“Unnerving To Watch”: Could Mitch McConnell’s Senate Fight Take Down The Country?
TPM Reader TW thinks back to 2008 and 2011 …
Saw your editor’s blog post on McConnell and it’s something I have been thinking about all week. I work in the investment industry and I am watching the town hall meetings, this thing with McConnell and it’s bringing flashbacks to 2011. I don’t think most people understand just how close we were to a real meltdown that summer. Without Biden and McConnell, there would have been a default and that would have dwarfed 2008.
Now normally, the country would be able to count on the fact that they averted disaster last time, so therefore, they will find a way to avert it again this time. But as I’ve thought about it all week (and for some time before this week), I’ve had a nagging thought that this is all wrong. But, I couldn’t put a finger on it either.
But after seeing the coverage of the town halls this week and listening to the right wing turn on their own, little by little, I guess I get it now. These people really are nihilistic and the only thing that will satisfy them is a total breakdown of government. Only then, they believe, can we have our “freedoms” and our “rights”. I don’t pretend to understand how you mentally get to that point, but that’s where they are.
Now, I know that there have always been crazy people in this country throughout our history, but there has also always been rational people who think first about the country and act accordingly. But that’s not where we are today. Rational people have been voted out or left and in their place are the Lee’s, Cruz’s, Rubio’s, etc. And while they claim to be capitalists and free market proponents, they couldn’t negotiate themselves out of a paper bag in the real world, and they have no understanding of practical economics. You can spout Ludwig von Mises all you want, but it has no practical application to the real world.
Which brings me back to McConnell. For all of the issues I disagree with him on, at least he was rational and would cut the deal to keep us from going over the big cliff. If he’s gone over to Crazyland and Boehner has abdicated any remaining parts of his speakership, then what’s left?
And all this comes as economically, our world is getting better. I realize that there is a ways to go with unemployment/underemployment, housing, etc. but this economy is still getting better. The market is up because of that fact. I know there’s a lot of noise around what’s driving the market, but at the end of the day, professional investors would not be pushing money into the market if they didn’t think the overall economy was headed the right direction.
So, yes, I am worried. A government shutdown can be dealt with, that won’t kill the economy, but the debt ceiling/default will. And without someone who can/will cut a deal, it’s unnerving to watch. At this point, I think we are in a more dangerous position than 2011.
I apologize for the length, but you guys are on the right track here with your reporting. This is the story of the fall, and very few people are talking about it yet.
By: Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, August 10, 2013
“Crazy Is as Crazy Does”: Congress Is Off To Suck Up To Its Lunatic Tea Party Constituents
Four years ago, Democratic representatives went home for the August recess and found themselves under assault from angry Tea Partiers, who took over town meetings with shouting and fist-shaking over the Affordable Care Act in particular, and more generally, the theft of their country by the foreign Muslim usurper Barack Obama. This August, however, it’s Republicans who are under attack by some of those same people.
At one town meeting after another, hard-right Republican House members are being confronted by constituents accusing them of not being quite doctrinaire and reckless enough (see here, or here, or here). Once again the immediate topic is Obamacare, but now the question isn’t whether the law should pass, but whether Republicans should shut down the government in a futile attempt to defund it. The members catching the most heat are those who argue that shutting down the government is useless, because Barack Obama is never going to sign a budget that defunds his greatest domestic accomplishment, so the only thing a shutdown would do is create more political headaches for the GOP.
This outbreak of relative pragmatism on the part of some Republican members of Congress is of course seen by Tea Partiers as little more than weak-kneed appeasement. It suggests that there’s a shift underway among the Republican base, from simply favoring the threatening of a government shutdown as a way to extract concessions, to supporting a shutdown of the government even with the knowledge that doing so will produce no concessions from Democrats.
As many a Republican politician will tell you (ask Marco Rubio, for one), convincing the Tea Party that you’re sufficiently conservative and that you hate Barack Obama enough isn’t just a full-time job, it’s a game that almost everyone will eventually lose. At some point you’ll take some position or express some opinion that is interpreted as less than maximal anti-Obamaism, and all it takes is one slip to be declared a traitor forevermore. So as crazy as Republican politicians sometimes seem, don’t forget that they’re under constant pressure from a base that is even crazier.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 8, 2013
“Richard Nixon Runs The Republican Party, Again”: A Contempt For The Regular Norms And Institutions Of Politics
The current Republican Party isn’t the party of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It isn’t a conservative party. It’s the party, instead, of Nixon and Gingrich. And that’s why it’s a dysfunctional mess, and a problem for the nation.
I said something to that effect the other day, and a commenter got all upset about it:
The party of Nixon? The guy who created and implemented the EPA? The guy who normalized the US international relationship with China? The guy who intervened in escalating fuel markets to fix prices, in order to protect consumers?
They are so far away from Nixon’s policies and governance.
I’ve seen this reaction before, and because it’s such an important point it’s worth spelling it out. It’s not about ideology. It’s not about specific policies. A healthy party, one that is able to cut deals and work with others, can be healthy even if their policies are far from the mainstream.
We can get at this a couple of ways. One is that everyone should be very careful about what “Nixon” did, as opposed to what the government did while he was president. Give Nixon the Congress and the policy environment of 1947 — or 1997 — and you get very different results.
But I suppose more to the point is that there’s just no way to read the contemporary Republican Party as some sort of principled ideological party. It just isn’t.
Think, on the one hand, how easily they took to George W. Bush’s support of an intrusive federal government program on education, or to Bush’s support of a major Medicare expansion.
Or think about their convoluted path on healthcare reform over the last 20 years – how an outline originally concocted by Republicans as a reaction to Bill Clinton’s initiative, and eventually implemented in one state by a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature, became (once adopted by Democrats) the essence of tyranny.
And don’t even get started on Republicans and the federal budget deficit.
That’s not a principled conservative party.
As no one knows better than real hardcore ideologues, the ones who know well that George W. Bush and the Republican Congresses he served with were never “real” conservatives. They’re right about that! Even though most of those saying that now are wannabes who never dissented during those years.
Unlike those ideologues, I’m not complaining about pragmatism; I think ideological parties are a terrible idea in a democracy. But while they aren’t the ideal conservative party that some want, they’re certainly not a healthy (conservative) pragmatic party, either.
That’s where Nixon and Newt come in.
Both of these very successful (pre-disgrace, anyway) Republicans became national figures as conservatives. Neither, however, was a principled conservative. Nixon was covered above; Gingrich was a Rockefeller Republican when he first ran for Congress, and both of them shifted back and forth as they saw opportunities to exploit.
But that kind of opportunism isn’t what make Newt and Nixon stand out. No, what they have bequeathed to Republicans is a contempt for the regular norms and institutions of the American political system, along with a Leninist belief that contradictions must always be heightened. Nixon broke laws, to be sure, but other presidents have broken laws. What made Nixon different – what made everyone, including his own party, so eager to be rid of him – was that he refused to accept that others within the system, whether in Congress or the press or the bureaucracy, were as legitimate as the president. What made Gingrich different is his consistent strategy of tearing down institutions (the House, and then the presidency) in order to save them. For both, politics was never about the normal promotion of interests and reconciliation of differences, but instead, very simply, about destroying their opponents.
Because they are the party of Newt and Nixon, the principles that today’s GOP worships aren’t market economics or personal liberty; look instead at a “principle” such as a refusal to compromise.
Or brinkmanship as a principle. The quintessential GOP stance, in a lot of ways, is the current insistence by many in the party that they must shut down the government to prove they are serious about the Affordable Care Act. What makes it such a great example — so much a Newt-inspired example — is that they’ve been flailing around all year trying to figure out what to ask for when they blackmailed the nation over the debt limit and funding the government. And that half or more of the party is insisting on it even as experienced legislators and analysts tell them that it can’t possible work. Because as I said back in the spring, the faction that wants the shutdown isn’t really sure about what it wants to demand; it’s only certain that it wants to take hostages. Extortion for the sake of extortion. As principle.
It’s of a piece with the series of almost-shutdowns we’ve endured (all of them echoing the Gingrich train wreck of 1995-1996). With the debt limit showdown of 2011. With the explosion of the filibuster far beyond previous use in the Senate. With a series of “constitutional hardball” examples over the years. With the choice to attempt to undermine the ACA rather than fix or improve what they could, with the goal – the goal! – of causing as much policy failure as possible.
A party only does those things if its leaders and many of its members have taken as a principle Nixon’s standard operating procedure of treating the rest of the United States government beyond the White House as illegitimate; a party only does those things if it no longer accepts the basic constitutional constraints that most politicians, no matter what their views on public policy, have by and large accepted. And a party only does this if it believes, as Newt Gingrich did, that the best way to gain control of institutions is to first destroy them.
That’s the Republican Party we have. Not every single member of it, of course, but it’s a strong enough influence that it’s what really matters. And while I have no brilliant suggestions for how to do it, I do believe that the most urgent task facing the political system right now is to figure out some way for Republicans to shake off the influence of Newt and Nixon.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, Salon, August 10, 2013
“On The Receiving End Of The Insanity”: August Off To An Awkward Start For The GOP
Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) received some unexpected pressure from the far-right this week, when he told constituents he’s strongly opposed to the Affordable Care Act, but he doesn’t want to shut down the government. For his conservative constituents, that’s simply unacceptable — Pittenger’s many votes to repeal “Obamacare” aren’t enough to satisfy the right, which wants GOP lawmakers to go much further.
As it turns out, Pittenger isn’t the only one. Watch on YouTube
In this clip, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) was also pressed by a constituent on whether he’s prepared to vote against any funding bill that includes funding for Obamacare.” As Jonathan Cohn explained:
The question draws strong applause from the audience. Schock says he shares the frustration with Obamacare, calling it “an extremely flawed bill” and supporting repeal. But shutting down the government, Schock goes on to explain, would be an extreme step — one that would have harsh consequences for average Americans. “If you’re going to take a hostage,” Schock says, “you gotta be willing to shoot it.” Another attendee quickly quipped, “kill it.”
As Aviva Shen noted, there was a similar scene in Nebraska at an event hosted by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R). When the congressman said he rejected a Republican plan to trigger a government shutdown, a constituent drew applause by arguing, “[W]e elected Republicans to fight for more conservative policies.”
GOP officials had fairly specific hopes for the August recess. Having conservatives complaining that Republicans aren’t far-right enough on health care wasn’t part of the plan.
Indeed, let’s not forget that the ideal scenario for Republicans was for far-right activists to show up at town-hall meetings and shout at Democrats, about health care and other issues. But as the August recess gets underway, these early reports suggest far-right activists are indeed showing up, and they’re glad to shout about health care, but it’s Republicans who are on the receiving end of their ire.
As we discussed yesterday, this is a mess the GOP created. If Republicans aren’t pleased with the results, they have no one to blame but themselves.
As party officials and strategists ponder their next step, they may also want to keep in mind that the pro-shutdown activists making a fuss at town-hall events aren’t part of the American mainstream. The conservative Washington Examiner had an interesting item yesterday on an important poll.
First, let’s examine a poll conducted June 2-5, several weeks before a small group of congressional Republicans proposed their defund-or-shutdown strategy. The survey, conducted for the Republican nonprofit Crossroads GPS by GOP polling firm North Star Opinion Research, examined voter attitudes toward Obamacare and its implementation.
Not surprisingly, the results were almost uniformly negative for Obama and other supporters of the Affordable Care Act — with the key exception being the response to this question: “Some say that the health care reform law is so bad that an effort to repeal it should be attached to a bill necessary to keep the government running. Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea for opponents of the health care reform law to risk shutting down the government in an effort to get rid of the law?”
Only 29 percent of respondents said this was a good idea, compared with 64 percent who said it was a bad idea and 7 percent who didn’t know.
Remember, this was a Republican pollster, publishing results intended to be helpful to Republicans.
It leaves the party in quite an awkward situation. After deliberately getting far-right activists all riled up about gutting the federal health care system by any means necessary, many Republicans are now balking at a government shutdown threat, leaving the GOP base feeling betrayed. But if Republicans take the base’s demands seriously, they risk alienating the mainstream, and handing Democrats a cudgel to use against them in the 2014 midterms.
Maybe GOP leaders should have thought this through a little more?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 8, 2013
“On The Receiving End Of Right-Wing Ire”: The GOP Struggles To Contain The Monster They Created
When it comes to Republican threats to shut down the government over funding for the federal health care system, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has adopted a you’re-either-with-us-or-you’re-against-us attitude: “All I’m saying is that you cannot say you are against Obamacare if you are willing to vote for a law that funds it. If you’re willing to fund this thing, you can’t possibly say you’re against it.”
It’s a sentiment the GOP base has embraced with great enthusiasm. Watch on YouTube
In this clip, we see Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) pressed by a constituent at a town-hall meeting on whether the congressman will go along with the far-right scheme to shut down the government in the hopes of defunding the Affordable Care Act. “Do you want the thoughtful answer?” Pittenger asked. The voter replied, “I want yes or no.”
The answer, of course, was “no.” The North Carolina Republican considers himself a fierce opponent of “Obamacare,” but nevertheless sees the shutdown threat as unrealistic. Indeed, Pittenger tried to explain why the tactic would fail in light of the Democratic White House and Democratic majority in the Senate, but the angry activists didn’t care.
“It doesn’t matter,” one voter is heard saying. “We need to show the American people we stand for conservative values,” said another.
The clip was posted to a Tea Party website called “Constitutional War.”
Keep in mind, Pittenger is not exactly a Rockefeller Republican from New England. As Greg Sargent reported yesterday, the congressman is a red-state conservative who’s not only voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but has co-sponsored a dozen or so bills to destroy all or part of the current federal health care system.
But as far as some Tea Partiers are concerned, Pittenger and other conservative Republicans who see the shutdown strategy as folly are suddenly the enemy.
It appears that Republican officials have created a monster, and like Frankenstein, they aren’t altogether pleased with the results.
For the last few years, GOP lawmakers have said, repeatedly, that the base should rally behind Republicans as they valiantly try to tear down the federal health care system and take access to basic care away from millions. And by and large, Tea Partiers and other elements of the party’s base cheered them on.
The scheme was, for the most part, a rather cruel con — Republicans almost certainly realized that their last chance to repeal “Obamacare” was the 2012 presidential election, which they lost badly. But they kept fanning the flames anyway, telling right-wing activists to keep fighting — and more importantly, keep writing checks.
Party leaders may have winked and nodded to one another, realizing that they’d never be able to fulfill their dream of heath care destruction, but therein lies the problem: conservative activists thought the party was serious, and saw neither the winks nor the nods.
The result, as Robert Pittenger noticed in North Carolina, isn’t pretty. The GOP base seems to be waking up and saying, “What do you mean you’re not willing to shut down the government over Obamacare funding? If Rubio, Cruz, and Lee have a plan, why are you betraying us by rejecting their idea?”
Republicans had an opportunity after the 2012 elections to shift gears. Party leaders could have subtly and understandably made clear that the repeal crusade had fallen short, and the GOP would have to begin focusing on other fights.
But the party did the opposite, telling easily fooled donor supporters that this was a fight Republicans could win. Now the GOP finds itself stuck in a hole they dug for themselves. Republicans were gleeful when the August recess meant Democrats getting yelled at over health care; they may be less pleased when they’re on the receiving end of right-wing ire.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 7, 2013
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