“The Kicking Mules Vs The Lying Turtle”: The GOP Civil War Is Now Basically Between Mitch McConnell And The Tea Party
There will not be another government shutdown, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
“It was a strategy that I said both publicly and privately could not work, and did not work,” McConnell told The Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan.
“All it succeeded in doing was taking attention off of Obamacare for 16 days,” he added. “And scaring the public and tanking our brand—our party brand. One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is that there’s no education in the second kick of a mule. It ain’t gonna happen again.”
This sounds as if he’s vowing to compromise when the resolution funding the government and the debt ceiling issue come up again early in 2014.
And to the Tea Party, that only means one thing: Treason!
The leader knows what the Tea Party thinks of him and he’s ready to take them on, along with his Tea Party challenger, Matt Bevin.
“They’ve been told the reason we can’t get to better outcomes than we’ve gotten is not because the Democrats control the Senate and the White House but because Republicans have been insufficiently feisty,” he told Noonan. “Well, that’s just not true, and I think that the folks that I have difficulty with are the leaders of some of these groups who basically mislead them for profit. . . . They raise money . . . take their cut and spend it.”
And in case that wasn’t clear enough, he called out the Senate Conservatives Fund, one of the key supporters behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and the plot to defund Obamacare that forced the shutdown.
“That’s the one I’m prepared to be specific about,” he said, adding that the group “has elected more Democrats than the Democratic Senatorial Committee over the last three cycles.”
Tea Party hero Erick Erickson responded to McConnell’s comments on Friday with “Question for Mitch McConnell: Will Any Reporter Ask It?”
The Red State editor-in-chief states that “the Senate Conservatives Fund has only helped nominate two Tea Party candidates, who went on to lose the general election.” In contrast, he points out, “On the other hand, Mitch McConnell supported Rick Berg, Denny Rehberg, Carly Fiorina, Linda McMahon, George Allen, and Tommy Thompson. All lost to Democrats.”
This leads to Erickson’s question: “So some enterprising reporter should ask Mitch McConnell this question: Given that the Senate Conservatives Fund has a better record than Mitch McConnell of getting Republicans elected to the Senate, shouldn’t he be supporting Matt Bevin?”
McConnell has successfully been able to persuade Ted Cruz to stay out of primaries. But the Tea Party, Erickson and the Senate Conservatives Fund are going all in. We’ll see who gets shut down this time.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, November 8, 2013
“The Coming Electoral Consequences”: Speaker Boehner Keeps Motivating The Wrong Base
The widely held assumption is that a variety of popular measures can pass the Senate and earn President Obama’s signature, but won’t become law because of the Republican-led House. And in plenty of instances, that’s true.
But on a variety of important proposals, the problem isn’t the House majority party, but rather, the willingness of the House GOP leadership to let the chamber vote up or down on the bills in question. The obstacle, in other words, isn’t 218 “no” votes; it’s House Speaker John Boehner’s disinclination to let the House exercise its will.
I can appreciate why the Speaker would rather kill popular bills than pass them – he promised his right-wing members he’d honor the manufactured “Hastert Rule,” and Boehner’s afraid of being deposed – but as Brian Beutler noted yesterday, the posture may well carry electoral consequences.
Big Senate bills in and of themselves won’t shake House Republicans out of their paralysis. It’s unrealistic to expect the House will address all of these issues and it’s possible they won’t address any of them. But the constituent groups to whom these issues matter – Latinos, the LGBT community, women and African Americans – won’t be confused about who killed them.
The flip side of the GOP becoming a whites-only party and crossing its fingers that Healthcare.gov fails is that Boehner is doing his damnedest to help Democrats receive their 2008 and 2012 coalitions in the coming midterm.
Remember, one of the key Democratic hopes going into the 2014 midterms – now 364 days away – is that congressional Republicans will motivate the Democratic base to show up for a change in a midterm cycle. How’s that going so far?
Swimmingly. Democratic candidates and campaign committees now intend to go to Latino communities and say, “Like immigration reform? Then help vote out the Republicans who killed the bipartisan reform package.” Dems intend to go to LGBT communities and say, “Like ENDA? Then help vote out the Republicans who killed the bipartisan bill.” Dems intend to go to African-American communities and say, “Like voting rights? Then help vote out the Republicans who made it impossible to reform the Voting Rights Act.”
And Dems intend to go to everyone and say, “Like the government shutdown and series of self-imposed crises? If not, then help vote out the Republicans who cooked up these schemes.”
The Democratic coalition is stable, but not unbreakable. By refusing to govern, Boehner and House Republicans are strengthening that coalition, boosting Democratic fundraising, helping Democratic recruiting efforts, and motivating the Democratic base.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 5, 2013
“A Total Perversion Of The American System Of Government”: The GOP Once Again Proves Too Irresponsible To Handle The Filibuster
What does a political party do when they are badly in need of expanding their base to include women and minorities?
I’m fairly sure that exercising its right to filibuster the nominees of a president—one a highly respected woman nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and one a highly respected and well liked African American Congressman nominated to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency—would not be at the top of the list of recommend behavior.
Yet, this is precisely what the Senate Republicans did today.
What makes the blocking of these nominees so remarkable is that there is no shortage of support when it comes to the quality of the nominees among the very GOP Senators that voted to deny the Senate the opportunity to vote up or down on their nomination. Rather, the Republicans’ problem is with the president and the reality that a Democratic appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will give Democrats a majority on that important judicial body.
Patricia Ann Millet is the Obama nominee to join the US Court of Appeals.
When Ms. Millet appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the committee charged with investigating and considering her nomination, not so much as one Republican Senator on the panel had a concern with or so much as a bad word to say about Millet’s qualifications.
Indeed, Ms. Millet was described by none other than Senator Ted Cruz as possessing “very fine professional qualifications.”
Yet, when the matter came to a cloture vote, the Democrats were unable to succeed in rounding up 60 votes and Ms. Millet’s nomination was blocked by a filibuster of the Senate Republicans.
The use of the filibuster to deny Millet’s nomination is but one more example of the Republicans simply refusing to recognize and accept that Barack Obama won the 2012 election and, having done so, gets to appoint people to fill vacancies in the federal court system.
You know, just like the Republican president who was able to appoint a few Justices to the United States Supreme Court, handing conservatives the majority vote in that body.
Currently, there are three vacancies on the DC Circuit Court which is generally regarded as the second most influential court in the nation following the Supreme Court. With the makeup of the DC Circuit Court currently split evenly between conservative appointees and liberal appointees, Senate GOPers cannot bring themselves to approve the nomination of someone they have deemed eminently competent for the job as to do so would give the appointees of Democratic presidents the edge in the vote count—although history confirms that one never knows how a judge will vote once they are seated on the bench.
While I understand that conservatives would prefer not to see the balance tip in favor of more liberal judges on so important a court—just as liberals squirmed as President Bush appointed hard-line conservatives to SCOTUS—anyone who would support this type of Senate behavior has completely rejected one of the most fundamental of Constitutional directives. While the Senate possesses the right to advice and consent on presidential nominees, that obligation was created to insure that high quality candidates with proper qualifications would fill these important roles.
Note that the filibuster is not provided for in our Constitution. The Founders intended that the Senate would take a vote on nominees and the majority would carry the day.
The vote on Ms. Millet’s nomination in the full Senate was 55-38 in favor of bringing the nomination to the floor for a full vote where Ms. Millet is expected to easily achieve confirmation. This vote included all of the Democrats voting for cloture along with two Republicans who also voted to bring up the nomination while three Republicans dogged it and voted “present”.
Yes, I get the irony of the GOP Senators voting ‘present’ after hammering the President for doing the same during his term in the Illinois legislature.
Remarkably, the Senate GOP leadership is not even pretending they have personal or competency issues with Ms. Millet as a candidate.
Said Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell—
“Our Democratic colleagues and the administration’s supporters have been actually pretty candid. They’ve admitted they want to control the court so it will advance the president’s agenda.”
What a shocker! A Democratic president wants to appoint someone to the court who shares his point of view. Who would have thought such a thing would be possible here in America—excepting, of course, every single American President who has ever made his own appointments to the federal bench.
The mere fact that Minority Leader McConnell could make such a comment with a straight face should provide ample evidence of the fact that the filibuster does not belong in the hands of a party that would so abuse both the privilege and their constitutional obligations.
For those senators who justify their actions by claiming that they owe deference to the President when it comes to approving the appointment of cabinet members and other executive branch roles but believe more scrutiny should be exercised when it comes to judges appointed to lifetime terms, one wonders how they explain their filibustering of Congressman Melvin Watts to become the head of Federal Housing Finance Agency.
The refusal to confirm Watts is particularly remarkable when considering that a sitting member of Congress appointed by a President to an executive position has not failed to be confirmed since before the American Civil War.
Mr. Watt’s personal competency, temperament or character has never been questioned by Republicans who oppose his nomination.
Instead, Republican opponents have suggested that they are displeased that Obama appointed a politician for the job. In other words, the senators who are opposed to Rep. Watts on this basis are saying that they wouldn’t even vote for themselves if appointed.
Anyone believe that?
Of course, this might be their best argument given that these Republican politicians likely have special insight into how they are each unfit to hold a position of responsibility.
Some GOPers have suggested that the office to which Mr. Watts has been chosen—one that oversees two rather complex financial institutions—would be better run by a “technocrat”.
That’s a tough argument to make considering that the President’s first nominee for this job back in 2010 —Joseph A. Smith, Jr. the North Carolina banking commissioner—was such a technocrat. Still, there was so much objection to Smith’s nomination by Republicans that Smith eventually chose to withdraw from consideration.
The time has come for the Democratic majority in the Senate to revise the rule and change when and how the filibuster can be used. While I would not recommend complete destruction of the device, it seems clear that it must be modified to bar the use of the filibuster when it comes to Presidential nominees.
As for those who argue that this could ‘backfire’ on Democrats should the GOP gain control of the Senate, I have no problem with this whatsoever. When it comes to presidential appointees—even if that president is a Republican—there ought to be some specific problem with the candidate if the nominee is to be rejected. It cannot be about one party in the Senate or the other getting to deny a presidential appointment because it may shift the balance on a particular federal court.
If a candidate is unfit for the office—think Harriet Meyers—then the Senate should reject that candidate. But if it simply is a matter of denying a highly qualified position because the opposition party doesn’t want anyone but someone sympathetic to their own beliefs, that is just not the way things were intended to operate and represents a total perversion of the American system of government.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, October 31, 2013
“Contempt For Progressive Legislation”: The Severely Conservative Judge Who Just Ruled Against Birth Control
Nine years ago, the California Supreme Court upheld a state law similar to the Affordable Care Act’s rules requiring most employers to include birth control coverage in their employee health plans. The sole dissent in that case was Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Nearly a decade later, Brown got her revenge. Though no longer a member of California’s highest court — President George W. Bush appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit over the strenuous objections of Democrats — Judge Brown is now the author of a 2-1 opinion holding that religious employers can ignore the federal birth control rules. What was once a fringe view held by a lone holdout is now the law in the second most powerful court in the country.
Judge Brown’s opinion barely conceals her contempt for progressive legislation. Prior to her nomination to the D.C. Circuit, Brown labeled the New Deal a “socialist revolution,” and she likened Social Security to a kind of intergenerational cannibalism — “[t]oday’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.” Since joining the federal bench, she authored a concurring opinion suggesting that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is constitutionally suspect. The very first sentence of her birth control opinion labels the Affordable Care Act a “behemoth.”
So there was never any doubt how Brown would vote on this particular challenge to women’s access to birth control. Her opinion was joined by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a conservative George H.W. Bush appointee. Carter-appointed Judge Harry Edwards dissented.
Coincidentally, Brown’s opinion comes just one day after Senate Republicans reignited the filibuster wars by filibustering the first of three Obama nominees to her court. Currently, the D.C. Circuit is evenly divided between Democratic and Republican active judges, but a large number of Republican judges in partial retirement allow the GOP to dominate the court. Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn wrote in a Fox News op-ed that Republicans should prevent any of Obama’s nominees from being confirmed to this court to prevent Democrats from gaining a majority. Although federal appeals courts typically hear cases via randomly drawn three-judge panels, the court’s rules permit a majority of the court’s active judges to displace any decision reached by a three-judge panel.
Senate Democrats waged an unsuccessful effort to filibuster Judge Brown’s nomination during the Bush Administration — largely because of her strident opposition to programs such as Social Security — but that filibuster was eventually defeated after Republicans threatened to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” to eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees. The deal that allowed Judge Brown to be confirmed also paved the way for Judge Priscilla Owen’s nomination. Yesterday evening, Judge Owen authored an opinion reinstating a Texas anti-abortion law blocked by a lower court judge.
There is a lesson here for Democrats trying to decide whether to invoke the nuclear opinion in the D.C. Circuit fight that Senate Republicans started this week. When Republicans had the courage to demand what they wanted and put a serious threat behind it, they got two of the most conservative judges in the country. If Senate Democrats follow suit — either by forcing Republicans to cave or by carrying through on a threat to nuke the filibuster — they will also win their fight to get President Obama’s nominees confirmed.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, November 1, 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
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