“When Conservatives Cry Wolf”: It’s More Like A Howl For Attention And A Public Relations Campaign
There were two important developments in the Republican Party last week. Let’s take stock.
First, after years of saying that yes, they would develop and introduce an alternative to Obamacare, three GOP senators finally presented one: Orrin Hatch, Tom Coburn, and Richard Burr unveiled what they call their PCARE plan (yes, it’s another one of those syrupy, dopey Washington acronyms that have become such a pestilential constant in our city). Conservatives exulted; “See? We can be serious about policy!” But as Jonathan Chait wrote, the thing was awfully general and sketchy, and as soon as people started asking serious questions about how this or that would work, “things began to fall apart.” As of now, the plan has evanesced into something that no one really takes seriously and everyone recognizes for what it is—a mere talking point, a general outline that exists solely so Republicans can go on teevee and say they have a plan.
The second development occurred several days ago when John Boehner promised big movement on the immigration front. We’ll do a bill this year, he said. No citizenship, no “amnesty,” but a process toward legal status. The Republicans were ready to cut a deal. Boehner posted his guidelines for reform on his web site Monday. By Friday, 4,500 comments had been posted, roughly 95 percent (or more!) of them negative (“Please tell the Jews that we don’t want their One World Order. If they like immigrants send them to Israel[sic],” wrote user “Barbara Cornett”). At the end of the week, Boehner suggested that immigration reform might not, after all, be on the docket this year. (Update: I softened this language from the original, at the suggestion of Greg Sargent, and he’s right about Boehner’s words, although I remain a hard-shell skeptic.)
Remember when we had a “budget deal” in December, and the government didn’t shut down again, and negotiations didn’t go until the eleventh-and-a-half hour? At that point, we actually had some people talking about the dawn of a new day in Washington. Maybe the Republicans really were changing their stripes.
When an alcoholic is destroying a family, it’s his drinking, self-denial and lies that are creating the problem. But a lot of the time, the family contributes, too. It’s in, perhaps, its own state of denial. “Oh it’s not so bad, really. Oh he’s under lots of pressure. I think he can stop, I really do. Maybe not just yet. As soon as he gets through this (intense time at work/family illness/etc.).”
This is what the larger Washington establishment has become: The enabling spouse of the drunk. “They’ll change. I just know it. This time, I really don’t see how they can’t. I mean, supporting immigration reform is so clearly in their own self-interest!” And certainly, it is. But laying off the sauce is certainly in the alcoholic’s self-interest, too. In that case, we all understand why the alkie doesn’t stop. It has nothing to do with self-interest. He knows his own self-interest. But he can’t change until his shame and disgust with himself is such that he’s ready to try.
With the GOP, it’s more complicated, because this isn’t just one person’s conscience. It’s an entire machinery of ideology-fueled delusion and rage. In fact, now that I think about it, our two examples above are perfect, because each describes the two huge problems with the GOP extremely well. They also explain why they’re not going to be putting down the bottle anytime soon.
The healthcare vignette provides us a textbook example of how the GOP has retreated into policy fantasyland. The specific policy point on which the plan began to unravel was as follows: Our GOP trio proposed, of course, a way to cover more Americans, because that’s pretty much the point, right? Right. Okay. Well, to cover more people, you have to spend money, which means you have to come up with a way to finance it.
Obviously, that’s a pretty thorny dilemma for Republicans. But the trio decided to finance their healthcare expansion by placing a cap on untaxed health benefits. That is, healthcare benefits are untaxed right now. So Hatch, Burr, and Coburn would have taxed benefits starting at about 65 percent of the average cost of a plan.
In other words—yes, a tax increase! An expert from the Kaiser Family Foundation told Talking Points Memo: “This would be a meaningful hit on people. It’s a big radical change. This is not an incremental thing, and it affects most people under 65.” So, they quietly changed it, raising the cap, which obviously means less revenue and less coverage.
You can imagine what those three would have said if Obama had put forward something like this. (He proposed a tax on “Cadillac plans,” but they affect only a small percentage of health consumers.) So why would they do the same? Because they live in policy fantasyland. This plan wasn’t intended as anything serious. It was created for public relation purposes only.
Immigration showcases the other malignant GOP tumor: The rage of the base. The base won’t permit immigration reform. It’s pretty much that simple. Boehner, of course, could stand up to that base, and he’d pass a bill, with mostly Democrats. But he just told us he’s not going there.
And so it goes. People often ask me, Tomasky, when do you think they’re going to change? The answer, of course, is it depends. If they somehow capture the White House in 2016, then there’s no incentive to change, and the future is pretty bleak. But if they lose to Hillary Clinton, and she wins reelection, then I do think that by 2024 it will finally be a different party. Is that supposed to be reassuring? That’s a decade away!
In the meantime, they will keep doing what they do. I really wish Washington would stop enabling them, but people are nervous about their nonprofit status, their funders and board members, and are simply devoted to the idea that both parties are responsible. They’re helping the drunk stay drunk. As my friend Bill B. says, from their comments and actions on healthcare and immigration, to contraception and most everything else, the Republicans keep telling us who they are. When are people going to believe them?
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, February 10, 2014
“Overrated, Useless Fools”: Why This Congress Will Never Achieve Anything Significant
As I wrote last month and also several other times over the past five or so years, “comprehensive immigration reform” — defined as a bill making it possible for currently undocumented residents to earn legal status and/or citizenship — can’t happen now because Republicans control the House of Representatives, conservatives control the Republican Party, and conservatives oppose granting legal status to undocumented immigrants. It’s a very simple calculation, and most discussions of the political status of immigration reform could start and end with some variation on that explanation.
But people need something to talk about, and politicians need reasons to go on Sunday shows. Elected officials need to “signal” to important donors and interest groups that they are doing everything in their power to enact the preferred policies of those important donors and interest groups. There is really more incentive for Republicans to talk about immigration reform than to actually pass it. Obviously lots of Republicans do sincerely want immigration reform to pass. But those Republicans don’t have a majority in the House, and until that changes, immigration reform will be practically politically impossible.
Last month, Speaker of the House John Boehner said he was confident that immigration reform could pass this year. That confidence lasted a few weeks. By the end of last week, the GOP had settled on an adequate excuse for declining to pursue their recently announced immigration “list of principles”: They can’t do anything at all because they don’t trust President Obama.
Which, fine. It’s a pretty lame excuse, but Speaker Boehner was not going to say, “I don’t have the clout or the power to unilaterally force a plurality of xenophobes and cowards ensconced in safe white districts to support a major Democratic policy priority.” Republicans were going to blame Democrats no matter what.
The flaw in their excuse, obviously, is that it leaves the GOP open to the line Sen. Chuck Schumer used on Sunday: If Obama is the problem, then Congress can pass a reform bill that won’t go into effect until 2017, when there will be a new president.
“It’s been a tough week for immigration,” he said. “But all three, many of the Republicans have said the following — Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, even Jim DeMint — they have said that they want to do immigration reform, but they don’t trust the President to enforce the law, particularly the enforcement parts. So there’s a simple solution.”
Unfortunately, coming up with a clever workaround to the arbitrarily chosen GOP excuse won’t change the fact that the arbitrarily chosen GOP excuse is only being used to distract from intractable political reality. Addressing the made-up problem won’t fix the actual one. Schumer gets points for “calling Boehner’s bluff,” but Boehner will not now be like, “well, fair point, you got me, now I guess we have to pass this bill.”
Still, it was a fun couple of weeks of once again debating whether immigration reform would pass soon! Perhaps members of Congress play this elaborate game — hyping major legislation, walking it back, calling out one another’s “bluffs” — mainly to keep the political class occupied.
It has become incredibly difficult even to pass the recurring omnibus bills — like the farm bill, which took a few years to make it through the House, and the transportation bill, which will likely cause Congress to melt down in acrimony and dysfunction once again later this fall — that Congress uses to keep the government funded and operating. The idea that new initiatives and major reforms might be possible with this Congress is just fantasy. Comprehensive tax reform? Immigration reform? “Entitlement reform”? Various politicians will claim, over the next few months, that all of those things and more could happen before the next Congress is sworn in. They will be wrong, but the political press, in need of something to talk about, will take the idea seriously for a while anyway.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, February 10, 2014
“Why Don’t We Just Pack Up And Go Home?”: Republicans Are Afraid To Take The Blame For Their Own Actions
Just this week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have all presented the identical argument: passing immigration reform will be very difficult because Republicans consider President Obama fundamentally untrustworthy.
The general thrust of the argument is that GOP lawmakers aren’t confident that the Obama administration will enforce federal law, and as such, they don’t want to vote for reform. Even if Congress approves sweeping border-security measures intended to satisfy GOP lawmakers’ demands, they say, Obama, the out-of-control, “lawless” radical, may simply blow off laws (or parts of laws) whenever it strikes his fancy.
It’s a deeply silly posture, based largely on fantasy and this partisan pretenses, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took this one step further yesterday during a notable press briefing.
“When [Republicans] say … they don’t trust the president to do it, why don’t we just pack up and go home?” she said. “We have a democratic system. We have checks and balances. We have three branches of government. In fact, we’re the first in the Constitution – the legislative branch. And what we’re supposed to do is legislate, and not make up excuses as to why we don’t.”
“That’s not a reason not to do an immigration bill, that’s an excuse not to do it,” she added. “And around here, you have to always differentiate between what is a reason, and what is an excuse.”
This may have seemed like a throwaway line, uttered in frustration, but Pelosi actually raised a critically important point. If Republicans believe their own rhetoric, why would Congress even show up for work at all?
Pelosi’s response may have sounded flippant, but there’s nothing rhetorical or theoretical about the Republican assertions. If the majority of the House of Representatives is sincere, and GOP lawmakers seriously believe President Obama simply ignores laws whenever he feels like it, and acts unilaterally to impose his will, Constitution be damned, why doesn’t Congress “just pack up and go home”?
Indeed, consider the legislative process over the last month or so. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed appropriations bills, directing the executive branch to finance government operations. But if Republicans don’t trust the president to faithfully execute the laws approved by the legislative branch, why did Congress bother? Why didn’t Republicans balk and declare they would only appropriate funds after Obama had earned their trust?
Soon after, lawmakers in both chambers approved a farm bill, which the Obama administration will now help implement. But if the House GOP is convinced the rascally president ignores laws, why did they vote on the farm bill in the first place?
House Republicans keep voting on all kinds of measures, which would be an odd thing to do if they’re convinced the American system of government has broken down so severely that a lawless White House is prepared to ignore federal laws on a whim.
And therein lies the point: lawmakers keep voting on legislation because they probably don’t seriously believe their own talking points. They’re not genuinely convinced Obama will blow off federal laws, because if they were, they would bother to pass new federal laws.
What’s likely happening is that Republicans may kill immigration reform and they’re afraid to take the blame for their own actions. The “we can’t trust Obama” line is a fig leaf, and a rather transparent one at that.
Of course, if I’m mistaken, and House Republicans genuinely believe they see a president who casually disregards and/or breaks laws he doesn’t like, they can prove their sincerity by stopping the legislative process and beginning impeachment proceedings. But so long as GOP lawmakers continue to legislate, working under the assumption that the executive branch will still execute federal laws, the inanity of the Republican argument on immigration will be increasingly obvious.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, February 7, 2014
“The GOP’s Immigration Conundrum”: A Perils-Of-Pauline Soap Opera
House Republicans’ latest revolt against immigration reform spells potential trouble for the party’s 2016 presidential candidates. The last thing the GOP needs in 2016 is another primary season marked by debate and dissension over the fraught issue.
The party’s handling of immigration-reform legislation since President Obama won reelection with 71 percent of the Hispanic vote reprises a decades-long pattern that has weakened the GOP in the competition for Hispanic votes. On the one hand, there is a recognition that the party needs to do more to attract Hispanic votes. On the other, there are repeated actions, both individual and collective, that send the opposite signal.
That is what has happened over the past few weeks. At one point, House leaders, led by Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), issued a list of principles for reform legislation that included a path to legal status but not to citizenship. That suggested a collective determination to pass something this year. Then, after a backlash from the outside groups that have long been Boehner’s nemeses, the speaker did an abrupt about-face, saying that a lack of trust that Obama would enforce the law made passage this year a heavy lift.
Perhaps the speaker is playing an exceedingly clever game to keep everyone guessing, a perils-of-Pauline soap opera in which he has already sketched out the scenario that ends with the passage of some notable piece of legislation this year. After all, he’s given every indication that immigration reform is something he wants to do, something he believes is good for the country and good for his party.
More likely, he is reflecting the views of the party’s most conservative members and those outside groups, who in turn reflect the views of many rank-and-file Republicans. Comprehensive reform, including a path to citizenship, enjoys majority support nationally. But conservative Republicans continue to oppose a bill that includes any path to citizenship.
Some Republicans are suggesting that they should not clutter up the midterm elections with an issue that divides their party and instead try to energize their voters by focusing on the issue that most unites Republicans, Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Many House Republicans hate the bipartisan bill that was passed by the Senate last year. If the GOP could win control of that chamber, it might be able to write legislation more to its liking and force the president to accept it.
There is no question that the politics of this are difficult for Boehner. Could he wait to push forward this year until it would be too late for conservative challengers to mount primary campaigns against incumbent House Republicans? Will there be a better opportunity next year? Will Republicans trust Obama more next year? What is the maximum Boehner can get now as opposed to then? Would support for legal status, rather than a path to citizenship, be enough to position Republicans better to start courting Hispanics on other issues?
But another question that Republicans should be asking is: What are the consequences of inaction? Can they afford another presidential nomination contest in which immigration reform plays a central role, as it did in 2012? There is debate inside the party over how much immigration hurt Mitt Romney in the general election. But no one is arguing that it helped him, and few would say a fresh debate in 2016 would be a net plus for their nominee, unless that nominee had run forcefully in favor of comprehensive reform.
A year ago, it looked as if most of the likely GOP presidential candidates in 2016 would be advocates of comprehensive reform. The task force created by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus — a group that was weighted toward the establishment wing of the party — recommended support for such a measure. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took a lead role in helping produce a bipartisan Senate bill. Others who are considering running in 2016 made statements indicating at least some level of support for comprehensive legislation.
Today, that support is far more muted, if it exists at all. The conservative intelligentsia is split on what to do. The base is clearly opposed to comprehensive reform. Given the prospective field of candidates for 2016, it’s likely that those running will include outright opponents of a path to citizenship. Whoever becomes the nominee will risk having been pushed further to the right than is politically safe for a general election.
Romney said after the 2012 election that he had recognized the potentially debilitating impact an intraparty debate on immigration could have on the nominating process. He had hoped there was a way for the party to come together on some set of principles to at least prevent the issue from being front-and-center during the primaries, he said, but that didn’t happen. Romney then mishandled immigration during the GOP primaries, as his advisers later admitted (though he had a different, somewhat contrarian view of that).
Romney’s advisers discovered that, whatever problems were caused by the former governor’s talk of self-deportation and the hard line he took on immigration reform, their biggest obstacle to reaching Hispanic voters in the general election was health care. Hispanics strongly supported Obama’s health-care initiative.
That points to another problem. Republicans have long argued that they can appeal to Hispanics on issues other than immigration. So far, they have yet to prove it. Appeals to the patriotism of the Hispanic community have not worked consistently. Appeals to Hispanic small-business owners haven’t done it. Efforts to reach socially conservative Hispanics on issues such as abortion have produced few dividends. The party is still looking for an effective message for Hispanics.
Immigration remains a gateway issue. Passage of immigration reform won’t necessarily win the next presidential nominee significantly more Hispanic votes. But its absence as a divisive issue in the nomination contest would give Republican candidates an opportunity to talk to Hispanic voters about new ideas or issues.
Republicans already face significant problems winning the Rocky Mountain states in a presidential election. Growing Hispanic populations in Nevada and New Mexico have made those two states major challenges for the party. Colorado is still competitive but could become more difficult for the GOP in future elections. Arizona, which has remained in the Republican column, could become a competitive state because of Hispanic population growth.
Perhaps an immigration reform bill will be enacted before the presidential primaries begin in 2016. What Boehner did this week in bowing to pressures from the right was to underscore that Republicans continue to think more like a congressional party than a presidential party. It will be interesting to see whether any of the prospective presidential candidates is ready to challenge that orthodoxy.
By: Dan Baltz, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 8, 2014
“Surprise! Republicans Aren’t Serious About Reform”: The GOP’s Lame Attempt To Blame Obama For The Failure Of Immigration Reform
This week, it became all too clear that House Republicans don’t really want to address immigration reform in any meaningful way this year. And if the reform effort does wither on the vine, Republicans know just who to blame: themselves.
Ha, just kidding. They’re going to blame President Obama.
A mere week after unveiling a list of immigration “principles” that the GOP would pursue, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that handling immigration this year would be “difficult,” because many Republicans don’t trust Obama.
“There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws,” he said. “And it’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.”
Of course, a bipartisan immigration reform package has already passed the Senate, which includes an eye-popping $40 billion for border security. Obama has even signaled that he would be prepared to sign into law a more modest package, including one that bestowed only legal status — as opposed to citizenship — to undocumented workers.
The obstacle to reform has always been in the GOP-controlled House, where hardcore conservatives have opposed any law that bears even a whiff of amnesty. That, in turn, has spooked potential reform supporters who are wary of a primary challenge.
Indeed, Boehner’s so-called principles can be seen as a trial balloon that was quickly deflated by members of his own party, including influential conservative writers like The Weekly Standard‘s William Kristol, who argued that the issue unnecessarily divided the GOP ahead of the 2014 midterms.
Boehner’s remarks were still notable, though, in that they are part of a ridiculous attempt to pin the blame on Obama, a strategy that Republicans have been testing out for months.
Back in October, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who helped author the Senate’s immigration bill before fleeing to chase down his lost conservative credibility, said Obama poisoned immigration reform by standing firm through the government shutdown and debt ceiling fight. By not agreeing to the GOP’s fantastical demands that he gut his health-care law, Rubio said, Obama made immigration reform “harder to achieve.”
“The president has undermined this effort, absolutely, because of the way he has behaved over the last three weeks,” he said.
To be sure, some on the right have charged all along that the White House can’t be trusted to meet tough border security and verification requirements, necessitating “specific enforcement triggers” before a path to citizenship or legal status could even come into play. What’s different now is that the claim has gone mainstream, a reflection of how desperate the GOP is to convey to Latino voters that they would do something on immigration were it not for Obama.
A sampling from the past week:
- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “Here’s the issue that all Republicans agree on — we don’t trust the president to enforce the law.”
- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.): “There’s some real question of trust here and the White House continues to really thumb its nose up, if you will, at the Congress.”
- Rubio (again): “We just don’t think government will enforce the law anyway.”
As Slate’s David Weigel explains, the argument is pretty much bunk:
Say the Senate bill was passed in the House tomorrow, conferenced, and signed by the president. He’s got three years left in office. The legalization component of the Senate bill depends on a border security standard that’s going to be determined by a panel of state governors. They have five years to sign off. If you think about the timing of the Affordable Care Act — passed in 2010, implemented at the end of 2013 — there’s no real danger of Obama using a new immigration law to grant more amnesty. He could do that right now.
So, file these talking points under “Republicans Looking Busy.” [Slate]
But Boehner can’t spike immigration reform without first finding a scapegoat to blame for its failure. And since Senate Republicans are on board, who else is there to blame but the ultimate conservative bogeyman?
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 7, 2014
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