Month: October 2013

Despite the continued denialism of Goldberg and Hewitt, there are some glimmers of hope. The Houston Chronicle, for example, has recanted its endorsement of Ted Cruz over Kay Bailey Hutchison [see reader clarification below]. Money quote:

When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation – that he follow Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator. Obviously, he has not done so. Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part of the solution. We feel certain she would have worked shoulder to shoulder with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in crafting a workable solution that likely would have avoided the government shutdown altogether.

I remain skeptical that a party in this deep an ideological hole – with so many forces still arguing for more digging even up against a national default – is able to climb even slowly out. But this horrible political disaster for them must surely have some impact on purely political animals. Rarely has such a radical move been so definitively quashed (even if at the last minute) – and abhorred so broadly by the American people. That’s why Chait thinks we are making progress:

We can’t be certain Republicans will never hold the debt ceiling hostage again; but Obama has now held firm twice in a row, and if he hasn’t completely crushed the Republican expectation that they can extract a ransom, he has badly damaged it. Threatening to breach the debt ceiling and failing to win a prize is costly behavior for Congress — you anger business and lose face with your supporters when you capitulate. As soon as Republicans come to believe they can’t win, they’ll stop playing.

Allahpundit’s view:

If the point of all this from Democrats’ perspective was to teach the GOP a lesson about not using shutdowns and the debt ceiling as leverage for policy concessions, I’m … pretty sure that that lesson has now been learned.

It might have been learned in different ways — e.g., tea partiers may conclude that what they need is a change of Speaker, not a change of tactics — but right now the thought of another round of brinksmanship and RINO/tea party recriminations makes me feel like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” hearing Beethoven after the Ludovico technique. That is to say, I don’t think Reid needs to worry about sending the wrong message if he accepts a token GOP concession or two in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Everyone knows who lost. Boehner won’t try this again soon.

But Weigel doubts the base will recognize its mistake:

[Y]ou can already see how the conservative base will remember this episode. It won’t be a story of Republicans making a huge strategic error and bumbling into an Obamacare-defunding fight without the votes to ever win. It will be a story of wimpy party leaders selling out. The shutdown would have been winnable if they hadn’t sold out.

I think Weigel has the better grasp of the fundamentalist denialism of the GOP base. And one has to wonder: if this fiasco does not deter them from their fanatical purism, what would? And if that is the case, and they continue to determine the future of the GOP, should the majority of the country not unite to consign that toxic faction to electoral oblivion?

(Photo: Ted Cruz lecturing a bewildered Carl Levin, as Chuck Hagel looks on, last January. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.) Update from a reader:

The Houston Chronicle did not endorse Cruz OVER Hutchinson.  They endorsed him over Paul Sadler, a Democratic state representative, about whom the Chronicle had good things to say. Hutchinson was retiring from the Senate and Cruz had run against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Republican primary.  In that race, the Chronicle endorsed Dewhurst over Cruz. Yesterday’s editorial is a paean to Hutchinson, expressing a wish that she had kept her seat. It is not retro-active endorsement of Sadler who was not mentioned.

After last night’s Republican implosion, it will surely be time soon for introspection among the so-called conservatives about where they have taken their party and this country. In lashing out at the sudden appearance of anti-Cruzniks, Josh Barro nails it:

Roughly one-third of this caucus thinks hitting the debt ceiling and shutting down the government are great strategies to try to stop Obamacare. The other two-thirds of the party has realized all along that this strategy sucks, but they could not find any way to stop their party from implementing it — even though these “reasonable” Republicans outnumber the crazies.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) was on CNN today saying that his party’s strategy for the last month has been lunacy. Well why the hell didn’t he do anything to stop it? Why didn’t he join with Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and stop the shutdown in its tracks on Sept. 30? Where is his sense of responsibility?

Because the operating principle in the GOP is: no enemies to the right. This has been the case for years now – as prescient moderate Republicans, from Specter and Smith to Lugar, were purged, and conservative dissidents like yours truly, Bruce Bartlett, David Frum et al. were ostracized. One might think this means the GOP has hit bottom, like an addict hooked on extremism finally recognizing it no longer exists as a viable party of government. But check out one of the key cowards and enablers and panderers out there, Jonah Goldberg of National Review. After nearly bringing the American and global economy to a standstill, and failing to achieve anything of substance, Goldberg’s advise to the GOP is, verbatim, “Move On Everybody, It Just Doesn’t Matter.” I kid you not:

I would bet that the shutdown plays a relatively minor role in the 2014 and 2016 elections. But even if the shutdown plays a big role, that would be all the more reason for Republicans to find the best and most unifying way to talk about it. Endless internecine screaming about what went wrong is exactly what Obama wanted out of this. Why give it to him if it won’t produce anything worthwhile? As an intellectual or historical question, I think it’s a great thing to debate. As a political touchstone, it’s poisonous.

Goldberg is responding – civilly! – to the hardcore Stalinist of the right, Hugh Hewitt, who still regards Ted Cruz as the future of what’s left of his party. He even tries to spin this fiasco as some kind of possible political win. What is out of bounds is a real, honest, brutal debate about what has happened to Republicanism, how to reverse it, and what lessons to learn. And so it will get worse. Until someone somewhere with some actual clout begins the raw debate that is essential if we are to return to two-party government. Until then, voting Democrat is the only option. I’m not one, but I’m also not insane. No one with any sense of collective responsibility can vote this shambolic crew of vandals into any form of office any time soon. Roll on, 2014.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Beutler suspects so:

The truth is, there are decent reasons to think that even someone as dug in as Cruz won’t assume the risk of delaying whatever deal Reid and McConnell ink. An individual senator or group of senators that held up the plan would own the ensuing market reaction forever. It’s hard to win the presidency if you’re responsible for the Cruz Crash. It’s hard to finance a re-election campaign if the public thinks you destroyed its wealth and institutional donors know how reckless you are.

Thus, despite the time crunch, there are promising signs that Congress will avert disaster by the end of the week, and reopen the government, too. How Republicans react to such a punishing defeat, what conservatives do, and what comes next for John Boehner, will be big stories in the weeks ahead.

Scheiber sees yesterday’s antics in the House as “the final spasm of a still-fresh corpse, the corpse being the GOP’s legitimacy as a political entity”:

In the end, I’m rather relieved that this all happened Tuesday—still relatively early in the process as these things go. A few savvy congressional reporters lamented that we’d lost an entire day while Boehner took a final lap around the mental institution he runs, possibly pushing the resolution of the showdown beyond Thursday. But if you size up the situation from a bit of a distance, you see that Boehner’s final farcical move almost certainly sped things up. Given that the House GOP almost always lurches away from the eventual solution at least once before swallowing its pride and allowing it to pass, far better to get it out of their system Tuesday rather than waiting till Thursday night, with only a few hours to go before D-Day.

Better yet, the fact that it happened before Reid and McConnell had finished their negotiation—with McConnell having suspended the negotiation to give Boehner a chance to embarrass himself further—strengthens Reid’s hand at the margin and allows him to strike a slightly more favorable deal.

Yglesias also expects deal:

This isn’t dispositive, but I do think it’s telling that financial markets remain calm. Playing this drama out until the 11th hour has been damaging, but that’s priced in. The expectation is still that this will end, and the pieces are in place for that to happen.

Suderman notes that, should the Senate deal go through, “shutdown will be over, and the Republicans who pushed for it hardest will have gotten essentially nothing for it.”

Lizza e-mailed congressional staffers about the Vitter amendment, which would deprive them of any employer contribution to their health insurance. A response from a Democratic staffer:

I guess what I find most outrageous about the Vitter Amendment is that it most hurts the youngest, least well paid staff who already make 25-35k a year in one of the most expensive cities in the country. We have several who fit that description in my office—they all went to top schools, got sterling GPAs, have awesome resumes that could get them hired at an Investment Bank or anywhere else, but they came here to try to make a difference. I make a somewhat healthier salary, and I’m married so I can hop on my wife’s insurance if necessary. But they don’t have those options. We’ll do what we can to make them whole if Vitter becomes law, but most offices won’t—especially on the R side. They’ll just ask another group of 22-25 year olds who came here for the right reasons to live on $20k a year. And they’ll get them to do it, but they’ll be less qualified, less intelligent, and they’ll be looking for the exit almost immediately.

It’s especially galling since they also could achieve the exact same purpose of being able to tell their base that they repealed Congress’s fake exemption from ACA by the “Vitter-lite” proposal which would only hit Members, and not staff. That they apparently decided that wasn’t good enough leads me to the conclusion that screwing staff is a feature, not a bug. The GOP would like to hollow out Congress, just as they have tried to do to many other federal agencies. The only thing better than getting rid of a federal agency is keeping it on life support, while the political hacks take their swings at it.

It’s short-sighted, it’s cruel, it’s unnecessary. I just don’t get it.

Weigel got similar e-mails about the Vitter amendment. One House staffer’s thoughts:

I can guarantee you that if our subsidy were taken away, I would immediately start looking for work in the private sector. I have absolutely no problem with participating in the health exchanges—this is, as many have pointed out, not about Obamacare. But there is no way I could stay in this job indefinitely if I had to shoulder the entire burden of my family’s health care. I care deeply about Congress and have always felt extremely privileged to work here and more than willing to sacrifice the higher pay, better hours and other perks I might find off the Hill. But there’s a limit to what we can absorb, and I know I speak for a great many of my colleagues.