By: Paul Kane and Rosalind S. Helderman, The Washington Post, March 10, 2012: Contribution by Ed O’Keefe
“Tantruming Toddlers”: President Romney And The Republican Congress
As we’ve discussed here many times, there a number of factors that make it more likely than not that Barack Obama will win re-election in November. But it’s also quite possible that Obama will lose, and Mitt Romney will become president in January. If Romney does win, chances are that he’ll come into office with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. That’s because whatever conditions produce a Republican win at the top will also probably allow Republicans to hold on to the House and take the Senate. It’s even possible that Obama could win and Republicans wind up with both houses, since Democrats right now hold only a 53-47 lead in the upper chamber, and they are defending 23 seats in this year’s election, while Republicans are defending only ten.
There’s an outside chance that a big Obama win could allow Democrats to hold the Senate and take back the house, but for now let’s focus on the possibility of a Romney win, which will probably leave him with the benefit of total Republican control. This is an eventuality that we really need to start thinking about, since a Romney presidency would be shaped in large part by his relationship with Congress.
The thought of finding ourselves nine months from now with a President Romney, Speaker Boehner, and Majority Leader McConnell is … let’s say unsettling. But I’m sure they’ll greet their newfound power with humility and restraint, not moving too quickly to roll back regulations, cut taxes for the wealthy, or dismantle social programs. Hah! Kidding, of course—the only question is whether they’ll be literally firing their guns in the air on the floor of the House and Senate, leaving holes in the ceiling that will be a testament in plaster to their triumph for years to come. At that point, Democrats will discover that the filibuster is a really, really good thing.
But there’s only so much they’d be able to stop, and congressional Republicans will be sending a stream of reactionary bills to President Romney’s desk. And let’s be honest: He’s going to sign every one of them. You will not see Romney veto a bill passed by a Republican Congress because it went too far in achieving conservative goals. Not gonna happen.
Which is why, if Democrats are smart, they’ll start a discussion now about how Romney is going to deal with the congressional nutballs in his party. They’ve already started tying Romney to Paul Ryan’s budget plan, but the larger question is how he’ll handle this unruly collection of extremists, who have shown themselves quite happy to hold the government hostage and bring America to the brink of default to serve their agenda.
The White House is now warning Republicans not to renege on the deal they made last year on the budget (which they are showing signs they want to do, by cutting domestic spending more than they agreed to); if they do, there could be a government shutdown in September. That would put all kinds of pressure on Romney to show he can rein in his party’s extremists. If he handles it well, he can demonstrate that he’s a responsible adult who is capable of restraining the collection of tantruming toddlers that is the Republican caucus in the House. If he doesn’t, he’ll show everyone just how chaotic and dangerous a government with Republicans in control of all three branches could be.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, April 19, 2012
“In The Process Of Unifying”: Republicans Are Just Not That Into Mitt Romney
Yeeesh, what does Mitt Romney have to do to drum up a bit of enthusiasm from his party? Sure, he’s got to be feeling pretty content as each day brings another Republican casting aside the somehow-still-going campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul to accept the inevitable proposition that Romney will be the party’s nominee. Yet few can seem to offer an explanation for why they like Romney beyond the fact that they’re stuck with him. Shortly after I noted John Boehner’s lackluster endorsement yesterday, reporters asked Mitch McConnell for his take on Romney and were given the same nod-and-sigh routine:
“Yeah, I support Governor Romney for president of the United States,” Mr. McConnell said. “And he is going to be the nominee. And as you have noticed, the party is in the process of unifying behind him. And I think it’s going to be an incredibly close, hard-fought race. Everybody is banding — bandying polls around, but just look at the Gallup tracking poll yesterday actually had Governor Romney with a two-point lead. I think it’s going to be a very, very competitive election. We’re all behind him and looking forward to the fall campaign, which is actually already under way.”
It’s not like Romney’s win has come as any surprise to Republicans; it’s a reality they’ve had months to come to terms with. You’d think a few of them would have spent that time writing a rousing argument for why they look forward to campaigning for him over the next six months. It seems particularly odd that McConnell and Boehner are both so blasé. They are about as Republican establishment as it comes, and throughout the primaries, I assumed they were all secretly rooting for Romney and dreading the very thought of a Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich candidacy. But as much as they want to see Barack Obama exit the White House, they seem to share the same enthusiasm for Romney as much of the country.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, April 18, 2012
“Invested In Economic Failure”: The GOP Plans To Sink The Economy
We’re just under eight months away from Election Day now, which means that the GOP is starting to run out of time to think up new ways to ruin the economy so that Barack Obama doesn’t get reelected. The Republicans have to do this delicately, of course; they can’t be open about it lest it become too obvious that harming the economy is their goal. But they have to be aggressive enough about it for their efforts to bear some actual (rotten) fruit. There are three fronts—gas prices, jobs, and the budget—on which we should keep our eyes open for signs that the Republicans are trying to achieve Mitch McConnell’s No. 1 goal for America.
Let’s take them in order. The Republicans received joyous news Monday in the form of the Washington Post poll that showed Obama’s numbers sinking in inverse proportion to rising gas prices. The gas situation is perfect for the GOP for two reasons. First, there’s very little a president can actually do about gas prices. Second, even though those prices don’t really tell us much about the more general economy, most people have the impression that they do, so for the out-party, it’s just a free whack.
No one can blame Republicans for using Obama as a piñata on the issue. But here’s what they can be blamed for. What is causing these high prices? Not low supply and high demand, which is what they teach you in school. In fact, supply is high—domestic oil production is at its highest point in years, higher under this allegedly business-hating president than under oilmen Bush and Cheney. And demand has been low because of the economy, although it’s now picking up.
No, experts blame a lot of the increase on fervid speculation in the oil markets, and a chief reason for a lot of that speculation is anxiety in those markets about a possible war with Iran. Said anxiety, in turn, is heightened every time a politician blusters about how we have no choice now but to go start that war. So this kind of rhetoric is a nice little two-fer for Republicans, who get to sound like tough guys and can also take comfort in knowing that the more they talk up attacking Iran, the more they’re doing their small part to keep prices high.
Now let’s look to jobs. As you may know, while we’ve been getting these hopeful job reports these last few months, there is one sector that’s been lagging notably: the public sector. In fact, during 2011 the public sector across the country—state and local governments, in addition to the feds—laid off massive numbers of people. Public-sector job losses averaged 22,000 a month in 2011. State and municipal governments are laying people off mainly for two reasons: the economy, which means they’re bringing in less revenue, and the drastic cuts in federal aid, which have forced the layoffs and firings of nearly half a million public-sector workers in the last two years.
True, Republicans want smaller budgets on ideological grounds. But they also know very well that the more domestic discretionary spending cuts they can force, and the more public employees they can make states and cities shave off their payrolls, the greater the negative effect on the overall employment picture. If those nearly half-million people were still working, what would the unemployment rate be? Maybe down to a flat 8 percent.
Lately, though, things are starting to look worrisome on that front for Republicans. In February, the public sector cut just 6,000 workers, well down from last year’s average. This indicates that the party might not be able to count for long on the public-sector numbers dragging down the private-sector ones. Hmmm. What to do about that?
Interestingly and conveniently, exactly what the Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing right now! They have been signaling lately that the budget numbers they agreed to with Democrats last year in the debt deal need to be revisited, and the cuts must be even deeper. Speaker John Boehner is open about the possibility of reneging. He has sent some mixed signals—he’s also talked about trying to get the House to accept a transportation bill that the Senate has already passed by the eye-poppingly bipartisan margin of 85–11. New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer says the bill can create 3 million jobs. The House returns to Washington next Monday. Where would you put the odds that this House of Representatives will vote, less than eight months before the election, to support a bill that Chuck Schumer boasts can produce 3 million jobs?
Every out-party does a little discreet cheering for the economy to be weak. But the GOP has put itself in a unique position. By opposing everything Obama wanted with such ferocity; by saying all those thousands of times that he had no clue about the economy; by sending out a parade of presidential candidates, from the semi-serious to the clown posse, all of whose central criticism of Obama is that he killed the economy—in all of these ways the party has more invested in economic failure than any out-party I can remember in my lifetime. Its best hope for now is gas prices, but even they eventually get lower, usually by late summer. Beyond that, all the GOP has to rely on is Mitt Romney’s unstoppable charisma.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, March 13, 2012
“Abandon Ship”: While Waiting For Dust To Settle, GOP Leaders Sharpen Case For Their Own Re-Election
Watching with growing unease as the GOP presidential nomination fight promises to stretch into the spring, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are making moves to protect their own reelection prospects in the fall.
The aim is to fashion a political and legislative agenda to sharpen the party’s case against President Obama and Democrats, and make a coherent argument for why the Democratic-controlled Senate, and not the GOP-led House, is to blame for the congressional gridlock that has disheartened the public. A side benefit is that the legislative strategy might shift public attention away from some of the social issues that have recently dominated their party’s presidential contest.
While most congressional leaders continue to believe that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will be the nominee, they worry about how long it will take to secure the nomination and the political costs of a drawn-out battle.
“Every day that goes by [without a nominee] is a day that plays to President Obama’s advantage,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has endorsed Romney and was the party’s 2008 standard-bearer.
While GOP leaders are eager for a nominee to emerge so they can begin a coordinated campaign against the Democrats, they are increasingly convinced that they must move ahead with an agenda of their own.
Last week, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that regardless of who the nominee is and when he assumes the role, the core of the GOP argument against the president will be the same.
“Listen, one thing is clear here,” Boehner said Thursday. “ . . . This year’s election is going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies. . . . The American people are concerned about our economy and concerned about jobs, and that’s going to continue to be my focus.”
And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has sketched out what a joint agenda should look like. “ ‘Obamacare’ should be the number one issue in the campaign,” McConnell told the Weekly Standard. “I think it’s the gift that keeps on giving.” The other top issues, as McConnell sees them, should be the deficit and national debt.
Bread-and-butter topics
One main concern going forward, key Hill Republicans say, is to avoid falling into more social-issue debates, which have hurt the broader party image and could affect down-ballot races for the House and Senate.
“To the extent that the focus in this cycle is on the economy, it’s better for Republicans. I think that’s probably where the stronger case for Republican change can be made,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), who managed presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s 1994 campaign for the Senate but remains neutral in the presidential race. “I think we’re stronger when we’re talking about economics.”
The result is a congressional party determined to show action on bread-and-butter issues that can serve as the core of a unified economic agenda.
“We’ve got plenty of things to worry about here in the House. We’ve got a transportation bill, we’ve got Iran, we’ve got debt and deficit,” said Rep. Allen B. West (R-Fla.). “ Whatever happens with the presidential race will happen with the presidential race. People sent me up here to focus on being a good congressional representative, not worrying about being a cheerleader in a food fight.”
House Republicans will move legislation later this month to repeal a key portion of Obama’s health-care law, days ahead of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on the legislation. Next week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is expected to unveil a budget proposal that will slash federal spending and stick closely to last year’s controversial proposal to alter Medicare with private options. Both of these efforts could flow seamlessly into whatever coordinated effort emerges once there is a nominee.
But, while it is widely acknowledged that tax reform will be a key point of argument in the fall campaign, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, said last week that he will not wait to for a presidential nominee decide how to move ahead on the issue.
“I’m going to continue to do that regardless of when we get a nominee,” Camp said. “I’ve got an agenda that I’ve been working on for a year and a half, and I’m going to keep doing that.”
House Republicans had hoped to be able to take some of the presidential nominee’s proposals and offer them on the chamber floor, while Senate Republicans might use their rights to offer them as amendments. If the nomination fight lasts deep into the spring, there will be little to no time for such stage battles in Congress.
Hedging on health care
One area of legislative indecision has already emerged. While the House GOP is moving ahead with its health-care debate, Senate Republicans have not decided whether to push for another vote repealing the health-care law. Action in the Senate could shine a spotlight on what Republicans believe will be a key issue of the fall campaign, but another vote could also give embattled swing-state Democrats the chance to vote for repeal, bolstering their independent credentials.
There is deep division between House and Senate Republicans about the consequences of a long primary season. Some, like McCain, thinks it hurts Republicans. Others, including McCain’s close friend Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), say the lengthy process has made Romney a better candidate, who will benefit from having had to fight for the nomination.
GOP leaders had anticipated that Romney would wrap up the nomination by Super Tuesday, and they would then begin the routine cooperation in which the presidential candidate defines a daily message that members of Congress amplify. For the immediate future, they will have to wait on that.
Gingrich’s top ally in Congress, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), is trying to build support by arguing that his candidate can energize the base and give down-ballot candidates something to rally around. Barton says that when he first ran, in 1984 on the same ticket as Ronald Reagan and Phil Gramm, he linked his candidacy to the popular president and the Senate candidate from Texas.
“Everything I did was Reagan, Gramm, Barton. They didn’t know me. But they knew them,” he said.
Contraception debate
And lawmakers acknowledge that the GOP message got derailed in February, when the issue of contraceptive coverage in the health-care law consumed the presidential campaign. As the discussion focused on whether the federal government could compel institutions connected to the Catholic Church to cover contraception costs in insurance programs, Republicans thought they were on high ground, and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) introduced an amendment to allow exemptions.
Then when Santorum publicly declared his opposition to the use of contraceptives, the tables began to turn. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on contraception, in which no women testified; the optics of that miscalculation were amplified by the politics of the presidential primary debate with adverse consequences for the GOP on the Hill.
Blunt, a key Romney backer, said that the other candidates in the race must decide how much longer they want to deprive Romney of the chance of assuming the mantle of the nominee. “They have to decide on their own that they’re no longer serving a positive purpose,” Blunt said.
Celebrating Women’s History Month: The Republican’s “Vagina Monologue”
When will Republicans stop their vagina monologue?
March is federally recognized as Women’s History Month, and Republicans have been celebrating the occasion in a most unusual style: with a burst of interest in women’s private parts.
On Thursday, the Senate took up an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would allow employers to deny women birth-control coverage if the employer found contraception morally objectionable.
About 100 miles south of Washington on that same day, Virginia legislators passed a measure requiring a woman to be offered an ultrasound image of her fetus before aborting it. The legislation, which opponents say could also require some women who have miscarriages to be offered ultrasonic images of their dead fetuses, is the successor of a bill that would have required women to undergo an invasive “transvaginal ultrasound.”
Still on Thursday, the industrious Virginia House of Delegates also approved legislation bestowing rights on people, including a father, to bring a lawsuit over the death of the fetus.
On Wednesday, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, a powerful influence among Republican lawmakers, described as a “slut” the law-school student invited by House Democrats to testify in support of birth control. “It makes her a prostitute,” Limbaugh said of the woman, blocked last month by House Republicans from testifying on what became an all-male panel. “She wants to be paid to have sex.”
On Tuesday, Oklahomans held a protest at the state capitol to oppose a bill, passed by the state Senate and now being taken up by the House, that would bestow “personhood” on fetuses — one of many such efforts across the nation. Democrat Judy McIntyre, one of just four women in the 48-member state Senate, was so upset that, according to the Oklahoman newspaper, she held a protest sign proclaiming: “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d [expletive] a senator.”
Democrats think they have a political winner in the Republicans’ fascination with reproduction at a time when economic production is what voters have in mind. The party is raising money with a petition against the “Republican War on Women,” and 11 Democratic women running for the U.S. Senate are using the occasion to launch a fundraising tour.
They are attempting to tie together everything from last year’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood to the proposed repeal of Obamacare (which expanded coverage of mammography and birth control). And Obama campaign strategists tell me they are confident that the two leading Republican presidential candidates, a Mormon and a devout Catholic, will have difficulty beating the rap that the party is obsessed with reproduction.
Evidence that the Republicans realize they’re in a pickle: Mitt Romney spontaneously flip-flopped on his initial opposition to the Blunt amendment, which would also provide employers with a moral opt-out from other elements of Obamacare. Romney first said that “questions about contraception within a relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, I’m not going there.” But he quickly reversed himself in favor of the amendment, aligning himself with Rick Santorum, who has voiced doubts about the constitutional protections for birth control.
More evidence: After championing the Blunt amendment, Republican leaders backed away from their demands for a vote on the provision. And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), an early proponent of the amendment after hearing about the issue during a Catholic Mass, disappeared from the debate. So Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) wound up forcing a vote on the provision, which was narrowly defeated Thursday afternoon.
“Today, the Senate will vote on an extreme, ideological amendment to the bipartisan transportation bill,” Reid said, kicking off Thursday’s debate. “This amendment takes aim at women’s access to health care.”
The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), made no mention of birth control in his reply, countering that “it is not within the power of the federal government to tell anybody what to believe, or to punish them for practicing those beliefs.”
Most other Republicans followed McConnell’s lead in avoiding mention of contraception. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), however, said the provision in the health-care law requiring preventive medical coverage for women is “questionable policy,” and he accused the administration of “deferring to its feminist allies” by mandating contraceptive coverage.
After the amendment went down to defeat, its sponsor gave a General MacArthur. “I’m confident this issue is not over,” Blunt said. “It won’t be over until the administration figures out how to accommodate people’s religious views as it relates to these new mandates.”
The monologue will continue.
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