“They Had A Choice”: Did Frustrated Mainstream Republicans Help Pull The Nuclear Trigger?
The big mystery of today’s majority-imposed rules change in the Senate is: What happened to the deal-making Republicans?
There’s nothing much to figure out on the Democratic side. It was clear to most observers that the three-seat blockade of the D.C. Circuit Court was solidly over the line separating Democratic senators’ individual preference for maintaining the filibuster and their party interest in seating a Democratic president’s choices for the federal bench. Democrats believed that they had no choice but to proceed.
Republicans, however, certainly did have a choice. After all, in the short run, they’re clearly worse off by this change than they would be had they used the filibuster far more selectively. That was enough to get them to compromise the last time this happened. So why didn’t they hold back again?
One possibility is that they simply miscalculated, believing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was bluffing. If that was the case, however, they could have backed off at the last second.
A second possibility is that they really wanted to eliminate the filibuster, and that they believed that the cost to the Democrats for pulling the trigger was great enough that it was worth the potential three years of majority-confirmed President Obama nominees. That’s possible, although it’s very hard to believe that voters will care at all, and Republican arguments (court-packing!) did not appear designed to appeal to those who might have been willing to condemn Democrats for a “power-grab.”
So here’s a third possibility. The problem with the summer compromise is that it was horrible for deal-making Republicans. The deal essentially said: Republicans will continue to filibuster nominations, but will supply enough votes for almost all of them so that the filibusters will be defeated. But that meant that in practice a handful of Republicans were forced to tag-team their votes, making sure that Democrats always had 60. What’s more, the shutdown fight — which began right after the Senate deal was struck — revealed that radical Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) were eager to scapegoat those same deal-making Republicans. That raised the cost of the executive branch nominations agreement for tag-teamers such as Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). In other words, the summer deal might or might not have been stable, but it certainly couldn’t hold in a world in which the majority of Republican senators are looking for ways to separate themselves from mainstream conservatives, and then using that separation to attack them.
Those deal-making Republicans did have another option; They could have just abandoned the radicals. But over what principle? After all, the situation here is that it’s the radicals, not the mainstream conservatives, who want to hold up all these nominations. One way to look at what happened today is that the deal-makers were getting out of the way and allowing the radicals to lose. If the outcome is the same — Obama’s judicial picks get confirmed — then why should the deal-makers ask for the blame for it?
We don’t know yet, and perhaps we won’t, but my guess is that the way Cruz and other Republican radicals acted during the shutdown is what explains the difference between a successful deal in the summer and today’s nuclear action.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post, November 21, 2013
“A Process At The Breaking Point”: Republicans Are Hijacking The Judicial Nominating Process Without Cause
In June, President Obama nominated three qualified jurists to serve as judges on the D.C. Circuit, generally considered the nation’s second-most important federal bench. Each one of the nominees has excellent credentials, each one of the nominees sailed through the Judiciary Committee without incident, and each one of the nominees enjoys the support of a majority of the U.S. Senate.
And last night, each one of the nominees has been blocked by a Republican filibuster.
Senate Republicans on Monday denied President Obama his third nominee in recent weeks to the nation’s most powerful and prestigious appeals court and insisted they would not back down, inflaming a bitter debate over a president’s right to shape the judiciary.
By a vote of 53 to 38, the Senate failed to break a filibuster of a federal judge, Robert L. Wilkins, who was nominated to fill one of three vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, falling short of the 60 votes needed.
Wilkins technically finished with 53 votes, but he had 54 supporters – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to vote “no” for procedural reasons.
As was the case with last week’s filibuster, it’s important to recognize that the Republican obstructionism had nothing to do with Wilkins, his ideology, his temperament, or his background. On the contrary, just the opposite is true – senators in both parties agreed that Wilkins is a fine nominee.
The problem, rather, is that a minority of the Senate has decided to block every nominee for the D.C. Circuit, regardless of his or her qualifications, because Americans had the audacity to re-elect a Democratic president. Once there’s a Republican in the White House, Republican senators will presumably agree to lift the blockade.
This is important because it has simply never happened before in American history. Senators in both parties have, in a variety of instances, blocked judicial nominees they considered offensive or extreme for one reason or another, but there is nothing in the American tradition that says a minority of the Senate can maintain vacancies on an important federal bench – indefinitely – because they feel like it.
Indeed, perhaps the single most bizarre example of obstructionism run amok is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who said just a few months ago that each of Obama’s D.C. Circuit nominees deserve a vote in the Senate. McCain then proceeded to join the filibuster of the nominees he said shouldn’t be filibustered.
After yesterday’s obstructionism, Senate Democratic leaders began “taking the temperature of their caucus on whether to finally go ‘nuclear’ and change the Senate rules,” and by any fair measure, Republicans haven’t left the majority party with much of a choice.
Let’s make this plain: if Senate Democrats don’t force a confrontation over this, they will, for the first time in the institution’s history, have allowed a minority of the Senate to hijack the judicial nominating process without cause.
The status quo is, for lack of a better phrase, a simmering constitutional crisis of sorts. Either Democrats act or a precedent will be set.
What’s unclear is whether Dems will, or even can, proceed with the so-called “nuclear option.” Does the party have the votes to execute the plan? Do they have the intestinal fortitude to accept the blowback from Senate Republicans relying on obstructionist tactics that have never before been tried in the United States?
Last week, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Pro Tem and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said, “I think we’re at a point where there will have to be a rules change.” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) added soon after, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There comes a tipping point, and I’m afraid we’ve reached that tipping point.”
If they were waiting to see what happened with Wilkins, now they know. Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a leading proponent of Senate reforms, asked, “When will we say enough is enough?”
In the short term, it’s up to Democrats themselves to answer this question. Republicans, whose support is not needed for the nuclear option, have effectively dared the majority party to end the blockade and return the Senate to its earlier traditions. In fact, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), whose antics have been more offensive than most in this debate, dared Democrats just a week ago to restore the original Senate process for judicial nominees.
Senate Republicans, for all intents and purposes, have broken the judicial confirmation process. They know they’re engaged in tactics with no precedent in the American tradition; they know it’s obstructionism on an unsustainable scale; they know it’s wholly at odds with every commitment they made during the Bush/Cheney era; and they just don’t give a darn.
Whether the Democratic majority is prepared to simply tolerate this crisis and allow the process to be hijacked for the indefinite future is unclear.
* Postscript: If you listened to the debate at all, you may have noticed GOP senators justifying their blockade by saying the D.C. Circuit handles fewer cases than the other circuits, and therefore can better tolerate indefinite vacancies. In case anyone was wondering whether the argument has merit, it doesn’t – this nonsense was debunked in September.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 19, 2013
“It’s Time For The Nuclear Option”: GOP Madness And Unprecedented Obstructionism Pushes Senate To Breaking Point
In July, with Senate Democrats prepared to execute the “nuclear option,” the chamber reached an agreement that calmed the waters. Indeed, at the time, it seemed like quite a breakthrough for routine governance – the Senate was allowed to hold confirmation votes, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was allowed to function, the EPA was allowed to get a new chief, and the National Labor Relations Board was allowed to go back to work.
It was nice while it lasted.
Today, after a brief respite in the confirmation wars, Senate Republicans re-embraced mindless obstructionism again. In fact, they did so twice.
Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked Rep. Mel Watt’s nomination to serve as one of the nation’s top housing regulators.
The Senate voted 56-42 to end debate on Watt’s (D-N.C.) nomination to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), but 60 votes were needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Republicans didn’t have any specific objections to Watt, but since they preferred the current official at FHFA, GOP senators refused to allow the chamber to vote on Watt’s nomination. It’s the first time in 170 years in which a sitting member of the House lost a confirmation vote in the Senate.
Shortly after blocking a qualified African-American man, Senate Republicans then blocked a qualified woman.
Senate Republicans blocked Democrats attempt to vote on whether to confirm Patricia Millett as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the D.C. Circuit, renewing Democratic conversations of possible rule changes.
On Thursday, the Senate voted 55-38 against ending debate on her nomination. Democrats needed at least 60 votes to overcome the Republican filibuster.
Again, Republicans had no substantive objections to Millett whatsoever, but simply don’t want President Obama to fill any of the D.C. Circuit vacancies with anyone.
It’s against this backdrop that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) intends to block a vote on Janet Yellen’s nomination to lead the Federal Reserve, and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) intend to block all confirmation votes altogether until someone pays attention to their Benghazi conspiracy theories.
Or put another way, Republican obstructionism has once again gotten completely out of control – there is simply no precedent in American history for tactics like what we’re seeing today – and if Democrats aren’t considering drastic measures, I’d be very surprised.
The status quo, as evidenced today, is a madness. It’s plainly unsustainable.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 31, 2013
“Republican Collapse”: They Picked A Goal They Couldn’t Achieve And A Means They Couldn’t Sustain
Congress has finally worked out a deal to end the government shutdown and dodge default, but not before the Republican Party demonstrated to Americans just how conflicted and dangerous it is.
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, this week described our current Congress as a greater danger to national security than Al Qaeda, writing, “We don’t tend to talk about Congress as — at this stage — what it plainly is: the clearest and most present danger in the world to the national security of the United States.”
That is what the G.O.P.-led House has brought us. Conservatives outside the chamber know defeat when they see it, and want to live to fight another day. But they beat their chests in vain as their laments fall on the deaf ears of the far-right political death squads.
On Tuesday, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial pages blasted:
“This is the quality of thinking — or lack thereof — that has afflicted many GOP conservatives from the beginning of this budget showdown. They picked a goal they couldn’t achieve in trying to defund ObamaCare from one House of Congress, and then they picked a means they couldn’t sustain politically by pursuing a long government shutdown and threatening to blow through the debt limit.”
Senator John McCain said this week, “Republicans have to understand we have lost this battle, as I predicted weeks ago, that we would not be able to win because we were demanding something that was not achievable.”
Senator Lindsey Graham put it more bluntly: “We really did go too far. We screwed up.”
But, far-right elements of the House cannot be reasoned with. They prefer to go down in a blaze of glory — or at least take the country down in one.
And arguably no one is more the face of this disaster than Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, labeled by one New York Republican representative, Peter King, as a “fraud” and “false prophet,” who helped orchestrate it.
The Houston Chronicle editorial board on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of trying to withdraw its endorsement of Cruz, an endorsement that no doubt helped get him elected. An editorial posted to the paper’s Web site began, “Does anyone else miss Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison?”, the senator Cruz replaced. It went on:
“When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation — that he follow Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator. Obviously, he has not done so. Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part of the solution.”
It seems everyone is waking up to what a disaster this current Republican contingent of extremists has become and how poisonous they are to the functioning of our democracy. Better late than never, I suppose.
Cruz’s favorable ratings are underwater in Pew’s, Gallup’s, Fox News’ and Quinnipiac’s polling.
But then, Cruz doesn’t put much stake in polls, with their pesky numbers.
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll taken last week, views of the Republican Party sank to record lows and 70 percent of respondents thought Republicans in Congress were putting their own political agenda ahead of what was good for the country.
The poll also found that negative feelings about the Tea Party had risen, with 47 percent saying they had negative feelings about the group, including 34 percent who described their feelings as “very negative.” Just 21 percent of Americans now say they feel positive about the group.
But when Cruz was asked Friday about the poll, he dismissed it as having a problematic methodology. He said: “If you seek out liberal Obama supporters and ask them their views, they’re going to tell you they’re liberal Obama supporters. That’s not reflective of where this country is.” In fact, it is Cruz’s methodology that is flawed. His grandiloquence may well be the undoing of the Grand Old Party.
According to a Pew Research report released Tuesday:
“A record-high 74% of registered voters now say that most members of Congress should not be reelected in 2014 (just 18% say they should). By comparison, at similar points in both the 2010 and 2006 midterm cycles only about half of registered voters wanted to see most representatives replaced.”
The report also found:
“An early read of voter preferences for the 2014 midterm shows that the Democrats have a six-point edge: 49% of registered voters say they would vote for or lean toward voting for the Democratic candidate in their district, while 43% support or lean toward the Republican candidate.”
Republicans terribly misplayed a weak hand on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. There was never any chance of success other than scaring the president and the Democrats into caving. President Obama and Harry Reid called their bluff and they were left with no real options.
This is an embarrassment for the country, yes, but it’s also an embarrassment for the Republican Party that lays bare their motives, tactics and intention. It may not be so easy for voters to forget this come next November.
As the conservative Matt Drudge tweeted on Wednesday: “Speaker Pelosi Part 2: Opening Jan 5, 2015.” If only.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 16, 2013
“Elections Don’t Have Consequences”: In His Warped Mind, Jim DeMint Is Essentially Declaring A Mistrial
Remember the 2012 elections? The one in which Republicans ran on a platform of repealing the Affordable Care Act, and then lost?
If you’re Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, helping lead the anti-healthcare crusade, the apparent answer is no.
DeMint thinks the election results don’t accurately reflect national sentiment and therefore can’t be used to argue against his desire to move the party to the right. True conservatism never got a hearing — particularly not in regard to Obamacare, which was, after all, modeled after a Massachusetts law signed by Romney. “Because of Romney and Romneycare, we did not litigate the Obamacare issue,” he says. Essentially, DeMint is declaring a mistrial.
So while John McCain and I — there’s a pairing I didn’t expect to write about — agree that elections have consequences, we nevertheless have Jim DeMint sticking up for the “these elections don’t really count” contingent.
And they don’t count, he argues, because that darned Republican presidential candidate just didn’t push the health care issue. Sure, if you have the memory of a fruit fly, you might not recall Romney promising in every speech for a year and a half to repeal the health care law, the ads promising to destroy the law on Romney’s first day in office, or the central role the anti-Obamacare message played in the Republican pitch in 2012.
But for the rest of us, it’s getting increasingly difficult not to just laugh out loud when Jim DeMint starts talking.
In fact, the closer one looks at this, the more hilarious DeMint appears.
I suspect he’d prefer that we forget, but in 2007, DeMint, then a U.S. senator, endorsed Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy, citing — you guessed it — Romney’s successful health care reform law in Massachusetts.
And yet, at this point, DeMint no longer remembers his affinity for Romney, his support for Romney’s health care plan, or Romney’s platform from last year’s campaign.
This guy’s the head of a once-relevant think tank?
On a related note, Molly Ball has a great new piece in The Atlantic on Heritage’s dwindling credibility under DeMint’s leadership.
[T]here is more at stake in Heritage’s transformation from august policy shop to political hit squad than the reputation of a D.C. think tank or even the careers of a few squishy GOP politicians. It is the intellectual project of the conservative movement itself. Without Heritage, the GOP’s intellectual backbone is severely weakened, and the party’s chance to retake its place as a substantive voice in American policy is in jeopardy.
As the right embraces a post-policy role in American politics, Republicans can thank DeMint for helping lead the way.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 26, 2013
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