Tag: GOP

Realistically what I think is going to happen is that almost no significant legislation of any kind will pass until 2017, by which point the GOP will [likely] control both the White House and the Senate and immediately eliminate the filibuster via the “nuclear” approach [meaning 50 Senators vote in favor of an opinion on the part of the President of the Senate that the super-majority is unconstitutional; thus the filibuster ceases to be]. Republicans, to their credit, tend to prioritize their vision of the national interests over issues of process and ego. Democrats, by contrast, seem to have mostly gotten into politics in order to bolster their own sense of self-righteousness and aren’t especially concerned with whether or not their conduct in office is efficacious.

Matt Yglesias, positively bubbling over with optimism for the country. If the filibuster goes in my lifetime, I think this is exactly how it will transpire, though: as the first action of a Republican controlled Senate serving a Republican President.
Yglesias is also 100% right that the credible threat of filibuster reform is more potent and much more likely to end in real reform than the actuality of that process (meaning: pushing a bill to end it with everyone knowing 67 votes aren’t out there). Democrats can never get these concepts through their heads, though. So forget about it.

Mirandizing terrorists inhibits intelligence collection? Wrong. Charging a terrorist in criminal court is a danger? Hundreds have been convicted that way. Non-torturous methods of interrogation fail? They work better. Call the Obama team pussies and they’ll back down? They’ll smack the tartar off your teeth. The public will rally around Republicans if they just ignorantly yell OMG TERRORISM loud enough? They’ll go to the other guy.

There’s just nothing left. […] [T]he GOP, for the first time in decades, is completely discredited on national security, without any credible spokespeople.

Spencer Ackerman, who’s right about everything except for his implicit assertion that the public understands this in any kind of durable way. Without continual, drumbeat messaging they will soon forget and fall back on the MSM trope that only the GOP can be trusted with Our National Security. It’s just too pervasive a frame, and one that has been repeated so relentlessly, explicitly and implicitly, for decades to the point that, like gravity, it’s just there, and not even noticed when invoked. You can’t and won’t undo that overnight. See: health insurance reform and government takeover of, subhead Death Panels. Democrats just don’t do this idea of “messaging” very well, if at all. I’m seriously not yet convinced they are aware of it as a concept.

All during that health care debate, whenever things got impossible you could always say: “What I think they should do is pass the Wyden-Bennett Reform Plan,” and everybody would shut up and slink home to look it up on Google.

It’s a more elegant version of the Bipartisan Study Commission. Which, by the way, the Republicans recently filibustered.

Actually, I think we just need one simple change that will get us back to the good old days when Congress was capable of passing standard legislation and could occasionally summon the will to make large, imperfect fixes of urgent national problems.

Get rid of the Senate filibuster. It wouldn’t make things tidy. It wouldn’t be utopia. The Democrats will miss it next time they’re in the minority. But when people elected a government, it would get to govern again. And probably, it could keep the lights on.

Gail Collins, apparently summoning this material
from some long forgotten font of agreement between us.

America Held Hostage: Day One

The Democrat, at least as currently constituted, simply does not understand what it takes to message. Every Democrat serving at every level should never even approach a microphone without uttering “America Held Hostage, Day X.” It’s as simple as that. Why is Senator Shelby holding America hostage over a couple of earmarks? Does he hate America?

Likewise: Up or down vote. Why won’t the GOP let the Senate vote on jobs creation? Why is the GOP against democracy? Just let the Senate vote; we will abide by the outcome. And etc…

That this is all so hard for them to understand is, perhaps, the single greatest argument in favor of their being dispatched from service come 2010. That they further don’t seem to understand that is, well, remarkable.

America Held Hostage: Day One

Decoder rings

Various folks are trying to sort out just what Obama means with this statement:

That’s why I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks and then let’s go ahead and make a decision. And it may be that if Congress decides, if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that’s how democracy works, and there will be elections coming up and they will be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or another during election time.

I think it’s pretty damned clear, actually. After all, he had just said this:

What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let’s just go through these bills – their ideas, our ideas – let’s walk through them in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense.

So then, following “President’s Questions” and the GOP’s performance at same, Obama feels he (and, by extension, his party) is/are the ones with the real solutions (as opposed to mere slogans), no matter how flawed those solutions may be, to the truly existential problems facing our government. The GOP, on the other hand, is suggesting we can simply cover everyone, lower taxes, and still have budget surpluses to use on all the wars we can start as far as the eye can see.
In fact, the only member of the GOP caucus putting real ideas out there that could do anything about the situation at hand is Paul Ryan ® of Wisconsin, who comes right out and admits that:

Just look at the numbers. [That the healthcare problem is the deficit problem is] not a theory. It’s a fact.

-and that-

if Ron Wyden and I were in a room, we could hammer out a deal [merging our healthcare proposals] by tomorrow.

And but Ryan basically wants to cap Medicare benefits, privatize at least parts of Social Security, and a do whole host of other stuff that I’d disagree with. That’s not important, though. The point is: these would be extremely unpopular positions to put into law, but at least they are positions. They are not sound-good, rhyming boilerplate nonsense; they are actionable “solutions” that could be turned into actual legislation that might do something about the problem (again, this is whether you agree with the particular mode of the solution or not). This is radically different from what the rest of his caucus proposes, which can be efficiently boiled down to “USA! USA! USA!”

So then, what Obama is saying is this:

Let’s get the key, decision-making personnel and folks with real ideas in a room, Democrats and Republicans. We’ll have all the plans and ideas, the GOP will have nothing to offer other than elimination of extremely popular programs, assuming they even offer that. Even if a deal doesn’t get done, there are clear positions taken, clear stances made public in a way that can’t be taken back, and is ultimately very similar to what the “Questions” televent did. It will be live, and it will be compelling. As such, any deal that actually comes out of it basically has to pass, otherwise the GOP look like the two-faced negotiators that they have proven to be (but have yet to be called out on). Failure to make a deal most likely also redounds on the GOP, since they would ideally be seen as having no ideas to offer anyway (assuming they just show up and scream platitudes while the Democrats actually have functional legislation and CBO scoring to offer). Thus, you show America in microcosm (and, not coincidentally, in TV drama form) the real reason “nothing gets done” in D.C. and, simultaneously, make the GOP look very small indeed. Or you get a healthcare deal.

The key to this plan, though, is the CBO (or whoever could reasonably play Ref in this debate). You can’t just run the numbers in 48 seconds and, on the spot, call out somebody’s plan as totally unworkable horseshit. So the more likely outcome of such an event would be a draw; two weeks later, nobody bothers to check that the GOP “plan” consisting of rhyming maxims and hoary chestnuts about using the ER as your PCP scores poorly (if at all), while the Democratic plan of actionable legislation scores as a deficit reducer and, oh by the way, covers 30 million presently un-covered Americans out of the gate. And such an outcome redounds to the generally negative perception of the Democrat as a feckless, do-nothing, non-governing, circular firing squad failure machine. So, I guess this is pretty much what’s going to happen. Whatever it is, it’s always good for the Republicans.

You heard it here first.

Fetch my blankey

Profiles in courage:

Richard (Dick) Shelby ®, Alabama, has really taken a stand of the highest moral order. He’s put a blanket hold on all 70 Obama appointees. Because they’re all Marxists, right? Uh, no. Because he wants some pork for his state:

  • A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS(1)) team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.” Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.
  • An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

Is there any greater clarion call for the reform of political appointment process than this horseshit? Do we really believe that all these appointees to the sub-panel of the temporary committee on occasional projects needs the full focus of Senatorial advice and consent? Can we not just send the ambassadors, the Secretaries, and a few other, top-rung key personal through this idiotic and completely politicized process and be done with it? The current state of affairs has more or less guaranteed the President can’t fire anyone, ever, unless he/she wants to face the prospect of that (presumably key) office then sitting empty for a few years. This is not what the framers had in mind.

In a world with a fully fecked Democrat, they’d be screaming about this any time a microphone was within sight. As it stands, there’s been not one peep. We had an attempted plane bombing with relevant folks sitting on the sideline, for Christ’s sake. It’s simple. People understand it. Scream, scream, scream. Plus, as a bonus, you get to hoist the GOP on its own “strict constructionist” petard. “We demand a return to Constitutional government!” And then you quote Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. What about this do these fools not understand?

(1)McCain note added for context:
Let’s leave aside for the purposes of this discussion that the country should really be hoisting McCain from the nearest yardarm for needlessly costing the taxpayer billions of additional dollars through his cynical and purely political stunt to blow up the original Northrop/EADS tanker deal in the first place.

Code Brown

Boston NPR was predictably atwitter this morning on the news that Scott Brown accelerated his swearing in. What they got through without ever saying, even once, is that he most likely was doing so such that he can be there to vote in lockstep with the GOP to block such critical world-changing policy points as who is going to head the NLRB. Goddamned Liberal Media bias working against us once again.
Brown is genuinely staving off the utter collapse of The Republic by keeping somebody notionally pro-union out of the chairman’s seat over to the labor board. So this “independent” will undoubtedly go 0-4 on the independent thinking front in week one, likely also helping to stop a jobs initiative. And, as Lord Jesus well knows, politically independent Americans have no taste for job creation, no matter how anemic or government sourced those jobs may be. We just don’t want new jobs. Why can’t the fat-cats in Washington understand that? Probably because many of them don’t drive trucks.

Will he be asked about this 0-4 first week, even once? Of course he won’t. Will the Globe add a front-page feature counting days, months, years without a non-GOP lockstep vote on Brown’s part? Of course they won’t. Will enterprising reporters get into his face this week and ask for the deep policy explanations that underlie his supposedly independent stance that just happens to perfectly align with GOP political plays this week, and thus be ready to call him out as either a fool or a fraud? Of course they won’t.

Here’s your Scott Brown “independent” vote counter, brazenly predicted two years in advance and carved into the electronic firmament for all to see: 0.

PAM McCain

10-2006 McCain: “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it,” McCain said in October 2006 to an audience of Iowa State University students.
2010 McCain: [Gates told the Armed Services Committee, “I fully support the president’s decision.”] In response, McCain declared himself “disappointed” in the testimony. “At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” he said bluntly, before describing it as “imperfect but effective.”

[Tea Party members] are people who’ve been gouged for years by the deregulated banking, mortgage lending, and commodities trading business, and when Obama sends down very weak, watered-down regulations to deal with those problems, they howl that he’s against “private enterprise” because that’s what they’ve been told to think by the Glenn Becks of the world.
Did you [tea partiers] know that insider trading isn’t even illegal in the commodities trading business? Do you honestly think gas prices were high in 2008 because we weren’t drilling enough in the Gulf of Mexico?
You idiots are being used. Think for yourselves. If the Fox Network believes it so wholeheartedly, how could it possibly be in your interest? They’ll take your ratings, sure, so they can sell you Charmin and $5 footlongs. I mean, Jesus, how can you not see that? If you had real allies that powerful, don’t you think someone would have taken care of you by now?

Matt Taibbi