Republican Politics

Dems Win in Wisconsin

August 17, 2011 By mario piperni

Some good news out of Wisconsin to start a dreary Wednesday.

The six-month saga that was Wisconsin’s state Senate recall movement ended Tuesday with Democrats retaining two seats – and Republicans still in possession of a week-old, razor-thin 17-16 majority.

On the fourth election day of the summer, two Democratic incumbents were victorious. Sen. Jim Holperin (D-Conover) beat challenger and tea party activist Kim Simac of Eagle River, and Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie) easily topped Republican lawyer Jonathan Steitz.

Bottom line: Republicans will continue to control the agenda in the Capitol, but it will be difficult for Gov. Scott Walker and other GOP leaders to get everything they want.

OK, Republicans still hold a lead in the Wisconsin Senate but yesterday’s wins combined with the two seats Dems took last week will make it trickier for Walker to pass any more draconian policies. The key is Sen. Dale Schultz who was the only Republican to side with Dems in voting against Walker’s collective bargaining bill. Moderate conservatives like Schultz who buck the party line are a rare thing these days. Any future legislation Republicans hope to pass will have to, at a minimum, concede something to Democrats or face being defeated.

On the negative side, Walker has pretty much already passed much of what Republicans had hoped for.

Republicans this year have already achieved many of the top goals that they have pursued for years. In addition to the collective bargaining changes, they approved significant cuts in state aid to schools and local governments; some tax cuts; the carrying of concealed weapons; requiring photo ID at the polls starting next year; and eliminating all taxpayer funding for political campaigns.

What is it with Republicans and cutting funding to schools? Do these people perceive education as a liberal plot to take over the country? Idiots. Anyway, next on the agenda for Dems is the Walker recall planned for next year. It’s a long shot but the overall results from the Senate recalls should give all fair-minded, freedom-loving Wisconsinites hope.

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Filed Under: Republican Politics, State of Mind Tagged With: Scott Walker, Wisconsin recall

Debt Ceiling Madness – The Deal

July 31, 2011 By mario piperni

Republicans have the art of hostage politics down to a science. They had a lot of practice last year when they held the unemployed hostage by refusing to extend benefits unless the President backed away from allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. They won that round. And now again, by threatening to blow up the economy by refusing to raise the debt limit, Republicans have pretty much gotten all that they wanted in this round of Mad Politics.

Sam Stein summarizes the deal.

A White House fact sheet distributed to reporters shortly after the president spoke laid down the specific elements of Sunday night’s deal to raise the debt ceiling:

The president will be authorized to increase the debt limit by at least $2.1 trillion, eliminating the need for another increase until 2013.

The first tranche of cuts will come in at nearly $1 trillion. That includes savings of $350 billion from the Base Defense Budget, which will be trimmed based off a review of overall U.S. national security policy.

A bipartisan committee with enhanced procedural authority will be responsible for pinpointing $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction from both entitlements and tax reform, as well as other spending programs.

The committee will have to report out legislation by November 23, 2011.

Congress will be required to vote on Committee recommendations by December 23, 2011.

The trigger mechanism — should the committee’s recommendations not be acted upon — will be mandatory spending cuts. Those cuts, which will begin in January 2013, will be split 50/50 between domestic and defense spending. Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries and “low-income programs” would be exempted from those cuts.

The fact sheet goes on to note that there is another enforcement mechanism that the president possesses.

“The Bush tax cuts expire as of 1/1/2013, the same date that the spending sequester [the trigger mechanism] would go into effect,” the fact sheet reads. “These two events together will force balanced deficit reduction. Absent a balanced deal, it would enable the President to use his veto pen to ensure nearly $1 trillion in additional deficit reduction by not extending the high-income tax cuts.”

The deal hasn’t passed through Congress but at this point it appears that the votes are there…maybe. It should sail through the Senate but there are still questions as to whether the House’s Tea Party Caucus will continue their game of madness and refuse to join Boehner in supporting the deal. And you can add to their discontent, the anger and frustration emanating from the Progressive wing of the House who will be asked to vote for a bill which contains zero gains on the revenue side. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver referred to the deal as “a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.” And Rep. Raúl Grijalva didn’t hold back in expressing his disappointment at the final outcome of months of negotiations.

“This deal trades people’s livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want.”

As for President Obama, it’s never an easy task to negotiate with people who are willing to give it all up for the sake of victory. Andrew Sullivan:

All in all, Obama played this terribly, in my opinion. Leading from behind can be a strategy when all the actors are responsible. When one isn’t – and has no problem destroying the economy in order to save it – you have to get out in front. Obama didn’t have the courage to do that in January. He has paid the price.

And just when you thought politics could not get uglier, Republicans have shown us all it can. One can only hope that David Axelrod is reading it right.

“In the short term, everyone suffers politically. In the long term, I think the Republicans have done terrible damage to their brand. Because now they’re thoroughly defined by their most strident voices.”

The question is whether voters will care or even remember fifteen months down the road how badly Republicans damaged their brand when the economy is still languishing in the pits. The focus in this last year and a half of Obama’s term should have been on job creation yet somehow he allowed Republicans to make the debt the showstopper. With this deal, the President has limited his options in what can be done to stimulate the economy. You can now eliminate new spending of any kind thereby making economic recovery in the near future less likely.

If unemployment is hovering around 10% come election day next year, does anyone seriously think that the blame will go to Republicans and their teabagging cohorts who held the economy hostage these many months and forced upon this administration a budget deal which contained no new revenue stream? I doubt it.

Bill Maher had it just about right when he said that the real problem here is that the U.S. is ruled by two parties of which one has no brains and the other has no balls.

Filed Under: Republican Politics Tagged With: debt ceiling

Crazy Teahadist Republicans

July 29, 2011 By mario piperni

The plot thickens.

Bill Kristol:

If the Republican bill loses today on the floor, or Boehner pulls it down, then Reid will take the lead, McConnell will cut a deal, and a Reid-McConnell bill will pass the Senate easily and then the House, with most House Democrats and lots of House Republicans voting yes. This won’t be an outcome that will destroy America, or end GOP hopes for 2012—but it’s not a good one either. The question is this: Will President Obama invite the House Republican defectors to the White House signing ceremony on Monday? They would deserve such recognition in honor of their role in weakening the Republican party in the House and the conservative movement in the country, increasing the chances of Obama securing a terrible Grand Bargain in several months when the Reid bill’s supercommittee reports, and making it harder to defeat Obama in 2012.

Again, for conservatives it all boils down to doing whatever it takes to defeat Obama in 2012. Nothing else really matters, certainly not the U.S. defaulting on its obligations and further destruction of the economy. But if there is a bright side to the ongoing crisis, it’s that a number of Republicans (and hopefully, voters) are realizing what happens when a party takes on a shitload of misguided, ideological nutjobs and gives them a say in Congress. You end up with mickey mouse politicians who are clueless to the fact that there is a time to play politics and a time to govern.

Teabagging politicians and the simple-minded folk who support them fail to understand that compromise is an integral part of the governing process. Remove that component and you are left with a legislative body unable to function, much like we now see in Congress. To hear Republicans in the House pounding their chests in glee over their refusal to compromise is to make a mockery of 235 years of democratic rule. Yet these people call themselves patriots. What a joke.

They fail to understand that they’ve already won this foolish battle. The White House and Democrats have conceded all to them. There will be no increase in taxes in whatever bill finally passes through Congress. The only thing the President now asks is that the debt ceiling increase run through 2013 so that this economy-damaging circus does not replay in six months time. As of this writing, the teahadists have refused that single concession.

One can only hope that Americans are paying attention.

Filed Under: Republican Politics Tagged With: debt ceiling, tea party

David Brooks Blasts Palin, Bachmann and Limbaugh – “Gods of the New Dawn”

July 19, 2011 By mario piperni

I’m not a David Brooks fan but I have to give him credit for trying to knock some sense into the heads of Republicans. In his latest NYT op-ed piece, he laces into Republicans over their failure to accept what he saw as a debt ceiling deal favorable to conservative ideals – one which could have “been a glorious moment in Republican history.” The deal was one in which the White House was willing to mess with Medicare and Social Security in a serious way and reduce the size of government to the tune of $3 trillion over the next decade. Republicans turned it down over their insane insistence that a deal could not include one cent of tax increases.

The interesting part of Brooks’ piece is that he gets specific in naming who he feels are the true culprits on the Republican side. In fact, he’s got them categorized into four groups.

Beltway Bandits (Grover Norquist who “enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.”)
Big Government Blowhards (Limbaugh and other right-wing media jocks who “are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners.”)
The Show Horses (Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann who “produce tweets, not laws.“)
The Permanent Campaigners (Republican politicians who do not “take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better. It’s to pass responsibility onto the other party and force them to take as many difficult votes as possible.“)

Very good. As I said, I’m not a big fan of Brooks and what usually comes off as twisted conservative logic but I do believe he’s nailed this one.

All of these groups share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn.

Unfortunately for Brooks, he’s going to get vilified by the very same people he’s correctly identified as the evildoers. No one tells a Norquist, Limbaugh or Palin that they’re hindering the great conservative dream. Conservative pundits are simply not allowed to tug on the cape of conservative gods. Just ask David Frum.

Filed Under: Media, Republican Politics Tagged With: David Brooks, debt ceiling

Mitch McConnell Asks That the Constitution Be Amended To Reflect Conservative Madness

July 13, 2011 By mario piperni

Republican politics is becoming more of a circus act by the minute. Here’s Mitch McConnell speaking on the Senate floor explaining why idiotic conservative economic policy should be rammed down the throat of Americans.

The time has come for a balanced budget amendment that forces Washington to balance its books. If these debt negotiations have convinced us of anything, it’s that we can’t leave it to politicians in Washington to make the difficult decisions that they need to get our fiscal house in order. The balanced budget amendment will do that for them. Now is the moment. No more games. No more gimmicks. The Constitution must be amended to keep the government in check. We’ve tried persuasion. We’ve tried negotiations. We’ve tried elections. Nothing has worked.

No more games? No more gimmicks? Is this guy serious? Hearing a Republican leader denounce political games and trickery is the equivalent of a Newt Gingrich denouncing infidelity. The last two and a half years have been nothing more than a bag of gimmicks with Republicans having tried desperately to make every Obama policy his Waterloo. The latest in their series of tricks is McConnell’s own plan to get Republicans off the hook in regards to the debt ceiling debacle they created. His proposal is for Congress to cede all responsibility in raising the debt ceiling and hand full authority to do so to the White House. Lovely. Political manipulation of that sort does not get any more transparent.

McConnell is smart enough to understand that Republicans have boxed themselves in on this issue. Should his party stick to their guns and refuse to allow the debt ceiling to be raised, the tsunami which will hit the economy soon after will squarely be blamed on Republicans. But should Republicans actually do the responsible thing and vote for a debt ceiling increase (as they did a number of times under Bush), the furor emanating from their tea-gulping base would destroy them. What to do? Enter the McConnell plan. President Obama raises the debt ceiling and Republicans enter the election year with what they believe will be new ammunition they could use to fire at the President – Obama: the Spending Madman. Nice try, putz, but unfortunately for him, his own party has rejected the idea. Here’s how he defended his proposal.

“If we go into default he will say Republicans are making the economy worse,” he concluded. “And all of a sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is a very bad position going into an election. My first choice was to do something important for the country. But my second obligation is to my party and my conference to prevent them from being sucked into a horrible position politically that would allow the president, probably, to get reelected because we didn’t handle this difficult situation correctly.”

McConnell might be a little too honest for his own good. He’s made it clear that it’s all about the 2012 elections. And that part about doing “something important for the country”…bullshit. His only obligation and concern is his party and getting them into a position of power – nothing else matters.

So now he comes up with his latest gimmick – enshrine economic policy into the Constitution because, god knows, Republicans have tried “persuasion”, they’ve tried “negotiations” and they’ve tried “elections” and “nothing has worked.”

Again, feel free to laugh at will.

Republicans have been in the White House for 28 of the last 42 years and have had their share of Congress during that time. Debt increases were far greater under Republican presidents than Democratic ones. So you can throw the “elections haven’t worked” argument out. As for Republican’s use of “persuasion” and “negotiations”, well, we all know what that looks like.

Bruce Bartlett has referred to the Republican’s Balanced Budget Amendment as, “quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin. Every senator cosponsoring this POS should be ashamed of themselves.” Ezra Klein calls it “dangerous” and “radical”.

And McConnell wants it enshrined in the Constitution. If this was a circus, you’d definitely want your money back.

Filed Under: Madmen and Losers, Republican Politics Tagged With: Mitch McConnell