“The Vote To Free The Hostages”: Unreasonable Conservatism Remains A Majority Proposition In The House Republican Conference
It was a foregone conclusion that the bill to end the manufactured fiscal crisis would sail through Congress once Ted Cruz foreswore a filibuster and John Boehner abandoned the “Hastert Rule.” The actual votes were anticlimactic, but still interesting.
The eighteen Senate Republicans who voted against the bill were far short of what it would have taken to sustain a filibuster, obviously. But still, the “nays” included all three senators thought to be mulling a 2016 presidential campaign (Cruz, Paul and Rubio), plus one previously mainstream senator facing a right-bent primary challenge (Enzi).
The 285-144 House vote showed why abandonment of the Hastert Rule was necessary. Actually, the 87 Republican votes cast for the bill (as against 144 GOP “nays”) was higher than most people anticipated. But it showed that unreasonable conservatism remains a majority proposition in the House Republican Conference.
The only “yea” vote that surprised me was that of Rep. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. But I’m guessing he really, really wanted to get money fully flowing to the Pentagon. More predictably, all three House members from Georgia running for the Senate voted “nay,” as did the putative GOP Senate candidate from Louisiana, Bill Cassidy. Shelley Moore Capito, the likely GOP Senate nominee from WV, voted for the bill.
At TNR Nate Cohn has some interesting insta-analysis of the GOP vote patterns in the House, noting that it was a lot like the “fiscal cliff” vote in January.
The underlying divisions are similar to the fiscal cliff vote, as well. Last January, commentators marveled at the outlines of a GOP civil war, between north and south, tea party and establishment. Tonight, red state and Southern representatives voted overwhelmingly against the Senate compromise: 27-91 in the red states, 25-88 among Southern representatives. Republicans from the Northeast and Pacific voted “yes” by 30-16 margin; the blue states voted “yes,” 32-17.
Cohn also notes that House GOPers with distinctly less ideologically conservative voting records and those from very marginal districts voted overwhelmingly for the deal. But any way you slice it, the majority of the Conference voted to continue a government shutdown and a debt limit threat that were not working very well for the GOP or for the country.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 17, 2013
“Invincible Arrogance”: Ted Cruz’s Conceit And Fringe Politics Is A Recipe For A Very Scary Personality
Since we are for the time being required to think of Sen. Ted Cruz as a significant force in American politics, it’s helpful now and then to consider how the world looks from his perspective. TPM’s Josh Marshall suspects that being told his whole life how incredibly smart he is has not been good for his character:
[B]ack when he showed up at Harvard Law School in 1992, he stunned his fellow classmates by putting up flyers around campus for an ‘elite study group’ with the instructions ‘only magnas from top Ivys need apply.’ In other words, at a place where arrogance is like air and self-awareness a precious commodity, Cruz managed to stand out on day one as a triple-ply arrogant ass.
Cruz never seems to have grasped that there are people every bit as sharp as him who didn’t go to an Ivy League School (even a ‘top Ivy’). My read on Cruz, from talking to people who knew him very well in college and law school, is that he’s so confirmed in his belief in his own rectitude and genius that he’s likely impervious to what most of us would interpret as rejection or failure. This didn’t work? Well, too many stupid people or cowards who didn’t flock to my banner. That seemed to be the gist of his speech before the vote. And my guess it wasn’t just puffing but represented his genuine belief.
Moreover, in a “populist” wing of the Republican Party that is very self-conscious about its lack of ethnic diversity, its transparent anti-intellectualism, and its tendency to lionize pols that are aggressively proud of their ignorance, Cruz has been an all-purpose antidote, and hears more testimony to his brilliance every day than most very smart people hear in a lifetime.
His situation reminds me of the central character in Walker Pecy’s novel Lancelot, who gets an unearned reputation for brilliance among his teammates on the LSU football team:
Being “smart” on the football team meant that you read Time magazine and had heard of the Marshall Plan. (“You don’t believe he can tell you about the Marshall Plan? Ask him! He’s one more smart sapsucker.”) They, my teammates, admired “smartness” more than anybody I’ve met before or since.
Now add in the fact that Ted Cruz happens to espouse a political philosophy (and for that matter, a religious faith) based on a very rigid concept of what’s right and wrong at all times and in all circumstances, along with Cruz’s legendary rhetorical skills, and you have a recipe for a very scary personality.
I once read a letter to the editor from a man who explained that in opposing legalized abortion and homosexuality he was expressing “the mind of God.” “Now that’s self-confidence,” I thought. Add into that equation a mind that’s used to being described as almost God-like, and invincible arrogance–if not an actual God Complex–will be the result every single time.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, October 18, 2013
“You Need This Mr. Speaker”: How To Make John Boehner Cave On Immigration
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) generally adheres to the unwritten Republican rule that bars him from allowing votes on bills opposed by a majority of Republicans, even if they would win a majority of the full House.
But he’s caved four times this year, allowing big bills to pass with mainly Democratic support. They include repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; providing Hurricane Sandy relief; expanding the Violence Against Women act to better cover immigrants, Native Americans, and LGBT survivors of abuse; and this week’s bill raising the debt limit and reopening the federal government.
Many presume the Republican House is a black hole sucking President Obama’s second-term agenda into oblivion. But the list of Boehner’s past retreats offers a glimmer of hope, especially to advocates of immigration reform. Though it has languished in the House, an immigration overhaul passed with bipartisan support in the Senate, and was given a fresh push by Obama in the aftermath of the debt limit deal.
The big mystery that immigration advocates need to figure out: What makes Boehner cave? Is there a common thread? Is there a sequence of buttons you can push that forces Boehner to relent?
Two of this year’s caves happened when Boehner was backed up against hard deadlines: The Jan. 1 fiscal cliff and the Oct. 17 debt limit. Failure to concede meant immediate disaster. Reject the bipartisan compromise on rolling back the Bush tax cuts, get blamed for jacking up taxes on every taxpayer. Reject the Senate’s three-month suspension of the debt limit, get blamed for sparking a global depression. Boehner held out until the absolute last minute both times, but he was not willing to risk blowing the deadline.
A third involved the response to an emergency: Hurricane Sandy. Conservative groups were determined to block disaster relief because — as with other federal disaster responses — the $51 billion legislative aid package did not include offsetting spending cuts. Lacking Republican votes, Boehner briefly withdrew the bill from consideration, unleashing fury from New York and New Jersey Republicans, including Gov. Chris Christie. While there wasn’t a hard deadline to meet, disaster relief was a time-sensitive matter, and the pressure from Christie and his allies was unrelenting. Two weeks after pulling the bill, Boehner put it on the floor, allowing it to pass over the objections of 179 Republicans.
The fourth cave occurred in order to further reform and expand a government program: The Violence Against Women Act. The prior version of the law had been expired for over a year, as conservatives in the House resisted the Senate bill in the run-up to the 2012 election. But after Mitt Romney suffered an 18-point gender gap in his loss to Obama, and after the new Senate passed its version again with a strong bipartisan vote, Boehner was unwilling to resist any longer. Two weeks later, the House passed the Senate bill with 138 Republicans opposed.
Unfortunately for immigration advocates, there is no prospect of widespread pain if reform isn’t passed. There is no immediate emergency, nor threat of economic collapse.
But there is a deadline of sorts: The 2014 midterm elections.
If we’ve learned anything about Boehner this month, it’s that he’s a party man to the bone. He dragged out the shutdown and debt limit drama for weeks, without gaining a single concession, simply so his most unruly and revolutionary-minded members would believe he fought the good fight and stay in the Republican family. What he won is party unity, at least for the time being.
What Boehner lost for his Republicans is national respectability. Republican Party approval hit a record low in both the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll and Gallup poll.
Here’s where immigration advocates have a window of opportunity to appeal to Boehner’s party pragmatism. Their pitch: The best way to put this disaster behind them is for Republicans to score a big political victory. You need this.
A year after the Republican brand was so bloodied that the Republican National Committee had to commission a formal “autopsy,” party approval is the worst it has ever been. You’ve wasted a year. Now is the time to do something that some voters will actually like.
There’s reason to hope he could be swayed. In each of the four cases in which he allowed Democrats to carry the day, he put the short-term political needs of the Republican Party over the ideological demands of right-wing activists.
Boehner will have to do another round of kabuki. He can’t simply swallow the Senate bill in a day. There will have to be a House version that falls short of activists’ expectations, followed by tense House-Senate negotiations. Probably like in the most formulaic of movies, and like the fiscal cliff and debt limit deals, there will have to be an “all-is-lost moment” right before we get to the glorious ending. Boehner will need to given the room to do all this again.
But he won’t do it without a push. A real good push.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, October 18, 2013
“An Alternate Bizzaro Universe”: Ted Cruz’s “American People” Remain Imaginary And Elusive
Give Ted Cruz this much: He remains unbowed in the face of both substantive defeat and public opinion, which he ceaselessly claims to have on his side.
For example, yesterday Cruz addressed the press (the man seems to only communicate in formal speeches – can you imagine dining with him?) on the shutdown and its conclusion, declaring the whole thing a massive expression of the will of “the American people.” He said:
Unfortunately, once again, it appears the Washington establishment is refusing to listen to the American people.
It is unfortunate that Washington is not listening to the people.
And I want to commend the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives has taken a bold stance listening to the American people.
Months ago, when the – when the effort to defund “Obamacare” began, official Washington scoffed – they scoffed that the American people would rise up. They scoffed that the House of Representatives would do anything, and they scoffed that the Senate would do anything.
We saw, first of all, millions upon millions of Americans rise up all over this country. Over two million people signing a national petition to defund “Obamacare.” We saw the House of Representatives take a courageous stand listening to the American people …
As I have argued before, it raises the question of precisely which “American people” Cruz is speaking for, because it’s not the ones who are answering pollsters. For example, an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday found that 74 percent – 74 percernt! – of Americans disapproved of the way Congressional Republicans were handling the budget negotiations, an 11 percent increase from a few weeks earlier. That came after an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last week found only 24 percent of those surveyed approving of congressional Republicans – a result which Republican pollster Bill McInturff (who along with Democrat Peter Hart conducted the survey) said made it, “among the handful of surveys that stand out in my career as being significant and consequential,” along with polls taken in the wake of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Lehman collapse and the last debt ceiling crisis. (Cruz tried to “unskew” the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, but was unsuccessful.)
Further, polls have shown that Obamacare has become more popular and that the intensity among its opponents has ebbed. And while polls show that more Americans disapprove of Obamacare than like it (though those numbers are deceptive if you don’t take out the people who disapprove because the law doesn’t go far enough), surveys also show that most Americans prefer to have Congress work to improve the law rather than repeal or defund it, a la Cruz.
And all of this after polls showed overwhelming numbers of Americans disapproved of shutting down the government in order to win policy concessions from the other side … which brings me to Cruz on Fox News last night. “But we’ve also seen a model that I think is the model going forward to defeat Obamacare, to bring back jobs, economic growth, to abolish the IRS, to rein in out-of-control spending,” he said. A model going forward – that’s right folks, Ted Cruz enjoyed this shutdown so much that he wants to do it again.
Presumably he’ll claim then to be acting in the name of the American people as well. Ted Cruz was elected from Texas, but it’s clear he really hails from some bizarro alternate universe. Where else could Obama winning a comfortable re-election and poll after poll after poll showing that Americans like neither shutdowns nor the party behind the specific shutdown that just ended all add up to a by-any-means-necessary mandate to pursue Cruz’s narrow right-wing agenda?
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, October 17, 2013
“John Boehner’s Last Stand”: His Hostage Taking Tactics Remain As Dangerous As Ever
The nature of Speaker John Boehner’s final battle with the White House on the budget crisis is now clear: It doesn’t matter what House Republicans win in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and re-opening government, as long as they win something.
Gone is the big talk about “defunding Obamacare.” Gone are the demands for delaying the health law, or delaying the individual mandate, or delaying the medical device tax. The final stand, according to the latest reports, is simply this: remove the health insurance subsidies for members of Congress, some executive branch officials, and some of their staffs. (Those staff members are furious about the potential cut to their incomes, and many have threatened to quit.)
If that seems a paltry prize to win for causing this destructive, embarrassing crisis, that’s because it is. But this fight really has nothing to do with the subsidies. It’s all about not walking away empty handed, about Mr. Boehner persuading his Republican members that they forced President Obama to give something up in exchange for not wreaking havoc on the economy.
And that’s precisely why the president can’t agree to it, even though the impact (for all but Congressional staffers) would be minimal.
For the sake of the rest of his presidency, and the presidents to come, he has to make it clear that no chamber of Congress can back the White House into a corner by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States. Even a small concession, like ending the Congressional subsidies, would betray that principle.
Of course that position is irreconcilable with the hard-right faction of the House that sees the debt ceiling as the only leverage that can turn them into a real political force. But the unprecedented use of that leverage has to be stopped here, even at a terrible cost, because the long-term cost would be so much worse.
Once Senate Republicans and Democrats began cobbling together their own plan, Mr. Boehner could have ended the crisis by standing back and letting momentum for the Senate plan build. Instead, he chose to sabotage it, because he and the Tea Party faction clearly want to use the power of hostage-taking again.
One of the provisions in the House’s latest plan is a demand that the Treasury not use any special measures to prevent default the next time the debt hits the ceiling — a provision, in other words, that would make default an even more likely possibility the next time than it will be on Thursday, when the Treasury runs out of borrowing authority. (The actual default will probably occur later this month.)
Mr. Boehner may hope that the diminished nature of his final demand about Congressional subsidies will embarrass Democrats into approving it, but his tactics are as dangerous as ever.
By: David Firestone, Editor’s Blog, The New York Times, October 15, 2013
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