The House Republican Payroll Tax Cut Train Wreck
I recently brought my two-year-old son to see the National Christmas Tree, which resides on the Ellipse, just south of the White House. At 26 feet and 4 inches, it’s big but honestly somewhat underwhelming, having replaced a 42 foot spruce first planted during the Carter administration which was toppled by high winds in February (conservative metaphor alert!).
Fortunately my son didn’t pay any mind to the tree’s size, as he was held rapt by the model train sets arrayed around its base. He wasn’t even especially concerned that one of the trains had gone off its rails and lay on its side in the grass.
Liberal metaphor alert: Before the National Christmas Tree lay the National Train Wreck. Is there a more apt analogy for the Tea Party Congress?
Take the drama this week focused on extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. You know the contours: With overwhelming bipartisan support, the Senate passed a two-month extension in order to buy time to work out a longer-term agreement. House Speaker John Boehner reportedly called the bill a “good deal” and a “victory.” But by the next day, Boehner’s Tea Party-dominated caucus had yanked him back onto the reservation. The new party line was that a two-month extension of the payroll tax holiday was simply insufficient, that only a full-year extension, a version of which the House had already passed, would be acceptable. (This despite the fact that as recently as 2009 more than 50 House Republicans were saying the way to “effectively stimulate” the economy was a payroll tax holiday of … two months.)
Keep in mind that Republicans don’t actually favor a full-year extension. For example, Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, who chairs the House GOP’s campaign committee, told the Los Angeles Times in September that it is a “horrible idea,” adding that Republican House candidates would have no problem making the case for letting the tax cut expire altogether. It turns out they really do have a problem making that case, so last week they pivoted by passing their year-long extension, which had poison pill riders attached to it (drug testing for unemployment recipients, for example, because in this economy if you’re jobless it must be because you’re high). They apparently finally ran up the white flag yesterday, more or less accepting the Senate bill.
If this scenario seems familiar—House Republicans playing, as Florida GOP Rep. Thomas Rooney put it, “high stakes poker” in an effort to push their extremist agenda, with the stakes being the economy and people’s livelihood—it is. We’ve seen this scenario play out again (see the near-government shutdown in April) and again (recall the unnecessary debt ceiling crisis in August). The big difference is that even Senate Republicans are fed up with their wild-eyed, Tea Partying House brethren. “It angers me that House Republicans would rather keep playing politics than find solutions,” Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown said after the House voted Tuesday to reject the Senate’s bipartisan bill. “Their actions will hurt American families and be detrimental to the fragile economy.” Nevada GOP Sen. Dean Heller said the House maneuvering “is about political leverage.”
Brown and Heller are the two Republican senators facing the toughest re-elections next year and so by necessity have a keen sense of what independent voters want. That they are taking such strong stances distancing themselves from the House reflects the fact that swing voters have had it with the Tea Party House lurching from one manufactured crisis to the next. The fact that House Republicans finally surrendered to political reality is almost irrelevant—just the fact of contriving another fight reinforces the public’s near-unanimous disapproval of Congress, its GOP members especially.
Only 11 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a poll released this week by Gallup. That’s lower than any such figure since Gallup started tracking congressional approval in 1974. For the year, Congress has an average approval rating of 17 percent, also a historic low. A Pew Research Center poll also released this week showed that 50 percent of voters (another record) believe that this Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses.
And this isn’t a case of a pox on both parties. While Democrats are not liked, voters have a special distaste for the GOP, according to Pew. By almost two-to-one (40 percent to 23 percent) more voters blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for Congress’s lack of accomplishment. Voters also see the GOP as being more extreme (53 to 33 percent), while they say Democrats are more willing to work with the other side (51 to 25 percent) and are “more honest and ethical” (45 to 28 percent).
The big beneficiary of the Tea Party Congress’s tone deaf overreach, and specifically its incoherent approach to the payroll tax cut, has been President Obama. His job approval wallowed in the low 40s for the last few months, but polls released this week by ABC and CNN showed his rating ticking back up to 49 percent. “President Barack Obama’s approval rating appears to be fueled by dramatic gains among middle-income Americans,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “The data suggest that the debate over the payroll tax is helping Obama’s efforts to portray himself as the defender of the middle class.”
Defending the middle class is the kind of political sweet spot which wins elections. To the extent House Republicans are not only ceding that ground but practically inviting Obama to occupy it, they are victims of a train wreck of their own devising.
And the wreck in front of the National Christmas Tree? As I looked on, another pair of visitors climbed the fence and set the train back on the tracks. I like to think voters will do the same next November.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, December 23, 2011
The Method Behind Mitt Romney’s Big Lie Strategy
In a speech late yesterday, Mitt Romney accused President Obama of trying to use government to “create equal outcomes.” Romney argued that Obama wants to create an “entitlement society,” in which “everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk.” He made a concerted case that under Obama’s ideal vision, everyone will “get the same rewards.”
This is a Big Lie — it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything Obama has ever said, proposed or accomplished. And many liberalwritershavenoted today that this is Glenn Beck-level craziness, suggesting that Romney is willing to say and do anything to win.
That’s true, but another thing it’s also important to understand about Romney’s falsehoods is that they all serve a larger story that he and his advisers have been deliberately developing over time. When you look at all the Big Lies Romney has told in recent months, you’ll see a common thread running through them all.
They’re all about conveying a sense that you should find Obama’s intentions towards America vaguely suspect; that Obama harbors a deep seated indifference or even hostility towards the fundamentals that make America what it is; and that Obama is in some basic way undermining the foundation of American life as we know it. Let’s go through them all:
* The claim above that Obama wants a society in which everyone gets the “same rewards” is obviously designed to suggest that Obama doesn’t believe in American competitiveness and ingenuity.
* In that same spirit, Romney claimed the other day that the Obama/Dem criticism of his Bain years shows that Obama intends to “put free enterprise on trial” during the general election.
* Romney’s frequent falsehood that Obama “apologized for America” is about suggesting that Obama is apologetic about America’s relative advantages over other countries; that on some basic level, he doesn’t wish the country well.
* Indeed, Romney’s book, which he has frequently described as a kind of foundation of his presidential run, is called “No Apology: The case for American Greatness,” as if Obama is apologizing for American greatness.
* Romney recently accused Obama of pursuing policies that he “knows” are bad for the country.
* Romney recently claimed that he doesn’t believe Obama “understands America.”
* The speech Romney gave when he announced his presidential run traded heavily on these themes: He claimed that we are “inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy,” adding: “We look at our country, and we know in our hearts that things aren’t right.”
* As far back as 2010 Romney revealed he would campaign on the idea that Obama “has not understood the nature of America,” and on the idea that Obama does not share American “values” such as “love of liberty, of freedom, of opportunity.”
And so on. At this point, the pattern here is obvious, and it’s clearly not an accident. And Romney and his team will remain secure in the knowledge that most of the media will politely look the other way as the Big Lies keep flowing, and will continue to treat them as just part of the game.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post Plum Line, December 21, 2011
On Tap: “Boehner The Barkeep” And The Radical Republican Winterfest
House Speaker John Boehner gave a spirited reply when asked recently about whether his party’s resistance to middle-class tax cuts risked making Republicans appear to be lackeys of the rich.
“I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder, all right?” Boehner said. “My dad owned a bar. I know what’s going on out in America.”
So Boehner has his finger on the American pulse because his deceased father owned a saloon? What strange brew have they been pouring in the speaker’s office?
Whatever advice Earl Boehner has been giving his son from the grave, it doesn’t appear to be working. On Monday, the bar owner’s son aligned himself with House conservatives in opposition to a broadly bipartisan plan to extend a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans.
This new position, essentially reversing the one Boehner voiced a mere three days earlier, proves anew that the old-school speaker is less a leader of his caucus than a servant of his radical backbenchers. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he’s their barkeep.
Three times at a news conference on Friday, Boehner was asked whether he could support a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, as Senate Democrats and Republicans were planning. Three times, Boehner declined to state an objection to the two-month extension (he objected to a different part of the agreement, about an oil pipeline, which the senators subsequently changed to his liking).
“I just gave you an answer. How much clearer can I be?” Boehner said, refusing to take issue with the two-month extension.
And so senators passed the extension, 89 to 10. Tea Party heroes Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio voted for the compromise. The fiercest budget cutter of them all, Sen. Tom Coburn, voted for it. Republican lions such as John Cornyn, Jon Kyl and Mitch McConnell voted for it. Only seven Republicans voted “no.”
McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who negotiated the compromise, kept Boehner informed at every step — and was confident enough in Boehner’s acquiescence that his office sent out a notice saying there would be no more legislative business in the Senate until 2 p.m. on Jan. 23. But Boehner’s backbenchers — particularly the Tea Party freshmen — had other ideas, and, in a Saturday teleconference, made clear to Boehner that he would have to abandon the compromise.
The House Republican freshmen have become a bit tipsy with power, and freshman Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) on Tuesday boasted at a news conference that his class is “performing more like sophomores now than freshmen.” Actually, their performance is more sophomoric than anything, but they’ve been able to deliver a string of insults to Boehner, most notably the July revolt that forced the speaker to pull his debt-limit plan from the floor. If Boehner needs any more evidence he’s out of style in his party, he can ponder the rise in the presidential race of Newt Gingrich, the man Boehner tried to depose from the speakership 15 years ago, losing his leadership position in the process.
On Tuesday, Boehner had the unpleasant task of going before the cameras to explain why his House Republicans, after championing tax cuts for millionaires, would be voting against a tax cut for ordinary Americans.
“You know, Americans are tired of, uh, Washington’s short-term fixes and gimmicks,” Boehner began. Behind him in the hallway outside his office, four American flags provided patriotic cover for the reversal. He complained that “the Senate Democratic leaders passed a two-month extension” — omitting mention that Senate Republicans, with Boehner’s knowledge and tacit support, had agreed.
So rather than pass a two-month extension, he’s willing to have the tax cuts lapse entirely when they expire at year end?
“I don’t believe the differences between the House and Senate are that great,” Boehner said, by way of reassurance. But this only confirmed that his side was making a big stink over nothing.
Why didn’t he raise warnings earlier about the two-month extension? “Uh, we expressed our reservations about what the Senate was doing,” he said.
What did he make of the fact that 90 percent of the Senate supported the compromise? Boehner, in reply, demanded to know why “we always have to go to the lowest common denominator” — which is exactly what he had done in letting his backbenchers lead him.
The speaker denied the obvious truth that he had encouraged the compromise before opposing it. He licked his lips, gave a “thanks, everybody” and disappeared.
The sophomoric freshmen must have needed their barkeep to serve them another round.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 19, 2011
Is The Republican Coalition Against Gingrich Insurmountable?
In his most recent appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s talk radio show, New Yorker staff writer Ryan Lizza talked about the Republican establishment’s disdain for Newt Gingrich — and Hewitt pointed out that the coalition against the former House Speaker’s candidacy goes well beyond them.
Here’s the transcript:
LIZZA: one thing about Gingrich that has just sort of shocked me, and maybe I should have realized this, but the level of hostility towards this guy from frankly the Washington Republican establishment, is off the charts. I’ve been, I don’t get out much. I have two small kids. But I’ve been going to a few holiday parties here in D.C., and all the conversations, of course, are about Gingrich. And I mean, there are Republicans in this town who are saying that they would vote for Obama before they would vote for Newt Gingrich in a general election.
HEWITT: Yeah.
LIZZA: And so this may be something you can help me understand. There’s a major mismatch here between, for lack of better words, the Republican establishment and the people who are telling pollsters that they like Newt better than Romney.
HEWITT: What’s interesting, Ryan, I think there are two camps. They’re, you know, Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn, neither of whom fit the term Washington insider…
LIZZA: Right, right.
HEWITT: Both has lacerated Newt Gingrich on ideas. Then, there is that great silence from everyone who served with him in Congress. I guess John Boehner broke that silence with Mike Allen today. I haven’t read it, yet. I was told by Chris Cillizza that Boehner damned with faint praise today. So there is a Beltway hostility, but there is a public intellectual hostility that I think goes to his ideas, which are not, in the final analysis, conservative.
LIZZA: And a lot of conservative intellectuals don’t respect him, and think he’s been all over the place, and he latches onto whatever the hot, new thing is, and then drops it two seconds later, and doesn’t have an attention span.
It is difficult to imagine Gingrich winning the GOP nomination with a coalition this diverse arrayed against him. And even less so when he’s widely thought to be the weaker general election candidate.
As Lizza put it later in the same conversation:
You can’t find a Democrat in Washington who thinks that Newt Gingrich would be a better candidate, would be more likely to beat Obama than Romney. I mean, it’s just, I’ve searched for these people. I’ve searched for the counter argument here, the sort of person who’s thinking outside the box and says oh, wait a second, actually Gingrich would be tougher to beat.
You can’t find that person.
Also hard to find: prominent champions of the proposition that Gingrich should be president. Absent that, I don’t think he can win.
By: Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, December 19, 2011
Newt Gingrich And His “Rock, Paper, Scissors” Constitution
The closer Newt Gingrich gets to the Republican nomination for president, the more unhinged become his attacks on the independence of the federal judiciary. In early October, when Gingrich was nowhere in the polls, he ginned up a patently unconstitutionalargument for subpoenaing judges to come before Congress to justify and explain what Gingrich considers their “radical” decisions. “The spectacle would be like a dog walking on its hind legs,” said Bruce Fein, the respected conservative attorney and former Reagan official, when asked about Gingrich’s plan. “You are surprised not that it is done ineptly, but that it is attempted at all.”
Now, leading most polls, but evidently still needing his own radical pitch, Gingrich has doubled down on his crackpottery. On Sunday morning, he told Bob Schieffer of CBS News’ Face The Nation that the Capitol police, or federal marshals, could and should come and arrest those judges if they refuse to respond in person to a subpoena seeking to publicly shame them for making unpopular decisions. He also delivered this shuddering version of the Constitution, an unfamiliar Rock-Paper-Scissors version, in which the promise of separation of powers is akin to a playground game:
Here’s the key — it’s always two out of three. If the president and the congress say the court is wrong, in the end the court would lose. If the congress and the court say the president is wrong, in the end the president would lose. And if the president and the court agreed, the congress loses. The founding fathers designed the constitution very specifically in a Montesquieu spirit of the laws to have a balance of power not to have a dictatorship by any one of the three branches.
Poof, just like that, the leading candidate’s “key” to nowhere. What Gingrich really is saying, under the guise of blasting “elitist” judges, is that the Bill of Rights would no longer be used to protect individual rights because the judges who help ensure those (often unpopular) rights can be outvoted by the White House and the Congress. In President Gingrich’s world, evidently, the Supreme Court would not have the final say on the law. The majority, as represented by the popularly elected branches, would have the ultimate vote. Not in every case, Gingrich says, just in some. Does that reassure you the way he meant it to?
Here’s the Face The Nation video from this morning in which Gingrich says “… there’s no reason the American people need to tolerate a federal judge who who is that out of sync with an entire culture….” http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7392048n
There are two possibilities for this level of jeremiad. Either Gingrich actually believes this nonsense, in which case he would be a constitutionally dangerous president, or he doesn’t, in which case he’s committing constitutional heresy just to win a few primary votes. Either way, it is conduct unbecoming a president. Close your eyes for a second and imagine if a Democratic candidate for the White House suggested that the judiciary be neutered by the White House and Congress; if a “liberal” running for president suggested that individual liberties and minority rights would hereafter be defined by Washington. Wouldn’t Gingrich be first in line with his pitchfork and torch?
You don’t need to be a lawyer, politician or scholar to hear the contradictions in Gingrich’s latest argument. He’s against “elitist” judges but not against the lobbyist-infused Washington insiders who would overrule them. He rails on the 9th Circuit for its Pledge of Allegiance ruling as though it were the law of the land (it is not, as your school-age child is likely to tell you). Similarly, he picks on a federal trial in judge in Texas whose school prayer ruling was almost immediately overturned on appeal. Small beer, indeed, for the monumental remedies Gingrich seeks; it’s like destroying the whole house to get rid of a few nagging flies.
“I think part of the advantage I have is that I’m not a lawyer,’ Gingrich told Schieffer. “And so as a historian, I look at the context of the judiciary and the constitution in terms of American history.” The fact that Gingrich is not a lawyer helps explain why he sounds so ignorant about the law. The fact that he is an historian helps explain why he’s hanging much of his theory on some hoary precedent involving Thomas Jefferson, the slave owner, who eliminated 18 of 35 judges back in his day. Never mind the constitutional precedent and practice of the intervening 200 years, Gingrich’s argument goes, it happened once so it should happen again.
I cited Judge Johnson above not just because his quote is a timely reminder to demagogues like Gingrich that they are often responsible for the very “activism” they decry. Judge Johnson, as a federal trial judge in Alabama from 1955-1979, essentially devoted his entire judicial life to helping to ensure that black citizens would gain the basic civil rights that governors and state legislators and the Congress and the White House would not give them. Imagine how many times Judge Johnson would have been called onto the carpet on Capitol Hill under a Gingrich Administration. On which side of that history would you want to be?
The last word goes to Fein, the proud Reaganite. On Sunday afternoon, he called Gingrich’s ideas “more pernicious to liberty than President Franklin Roosevelt’s ill-conceived and rebuked court-packing plan.” More colloquially, Fein told me in October when Gingrich first went off the rails on this issue: “This is crazy. It would bring us back to the pre-Magna Carta days… The idea that these legislators, who haven’t read the Constitution or their own statutes, are going to lecture federal judges about the law is ridiculous. It’s juvenile. It’s high school stuff.” Indeed—and thus perfect for a bumper-sticker: Your Constitution: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Newt.
By: Andrew Cohen, The Atlantic, December 18, 2011
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