The Bunning Breakdown
Mar 3, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Bunning Breakdown, mainstream media, republicans suck
The Jim Bunning episode seems to have been a bridge too far even for Republicans. Harry Reid essentially left the situation to Mitch McConnell, the man who’d forced Bunning into retirement. Awkward!
Faced with bad press, even ridicule — from inside the Beltway! — McConnell had no choice but to lean on Bunning with whatever leverage he might have, months after essentially firing the guy.
So what did Bunning do? Put a blanket hold on Obama’s nominees. The Bunning breakdown continues: if he cannot run for re-election, he will do all the damage he can possibly do on the way out. He’s throwing wild pitches and there’s little McConnell can do to control him.
Who said Republicans were smart?
Time’s Joe Klein suggests that Bunning will attract more attention to the obstructionist tactics fostered by some in the Republican party, forcing Republicans to either openly embrace or finally abandon the procedural blocks. “Let’s call the roll. Let’s see how many allies Jim Bunning and Jon Kyl have. Let’s find out their names and remember them. This is so important that we should stop all other business: Let them filibuster…and spend hours telling us exactly what else they would abolish.”
Bunning has become a loose cannon on deck — and obstructionism has jumped the shark, even for the village. Pass. The. Popcorn.
Furthermore, let the record indicate that Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, has turned down his last life preserver on health care reform. The party of no is sinking into reconciliation. They can try calling it “the nuclear option,” but if reconciliation bills square with the Senate rules (and given the history of Republicans using reconciliation, they will) then there’s no room to complain. After all, there’s nothing in the Constitution about filibusters, is there?
I think we’ll look back on the Bunning breakdown as the beginning of the end for Mitch McConnell as minority leader. He’s engineered an epic fail. If he’s still in the job come January 2011, it will be a sign the GOP really has lost its mind.
Jim Bunning Provides
Feb 27, 2010 Jobs Bills, republicans suck
My girlfriend’s mother is still recovering from her car wreck in December. She was due to start a new job the next day, but of course she’s now unemployed — and as a result of the accident, she will probably never work as a psychiatric nurse again. She depends on COBRA and unemployment during this period of transition as she seeks to go on disability at the age of 55.
Enter Jim Bunning, Republican Senator from Kentucky. He’s single-handedly holding back the extension of unemployment and COBRA and is very annoyed that doing so causes him to miss his basketball game. Waah! Never mind the 1.2 million American workers losing their safety net in the middle of a recession.
The “substance” of Bunning’s objection is that any extension of benefits should come out of stimulus money, which is a backhanded way of perverting spending decisions already made by Congress. We’re talking about$10 billion, which is enough to run the occupation of Iraq for about a week. Of course, the Senate will be able to override Bunning next week, but the delay will create turmoil — and extra costs:
Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the (National Employment Law Project), said that even when Bunning is eventually thwarted and the extension is passed, state governments will still have to deal with the extra administrative costs of shutting down and restarting the extended benefits programs.
“Once the program is retroactively reauthorized, the federal government is going to send the same amount of money, but his own state government is going to have to spend even more money,” Conti said.
“What happened last night was an absolute disgrace. There is a time and a place a purpose for debate on deficit reduction, but you don’t make your stand on the back of the unemployed. It is ill-informed, counter productive and just cruel.”
John Cornyn (R-Texas) spoke in support of his compatriot: “I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky…Somebody has to stand up finally and say, ‘No more inter-generational theft!’” Cornyn said nothing about the $709 billion cost of the Iraq war that was charged to a Bank of China credit card from 2003-2008.
I said weeks ago that these were precisely the optics Democrats were after when they stopped producing omnibus jobs bills. Republicans are playing right into their hands. Bunning won’t be running for re-election this year, but the GOP is setting itself up for a big fall and he’s providing the perfect optics for campaign ads.
When asked to release his hold, Bunning replied “tough shit.” Stay classy, Republicans! You’re doing great!
Wheat From Chaff: A Visual
Feb 12, 2010 2010 Elections, Consensus, GOP obstructionism, Richard Shelby, republicans suck
Republicans have blinked on appointments. The wheat-from-chaff technique requires a hard shake every now and then:
“Mitch, this is unprecedented,” the president said, gesturing forcefully on the Cabinet Room table, according to aides. “If you don’t move any, I’m going to do some [recess] appointments.”
The 27 confirmations mean no recess appointments will be needed during this break, top administration officials said. Recess appointments, which a president can make when Congress is not in session, are temporary and generally last to the end of the year.
That Hail Mary pass Richard Shelby wanted to throw Parker Griffith never actually got thrown; the play ended in a sack. The GOP has started the string of losses they’ll be taking into November, and the first will be the Republican establishment candidates. Expect Parker Griffith to spend gobs of money just trying to get through the primary.
I expect the wingnutosphere to try and make this an example of Obama’s “arrogance,” but it’s only going to make independents like Obama more. I think middle America is ready to see strength from him — they’ve had a year of bipartisanship outreach that was unreturned.
Couldn’t See This Coming
Feb 9, 2010 2010 Elections, Morning Video, Republican Party, republicans suck, wall street bailout
How tone-deaf is the GOP? They’re actively chasing Wall Street money on an anti-reform agenda in the wake of the biggest bailout in world history. Which is about as stupid as Mondale’s pledge to raise taxes, because the Democrats are going to hammer them all year with stuff like this:
Richard Shelby
Feb 5, 2010 Alabama Republicans, Barack Obama cabinet picks, Defense Procurement, Richard Shelby, alabama, republicans suck
I’ll give Jeff Sessions credit: he at least wrote back to me about his gang-rape vote. Richard Shelby, on the other hand, has yet to acknowledge the complaint. Now Shelby’s put an unprecedented “blanket hold” on 70 Obama nominees, and again refuses to explain himself:
The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.
And what, pray tell, does Shelby want to extort from the administration? The Mobile Press-Register reports:
- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS 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.”
The story of the tanker planes is ridiculous. Northrop wants to team up with Airbus to build them in Alabama; rival Boeing wants to build them in Washington. Now Northrop wants the Air Force to change its criteria for selection or else it will take its football and go home. The second one is new to me, but just how bad is the problem of improvised explosive devices in the United States? Because I don’t see the FBI deploying to Pakistan anytime soon.
Maybe I’m wrong; maybe Northrop/EADS should have the contract and the FBI desperately needs this facility to be in Huntsville. Or maybe Shelby is just a pig at the trough in Washington taking “the party of no” to petty extremes. As I noted back in September amid the “czars” nontroversy, the GOP obstructionism is aimed at hampering Obama’s ability to govern. Effective leadership consists of delegation to competent subordinates; block the subordinates, and you block the leader. As of August, Obama still didn’t have half his team in place:
While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.
He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.
All of which suits Shelby and the GOP just fine, I’m sure. After all, they were willing to block Obama’s nomination for head of the Transportation Security Administration just to keep the people at the x-ray machines from unionizing. The funny thing is, I remember when Shelby was the Democrat who unseated Denton by accusing him of overconsuming pork.
The Art of Reversal
Feb 3, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, DADT, Jeff Sessions, John McCain, Obama postelection strategy, military, republicans suck
Sure, Obama might have just issued an executive order and done away with DADT with a pen-stroke. But rather than set himself against the Pentagon, Obama decided to utilize the chain of command to strengthen the case for a reversal of the statute. That’s classic consensus politics adapted for the reality of military culture, and yesterday brought the genius of the strategy into sharp focus.
No one in the military outranks Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yesterday he told a Senate committee the Pentagon will spend the next year studying how to end the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates seconded. Republicans on the committee responded with immediate resistance — and that is the point.
The optics of the issue are a complete contrast to 1993. Instead of attempted fiat, the White House has Republicans disagreeing with generals. At Huffington Post, Jason Linkins offers a roundup of past quotes from John McCain, who consistently maintained he would follow the military’s lead on DADT only to reverse himself yesterday:
Get that? Republicans are now in the position of second-guessing the military. This trend was visible as early as June of 2009. I once despaired over Obama’s choice of a Republican for Defense Secretary because I thought it fed into the (utterly false!) right-wing narrative that Democrats can’t run the Pentagon. But Gates has been a solid team player, especially on this issue, and now we have a significant cultural reversal — one that Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly website recognizes this morning, too.
There will be complaints from the left. Why wait a year? Well, it’s far less time than most weapons procurement decisions; and the policy has been in place for 17 years. Meanwhile, the armed forces are softening enforcement. Knowing the military culture, it will take at least a year for the brass to formulate the new policy; but the military always prefers to write its own policies because the needs of unit commanders are different from the political desires of elected politicians. They always respond to strong leadership, however, and Obama has been a stronger CIC than most people realize.
Of course, in the meantime there will be viral emails from armchair generals and veterans of previous conflicts. There will be ideologues demanding respect with their combat credentials in the lede. With respect, I look forward to smashing their stupid.
Adding: over at Stark Reports, Mike has some great interviews, including a voice-only quote from serial liar Jeff Sessions who was “visibly discomfited” by the topic.
Also adding: I’ve been linked by Wolfrum, who is a cool human being. Go give him some traffic.
The Obama You Voted For
Jan 31, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Consensus, Obama White House, Obama's communication strategy, Republican tinfoil hattery, Republicans Meet The Teabag Terror, republicans, republicans suck
On the left, response to the president’s pantsing of House Republicans has been universal relief. Finally, more than one commenter has declared, this is the Obama I voted for. We’ve all been frustrated by the wishy-washy wishfulness of bipartisanship, haven’t we? I mean, come on. Obama’s been holding out an olive branch to the GOP for a year and kept pulling back a bloody stump. Right?
During his SOTU last Wednesday night, he made sure to remind the country that he would be meeting with House Republicans Friday. The same encounter one year ago saw TV cameras turned off after the speech, but this time the White House asked for them to stay on:
We’ve got to close the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. I’m not suggesting that we’re going to agree on everything, whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don’t have a lot of room to negotiate with me. I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America. (Emphasis mine)
But that’s the exact same Obama. A full year of Republican obstructionism and Wall Street profiteering are the only difference; nothing else has changed. The paragraph above may sound frustrated, but there’s actually a renewed call to bipartisanship amid the presidential smashing of stupid.
The emphasis on Republicans having left themselves no room is yet another example of his brand of consensus politics. The object isn’t to shove Republicans away but to let them choose whether to be a part of the consensus. Which brings me to the Republican National Committee’s meeting in Hawaii that same day:
The Republican National Committee, pressed to find a way to more clearly distinguish itself from Democrats, on Friday adopted a rule that will prod GOP leaders to provide financial support to only those candidates who support the party’s platform.
This was a “compromise” from an earlier proposal to apply a “purity test” on candidates, which says much about their willingness to reach across aisles. But why would the party of no feel pressed to distinguish itself from Democrats? The answer, of course, is that the party’s new astroturf-fueled movement is ideologically rigid, is busy seizing control of the precinct apparatus, and has them completely terrified.
Which brings me back to the “pivot” Obama recently made on Wall Street. The president has staked out the political center and yanked the populism out from under the teabaggers at the very moment their “movement” is cracking up and Sarah Palin, the default GOP candidate for 2012, is disappointing the right by keeping her appointment in Nashville this week. Some Republicans are warning the party that being painted in this corner is bad electoral strategy, but I don’t expect they will listen.
I also don’t think the tea party movement can last — at least, not as a potent political force. Factionalism is ruling the day among the angry right. Obama’s strong move to pin down Wall Street will prove enormously popular and steal much of their legitimate thunder, leaving only birthers, healthers, and other assorted nuts to scream “socialism!” That word didn’t work in 2008, it didn’t work in 2009, and I expect the tea parties will not only descend into self-parody by November 2010, but will very likely exhaust the patience of middle America.
Which brings me back to the president’s emphasis on maneuvering room. Obama’s habit of “formless” positioning is a constant irritant to the left, but it also leaves him political space. Having rejected such nuances for clear, yet extreme positioning, the minority party is giving us a case study in why the president is able to hit their question-time fastballs out of the park: he’s smarter than they are, and his strategies reflect that.
As I said, I doubt they will learn anything except that direct, public confrontation with the president is a bad idea. Most, if not all of them will probably choose to stay painted in a corner. You can see it in their complaints about Obama “lecturing” them Friday. But that is the point: they make the choice. Obama doesn’t have to beat them if they beat themselves.
Grabbing the Center
Jan 28, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Obama's Speeches, Obama's communication strategy, President Barack Obama, health care reform, republicans suck
Obama grabbed the political center last night — and Republicans played right into his hands with boorish behavior. They sat on their hands; as he spoke about tax cuts and banks and small business, the Democrats leaped to applaud. The Republicans realized the error only after being publicly ribbed by the president. They finally took part once Obama mentioned big business, at which point they became more enthusiastic than Democrats for several minutes.
The optics are awful for the Grand Old Party, but terrific for Obama. Video bites from last night will hammer the GOP from here to November; they are now on the wrong side of the populist zeitgeist. Justice Alito mouthing “that’s not true” as Obama decries the Citizens United decision is political gold: the conservatives are now the judicial activists. Rush Limbaugh will tell us today why Alito is right and Citizens is the greatest blow for freedom since Dredd Scott, but it won’t resonate. How can it, if Goldman-Sachs is a “person” now?
Losing the 59-seat Senate majority seems to have inspired a new approach to health care reform as well as financial reform. Ironically, “success” in Massachusetts may mean the GOP stands by helpless in February as a public option passes through budget reconciliation. But the subject was only a brief section of the speech, which brings out the usual complaints on the left. Michael Lind calls Obama’s extended passage about tax cuts in the stimulus bill
a complete rhetorical capitulation to the Right. To listen to Obama, the tax cuts were what saved the economy, not the Keynesian spending. This raises the obvious question: maybe instead of a stimulus, there should have been only tax cuts, as the Republicans argued all along! Maybe we should have elected John McCain after all!
Or, Obama understands that few Americans understand basic economics but they know tax cuts are good, and Republicans are supposed to like tax cuts but evidently don’t, which helps Democrats win. Here’s Jason Linkins on energy policy and the Republican response:
While Obama professed nominal support for his cap and trade plan, the fact that the President had also enumerated an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy independence sort of stole the wind from McDonnell’s sails in advance.
Indeed, that very passage has greens foaming at the mouth today. But once again, taking the center lets you do things like steal your opponent’s wind in advance; and in time, I’m sure the details of offshore drilling and new nuclear plants will turn out to be every bit as nuanced as the supposed “budget freeze” Obama promises. In a phrase, it’s more of that 11-Dimensional Chess the left hates.
The GOP watched its 2012 hopes begin to fade last night amid the ongoing tea party debacle, but the last people to see it are the progressives.
With Enemies Like These…
Jan 25, 2010 Michael Steele, Republican Party, republicans suck
David Corn seems more cued-in to what the rest of the progressive left is missing:
With profound challenges still facing the nation, what counts is what Obama can achieve by out-maneuvering and surmounting this opposition. Washington is long past the point when the White House ought to be pressed to prove its bipartisan cred.
Obama has been overly bipartisan, to his detriment, and gotten nothing but intransigence in return. But that is quite the point: no one is ever going to say that Obama did not try bipartisanship. The longer GOP obstructionism goes on, the worse the Republicans look.
Which brings me to the news that Republicans will be meeting in Hawaii for a strategy session on the beach. The Grand Old Party is a great big party, alright, and Michael Steele is busy with blowout spending. From the National Journal:
The RNC has spent more money than it has taken in during every month since July, even as the party brags about an expanded donor base that set off-year records.
As I’ve been saying since the tea parties started last year, the whole phenomenon is driven by marketers and for marketers. If the GOP was a public stock, I’d short it. The Republicans are nowhere near done with self-destruction.
