“A Self Righteous Verbal Tick”: Ted Cruz Doesn’t Speak For “The American People”
Can we please leave “the American people” out of the debate over defunding the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare)? I’m not talking about the citizens of this great nation, but rather the politically self-righteous verbal tick our elected officials and commentators employ in an effort to invest in themselves the authority of the electorate.
So for example, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the “defund” ringmaster, said earlier this week that while his grand idea has little chance in the Senate, “House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground, and continue to listen to the American people.” And on Fox News on Wednesday night, Cruz praised “House leadership for listening to the American people,” adding that, “We’ve got to respond to the American people.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Cruz said, “needs to listen to” – you guessed it! – “the American people.”
Appearing on the same show, Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee declared that “the American people are coming together, and they’re standing together and they’re saying, please defund this law.” He went on to praise House Speaker John Boehner for standing “with the American people. We now need to stand with him and with the people and defund this law.” And so on. (Boehner’s House this morning actually did pass a continuing resolution which would keep the government open through Dec.15 while defunding the Affordable Care Act; the bill stands no chance of passing the Senate.)
It must be bracing to carry a mandate to speak on behalf of the American people … even if, as is the case with Cruz, Lee and their tea party pals, they don’t have anything of the sort. Instead they have the insufferable pretension of one: They alone speak for the people because, well, they say so. Their belief in their own popular righteousness recalls Mr. Dooley’s definition of a fanatic: someone who “does what he thinks th’ Lord wud do if He knew th’ facts iv th’ case.”
And from whence does their mandate to speak so authoritatively for “the American people” derive? Cruz referenced an Internet petition which garnered 1.3 million signatures. “Look, today’s decision is a victory for the American people,” he said. “Those 1.3 million Americans … that went and signed that petition and spoke out.” That might explain the difference between the American people and Cruz’s “the American people”: He defines the term as people who share his radical agenda.
More broadly Cruz, Lee and company would presumably point to polls showing that Obamacare remains broadly unpopular. But that reflects, charitably, a superficial knowledge of the polling. Take the Pew Research Center/USA Today poll released earlier this week. Fully 53 percent disapprove of the Affordable Care Act as opposed to only 42 percent who approve. (The Real Clear Politics average of polls has 38 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving.) But dig deeper and you’ll find that that 53 percent is split over how to deal with the law they don’t like – more than half of them, 27 percent, want pols to try to make the law work; a lesser number, 23 percent, want to see elected officials try to make it fail. In other words something like one-quarter of the actual American people stand with Cruz, Lee and the rest of the fanatics. Some mandate.
This is not an unusual result. Even a laughably skewed poll which Heritage Action – the activist branch of the Heritage Foundation – commissioned to bolster the “defund” push found that 52 percent of Americans (or more precisely 52 percent of Americans in a selection of 10 GOP-leaning House districts) think that implementation of the law should go forward, while only 44.5 percent favor repeal. This makes intuitive sense: Not everyone who dislikes the law does so because they’re conservative; some portion of the law’s critics is progressives disappointed that it wasn’t more liberal.
But there are a couple of more important points to be made about polls. For one thing, the most authoritative poll taken in the last year occurred in November, at great expense. It had a sample size of more than 125 million and the results were not particularly close: The candidate who campaigned on repealing Obamacare lost by four percentage points – nearly five million votes – to the fellow who signed Obamacare into law. You’d think that if the American people saw stopping Obamacare as a cause worth fighting for “with every ounce of breath we have,” as Cruz put it Thursday, they might have so indicated at the ballot box. And yet Cruz, Lee and their cronies seem to see in this result a mandate from “the American people” (if not the American people) to obstruct the law to the maximum extent, even to the extent of shutting down the government to stop it.
And while the tea party right’s fidelity to the will of “the American people” as expressed by more recent public opinion polls is admirable, it takes on a far more self-serving aspect when considered in light of other polls which left people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee unmoved. For example 86 percent of Americans support background checks for people buying guns; on immigration reform, 64 percent of Americans support the comprehensive bill that the Senate passed and 78 percent support a qualified path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Oh, and 71 percent of Americans oppose shutting down the government, according to a poll conducted over the summer for House Republicans. For those keeping track at home, those figures are more impressive than the 50-something opposed to Obamacare – perhaps no one has told Cruz, Lee et al. about these judgments from “the American people?”
The list goes on. The fact is, as I have written over and over and over and over, there are a number of prominent issues where the GOP seems immune to the charms of “the American people.”
And to be clear, this is not a partisan problem. Pols in both parties are promiscuous with the desires of “the American people,” while none have a monopoly on it. So let’s agree that it’s time to retire “the American people” – or more specifically their demands and expectations – from the political lexicon.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, September 21, 2013
“We Don’t Make Deals With Bullies”: No Yielding On Obamacare, Debt Ceiling Or Government Shutdown
Republicans in the House are like a bunch of 3-year-olds playing with matches. Their hapless leaders don’t have the sense to scold them and send them to their rooms — which means President Obama has to be the disciplinarian in this dysfunctional family.
Mature adults in the GOP should have explained reality to these tantrum-throwing tykes long ago: It simply is not within their constitutional power to make Obamacare go away. They can scream at the top of their lungs, roll around on the floor, hold their breath until they turn blue, waste everybody’s time with 41 useless votes — whatever. All they can really do is hurt themselves or others.
Yet here we are, with Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) cowed into letting his members threaten to shut down the government unless they are allowed to stay up all night watching television and eating candy. Also, unless the Senate and Obama agree to nullify health-care reform before it fully takes effect.
I happen to believe that Obamacare is a great accomplishment, providing access to medical insurance to millions of Americans who lack it and bringing the nation much closer to universal health care. It’s an imperfect law, to be sure, but it could be made much better with the kind of constructive tinkering that responsible leaders performed on Social Security and Medicare.
Even if Obamacare were tremendously flawed, however, it would be wrong to let a bunch of extremist ideologues hold the country hostage in this manner. If Republicans want to repeal the reforms, they should win the Senate and the presidency. If not, they’re welcome to pout and sulk all they want — but not to use extortion to get their way.
At issue is not just the threat of a federal shutdown, which will happen Oct. 1 unless Congress passes a continuing resolution to fund government operations. The debt ceiling has to be raised before the Treasury hits its borrowing limit, which will happen around Oct. 18. If House Republicans don’t kill or neutralize Obamacare with the funding bill, they are ready to threaten the nation — and the global economy — with a potentially catastrophic default.
The proper response — really, the only response — is to say no. And mean it.
Obama is, by nature, a reasonable and flexible man, but this time he must not yield. Even if you leave aside what delaying or defunding Obamacare would mean for his legacy — erasing his most significant domestic accomplishment — it would be irresponsible for him to bow to the GOP zealots’ demands.
The practical impact of acquiescing would be huge. Individuals who have been uninsured are anticipating access to adequate care. State governments, insurance companies and health-care providers have spent vast amounts of time and money preparing for the law to take effect. To suddenly say “never mind” would be unbelievably reckless.
The political implication of compromising with blackmailers would be an unthinkable surrender of presidential authority. The next time he says “I will do this” or “I will not do that,” why should Congress or the American people take him seriously? How could that possibly enhance Obama’s image on the world stage?
Obama has said he will not accept a budget deal that cripples Obamacare and will never negotiate on the debt ceiling. Even if the Republicans carry through with their threats — and this may happen — the president has no option but to stand his ground.
You don’t deal with bullies by making a deal to keep the peace. That only rewards and encourages them. You have to push back.
The thing is, this showdown is a sure political loser for the GOP — and smart Republicans know it. Boehner doesn’t want this fight and, in fact, should be grateful if Obama hangs tough and shows the crazies the limits of their power. Most Republicans in the Senate don’t want this fight. It’s doubtful that even a majority of House Republicans really, truly want this fight, no matter what they say publicly.
But irresponsible demagogues — I mean you, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — have whipped the GOP base into a frenzy of unrealistic expectations. House members who balk at jumping off the cliff risk being labeled “moderate,” which is the very worst thing you can call a Republican — and the most likely thing to shorten his or her political career.
The way to end this madness is by firmly saying no. If Boehner won’t do it, Obama must.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 20, 2013
“Celebrating Misery”: House Republicans’ Ghoulish Defunding Rally
There was something ghoulish about the rally that House Republicans held today in the Rayburn Room after they voted to defund health care reform. The party atmosphere was so boisterous, the cheers and laughter so loud, that it was easy to forget everyone in the room had just voted to keep tens of millions of people from getting health insurance.
By keeping spending at its current levels through mid-December, they had also voted to continue the sequester, which is preventing millions of people from getting public housing subsidies, Head Start seats, and unemployment benefits. The sequester is also taking a serious toll on scientific research and investment in infrastructure, not to mention its infuriating drag on employment and the economic recovery. How about another round of applause?
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, of course, from a House that had voted the previous day to cut food stamps for 3.8 million low-income people, including many very young and very old recipients. But at least they didn’t have a party to celebrate that vote.
Today, though, everyone was in a great mood.
“When we acted, it wasn’t just a group of Republicans, but it was a bipartisan vote,” said Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Whip. (O.K., fine. Two Democrats voted for it, and 188 voted against.) “Let me state that again because I want to make sure you write it correctly. [Huge laughter.] It was a bipartisan vote because we’re Americans first! [Cheers, applause.]”
But some Americans are last, like the millions who would have to get all their medical care from an emergency room if the House had its way. That didn’t seem to bother Eric Cantor, the Republican leader, who pushed through the food-stamp bill and today claimed the health law was turning the country into a part-time economy. (Actually, the recession had started that trend long before President Obama’s health law took effect.)
Mr. Cantor called on Senate Democrats to pass the House bill, which isn’t going to happen, and even named a few from conservative states, like Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who Republicans hope to defeat for re-election by linking them to the health law.
What he didn’t mention, though, is that the House’s real beef is with Senate Republicans, not Democrats, many of whom have denounced the extremist tactic of threatening a government shutdown if health reform isn’t defunded. The defeat of the House demand in the Senate is pre-ordained, and when the measure comes back to the House next week without any mention of the health law, and with little time left to avoid a shutdown, the laughter and applause will be long gone.
By: David Firestone, Editors Blog, The New York Times, September 20, 2013
“The Crazy Party”: The GOP Has Made Its Transition From Being Just The Stupid Party
Early this year, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, made headlines by telling his fellow Republicans that they needed to stop being the “stupid party.” Unfortunately, Mr. Jindal failed to offer any constructive suggestions about how they might do that. And, in the months that followed, he himself proceeded to say and do a number of things that were, shall we say, not especially smart.
Nonetheless, Republicans did follow his advice. In recent months, the G.O.P. seems to have transitioned from being the stupid party to being the crazy party.
I know, I’m being shrill. But as it grows increasingly hard to see how, in the face of Republican hysteria over health reform, we can avoid a government shutdown — and maybe the even more frightening prospect of a debt default — the time for euphemism is past.
It helps, I think, to understand just how unprecedented today’s political climate really is.
Divided government in itself isn’t unusual and is, in fact, more common than not. Since World War II, there have been 35 Congresses, and in only 13 of those cases did the president’s party fully control the legislature.
Nonetheless, the United States government continued to function. Most of the time divided government led to compromise; sometimes to stalemate. Nobody even considered the possibility that a party might try to achieve its agenda, not through the constitutional process, but through blackmail — by threatening to bring the federal government, and maybe the whole economy, to its knees unless its demands were met.
True, there was the government shutdown of 1995. But this was widely recognized after the fact as both an outrage and a mistake. And that confrontation came just after a sweeping Republican victory in the midterm elections, allowing the G.O.P. to make the case that it had a popular mandate to challenge what it imagined to be a crippled, lame-duck president.
Today, by contrast, Republicans are coming off an election in which they failed to retake the presidency despite a weak economy, failed to retake the Senate even though far more Democratic than Republican seats were at risk, and held the House only through a combination of gerrymandering and the vagaries of districting. Democrats actually won the popular ballot for the House by 1.4 million votes. This is not a party that, by any conceivable standard of legitimacy, has the right to make extreme demands on the president.
Yet, at the moment, it seems highly likely that the Republican Party will refuse to fund the government, forcing a shutdown at the beginning of next month, unless President Obama dismantles the health reform that is the signature achievement of his presidency. Republican leaders realize that this is a bad idea, but, until recently, their notion of preaching moderation was to urge party radicals not to hold America hostage over the federal budget so they could wait a few weeks and hold it hostage over the debt ceiling instead. Now they’ve given up even on that delaying tactic. The latest news is that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, has abandoned his efforts to craft a face-saving climbdown on the budget, which means that we’re all set for shutdown, possibly followed by debt crisis.
How did we get here?
Some pundits insist, even now, that this is somehow Mr. Obama’s fault. Why can’t he sit down with Mr. Boehner the way Ronald Reagan used to sit down with Tip O’Neill? But O’Neill didn’t lead a party whose base demanded that he shut down the government unless Reagan revoked his tax cuts, and O’Neill didn’t face a caucus prepared to depose him as speaker at the first hint of compromise.
No, this story is all about the G.O.P. First came the southern strategy, in which the Republican elite cynically exploited racial backlash to promote economic goals, mainly low taxes for rich people and deregulation. Over time, this gradually morphed into what we might call the crazy strategy, in which the elite turned to exploiting the paranoia that has always been a factor in American politics — Hillary killed Vince Foster! Obama was born in Kenya! Death panels! — to promote the same goals.
But now we’re in a third stage, where the elite has lost control of the Frankenstein-like monster it created.
So now we get to witness the hilarious spectacle of Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal, pleading with Republicans to recognize the reality that Obamacare can’t be defunded. Why hilarious? Because Mr. Rove and his colleagues have spent decades trying to ensure that the Republican base lives in an alternate reality defined by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Can we say “hoist with their own petard”?
Of course, the coming confrontations are likely to damage America as a whole, not just the Republican brand. But, you know, this political moment of truth was going to happen sooner or later. We might as well have it now.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, September 19, 2013
“Overwhelmed With Madness”: House Republicans Beat John Boehner Into Submission
Following up on an earlier item, it’s not official — House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told his members at their weekly conference meeting that he’s prepared to abandon his own plans and try things their way. As such, with a government-shutdown deadline just 12 days away, the House will vote on a spending bill that defunds the Affordable Care Act, just like the far-right demands.
When reporters asked whether he had lost control of his conference, Boehner replied, “The key to any leadership job is to listen.” That’s a generous way of saying he’s being told what to do by those he ostensibly leads.
What’s more, the woefully weak Speaker seemed eager to punt the whole mess to the upper chamber, in the hopes that he won’t take all of the blame for the fiasco he and his caucus created: “[W]e’re going to send it over to the Senate, so our conservative allies over there can continue the fight. That’s where the fight is….. The fight over here has been won. It’s time for the Senate to have that fight.”
And when Boehner said the fight in the House “has been won,” the Speaker is referring to the victory of the extremists he hoped to lead in a more responsible direction, but who blew him off.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, doesn’t have a lot of choices, and can’t force congressional Republicans to be less foolish. It can, however, prepare for the worst.
The White House told federal agencies on Tuesday to prepare for a government shutdown.
President Obama’s budget director Sylvia Matthews Burwell in a memo to agencies said they should set their plans in case Congress fails to pass a funding measure by the end of the month. The government would shut down on Oct. 1 without action by Congress.
While there is time for Congress to act, Burwell wrote that “prudent management” requires agencies to prepare for a shutdown.
It’s tempting to think the White House would be scrambling to figure something out right now, but there’s just not much President Obama and his team can do. They can’t negotiate with Republican leaders because rank-and-file GOP lawmakers aren’t listening to their leaders anyway, and they can’t focus on common ground because Republican demands are too ridiculous.
So what happens now?
The House will almost certainly approve their stopgap spending measure this week, marking the 42nd time House Republicans have voted to gut the Affordable Care Act. The bill will then go to the Senate, which will swiftly reject it, before passing a bill of its own.
The House will then have to decide whether to approve the Senate bill or shut down the government. All of this will have to happen within the next 12 days.
Also keep in mind, the new House Republican strategy not only pushes Washington closer to a shutdown, but also raises the possibility that conservatives are acting against their own interests — if the Senate spending measure is to the left of Boehner’s original plan, the right may have to swallow a bill that’s friendlier to Democrats than the one they could have had just a week ago.
It would have been quite easy to avoid this showdown, if only Boehner were a more effective Speaker and his members weren’t so overwhelmed with madness.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 18, 2013
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