“Boehner Wants To Expand Magic Obama Lawsuit”: Another Sign Republicans Don’t Have Specific Policies To Articulate And Fight For
House Speaker John Boehner’s magic lawsuit against President Barack Obama is back! And he’s considering whether to try to use it to solve his immigration problem.
Initially, the suit was intended to address a real issue for the Speaker and his party: Many Republicans were fed up with the normal frustrations of separated institutions sharing powers under divided government. Their answer was to take dramatic – but counterproductive – action, such as impeaching the president.
The lawsuit was Boehner’s solution. It was enough of a radical gesture that Republicans could feel they were doing something about the lawless Kenyan socialist in the Oval Office. But, unlike impeachment or shutting down the government, it wasn’t so radical that it would make Republicans sound like a bunch of crazy people to the 80 percent of the electorate that doesn’t get all its information from conservative talk radio.
One of the drawbacks, however, is that every precedent suggests the courts would dismiss the suit because the House doesn’t have standing to sue the president. The Republicans’ solution? Make a big fuss about the suit, even have the House vote to authorize it (thus allowing Republicans to claim they voted to Do Something about Obama), but neglect to actually file it.
The brilliance of this tactic is becoming obvious, because it turns out that the hypothetical lawsuit — which hasn’t been filed and dismissed — can be expanded to cover any new White House outrage. Magic!
So with Obama reportedly about to take executive action on immigration — which Republicans assume he has no authority to do based on their narrow, Obama-specific reading of presidential powers — Boehner once against needs to distract his cohorts from talking about impeachment or shutting down the government. Will the lawsuit do the trick? It just might.
By the way, frustration is inherent to the U.S. political system and normal political parties just try to make the best possible deal. Republicans, however, are faced with a rank and file that sees compromise as evil. And on several issues, including immigration, they don’t have a specific policy to articulate and fight for.
That is what makes magic lawsuits an ideal solution. The goal isn’t public policy; it’s expressions of outrage. And the job for Republican leaders isn’t to move public policy as close to their ideal as possible, it’s to find ways to channel the most potent expressions of outrage without hurting the party’s standing with voters.
I have no idea how long the magic lawsuit will work, but it succeeded admirably over the summer, and maybe it’s still potent enough for this immigration situation, too. And that’s also part of the reason Boehner continues to be an underrated Speaker of the House.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg View; The National Memo, November 17, 2014
“Routine Partisan Lip Service”: Immigration, Impeachment, And Insanity On The Republican Right
Obstructing, denouncing, and demonizing Barack Obama are so central to the existence of the Republican Party today that its leaders simply ignore the real purposes of the president’s proposed immigration orders. So someone should point out that his imminent decision will advance priorities to which the Republican right offers routine lip service: promoting family values, assisting law enforcement, ensuring efficient government, and guarding national security.
Much of the argument for immigration reform, and in particular the president’s proposed executive orders, revolves around the imperative of compassion for immigrant families. That is a powerful claim — or should be, at least, for the self-styled Christians of the Republican right. If they aren’t moved by empathy for struggling, aspiring, hard-working people, however, then maybe they should just consider the practicalities.
America is not going to deport millions upon millions of Latino immigrants and their families to satisfy Tea Party prejudices, even if that were possible. Attempting to do so would be a gigantic waste of taxpayers’ money, an unwelcome burden on thousands of major employers, and an inhumane disgrace with international consequences, none of them good. It might or might not be “legal,” but it would surely be stupid.
Instead the Obama administration aims to relieve the terrible pressure on immigrant laborers and their children, and to direct resources where they will best accomplish national objectives, by deporting serious felons and other illegal entrants who may endanger security. By insisting on those broad yet clear distinctions, the president will protect the innocent and prosecute the not-so-innocent – exactly what he should be doing with the support of Congress.
Those wise objectives don’t interest the congressional majority, compared with the chance to rile their base by muttering threats against Obama. Just the other day, a tweet appeared under the name of Chuck Grassley, long among the dimmer members of the Senate, warning that the president is “flagrantly violating his oath” and “getting dangerously close to assuming a Nixonian posture.” For the Iowa Republican, that’s subtlety. In case you missed it, he was blustering about impeachment, and he isn’t alone.
Like so many of the familiar accusations against the president, complaints that his executive orders on immigration are “Nixonian” or “lawless” lack merit. Such orders are well within the recognized authority of his office, and considerably more conservative than the official conduct of some of his predecessors, such as George W. Bush – who issued about a hundred more executive orders than Obama has done so far.
With respect to constitutional principle, the camouflage favored by Obama’s antagonists, their flexibility is telling. The separation of powers only matters when they say so. They say nothing when the president uses executive orders to tighten immigration and deport more people than all his predecessors combined. Indeed, when the outcome pleases Republicans, then nobody needs to worry about executive overreach, let alone high crimes and misdemeanors.
Nor does a presidential executive order – even one granting “amnesty” to immigrant children – trouble the Republicans when a Republican president implements that kind of reform. When Presidents Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush took action to keep immigrant families together during their respective administrations, refusing to wait for Congress to move, there was no barking from the likes of Grassley. (According to The Hill, the two GOP presidents made those adjustments following the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which created a “path to citizenship” for about 3 million undocumented workers. It was signed by the sainted Reagan.)
Republicans in the Senate and House have rejected every legislative opportunity on immigration, including measures to strengthen border security. That’s because they prefer partisan confrontation – and that is what they will get. The consequences for their party promise to be politically devastating – and still worse if they are foolish enough to believe their own rhetoric about impeachment.
By; Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, November 14, 2014
“Clever Little Deceptions”: Behind The G.O.P.’s Misleading Shutdown Statements
Senator Mitch McConnell said yesterday that he would not shut down the government, over immigration or anything else, after he takes over as Majority Leader in January. On the same day, Speaker John Boehner refused to rule out a shutdown. Both were being deceptive, but Mr. McConnell, as usual, was a little more clever about it.
The House produced last year’s government shutdown when it insisted on attaching the repeal of various parts of the Affordable Care Act to spending bills necessary to keep the government open. That was a huge embarrassment for Mr. Boehner, making his caucus appear feral and ungovernable, and he has no desire to repeat it.
But his newly expanded Republican majority actually is a bit wilder than the outgoing one, and it is inflamed by President Obama’s plans to take executive action on immigration by sparing up to 5 million people from deportation. Some on the far right want to pass no spending bills if the president takes action; others, as National Review reported, want to shut down only specific departments, like Homeland Security (which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Mr. Boehner is playing his customary game of appearing provocative in public, to keep his most extreme members at bay, while trying to cut some kind of deal in private. But if he or his members think a shutdown of the Homeland Security department is going to work, they’re kidding themselves. During the last shutdown, most of the department stayed open, in part because many of its functions are considered essential and are funded by fees rather than Congressional appropriations. To have any real leverage, House Republicans would have to threaten to shut down more than that.
Mr. McConnell wants his chamber to appear reasonable and governable in contrast to the House, and likes to portray himself as the leader who averts shutdowns. But he’s the one who has already threatened to use spending bills to stop any environmental regulations that might restrict the burning of coal, which is the same as a shutdown threat.
His plans are evident in the exact wording of his statement yesterday: “We’ll not be shutting the government down or threatening to default on the national debt.” But if he can pin the shutdown on the president, then he can claim he wasn’t the one who closed the government’s doors. During the last shutdown, the spending bills never reached the president’s desk for a veto, because the House’s demands were rejected by the Senate, and everything was blamed on “Congressional gridlock.” With Republican control of both chambers, things will be different, and a shutdown remains very much on the table.
By: David Firestone, Taking Note,The Editorial Page Editors Blog; The New York Times, November 14, 2014
“Barack Obama Is A Big Meanie!”: John Boehner Already Making Excuses For His Failure
It only took a couple of days before John Boehner made clear that when it comes to his approach to legislating in the wake of the Republicans’ victory in the midterms, absolutely nothing has changed. All that talk about “getting things done” and “showing they can govern”? Forget about it.
In his press conference the day after the election, President Obama got asked about immigration reform and repeated what he’s been saying all along—that if Congress doesn’t pass anything, he’ll take some (as yet undisclosed) actions based on executive authority. He also noted for the umpteenth time that the Senate already passed a reform bill, one that included lots of gettin’-tough provisions demanded by Republicans, which Boehner refused to bring to a vote in the House even though it would have passed. He also emphasized that if Congress does pass a bill, it would supplant whatever executive actions he might take, so taking some executive actions might provide a nice inducement for them to do something.
So yesterday when Boehner had his own press conference, he got super-mad:
“I’ve made clear to the president that if he acts unilaterally, on his own, outside of his authority, he will poison the well, and there will be no chance of immigration reform moving in this Congress. It is as simple as that,” he said. “When you play with matches, you take the risk of burning yourself. And he’s going to burn himself if he continues to go down this path.”
Let’s think about this “poisoning the well” idea. Boehner is saying that if President Obama takes executive action, congressional Republicans will be angry and distrustful, which would make legislating harder. While up until now, they’ve been friendly and trusting toward Obama, and willing to work together.
Just a couple of days after the election, Boehner is already preparing excuses for why he failed. Why didn’t immigration reform pass? Because Barack Obama is a big meanie!
That well was poisoned long ago, and it was Republicans who did the poisoning. This is an important reminder that the fundamental dynamic within the GOP—in which appeasing the party’s right wing is the primary concern of the leadership—has not changed at all. In fact, it’s been intensified. In both the House and Senate, the incoming GOP caucus will be more conservative than they are right now. The problem was never that John Boehner didn’t think it was good for the country or his party to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the problem was that he didn’t have the courage to stand up to the Tea Party right. And now there are even more of them.
Meanwhile over in the Senate, you’ll have a combination of Republicans up for re-election in two or four years who will be increasingly nervous about a primary challenge from the right, and new members who hail from the Ted Cruz caucus. You think you’ll get a yes vote for comprehensive reform from Tom Cotton, who claimed during the campaign that ISIS and Mexican drug gangs were conspiring to attack us via the Rio Grande? How about Joni Ernst, who talked about shooting government officials and believes the United Nations has a secret plan to force Iowa farmers off their land and relocate them to urban centers? Or James Lankford, who thinks too many American children are on ritalin “because welfare moms want to get additional benefits”? Is this the group of sensible moderates that is going to vote for comprehensive reform?
I’ll bet that John Boehner would like nothing better than to have Barack Obama issue some executive orders on immigration. Then he’d have an easy answer every time someone asked when he was going to allow a vote on a comprehensive immigration package. What can I do? Obama poisoned the well. It’s not my responsibility anymore.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 7, 2014
“Learning The Hard Way”: House Republicans Can’t Find Anyone To Sue The President
It’s not so easy, it turns out, for Congress to sue the president.
Speaker John Boehner is finding that out the hard way after a second law firm withdrew from representing the House in the Republican-led lawsuit against President Obama over his use—or overuse—of executive authority. William Burck of the Washington-based firm Quinn Emanuel pulled out of the case last month, not long after he signed a contract with the House to replace David Rifkin of BakerHostetler.
The yet-to-be-filed suit has become an embarrassment for the speaker after he led the House in a party-line vote to authorize legal action against Obama back in August. The lawsuit would accuse the president of exceeding his authority by delaying implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate without permission from Congress.
In both cases, according to sources working on the issue, the law firms succumbed to political pressure from Democratic clients who threatened to pull their business if the firms represented the House GOP in a partisan suit. Congressional Democrats had decried Boehner’s move as a waste of taxpayer money. They also successfully parlayed the planned lawsuit into a fundraising boon by telling liberal supporters it was a prelude to impeachment, which Boehner insisted was not the case.
But not only did the two firms withdraw, they ditched the case so quickly that neither of them performed enough work to bill the House, sources said. In an odd silver lining for House Republicans, nearly three months after they signed off on the lawsuit, not a single dollar of taxpayer money has been spent. It’s also not a given that the legal proceedings, whenever they begin, will drag out beyond Obama’s presidency. The expectation among staff working on the case is that a federal court, once the lawsuit is filed, could decide fairly quickly on whether it would go forward. There is little precedent for one chamber of Congress suing the president under these circumstances, and Republican staffers acknowledge the case could get thrown out.
House leaders have now all but given up on finding a new lawyer who will take the case, and Boehner is instead considering assigning the work to the chamber’s in-house counsel, which is a position appointed by the speaker.
“The litigation remains on track,” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said Thursday, “but we are examining the possibility of forgoing outside counsel and handling the litigation directly through the House, rather than through law firms that are susceptible to political pressure from wealthy, Democratic-leaning clients.”
Another wild card is the likelihood that Obama will issue a broad executive order legalizing undocumented immigrants after the November election, a move that would inflame Republicans and generate calls for more legal action. In other words, the House could vote again in November or December to add immigration to the resolution authorizing a lawsuit over Obamacare.
“We are also closely following what the administration does on executive amnesty, and the possible impact that could have on the litigation strategy,” Smith said.
Democrats, meanwhile, have turned from criticizing Boehner to mocking him.
“Speaker Boehner cannot find a single lawyer in the entire country—even at $500 dollars an hour in taxpayer money—to file a lawsuit that is so totally devoid of any legal merit,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Burck did not return requests for comment. His firm’s withdrawal was first reported by Politico on Wednesday night.
By: Russell Berman, The Atlantic, October 30, 2014
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