford a government default that could have destroyed the momentum of the fragile recovery a year before his re-election. Next year the voters will not be deciding whether to re-elect President Obama. They will be deciding who they elect to Congress.
Do the Republicans really want to be held responsible for another financial calamity when it is their turn to face the voters? In fact, many observers believe that such a development would create exactly the kind of wave that could wipe out their already fragile majority in the House and dash their best hope in the foreseeable future to take back the Senate.
This increasing lack of connection to political reality may result in part from classic denial. They are unwilling to accept that their extremist ideological views are massively unpopular with an increasingly progressive electorate.
Last election they simply refused to believe that all of those Hispanics, African Americans, women and young people would come to the polls. Even their pollsters refused to believe that the electorate was changing. They were actually stunned that they lost.
They continue to refuse to believe the fact that with every passing year, the electorate is less and less sympathetic to their extremist views. Polls show that Millenial voters are the most progressive generation in 50 years. Every year a new class of those Millenial voters replaces a group of older, less progressive voters in the electorate. What’s more, every year there are more and more Hispanics and Asian Americans who voted over 70 percent for Obama. And of course — as a recent poll in the Virginia governor’s race makes clear — they persist in driving away more and more women voters with their opposition to women’s reproductive rights, attacks on education, child nutrition and universal background checks on guns.
The Tea Party Republicans appear to have abandoned hope that they can achieve their goals through the established — democratic — political process. After all, virtually all of their demands are extremely unpopular with the broader electorate and they overwhelmingly lost the last election.
Most Americans do not support their demand to defund Obamacare — and the law’s popularity will only grow once it goes into effect — as its benefits become clear and the “horrors” predicted by its opponents fail to materialize.
Most Americans simply do not support policies that take food from the mouths of hungry children in order to give more tax breaks to millionaires, or gut the provisions of the Dodd-Frank law that rein in Wall Street banks, or privatize Medicare.
So they have resorted to the tactic of choice for small extremist minorities: hostage-taking. They are threatening to blow up the economy if they don’t get their way.
And that is precisely why the president and Democrats in Congress are so clear that they will not cede to GOP demands. If Democrats were to allow hostage-taking to work, GOP extremists would try the same tactic again and again. There would be no end to the hostage-taking in order to force the majority of Americans to agree to the positions of a small minority that have been rejected in democratic elections.
And the GOP leadership is ignoring one final factor. When voters cast their ballots they not only ask who is on their side, they also ask who is competent to provide leadership.
Many Republicans in Congress have announced they are willing to risk shutdown or default to avoid the “horrors” of Obamacare, which they say is the worst law ever passed by Congress. Really?
Next time you get into a plane, ask yourself how you would feel about having a delusional pilot so out of touch with reality that he would recklessly risk the well-being of all on board to fly through a tornado because he wants to fly to the mythical land of Oz.
Voters are not generally wild about entrusting leadership to a bunch of reckless adolescents who see nothing wrong with playing chicken racing their cars toward each other to see who will swerve first.
Recklessness, lack of connection with reality, failure to recognize that actions have consequences — those are not the qualities that voters find appealing in candidates for higher office.
One way or another, the GOP will ultimately fold — that is virtually certain. The only question is whether someone in Republicanland who has yet not drunk the Tea Party Kool Aid will grab the yoke and pull the GOP out of this spiral dive — or whether they are forced to surrender as they emerge from a pile of rubble on the canyon floor.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, September 27, 2013
“Memo To Republicans, You Lost, Now Deal With It”: Third Graders Don’t Get Cupcakes For Threatening To Break Windows And Chairs
Imagine you’re a third-grade teacher, and the school announces that all the classrooms are going to be repainted, and the kids will get to choose the colors. You let your students each make a case for the color they’d like for their classroom, and it comes down to a choice between blue and green. The two sides give cute little speeches to the class about their favorite colors, and then you take a vote. There are 20 kids in the class; 12 choose blue and 8 choose green. Blue it is.
But then the kids who wanted green insist that the color has to be green. They go to the principal’s office and make their case that blue sucks and green rules. The principal tells them that the class chose blue, so the walls are going to be blue. Then the pro-green kids return and say that since there was a new kid who joined the class since the vote, we have to have the vote again. Another vote is held; it’s still blue. Then the pro-green kids announce that because anyone can see that blue is sucky, they’re going to write in green magic marker on any wall that gets painted blue. Then they announce that if the walls get painted blue, they’re going to break the windows in the classroom, smash the chairs, and fling the contents of everybody’s cubby on the floor.
When they’re told they can’t do that, they say, “OK, tell you what: we’ll refrain from breaking the windows and trashing the class, but only if you give us pro-green kids cupcakes every day, excuse us from homework for the rest of the year, and let us choose all the games we play at recess. It’s either that, or we start smashing.” Would you respond to these children, “Well, what if we just give you the cupcakes?” Of course not. You’d say, “Listen, you psychotic little turds. The goddamn walls are going to be blue. YOU LOST. Now suck it up.”
Okay, so if you were a third-grade teacher you wouldn’t actually say that. But you’d think it. And that’s where we are today. Republicans argued against the Affordable Care Act when it was moving through Congress. A vote was held, and they lost. Then they went to the Supreme Court and asked for the law to be overturned. They lost. Then they tried to defeat the president who passed the law and replace him with a guy who promised to repeal it. They lost. Now they’re saying that if they don’t get what they want, they’re going to trash the place.
And now we come to the part about the cupcakes and homework. The latest idea from Republicans is that in exchange for not trashing the American economy with a debt default, just defunding the Affordable Care Act isn’t enough. What they want as the price for standing down is the entire Republican wish list. Get a load of this:
According to a document obtained by CQ Roll Call, that “wish list” contains 20 “additional options” for the debt limit bill, on top of four principles in the “Core Package” — a one year debt limit increase for a one year delay of Obamacare, the agreement of tax reform instructions and the Keystone pipeline.
The 20 additional options, according to the document, are:
Economic Growth
1. Offshore Energy Production
2. Energy Production on Federal Lands
3. Pipeline Permitting Reform
4. Coal Ash
5. Prohibit EPA from Regulating Greenhouse Gases
6. REINS Act
7. Regulatory Process Reforms (APA)
8. Consent Decree Reform
9. Regulatory Flexibility Improvements
10. Block Net Neutrality Regulations
Non-Health Care Reforms:
1. Federal Employee Retirement Reform, which Republicans estimate will save $20 to $84 billion.
2. Eliminate Dodd-Frank Bailout Fund, which they estimate will save $23 billion.
3. Eliminate Mandatory Funding for CFPB, with estimated savings of $5 billion.
4. Require SSN to Receive Child Tax Credit, with estimated savings of $7 billion.
5. Eliminate Social Service Block Grant, with estimated savings of $17 billion.
Health Care Reforms:
1. Increase Medicare Means Testing, which Republicans estimate will save $56 billion.
2. Reduce Medicaid Provider Tax Gimmick, which Republicans estimate will save $11 billion.
3. Medical Liability Reform, with estimated savings of $49 billion.
4. Disproportionate Share Hospitals, with estimated savings of $4 billion.
5. Eliminate Public Health Slush Fund
I’m sure that if you asked them the logical question—Are you people insane?—they’d respond that this is an opening position for negotiations, and we can go from there. Sure, maybe we won’t get everything on the list, but maybe we could bargain it down to, say, delaying the ACA for a year, handcuffing the EPA, the Keystone XL pipeline, and cutting money for public health. In other words, we might be willing to not smash the windows if you give us the cupcakes.
There are some basic notions that undergird the operation of a democracy. When there’s an election, the candidate who gets more votes is the one who takes office. When a bill is passed through Congress and signed by the president, it’s now the law. And when you lose, you don’t get to demand that your agenda be enacted, for no reason other than that you’d prefer it that way. If you want a bunch of policy changes, you have to win an election, then pass that agenda through the legislative process. That’s how it works. Baseball players who strike out don’t get to just demand that they be given a triple or else they’re going to set fire to the stadium. And third graders don’t get cupcakes for threatening to break windows and chairs.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 27, 2013
“A Clarifying Moment”: No Negotiations On Debt Limit Means Exactly What It Says
The good thing about the fiscal madness that’s gripped the GOP is that it creates a good, clarifying moment for progressives. The president and congressional Democratic leaders have repeatedly announced a policy of refusing to negotiate over a debt limit extension, on grounds that (a) the economic stakes involved in messing around with this are just too high, dwarfing in importance anything either side could “win,” and (b) the debt limit accommodates existing debt from previous spending, and thus is not an appropriate vehicle for changing spending or taxes. (It would have been nice had the president taken this position back in 2011, but better late than never).
It is of great importance that Obama, Pelosi and Reed not flinch from this position, no matter what. This is a point on which all progressives, regardless of how they feel about specific fiscal issues, ought to be able to agree. Indeed, this is of particular importance to Democratic “centrists” who might be tempted to agree with this or that detail of the debt limit bill Boehner is putting together–say, approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which is insanely popular in certain parts of the midwest, or greater means-testing in Medicare. Once Democrats head down the road of discussing any of these concessions in exchange for allowing the economy to continue to function, the hostage-takers in the GOP will have won, perhaps for good.
Matt Yglesias argues that negotiating over the debt limit this time would represent a vast abandonment of responsibility by the president:
Republicans are essentially asking for an end to constitutional government in the United States and its replacement by a wholly novel system….
Things like this do happen. The British system of government used to feature a ruling monarch who was checked in limited ways by two houses of parliament. Over time, those houses of parliament leveraged their control over tax hikes into overall control of the government. On a somewhat slower time frame, the elected House of Commons nudged the House of Lords out of almost all of its de facto political power. And that’s the House’s proposal here. The president should become an elected figurehead (not dissimilar to the elected presidents of Germany, Israel, or Italy) whose role is simply to assent to the policy preferences of the legislative majority.
That’s the logic of bargaining over the debt ceiling, because this isn’t really a bargain at all. A bargain is when Obama wants something the GOP doesn’t want (universal preschool, say) and then the GOP says “look we’ll do it, but only if you do X, Y, and Z for us.” Increasing the debt ceiling isn’t like that. It isn’t a pet policy priority of Obama’s and it isn’t something House Republicans oppose. It’s something both sides agree is necessary to avert a legal and financial disaster.
Matt goes on to point out that today’s demands are attributable to Obama’s failure to take the same position in 2011. Then, at least, one could make the argument that both parties were very interested in taking steps to reduce long-term deficits and debt. Now it’s reasonably clear the Republican agenda is to permanently shrink government, to overturn the duly enacted Affordable Care Act and nullify the Supreme Court decision and the presidential election that kept it in place, and to prove once and for all that most intransigent brand of “constitutional conservatism” can work politically. To the extent that both parties claim to care about the economy, there is no one, not even debt default enthusiasts, who think wrangling over the debt limit is going to be good for the economy.
So the answer to this vicious “opening bid” from Boehner needs to be “no,” not “maybe” or “maybe something else.” If no negotiations occur, then there is a reasonably high probability that the GOP’s corporate allies will make Boehner walk the plank and cooperate with House Democrats to pass a “clean” debt limit increase. That’s actually the only sane way out of the dark place Boehner is leading the country towards right now.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 26, 2013
“The Devil’s Christmas Tree”: It’s Still A Long Ride On The Crazy Train
Expect to hear a great deal of cheerleading for a government shutdown from unusual quarters today. That’s because House Speaker John Boehner is now beginning to implement his earlier and much-puzzling-to-rational-people strategy of shifting Republican hostage-taking from efforts to keep the federal government operating to a debt limit bill due at the very latest by October 17.
Why is he doing this? You have to assume that Boehner is mesmerized by polling showing a debt default is more popular than a government shutdown–polling that is, of course, based on broad public incomprehension of the implications of a debt default.
Because (a) the president’s position after the dispiriting debt limit impasse of 2011 is that he will not negotiate over the debt limit, and because (b) congressional Democrats support that position, often with implicit or explicit “Hell No!” amendment, Boehner needs a debt limit bill that can pass the House with Republican votes only. And so his bill, as it is developing, is a right-wing Devil’s Christmas Tree, or to use a more secular metaphor, an evil child’s wish list for Santa. The generally very calm and very articulate Ezra Klein is almost at a loss for words in describing it:
The House GOP’s debt limit bill — obtained by the National Review — isn’t a serious governing document. It’s not even a plausible opening bid. It’s a cry for help.
In return for a one-year suspension of the debt ceiling, House Republicans are demanding a yearlong delay of Obamacare, Rep. Paul Ryan’s tax reform plan, the Keystone XL pipeline, more offshore oil drilling, more drilling on federally protected lands, rewriting of ash coal regulations, a suspension of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate carbon emissions, more power over the regulatory process in general, reform of the federal employee retirement program, an overhaul of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, more power over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s budget, repeal of the Social Services Block Grant, more means-testing in Medicare, repeal of the Public Health trust fund, and more.
[T]his is really the [Republican] conference teaching Boehner a lesson. He had so little support to raise the debt ceiling at all — and so little trust from his members that he had a strategy to maximize their leverage — that this is the bill he had to present. At this point, Boehner either can’t stop them, or he’s too exhausted to try.
I suppose the other interpretation is that Boehner intends to eventually patch together something less psychotropic that can be passed with mostly Democratic votes (he has, after all, publicly and repeatedly said he won’t let the country default on its debts), and/or that business community pressure will be brought in like a deus ex machina to pull Republicans back from the brink. In that case, I suppose, there’s no reason to say no to any House Republican demand (though the leadership did, it is being reported, turn down including a late-term abortion ban similar to the one the House passed earlier this year).
It’s also possible, theoretically, that Boehner and company wanted to shock Democrats and the MSM with the consequences of his party’s impending defeat on appropriations in order to force some sort of compromise on measures designed to avoid a shutdown. But at this point, Republicans will find it increasingly difficult to accept any deal that doesn’t disable Obamacare, now that Boehner has embraced the idea that a one-year implementation delay is a “reasonable” alternative to “defunding” it. And that’s a non-starter for Democrats, even if they do prove willing to directly or indirectly violate constant pledges not to consider a debt limit bill with conditions.
So that gets back to why a lot of folk will soon be begging John Boehner to put aside his little do-it-yourself atomic bomb assembly kit and go back to threatening the conventional warfare of a government shutdown. TNR’s Noam Scheiber is already there:
[O]ne of two things is probably going to happen if we avoid a shutdown: Either John Boehner is going to turn around and appease irate conservatives by insisting on delaying Obamacare in exchange for raising the debt limit, thereby sending the government into default (since Obama isn’t negotiating). Or he’s going to back down and allow the debt ceiling to be raised with a minority of House Republicans and a majority of House Democrats, thereby further infuriating conservatives and almost certainly costing himself his job. (Recall that conservatives got more than halfway to the number of defections they needed to oust Boehner back in January, after he’d merely allowed a vote on a small tax increase when a much bigger one was kicking in automatically.) That is, either Boehner gets it or the global economy gets it, both of which Boehner would like to avoid even more than he’d like to avoid a shutdown.
If Boehner resigns himself to a shutdown, on the other hand, suddenly the future looks manageable. After a few days of punishing political abuse, Boehner will be able to appear before his caucus, shrug his shoulders in his distinctive Boehnerian way, and bleat that he executed the strategy conservatives demanded, but that the country is overwhelmingly opposed to it, as are most Senate Republicans and almost every semi-legitimate right-wing pundit and media outlet
That’s just great. I suppose begging John Boehner to be somewhat less destructive is a preferable alternative to caving to his demands. But it still involves a long ride on the crazy train in order to reach the engineer with a request to please turn around.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 26, 2013
“The New Ransom Note”: Republicans Ready To Trade One Hostage For Another
There are just five days remaining for Congress to pass legislation to prevent a government shutdown, and overnight, the odds of some modicum of success appear to have improved. In the Senate, where a spending measure was on track to pass Sunday night, a bipartisan agreement was reached that will “accelerate” the process — the chamber should now wrap up its work on Saturday.
In theory, this could give House Republicans time to reject the Senate bill, push another far-right alternative, and practically guarantee a shutdown, but all evidence suggests that’s unlikely. As National Journal reported, “Conservative Republicans in the House appear ready to back off their demands that the short-term funding resolution Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown also defund or delay Obamacare.”
So, for those hoping congressional Republicans don’t shut down the government, this is good news, right? On the surface, yes. Based on overnight developments, a shutdown appears less likely than it did a few days ago.
The problem is, as the Washington Post and others are reporting, GOP lawmakers appear eager to trade one hostage for another — and the next hostage crisis will be far more serious.
With federal agencies set to close their doors in five days, House Republicans began exploring a potential detour on the path to a shutdown: shifting the fight over President Obama’s health-care law to a separate bill that would raise the nation’s debt limit.
If it works, the strategy could clear the way for the House to approve a simple measure to keep the government open into the new fiscal year, which will begin Tuesday, without hotly contested provisions to defund the Affordable Care Act.
But it would set the stage for an even more nerve-racking deadline on Oct. 17, with conservatives using the threat of the nation’s first default on its debt to force the president to accept a one-year delay of the health-care law’s mandates, taxes and benefits.
This is nothing short of madness, but it’s nevertheless quickly become the preferred Republican plan — the GOP is prepared to let one hostage go (they won’t shut down the government), while putting a gun to a new hostage (Republicans will trash the economy on purpose unless their demands are met). All of this will play out over the next 22 days.
The next task, aside from preventing a shutdown, is filling out the details of the ransom note.
According to the plan that GOP leaders will present to members today, Republicans will present a debt-ceiling plan “loaded with dozens” of right-wing goodies, including:
* A delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act;
* Approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline;
* The elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau;
* A tax-reform blueprint Republicans consider acceptable;
* A block on combating the climate crisis;
* The elimination of Net Neutrality;
* An extension on destructive sequestration spending cuts;
* Scrapping elements of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law;
* Medicare cuts;
* Tort reform;
* Maybe a ban on late-term abortions.
In exchange, Democrats would get … literally nothing. And if their demands are not met, Republicans will crash the economy, push the nation into default, and trash the full faith and credit of the United States for the first time in American history.
Republicans could try to achieve these goals through the normal legislative process, but they probably realize those bills would fail to become law. So, as they abandon American governing and adopt policymaking-by-extortion, these unhinged lawmakers figure they’ll just load up a must-pass bill with goodies, and threaten deliberate harm to Americans unless they get their way.
This is evidence of a political party that’s gone stark raving mad. If you hear a politician or a pundit suggest this is somehow normal, or consistent with the American tradition, please know how very wrong they are.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 26, 2013
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