magnet
1641
In this case, the “Tea Party” faction constitutes about 60-70 members out of the 240 members of the House Republican caucus. The rest of the Republicans follow along mainly because they are afraid of a primary challenge from the right.
All 240 members of the caucus can communicate directly with Boehner. The Tea Party faction also has strong support from Eric Cantor, who is second in line after Boehner.
That would actually be a huge defeat for the GOP because they compromised with a Democrat. The current rule is no compromises with the other party, ever, never mind the substance of the compromise.
There’s the “college kid writing a paper” option, where a clean debt ceiling increase (or one with some token cuts) gets passed at 11 PM-ish on August 1st.
JeffL
1643
I had really hoped that the collapse of the GOP at the end of the Bush years would result in a fresh infusion of young moderate Republicans. Ugh.
After the Bush fiasco, you would have expected that no rational person would vote Republican again, or at least, not until they’d gone through some major soul-searching, acknowledged their mistakes, and developed some policies that showed they were on a different path.
They’ve done none of that - if anything, they’ve doubled down on the most destructive and irrational parts of their agenda. But because it’s a two-party system… and most voters are not terribly rational… people expressed their impatience with the slow speed with which Obama has been repairing the damage from the previous administration by giving these lunatics power again.
Given that history, I have no faith at all that people will blame the GOP for the disaster that may well follow this debt ceiling business. “Why didn’t Obama do anything to stop it?” will be the question they ask, not, “Why did the GOP intentionally tank the US economy? Again?”
What’s sickening is that some relatively small and likely transient portion of the House (what a mere ~70 seats?) is able to so thoroughly wreck things. Well, that and that the rest of the nominally non-Tea GOP Representatives are so lily-livered that they’ll go along with default just for fear of a primary challenge that will most likely fail – It wouldn’t take very many Republicans to break from this craziness to save the day.
I thought the Democrats had the market cornered on spinelessness, but apparently not. :-/
One can only hope that it’s enough to wreck the GOP permanently.
JeffL
1646
Boehner miscalcuated. This has been a leadership fiasco in so many ways, in so many places. Had Boehner figured out what was brewing earlier, he could have potentially gotten some of his allies, sat in a room with Obama, Reid, Pelosi, put together a plan that would fly and both sides agree to it, they leave the room and do their posturing and then pass the plan. With enough Republicans and a few Democrats supporting it in the House the Tea Party could have done their posturing and it wouldn’t have mattered.
That’s what really sucks. Had the Democrats gone along with Boehner’s non-constitutional amendment bill, it would have passed, gone to the Senate, they could have wrangled over the 6 month vs. 2013 option (the only real difference in the bills,) sent it back to the House and with full Dem support and a number of GOPs voting for it, it would be done. Not trying to lay this on the Democrats, just the total inability of Congress to work together in any fashion. The days of Reagan and Tip O’Neil having drinks and working out a plan, then calling each other names in public while still passing the bills they agreed on in a Georgetown bar, are long gone.
This is what I thought too, but 538 looks into it.
The Tea Party Caucus has 60 members in the House — exactly one-quarter of the Republican delegation. It is responsible, however, for 13 of the 25 Republicans who have indicated that they will vote no on the bill, or slightly more than half.
In percentage terms, 22 percent of the Tea Party Caucus has come out against the bill, as opposed to 7 percent of Republicans who are not a part of the group.
Just 3 percent of Republicans running for re-election in districts rated as competitive in the general election are believed to oppose the bill. But 13 percent of Republicans who are running in safe seats or who are retiring to run for higher office are “no” votes. (I count Mrs. Bachmann in this category although her retirement from the House is not certain depending on how her primary campaign goes.) Those seats which are safe in the general election are precisely those that are often not safe in the primaries, however, so the threat of primary challenges is probably what is driving the disparity.
JeffL
1649
Reagan and Tip O’Neil differed vehemently on a lot of issues. But they became good personal friends. That’s no secret, lots of people documented that at the time and today. Read Farrell’s biography of O’Neil (seriously, Jason, I think you’d really like it, as it talks about a strong Democrat and liberal and how he managed to be very effective in the face of the environment of Carter to Reagan, with a lot of very clever strategy and politics - fascinating book for any political junkie.) O’Neil called Reagan all kinds of names, was 180 degrees off of him politically, plotted against him - yet they were friends, and as such there were times such as the ones we are currently end where they would sit down together over drinks and agree they had to find a bipartisan solution for the good of the country.
Dunno if you’re aware of it, Jeff, but the “O’Neil and Reagan” love story is a bit of a chestnut in the process-oriented “ah why can’t the moderates get along any more” centrist American narrative that drive liberals completely up the wall.
JeffL
1651
I’m not saying they were best friends. But they were friends in a way that is unfathomable to people today, who assume that because you hate each other’s politics you want each other dead. Like I said, go read some good biographies like Farrell’s of O’Neil where he pulls no punches in relating how O’Neil would call Reagan one of the most ignorant people he’d ever met, yet at the same time talk about how much he loved their annual St. Patrick’s day tradition of going out drinking together. He attacked him vehemently one day, then kissed Reagan on the forehead in the hospital the day of the assassination attempt. And as much as they fought and plotted (though O’Neil much more than Reagan, because he needed to due to the political environment of the day) they did on several occasions realize that they had to sit together and come up with a joint solution on an issue. (BTW, Chris Matthews was O’Neil’s primary strategist, just a trivia tidbit.)
And I am aware that liberals find the idea of O’Neil having a personal friendship with Reagan is abhorrent.
No, it isn’t that at all. It’s that that whole narrative about “not necessarily liking each other but getting together and sussing things out then calling each other names but working out grand bargains” is considered well-worn and largely inaccurate centrist fable about how politics worked in the 1980s.
JeffL
1653
Oh, if you’re talking about that as the overall way they worked, no doubt. But there were occasions when they did sit together privately and work things out over drinks, on a few issues that required a bipartisan solution. And what we are facing today is absolutely that type of situation.
Jeff, they’re saying it’s the exception to the rule.
But almost any substantive compromise Obama made would be, basically, conceding terrible policy to people who held the country for ransom. The Boehner and Reid plans were apalling. Obama making a bargain along the lines of the Reid bill would be an apalling collapse, and in terms of, say, radical Republican dreams of a few months ago, a triumph for Republican hardliners. They got a huge austerity slash in the middle of a deeply troubled pseudo-recovery by ginning up an utterly bullshit crisis.
Obama basically needs to go to war with the Republicans and try to hold the country together with expedients until people who will govern the country like humans get elected.
EDIT: Who would he even bargain with? Speaker-in-name-only Boehner? Allen West, Michelle Bachmann? Maybe Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would grant him an audience?
JeffL
1656
Yeah, we are probably vehemently agreeing. ;)
JeffL
1657
Jason, I agree. That was actually the intended point: even with two people who were direct opposites in their politics, in Reagan and O’Neil, and who were absolutely convinced the other was completely wrong and bad for the country, they still were able, when needed, to sit and hammer out something that absolutely needed to be hammered out.
That just doesn’t seem possible today, for exactly the reason’s you are pointing out. The Tea Party doesn’t just disagree with Obama, they personally hate the guy, and would apparently be willing to sink the entire ship just to drown him.
Up to a point. but even before the leadership of the GOP fragmented, they were getting pretty intransigent. Maybe Tom Delay could have brought about compromise - if he wanted - but the whole crisis would have developed differently anyway.
The practical takeaway is “these are crazy people,” there’s really no good way to deal with the situation. It may not be possible to work around them, it almost certainly isn’t possible to work with them without surrendering to appallingly unacceptable policy disasters. (And their failure to accept the Reid deal - a hardline Republican package a few months ago - suggests that even surrendering doesn’t always cut it. Maybe surrender faster, with more forelock tugging and some kind of flag-lowering.)
Lum
1659
I am honestly coming, rapidly, to the belief that the GOP wants a one-party state. They refuse to deal with the Democrats at all or even acknowledge they exist much of the time. I think there is a core belief, unspoken, among the GOP that theirs is the only party with any legitimacy to rule. The Democrats have their own partisans but are at least willing to come to terms with the Republicans to get things done - the Republicans aren’t. And that is causing our government to collapse into paralysis.
JeffL
1660
The GOP is learning that they are dancing with the devil. Boehner is genuinely pissed/frustrated, witness his appeals to his party that he had stuck his neck out with the President and appeals to them to follow him, and the results. Now Boehner is very likely to be unable to withstand a challenge to his House Leader role, and has absolutely been shown to be weak, which in Washington is like profusely bleeding in a tank of sharks. I don’t think the GOP is allowing this minority to run things because they agree with them, but because they are afraid of them.
