“Congressional Dysfunction, The Serialized Tragicomedy”: Democrats Should Restrict Their Legislative Actions To Maximum Of Seven Days
The problem with modern-day politics, aside from everything, is that it lacks consistent excitement.
Sure, there are moments when debate over a major bill gets attention, but our interest fades once the bill passes and we drift back to more intriguing things, like reality television shows about dumb people.
Last week, however, lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Congress took a step that could turn American politics into must-see TV: They serialized democracy.
At issue was a bill to continue funding the Department of Homeland Security, the folks responsible for protecting our borders and keeping the country safe from terrorism. Most would agree it’s important to have that part of the government functioning, largely so it can do its “keeping the country safe from terrorism” thing.
After the requisite amount of harrumphing and whatnot, lawmakers could have just funded the department and moved on to other matters, allowing us to get bored and shift our attention to the myriad Kardashians we have to keep up with.
Instead, a wily group of Republicans decided the Homeland Security funding bill would be a great thing to use as leverage against President Barack Obama’s recent executive action on immigration, which is supposed to shield from deportation about 5 million immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally. The GOP lawmakers said they would only fund the Department of Homeland Security if the bill also rolled back Obama’s executive action, which they say is illegal and tyrannical and really hurt their feelings.
The problem is, Democrats won’t vote for a DHS funding bill that overrides the president’s immigration action, and even if they did, Obama would veto the whole thing. Also, the president’s attempt at immigration reform was recently suspended by a federal judge.
But legal limbo and the Sisyphean nature of legislatively doing away with Obama’s executive action would not deter these Republicans. They stuck to their guns, shot down short-term funding measures and — as the clock ticked to the deadline — finally agreed to give the Department of Homeland Security a week’s worth of additional money.
Several Republicans criticized their own party for being unable to reach agreement on a long-term bill that would keep the DHS running. And Democrats, naturally, had a field day.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee communications director Matt Thornton told Politico: “If this is a harbinger of things to come, the American public is in for a very long, painful and unproductive Congress.”
That’s one way to look at things. The other is that America is in for a long, gloriously dramatic and delightfully farcical new season of “Congress.”
With a one-week funding extension, Republicans gave us not just a dramatic cliffhanger — What happens when the homeland you love is no longer protected? — but the promise of another week of political intrigue.
Will Obama cave to the GOP’s pressure, take back his executive action and finally admit he’s a Kenyan-born radical transported through time to bring American society to its knees? Will House Speaker John Boehner rise from his office tanning bed, march to the congressional clubhouse where ultra-conservative lawmakers make forts out of stacks of money and shout, “SERIOUSLY, GUYS?!?”
This is not a failure to govern on the part of Republicans. It’s an ingenious way to methodically push the political narrative forward and keep Americans enthralled.
Perhaps the wildly popular public radio podcast Serial — which drew millions of online listeners by using an episodic format — gave lawmakers this idea. Wherever the concept came from, it’s gold.
Following the Republicans’ “short-term decisions equal long-term drama” lead, Democrats should now restrict their legislative actions to a maximum of seven days.
For example, rather than flatly vetoing the GOP’s Keystone XL pipeline bill, Obama should have issued a special one-week veto. That would have given us days of delicious bickering between legislators, oil companies and environmentalists. Why watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills when you could see The Real Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statements for the Keystone XL Pipeline Project of the State Department?
Here’s the bottom line: Episodic politics would put plenty of butts on sofas and finally get Americans tuning in to what their government is doing or, in most cases, not doing.
What’s to lose? If the whole process is going to be ridiculous, it might as well be ridiculously good TV.
By: Rex Huppke, Columnist for the Chicago Tribune; The National Memo, March 3, 2015
“The Only Way Victory Can Be Achieved”: Republicans Still Obsessed With Message-Sending
There was a weird little sidelight to the just-concluded mini-crisis over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which was that the American Action Network, a group allied with John Boehner, was running ads criticizing conservative Republicans for not supporting a clean DHS funding bill, even as Boehner was trying to win them over with a much softer approach. But what really struck me watching this was something about the message itself:
You may have noticed that when the ad says “put real teeth in immigration enforcement,” the image is of a Predator drone, presumably because we’ll be raining missiles down on people wading through the Rio Grande. Which is…interesting. But here’s the text:
“While the threats grow, conservatives in Congress want to beef up our security, enhance cybersecurity, and put real teeth in immigration enforcement. It’s the right message to send to our enemies. But some in Washington are willing to put our security at risk by jeopardizing critical security funding. That’s the wrong message to send to our enemies. Tell Congressman Tim Huelskamp to fund homeland security. Our safety must come first.”
This is a common argument, particularly when it comes to national security policy. “Sending messages” is supposed to be extremely important, and not just to friends and potential supporters, but to adversaries and enemies as well. Indeed, sometimes it seems that victory can be achieved if only we “send the right message.”
George W. Bush was particularly fond of citing the importance of proper message-sending. For instance, here are some of the things he said in the first debate he did in 2004 with John Kerry:
“[Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi] doesn’t want U.S. leadership, however, to send mixed signals, to not stand with the Iraqi people…I don’t see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What message does that send to our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?…I know we won’t achieve if we send mixed signals. I know we’re not going to achieve our objective if we send mixed signals to our troops, our friends, the Iraqi citizens…The way to make sure that we succeed is to send consistent, sound messages to the Iraqi people…I think that by speaking clearly and doing what we say and not sending mixed messages, it is less likely we’ll ever have to use troops…But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we’ve affected the world in a positive way…[Kim Jong-Il] wants to unravel the six- party talks, or the five-nation coalition that’s sending him a clear message…You cannot lead if you send mixed messages. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to our troops. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to our allies. Mixed messages send the wrong signals to the Iraqi citizens.”
Now I don’t mean to say that message-sending is never important. Adversaries and allies alike notice both what we do and what we say. But the idea that what matters in defeating ISIS is the message we send them is kind of crazy. There are plenty of reasons why it would have been a bad idea to shut down DHS, but it’s not like somewhere in Mosul a bunch of ISIS fighters would be watching CNN and say, “We were prepared to abandon this war, but this sends a message of weakness. The time to strike America is now!”
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 4, 2015
“Straight To ‘Hell No'”: The Rapid Radicalization Of The Republican Party By The Hard Right
This is a blog, not a history lesson. But I can’t resist trying to make some sense of the current Republican desire for self-immolation.
Where has this so-called “Hell No Caucus” come from? Whether it is refusing to pass bills to fund the government, approve increases in the debt ceiling or provide money for the Department of Homeland Security, the Republican Party has an increasingly apparent and growing antagonism to pragmatic solutions. It has drifted so far right that it is truly in danger of self-destruction. As New York Republican Rep. Peter King, put it on CBS’ “This Week,” “[T]here’s a wing within the Congress which is absolutely irresponsible – they have no concept of reality.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Luke Russert on Friday, he added, “I’ve had it with this self-righteous, delusional wing of the party.”
The GOP has become more and more extreme, to a point where it is barely recognizable from what it was in the 20th century. Even Ronald Reagan, and certainly Barry Goldwater, would not understand their party today.
I remember producing a pamphlet on the rise of the “New Right” in the early 1980s with an analysis of groups like the National Conservative Political Action Committee, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, the Conservative Victory Fund and many others. We argued how destructive the extreme right wing views were at the time but little did we realize how nihilistic they would become.
Here is the history lesson.
A very conservative group formed in 1973 called the Republican Study Committee. They were small, but they were opposed to both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as too liberal and decided to organize against their policies. Then-Rep. Phil Crane of Illinois and congressional staffers Paul Weyrich, who went on to found the Heritage Foundation, and Ed Feulner, who later headed Heritage, were driving forces, along with several other members of Congress. When Newt Gingrich became House speaker in 1995, he didn’t want a separate group on his flank causing trouble, despite the fact that his conservative views were not too far from theirs. So he abolished it; but it came back.
A National Journal article last year discussed in detail the evolution and rapid growth of this far right caucus.The growth of the Republican Study Committee since 1995 has been truly dramatic – 15 members out of 218 in 1995, up to 72 members out of 220 in 2001 and skyrocketing to 171 members in 2013. The percentage of Republicans who joined this very conservative group went from 7 percent in 1995 to over 70 percent last year.
It is not too difficult to understand why House Speaker John Boehner, or any speaker, might have trouble with his or her Republican caucus.
Of course, there are other groups. Michele Bachmann helped organize the Tea Party Caucus several years ago, a group more extreme than the Study Committee. And, now, an initial nine members of the Study Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, have begun to assemble the House Freedom Caucus. More trouble is afoot than Republicans may realize.
The vote last Friday where 52 Republicans bucked the speaker on his effort to move forward on funding for DHS says a lot about the GOP’s direction. The numbers don’t add up for Boehner to move much of anything forward, and the Senate won’t buy what the Study Committee or the Freedom Caucus are selling.
The rapid radicalization of the Republican Party is playing out in the presidential sweepstakes as well. The Conservative Political Action Conference has gone from a fringe gathering to a primary litmus test for most candidates.
There is no such thing as a moderate voice in the leadership of the Republican Party any longer; there is barely a Main Street conservative voice that will get traction within the party that now finds itself in control of the House and Senate. Even the John Boehners and the Mitch McConnells live in fear of the new suicide caucus.
The problem, as many Republicans know, is that this crowd is ungovernable and ultimately, nationally, unelectable.
By: Peter Fenn, U.S. News and World Report, March 3, 2015
“Polls Show Most Americans Favor Pathway To Citizenship”: GOP Continues To Be Held Hostage By Aging, Nativist Tea Partiers
With all the high drama in Washington over immigration, you’d think the fate of undocumented workers represented a cataclysmic political divide — an ever-widening chasm that cannot be bridged. But it doesn’t.
Polls have long shown that a majority of Americans favor a pathway to citizenship for those residents who entered the country illegally. But new data show that isn’t a matter of blue states overwhelming red ones. In fact, there isn’t a state in the union, from the bluest to the reddest, where a majority opposes a path to citizenship, provided certain criteria are met, for those without papers, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
The PRRI has used its data to create an American Values Atlas that shows the political inclinations of voters in each state. Unsurprisingly, some states are more immigrant friendly than others. In California, for example, 66 percent support a path to citizenship for the undocumented. In crimson-red Alabama, that drops to 56 percent. But that’s still a majority.
Yet, that very pathway is the mechanism that congressional Republicans have denounced as “amnesty” and refused to support. House Speaker John Boehner’s caucus has declined even to hold a vote on a proposal for comprehensive immigration reform.
Last fall, when President Obama took action through executive orders to grant temporary papers to as many as 4 million immigrants who met certain criteria, Republicans were apoplectic, claiming he was violating the Constitution and behaving like a despot. They have used every instrument at their disposal, from lawsuits to a pitched battle over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, to overturn the president’s orders.
Yet even the president’s executive action on immigration is not as unpopular as you might think. While his decision to use executive powers does not draw universal support, the aim of his action does. Three-quarters of Americans favor his policy of granting temporary documents to certain groups of immigrants. Said Robert Jones, CEO of the institute, “In today’s polarized politics, there are few major issues that attract this kind of bipartisan and cross-religious agreement.”
It makes you wonder: Who are those congressional Republicans listening to? Why are they opposing a policy with widespread support, even among GOP voters? (While more Democrats — 70 percent, according to the PRRI — support a path to citizenship, 51 percent of Republicans do, as well.)
The answer is depressing, if not surprising: The Republican Party continues to be held hostage by an aging and nativist minority of Tea Partiers who cannot stomach the idea of a browning America. (It isn’t considered polite to point this out, but more Tea Partiers hold views that show racial resentment than the public at large. As just one example, a 2010 New York Times poll showed Tea Partiers are “more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.”)
Among those who identify with the Tea Party, only 37 percent support a pathway to citizenship, according to the PRRI poll. Twenty-three percent would give them legal residency, while 37 percent want to deport each and every one of them, the poll said. (Never mind the logistical and financial nightmare that trying to round up every undocumented resident would represent.)
This is a huge problem for the GOP, as its strategists have pointed out for years. The party cannot afford to alienate Latinos, a growing bloc, as they have alienated black voters with their resistance to civil rights measures.
So rather than pander to an ultraconservative and xenophobic minority, the Republican Party’s leaders ought to educate them about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. As a practical matter, demographic change is already preordained: By the year 2042, according to the U.S. Census, whites will no longer constitute a majority, no matter what happens to undocumented immigrants. The GOP needs the allegiance of more voters of color if it is to regain the Oval Office.
But there is more at stake here than the survival of a political party. The nation also needs those immigrants; it needs their energy, their youth, their hopes and dreams. We ought to welcome them with open arms.
By: Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, March 2, 2015
“Upending The Status Quo”: How Obama Is Shrewdly Using Partisanship To Sideline Netanyahu And Save The Iran Nuclear Deal
The conventional wisdom is that partisanship in Washington, D.C., is one of the biggest obstacles to solving America’s most entrenched problems, from fixing the immigration system to closing the inequality gap. But if the fallout from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s forthcoming address to Congress is any indication, partisanship can be a pretty useful tool when it comes to upending the status quo.
Throughout the controversy, the White House has been happy to run its relationship with Netanyahu through the partisan vortex, helping splinter a bipartisan consensus that was once the most potent domestic threat to a U.S. rapport with Iran — a deal that would constitute the crowning accomplishment of President Obama’s foreign policy legacy.
Of course, Netanyahu has himself to blame more than anyone. By accepting an invitation from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to essentially hammer the administration before a joint session of Congress, without notifying the White House or the State Department, he took his longstanding disdain for Obama to new heights. When even Fox News anchors are questioning your treatment of the president, this may be a sign you have crossed a line.
He exacerbated his problems by rejecting an invitation from Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) to privately meet with Democrats, in what they said was an attempt to “balance the politically divisive invitation from Speaker Boehner.” Netanyahu explained that the meeting would “compound the misperception of partisanship regarding my upcoming visit,” but it seems his rejection accomplished that just fine on its own.
“Since when does an Israeli prime minister say no to a meeting with Democrats?” bemoaned a former Israeli official to The New York Times. And referring to Durbin and Feinstein, he said, “By the way, their Israeli voting record is impeccable. Not good, not very good, impeccable.”
This gets to the crux of the problem for Obama, as he potentially heads into the final stretch of a years-long attempt to reach a deal on Iran’s controversial nuclear program. He not only has to fend off opposition from Republicans, but staunch pro-Israel members of his own party, some of whom seem intent on passing additional sanctions on Iran to scuttle any deal. The problem is so acute that, as recently as January, Obama faced the prospect of a united Congress overriding his veto for the first time in his presidency.
But that has changed. By aligning himself so plainly with the GOP, Netanyahu may have made it impossible for Democrats to join the Republicans. As Dov Zakheim writes at Foreign Policy, “Netanyahu’s determination to address Congress has all but destroyed any chance the Hill’s passing new sanctions and overriding a presidential veto. The deal will therefore go ahead.”
The Obama administration appears to realize this, taking the fight to Netanyahu in a highly public way. The White House made clear it would snub Netanyahu, saying both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden would not meet with him. It still has not said who (if anyone) will be attending the annual summit this weekend of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby. [Update: Rice and Samantha Powers, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., will attend.] Then this week, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said Netanyhu’s speech was “destructive” to U.S.-Israeli relations — not “unhelpful” or any other boilerplate diplomatic language, but “destructive.”
Then Secretary of State John Kerry used his testimony on Wednesday to the House Foreign Affairs Committee to remind everyone that Netanyahu supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Never mind that Kerry was for it before he was against it — he noted that Netanyahu is a hysterical hawk and associated the Israeli prime minister with the most divisive foreign policy issue of the last generation. After all, everyone knows that there is little rank-and-file Democrats hate more than the Iraq War and those who egged the Bush administration on. (Kerry’s attack was all the more remarkable given the fact that his friendship with Netanyahu goes back to the 1970s.)
This is all bad news for those who believe that a U.S. accord with Iran would spell doom for Israel. But for those who believe that diplomacy and negotiations are far better than the alternatives, they might have partisanship to thank.
By: Ryu Spaeth, The Week, February 27, 2015
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