“Just Do It And Move On”: John Boehner Can’t Bring Himself To Rip Off The Band-Aid
Mitch McConnell knows what John Boehner doesn’t, namely that when you have to do something painful, it’s best to get it over with quickly. Rip off the Band-aid, chop the zombie-bite-infected leg off with one blow, just do it and move on. But we’re a day away from a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, and Boehner can’t bring himself to do it.
So here’s the current status. McConnell decided that the Senate would take two votes, one on a “clean” DHS funding bill—i.e., one without a rider reversing President Obama’s executive actions on immigration—and one addressing just those executive actions. That way DHS stays open, Republicans get to cast their symbolic vote against Obama, and everybody goes home. The funding bill is already moving through. And of course, Tea Partiers are outraged (here’s one colorful post from Erick Erickson entitled “Eunuch Mitch McConnell Squeals Like a Pig“). Which, I’m pretty sure, doesn’t bother McConnell all that much, because he knows what’s in his party’s interest and what isn’t.
Boehner is still saying “nuh-uh!” But to what end? What does dragging this out actually accomplish for him? Here’s a report from Politico:
Boehner is playing a game of political survival. Most of his inner circle knows that the House will be forced to swallow a clean DHS funding bill at some point. But if the speaker wants to keep conservatives from launching a rebellion, it may be too early to capitulate. Boehner is aware of the perilous situation he’s facing—which is why, in private conversations with lawmakers, he’s telling them to “stay tuned” without tipping his hand on his next move.
Speaking to his caucus Wednesday, Boehner said he hadn’t spoken to McConnell in two weeks, an apparent attempt to distance himself from the Senate GOP leader’s plan. It seemed to highlight what will likely be an unfolding dynamic in the coming Congress, particularly over fiscal matters: The Senate will be forced to cut deals on politically toxic issues, and Boehner will ultimately be forced to accept them in order to avoid potential crises.
So the outcome is inevitable, but Boehner seems to be operating on the assumption that if he holds out a while longer, the crazy caucus will be less angry with him. And when has that ever worked? We’ve been through this multiple times now, and at the end of it they dislike him just as much as they did at the beginning.
There are three things Boehner could be thinking. The first is that if there’s a partial shutdown, the administration will give in and undo Obama’s executive actions. No one is dumb enough to believe that. The second is that he or someone else will have an extraordinary flash of insight and devise a clever stratagem that will get the Republicans everything they want. That’s possible in theory, but highly unlikely to say the least. The third is that this shutdown fight will end the same way all the other shutdown fights ended: with Boehner giving in and allowing a vote on a bill to end the crisis, a bill that passes with the support of Democrats. He will be decried as a capitulator and a RINO, and nothing will have changed.
But is Boehner really in a “perilous situation”? The reason he’s still the speaker isn’t that he’s done such a masterful job of keeping Tea Partiers happy. It’s that nobody else wants the job. When he retained the position in January, 25 Republicans voted for somebody else, but the votes were entirely symbolic. There’s no other candidate, there’s no rebellion planned. He’s secure in his miserable position.
So really, Mr. Speaker, just rip off the Band-aid. Hold the vote to fund DHS. We all know how this ends.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, February 26, 2015
“Hey, Boehner; Show Some Stones For Once”: The Right Wing Is Toothless And Congress Is Essentially Leaderless
So here’s something I’ve often wondered over the last few years. What exactly would happen if John Boehner bucked the right-wingers in the House? You know—if he gave us one of those heroic Hollywood moments that we so long for in this sail-trimming city and gave a big speech about how he was putting principle ahead of politics and the consequences be damned.
You know what I think would happen? If, say, he followed Mitch McConnell’s lead and allowed a vote on a clean DHS-funding bill? After all the dust settled—nothing. Oh, the dust would fly to the heavens for a few days. Tea Partiers would scream about his betrayal. Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of them would fulminate. There’d be a few breathless stories about how his speakership was in mortal peril. And then, something else would happen in the news cycle, the intoxicating effect of the drug of munity would wear off, and we’d be back to exactly where we were before the dust went skyward.
We have a dysfunctional legislative system, and one of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional system—indeed the main hallmark of a dysfunctional system—is that no one is held accountable for anything they do. And there’s no reason to think Boehner would be held accountable by his right wing.
First of all, they don’t have the votes to oust him. In his last speakership election, 25 Republicans voted against him. That’s a chunk, but it’s a small chunk. And besides, who are they going to replace him with? Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who seems not able to count noses and who isn’t particularly well liked by his GOP colleagues? Majority Whip Steve Scalise, now branded as a white-supremacist sympathizer? One doesn’t expect much of today’s GOP, but I doubt very much that even this hardened assemblage would want to be led by a man with that charge hanging around his neck.
So the whole business is ridiculous. And in fact, if you look closely at the record, you see that Boehner has bucked his right wing. Although “bucked” isn’t really the right word, since to buck means to resist with some show of strength. Boehner never does that. What he does is that he hews to the right-wing line rhetorically for as long as he possibly can, and then, when it’s two minutes til midnight and it’s obvious to everyone that he has to bend, he bends. He did it on the debt ceiling. He does it on budget questions. And there’s always a great deal of sturm and drang, but soon enough, it’s back to business.
Think here about the famous Hastert Rule, that a Republican leader can’t bring anything to the floor that doesn’t have the support of a majority of the Republican majority. This has come up a number of times in the last four years, and always the line is: Oh my God, he can’t break the Hastert Rule! Dare he break the Hastert Rule? His speakership is in grave jeopardy if he breaks the Hastert Rule! No, Lord, not the Hastert Rule!!
Well, he’s broken the Hastert Rule three times. The first time was on the fiscal cliff negotiation at the beginning of 2013. On that one, 85 House Republicans voted for the compromise bill that emerged, and 151 of them voted against it. The second time was on Hurricane Sandy relief, which happened just a couple of weeks after the fiscal cliff vote. That time, 49 GOPers voted for the relief, and 179 against. And the third came a little more than a month later—two years ago tomorrow, in fact—when the House passed a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. That time, 87 Republicans voted aye, and 138 nay.
So look at that record. In two months’ time, Boehner violated the allegedly inviolate Hastert Rule three times. And what happened to him? Well, we’re still calling him Mr. Speaker, last I checked. The right wing has not mutinied. And in fact the dark little psychological secret is that the vast majority of them have no interest whatsoever in mutiny. It’s far better for business for them, back in the home districts, to be able to scream betrayal and present themselves to their rabid constituents, the kind who just might go organize themselves to find a primary challenger to run against them, as the true defenders of liberty against all the sell-outs and ideological harlots they have to contend with on a daily basis, Boehner included. Gower Champion couldn’t choreograph it any better.
If I’m right about all this, and I am, then the question is why Boehner can’t, just once, show some stones and say, at 10 or 15 minutes til midnight rather than the usual two, “Sorry, we’re gonna do the reasonable thing here, and save this other fight for another day?” Well, some have argued that it may be in this case that he doesn’t actually know whether he has the votes. But I think that’s a reach. He’s got 245 Republicans. There are 188 Democrats, presumably all of whom would vote for a clean bill. So he’d need about 30 Republicans to back a clean bill. If he can’t get a mere 15 percent of his caucus to vote for a clean bill, maybe he’s got no business being speaker anyway. That would mean breaking the Hastert Rule, but as we’ve seen, he’s paid no price for that in the past.
And look at what happened in the Senate after McConnell decided to be reasonable. The vote was 98-2! The holdouts were Jim Inhofe and Jeff Sessions. Ted Cruz voted for the clean bill! Mike Lee! Joni Ernst and all the new red-hots. McConnell called the radicals’ bluff, and they folded. I say there’s every reason to think that roughly the same thing would happen in the House.
It’s often said in Washington that Congress is held captive to the hard right. But that’s not it. Boehner could break that hold if he wanted to. So it’s not really the radicals who are to blame, but Boehner’s refusal to be their leader and tell them “this is the way it is.” That’s the one thing, as their leader, he’ll never do. You know—lead.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, February 27, 2015
“Viva La Incompétence!”: Boehner’s and Bibi’s Blunders ‘Liberate’ U.S. Foreign Policy From NeoCons
It’s all happening because I am completely ignoring every urge towards common sense and good judgment I’ve ever had–George Costanza, “Seinfeld”.
President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the military-industrial complex, but even the former 5-star general Supreme Allied Commander in World War II couldn’t do it. The quagmire of Vietnam couldn’t do it. The quicksand of Iraq couldn’t do it. The killing fields of Cambodia couldn’t do it. The Bush/Cheney failure on 9/11 couldn’t do it. Allowing bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora, and then failing to find and capture him, couldn’t do it. Allowing Pakistan to develop the “Islamic bomb” couldn’t do it.
Even the election of the Iraq invasion’s opponent as president couldn’t do it.
But, John Boehner (R-OH) has done it.
He cannot do much else, but he has achieved what no other politician could do for half a century: expose the entire Republican national security “brand” as a fraud.
Remember the pious platitudes about the first function of government to be protecting the American people? Remember the decades of demagoguery skewering Democrats as being lax on security issues, the disgusting draft-dodging Saxby Chambliss leveling that accusation on war hero and triple amputee Max Cleland (D-GA) in the waning days of a senate campaign? Recall the Bush/Cheney 2004 ads showing snarling wolves that would be unleashed against the American people if John Kerry were elected?
Now, thanks to Speaker Boehner, the Republicans have no credibility or standing on national security. None, zero, zorch, nada. The next time you hear a Republican bleating about national security, you can have a good laugh.
They were willing to leave us vulnerable, and took their threats to the brink.
A minimally competent Democratic party should be and would be screaming bloody murder. After all, Republicans are playing political games with our lives and our families’ security. Democrats would be filling the airwaves and the (now-neutral!) net non-stop, spreading the alarm to “every town, middlesex, village and farm” that Republicans will sacrifice our nation’s safety, and raise legitimate issues about their love of country.
[Not hearing that? Well, do not ignore the qualifier “minimally competent”.]
Not to be outdone, however, Bibi’s blunder is even worse for the neoconistas. At least since the Yom Kippur war in 1973, and perhaps earlier as well, it has been virtually impossible for US foreign policy to diverge in meaningful ways (i.e., those that might actually lead to peace) from Israel’s as defined by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Any president, member of Congress, or candidate who criticized Israeli policy, who even spoke about pressuring Israel was immediately pounced upon by AIPAC, carrying with it the threat of political oblivion.
Until Bibi’s blunder, support for Israel was considered to be 100% support for whatever the government of Israel du jour decided to do.
The political price to be paid for deviating from that support was always more of the myth than reality. American Jews, although backing Israel, nevertheless vote more on economic and social issues than they do on competing claims of which candidates are helping Israel more.
Now, that myth is exposed. President Obama and many Democrats are shunning Bibi, but not wavering in their support of Israel. They refuse to be pawns in his political games to win the Israeli election. They refuse to scuttle prematurely the opportunity of avoiding another major armed conflict. They refuse to compromise the moral authority the US will have achieved by going the last mile with Iran if the negotiations fail.
From this day forth, presidents and members of Congress can oppose new settlements on the West Bank as impediments to peace without waiting until their retirements. They can let the Israelis know that our support is strong, but that we have expectations of them, too, that need to be honored.
Thanks to John Boehner (R-OH), Republicans have relinquished their (specious) claim to caring more and fighting harder to perform government’s primary mission, safety and security. Fearmongering 101 is not only no longer available to them, it will be fodder for mockery.
And, thanks to Bibi, liberated from the need to express support for everything any Israeli government does as a measure of how much they support Israel, the US will now become a more effective partner to bring peace and security to Israel and dignity to Palestinians.
Bibi has neglected to realize that Americans, like other people, do not appreciate a foreign leader who deliberately tries to embarrass the President, just like foreign countries tend not to enjoy being invaded and occupied.
There has always been a segment of the population who cannot abide a black man in the White House, especially exercising the powers of his office. The visual images rankle. [Obama is not just the first person of color to be president, he is the first black man ever to rule a white majority nation]. Some of that same segment, however, may find themselves for the first time siding emotionally with him as President when an Israeli (yes, Jewish) leader tries to embarrass him.
By asserting American priorities and not being cowed by Bibi’s influence in the US, the President will gain support among the American people, not just from his own base, but from die-hard opponents as well, exactly the opposite of what Bibi wanted.
Achieving the precise opposite of one’s intended outcome is one definition of incompetence. The US adventures in Vietnam and Iraq spring immediately to mind.
Boehner’s and Bibi’s blunders have liberated US foreign policy from the iron grip of the neoconistas.
Viva la incompétence!
By: Paul Abrams, The Blog, The Hufington Post, February 28, 2015
“A House Divided”: Its Pretty Hard To Actually Govern In A System Designed To Require Compromise
The plan was to force President Obama to either sign a bill repealing his executive actions on immigration or veto it and shut down the Department of Homeland Security. But things didn’t work out that way.
Senator McConnell couldn’t get the 6/7 Democratic votes he needed to pass a bill that paired funding for DHS to repealing the President’s immigration actions and Speaker Boehner was unwilling to pass a stand-alone funding bill with primarily Democratic votes. So we got a one week reprieve before we do this all over again.
The good news is that we found out that neither Republican leader is willing to follow through with their threats to blow up hostages in order to force Democrats to give them what they want. So at some point, they’ll pass a bill that funds DHS.
After the Republicans gained control of the Senate and increased their margins in the House in the November elections, both Mr. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, promised to reverse Congress’s pattern of hurtling from crisis to crisis, even over matters like appropriations that were once relatively routine.
But in their first big test, the Republican leaders often seemed to be working from different playbooks, at times verging on hostility, with each saying it was time for the other chamber to act.
The funding stalemate bodes poorly for any larger policy accomplishments this year, leaving lawmakers pessimistic that the 114th Congress will be able to work in a bipartisan fashion on more complicated issues.
The Office of Management and Budget has said that a vote to increase the nation’s debt limit will be necessary by mid- to late summer, and lawmakers were also hoping to take up trade policy, as well as at least a modest overhaul of the nation’s tax code — undertakings that now look increasingly imperiled.
When you’ve spent the last six years convincing your base that your opponent is a tyrant who is out to destroy the country and that his party’s agenda is the tool by which he will do that, its pretty hard to actually govern in a system that is designed to require compromise.
I wouldn’t say that any of that is a big surprise to those of us who have been paying attention. But what is surprising – and will be worth paying attention to over the next few months – is the apparent hostility between McConnell and Boehner. I don’t think anyone saw that coming. But it does suggest that there is more than one fault line in this divided house.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, February 28, 2015
“The Fate Of The GOP Majority Is On The Line”: Even The Wall Street Journal Says Republican Congress Is Failing
This WSJ editorial is definitely NOT good news for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Speaker John Boehner:
Republicans in Congress are off to a less than flying start after a month in power, dividing their own conference more than Democrats. Take the response to President Obama ’s immigration order, which seems headed for failure if not a more spectacular crack-up…
If Homeland Security funding lapses on Feb. 27, the agency will be pushed into a partial shutdown even as the terrorist threat is at the forefront of public attention with the Charlie Hebdo and Islamic State murders. Imagine if the Transportation Security Administration, a unit of DHS, fails to intercept an Islamic State agent en route to Detroit.
So Republicans are facing what is likely to be another embarrassing political retreat and more intra-party recriminations. The GOP’s restrictionist wing will blame the leadership for a failure they share responsibility for, and the rest of America will wonder anew about the gang that couldn’t shoot straight…
It’s not too soon to say that the fate of the GOP majority is on the line…This is no way to run a Congressional majority, and the only winners of GOP dysfunction will be Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.
Ouch! That one left a mark. When Republican leadership loses the Wall Street Journal editorial page, you can rest assured that they’re in big trouble.
And yet today Speaker Boehner told Chris Wallace that the House has already done it’s business and that he is prepared to let DHS funding expire at the end of the month.
Notice that Sen. McConnell didn’t appear on any of the Sunday news shows. But here’s how he explained his position earlier this week.
“I think it’d be pretty safe to say we’re stuck, because of Democratic obstruction on the Senate side,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters Tuesday. “I think it’s clear we can’t go forward in the Senate. And so the next move, obviously, is up to the House.”
If the WSJ is right and the fate of the GOP majority is on the line, it’s past time for these two Congressional leaders to face up to yet another embarrassing political defeat and get something done.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal, The Washington Monthly, February 15, 2015
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