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Just as House Speaker John Boehner was concluding a brief press conference on Monday afternoon—declaring that House GOPers would once again send to the Senate a bill funding the government that would block Obamacare, practically ensuring a government shutdown—I bumped into former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who now works at Patton Boggs, a powerhouse law and lobbying firm in Washington. Glad not to be part of the mess? I asked.
“I’m of two minds,” Lott said. “I’d like to be in the arena and help work something out. But it’s gotten too nasty and too mean these days. I couldn’t work with these guys.”
What do you think of how Boehner and the House Republicans are handling this?
“They’ve made their point,” Lott huffed. “It’s time to say enough and move on.” Referring to the die-hard tea partiers in the House Republican caucus, he added, “These new guys don’t care about making things work.” Lott noted that in the mid-1990s, he warned then-Speaker Newt Gingrich not to force a government shutdown. “I knew it wouldn’t be good for us,” he said.
So how does this end? Lott said he still was optimistic that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could step in and negotiate a deal—maybe a short-term continuation of spending. (Not too long ago, I noted that the odds of a successful McConnell intervention were low.)
I asked Lott if his old GOP pals still serving in the Senate have lost control of their party. How do they feel about that? I inquired. Lott shook his head: “That Ted Cruz. They have to teach him something or cut his legs out from under him.”
Cut his legs out? Yeah, Lott replied with a chuckle.
CLEVELAND, Tenn. — “The premise was good,” said Bob McIntire, 53, an insurance executive here in deep red Bradley County, where the local Democrats would have trouble filling up a phone booth.
The payoff, well, that was the problem.
On talk radio and in the conservative blogosphere, the bipartisan vote on Wednesday to reopen the government without defunding President Obama’s health care law was being excoriated as an abject surrender and betrayal by spineless establishment Republicans. But for glum and frustrated conservative voters on Thursday around breakfast tables in eastern Tennessee, in the shadow of a military base in Colorado Springs and on the streets of suburban Philadelphia, it was as much a surrender to reality as to Democratic demands.
To Mr. McIntire, that reality was a media environment in which conservatives don’t get a fair hearing, a unified and shrewd Democratic opposition, and a Congress hopelessly compromised by Washington deal making. For Matias Elliott, a cabdriver in Colorado Springs, the reality was the harm being done to the nation’s military and to the local economy. For Jean Naples, a homemaker in Doylestown, Pa., it was the “despicable” way the shutdown disrupted funerals for military personnel killed overseas and the way her husband’s medical supply business had suffered a severe cash-flow problem during the shutdown.
Many conservatives described a dispiriting gap between conservative ideals, which they believe inspire widespread agreement, and conservative tactics, which do not. The failure to stop the health care plan left Republicans like Ms. Naples pessimistic and disillusioned. “I’m just totally blown away by everything,” she said. “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.”
Still, for many Wednesday night’s vote had to play out as it did, because there was no other alternative.
“The shutdown had to end,” said Andre Zarb-Cousin of Colorado Springs, who said that he believes the Affordable Care Act could destroy the country. “Who’s suffering? Veterans’ families. People being on welfare.”
Among commentators on the right, the reaction has been less driven by despair than by anger. In heated language on talk radio and on conservative blogs, many spoke of a winning if difficult strategy sabotaged in the end by weak-willed leadership.
“I was thinking about this last night, too, while I was pondering if I can ever remember a greater political disaster in my lifetime,” Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday on his radio show, “if I could ever remember a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist for all intents and purposes.”
This view of the shutdown, while infuriating to many on the right, has the virtue of being something fixable. On the conservative blog RedState, Erick Erickson said the capitulation was an urgent lesson in the need to replace establishment Republicans with true conservatives. Tea Party members here in Tennessee agreed, saying that despite the lack of policy victories by the Republicans in Congress, the shutdown had energized the base and shown them that some conservatives, like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, were willing to stand up.
“We’re just trying to make Washington, D.C., listen, and I think we did a really good job of that,” said Donny Harwood, 49, a nurse and the director of the Bradley County Tea Party.
After peddling their propaganda for decades, Rush Limbaugh couldn’t figure out any other way to spin the latest Republican shellacking after they shut down the government and tried to default on the nation’s debts. So the only other think Rush could have done, was to say something almost close to the truth.
“I was trying to think if ever in my life, I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant. I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican party has been doing. There has not been any serious opposition…against what’s happening in this country. The Republicans have done everything they can to try to make everyone like them and what they’ve ended up doing is creating one of the greatest political disasters I’ve ever seen in my lifetime…I was pondering if I could ever remember…a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist, for all intents and purposes.”
A new report called “The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy” is confirming what we all know, that self inflected wounds is not good for you. The report concludes that crisis-driven government and the resulting fiscal policy uncertainty has directly harmed the American economy by increasing the unemployment rate by 0.6%, or the equivalent of 900,000 jobs. “The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy” was prepared by Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, a leading independent research firm, for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
Michael A. Peterson, President and COO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said: “This report makes clear that self-created fiscal crises have significant costs to our economy and to American families. These partisan battles not only threaten our fragile economic recovery, but they have not resulted in any comprehensive solution to our real fiscal challenge, stabilizing our long-term debt.”
“Partisan divided government has failed to address our long-term fiscal challenges sensibly, instead encouraging policy that is short-sighted, arbitrary, and driven by calendar-based crises,” said Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers. “Based on this report’s findings, we can assert confidently that the crisis-driven fiscal policies of the last several years have damaged our still-struggling economy. One can only hope that our policymakers will implement more sensible policy in the future.”
Since the Republican Government Shutdown ended its 16th day yesterday, everyone’s been asking the same question. Why? Why did Republicans shut down the government and took this country on what seemed to be a pointless adventure. Well the answers are slowly beginning to come in and this from Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) takes the cake… so far.
The reason for shutting down the government? So that Republicans could “reestablish our brand as being against ObamaCare.” Really? Yea, really. They wanted to show the world that they are united against ObamaCare… a scheme that cost the nation $25 Billion so far.
KINGSTON: People need to exhibit their beliefs and have the opportunity to debate, which is what we’ve been able to do in the last two weeks, and I think you can, you know, from a pessimistic standpoint say, you guys, you Republicans did not get anything out of it.
But on the other side, I think it was important to us to reestablish our brand as being against Obamacare and from what we’ve seen so far, Obamacare is not going to be a winner. It has not decreased the cost of medicine or…
HAYES: Congressman, do you think anyone going into this was confused about the Republican stance on Obamacare?
KINGSTON: You know, you would be surprised. I’m telling you, sometimes our base thinks that we haven’t driven the point enough, even though we’ve had something like forty different votes to defund it in one form or the other, we still get complaints that we’re not doing anything to defund Obamacare.
Video.
The President:
Last night I signed legislation to reopen our government and pay America’s bills. Because Democrats and responsible Republicans came together, the first government shutdown in 17 years is now over; the first default in more than 200 years will not happen.
These twin threats to our economy have now been lifted, and I want to thank those Democrats and Republicans for getting together and ultimately getting this job done
Video
John McCain and Rep Steve King have questioned their party’s decision to shut down the government following the instructions from first year Senator Ted Cruz. That wasn’t expected but it was good to see. When anyone from the most partisan Republican propaganda machine begins to question the wisdom of the shutdown, then you know the Republicans are in deep dodo.
That is what happened when Fox’s Gretchen Carlson interviewed Representatives Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Adam Smith (D-Wa) about the recent Republican government shutdown.
Republicans finally accepted the proposal from Congress and reopened the government last night, but yesterday when this interview took place and everyone knew the details of the Senate proposal, the Democratic Representative pointed out the fact that the House could have accepted this same proposal since the beginning of the shutdown. Smith said, “the shame of it is, this is something we could have done back in the beginning of October.”
This is where the impossible happened. The Fox News host agreed that the shutdown was a failure in the eyes of the sane American citizenry.
“Isn’t this what Americans hate quite frankly, about you guys, members of Congress?” Carlson asked. “That this is something that could have been done long ago and here we are again?”
When Fox News gets it right, then you know you’ve really messed up!
Video
The Teaparty’s attempt to make this nation bow down on all fours came to a crushing defeat tonight, as both Senate and the House voting to end the Republican induced government shutdown. And now this: the Teaparty favored candidate in New Jersey failed to topple Cory Booker for the US Senate.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker won a special election Wednesday to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, giving the rising Democratic star a bigger political stage after a race against conservative Steve Lonegan, a former small-town mayor.
Booker, 44, will become the first black senator from New Jersey and heads to Washington with an unusual political resume. He was raised in suburban Harington Park as the son of two of the first black IBM executives, and graduated from Stanford and law school at Yale with a stint in between as a Rhodes Scholar before moving to one of Newark’s toughest neighborhoods with the intent of doing good.
He’s been an unconventional politician, a vegetarian with a Twitter following of 1.4 million – or five times the population of the city he governs. With dwindling state funding, he has used private fundraising, including a $100 million pledge from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to run programs in Newark, a strategy that has brought his city resources and him both fame and criticism.
Booker was elected to complete the 15 months remaining on the term of Frank Lautenberg, whose death in June at age 89 gave rise to an unusual and abbreviated campaign. If he wants to keep the seat for a full six-year term – and all indications are that he does – Booker will be on the ballot again in November 2014.
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America, Don’t EVER Drink The TEA
Finally! After over two weeks of a Government Shutdown in which even Sen. John McCain admitted in a Fox News interview, was completely the GOP’s fault, the Republicans are going to relinquish their unpopular battle and vote on a Clean Continued Resolution which will re-open the Government and put a halt to the ‘Default Talk’ of the Debt Ceiling.
So many questions still remain in this Failed takeover by the TeaPublicans. What was the purpose? Why did they take America to the brink of National Default of paying it’s bills? What Next?
It’s all Very Simple.
The Purpose: Ruin and destroy the Obama Presidency.
Why did they take America to the Brink? Ruin and Destroy the Obama Presidency.
What Next? Ruin and Destroy the Obama Presidency.
From the Beginning of the Barack Obama Presidential Term in 2008, the Great Obstructionist Party’s game plan was to Nullify, Deny, Embarrass, Destroy, Obstruct, Defame, Denounce and Negate the Legitimacy of his presidency.
The very idea that a small faction of the United States Congress could hold this Nation hostage because they don’t like President Obama and Obamacare is unfathomable. Now, as this stage of their hostile Government Takeover comes to a close, it appears the negotiations will last until January 15, 2014 and the Debt Ceiling will be revisited on February 7, 2014. Surely, you know we will go through this again in January.
We have to #EndThisNow!
“Kicking the Can Down the Road” is not the way to govern a Nation. But it appears since President Obama became the Commander in Chief, he has put out fires instead of initiating his policy. I believe this is the GOP’s plan: Manufactured problems like the NSA, IRS, Benghazi, Sequester to the GOP Shutdown and the near Default of the Debt Ceiling has kept this President on defense and reactive than on the Offensive and Proactive. For 5 1/2 years of Obstruction and hindrance from the TeaPublicans, much of the planned agendas from the Obama Administration have not been addressed or implemented.
Remember Immigration Reform, Jobs Initiatives, Increasing the Minimum Wage, Gun Control, Climate Change and Energy Initiatives and Oil Drilling in this country? I do. But what has been done on any of those in the last 6-months? Correct! Nothing. Unfortunately, I feel this will continue. The Teapublican Plan is to make this President look worse than Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. You remember the Great Recession where banks and financial investors failed, housing market declined, auto companies were abandoned to fail and the stock market dropped below 8,000?
To make President Obama look worse than those disastrous moments in Bush Administration’s history is the plan, so don’t for one second believe this is over. Yes, the TeaPublicans have retreated but the fight is not over. They’ll regroup and between now and January, they will manufacture another crisis.
America, if you’ve seen enough from the extremely radical Tea people. Voting in every election is more critical than ever before! The Koch Brothers and Heritage Action are throwing money into every local election to sway votes with advertisements filled with lies and deceptions. Our Job: Make folk aware of the importance of voting. We’ve got to get behind the President and express our concerns by Voting Out Extremism!
Now is the Perfect time. Never forget America, who Shutdown our Government and nearly Defaulted our country in the eyes of the World.
If you want to make a difference, Vote! If you want this country to Move Forward, Vote! If you believe extremism is what keeps us bound, Vote! Obstructionism is Not Governing! Democracy and Compromise is Governing!
Vote America, Vote!
Categories
Let’s Fake A Deal
In the end, we got a terrible economic deal, but a nice political gift. Congress essentially kicked the problem down the road and ensured that early January would mark the beginning of other round of hostage-taking on the part of the right, more attacks on the health care law, and an intransigence on raising revenue in a fiscal deal that will raise hypocrisy to a new level, after they lambasted the president for not negotiating on the debt. Which he did. Anyway.
Even worse is listening to chastened Republicans talk about the importance of bipartisanship and how they hope that Democrats learn the lesson that they shouldn’t do this when they’re in the GOP’s position. Remember: Only the right can shut down the government and scare the world into thinking we’d default on our loans.
The good news is that this deal was worse for the Republicans than even I thought it would be. It was clear that this gambit was not going to help them, and Ted Cruz made it even better for the left because he was convinced that everyone outside of the major cities agreed that the ACA was from the devil and needed to be exorcised. The president stood his ground and public opinion shifted severely away from the GOP. It will take quite a bit of work on their part just to maintain their ranks in the Congress next year. They can kiss the Senate goodbye and might even lose the House, gerrymandered or not.
That this all occurred at the same time that the ACA rollout produced disastrous results makes the episode even sweeter, and is the political equivalent of rubbing salt in right wing eyes. If they had played it straight, they could have earned two years of political capital and would have had the Democrats on the run. But the right made sure that the computer problems will be mostly fixed by the time they’re ready to renew their attacks, and most people won’t pay attention anyway.
The only positive redemption I can see is if the GOP makes the debt and deficit an issue that only they can solve. The public is on their side on that argument, but that would also include cuts to Medicare and Social Security that will not go down well. The shutdown showed that Americans were upset because national parks were closed. Does the GOP think we’d also like to privatize entitlements? I think not.
Let’s hope that Barack Obama keeps his spine straight and forces the right to accept a deficit deal mostly on his terms and without significant consequences for the health care bill. He can also push the immigration bill while the right is down and hope that enough of them see fit to change their minds. Probably not, but it’s fun to dream.
In any case, enjoy the next six weeks. Then it all starts again.
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Mr. Dershowitz made an appearance on CNN with former New Mexico’s governor Bill Richardson, and he had some choice words for his former Harvard student, Ted Cruz.
Speaking about the government shutdown and the looming breach of the Debt Ceiling, Dershowitz said this about Cruz:
“I think it raises very serious constitutional questions of the kind that Ted Cruz should be interested in. Could you imagine Hamilton and Madison sitting around and drafting the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. They’re talking about how the government has to pay its debts, how it has to secure the credit of the United States, how the House of Representatives to originate bills on revenue.
Nobody in a million years would have contemplated the power of Congress to shut down the government, to create doubts about our creditworthiness.”
Nobody except little Teddy that is. I guess Cruz wasn’t paying attention in class.