How the GOP is a party of words: Promises are promises are promises...

By Nicholas Wilbur

Transitions are always difficult. If you're a Republican, Change® is particularly tough to swallow – which is why the GOP spent the last two years projectile vomiting on anything that tasted like "Progress" and throwing filibuster tantrums whenever Congress debated a bill on Capitol Hill.

They swept the midterm elections, nonetheless, not with a strong record – or any record at all – but by riding the coattails of the anti-government prattle of the Tea Party patriots who flooded the mainstream media with sensational circus theatrics and apocalyptic prophesies of the country's imminent demise were Democrats to remain in power.

The seemingly sane but obviously stubborn Republicans teamed up with Tea Party candidates and capitalized on the nation's fears and doubts by crafting a national message so bold it could not be ignored, even by liberals, who, for good or ill, were transfixed. Traditional Republicans, as the media has since dubbed the non-Tea Partiers, touted a "repeal and replace" strategy to undo the alleged devastation wrought by the Obama Administration and his Democratic Party minions in Congress. The Teabaggers, as the left-wing media dubbed the ideological extremists, did their part by peppering the rhetoric with threats to amend the Constitution and deny citizenship to brown people, abolish the IRS, and defund the departments of interior, commerce and education that these Fox News junkies believed had become a black hole for taxpayer dollars. 

But Republicans knew they couldn't continue riding in the back of the leadership bus through 2011. With majority control of the lower branch of Congress, there was a sudden expectation that these new leaders would actually lead, that these new lawmakers would actually make laws. Bitching and whining and obstructing the legislative process at every turn would not suffice with majority status in "the people's house" of Congress. 

They had to appear, at least on the surface, that they were worthy of the government paychecks they received.

And so, after a year-long campaign focused on accusing Democrats of ignoring the main concern of the American people – job creation – Republicans got right down to business upon entering office. Sort of. 

They amended the House rules to require that all bills brought to the floor include a constitutional citation of lawfulness. They rescinded the already limited voting rights of delegates from D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and elsewhere. They required that all bills include spending cuts to offset any costs needed for implementation of the newly-proposed legislation (exempting, of course, tax cuts for the rich and their repeal of President Obama's health-care law). And they changed the House schedule to give every lawmaker one week off for every two weeks worked. 

That was just the beginning. 

As they settled into their new positions of power, Republicans showed their dedication to the financially strapped American working class by introducing... a bill to remove the polar bear from the endangered species list, a bill to abolish the IRS and eliminate the income tax, and another bill that would redefine rape. 

Having promised to cut $100 billion from the federal budget this fiscal year, Republicans drafted legislation to free up a whopping $61 million (yes, million) in the budget by abolishing public financing for presidential elections. Most recently, they voted on what amounts to an office memo, a skeletal outline, a very rough, very unspecific, and very ambiguous House Resolution that calls for $32 billion in cuts.

Not exactly landmark legislation. Not legislation at all, in most cases. In fact, the only significant piece of legislation proposed thus far by Republicans has been the health-care repeal bill, which, given its chances of becoming law, wasn't much of a bill at all. They spent the last year promising to "repeal and replace" the 2,000-plus-page law known by conservatives as "ObamaCare," but the "replace" portion of the promise was conveniently absent from the two-paragraph repeal bill passed in the House. As they knew it would, this faux legislation failed in the Senate.

So here we are one month into the new Congress, with Republicans still reeling from a landslide victory over Democrats in the midterm election, and what do we have to show for it? 

Nothing. 

And looking back, we should not be surprised. We all saw this coming. 

After "shellacking" Democrats in the midterm elections, Republicans returned to Washington intent on "saving millions of taxpayer dollars." They began this quest by attempting to eliminate grant funding for public radio. The $3.2 million in projected annual savings was pittance, they knew, and doomed to failure, as they eventually saw. But they tooted their horns and banged their drums nonetheless, eventually blaming liberals for offering government handouts to Not Pro Republican media outlets. Next in line: banning earmarks, another pittance estimated to save $16 billion a year. That fell flat when Republicans realized that banning earmarks meant they could no longer fund infrastructure projects in their home states. There were also targeted efforts to deny unemployment benefits, thwart the judicial "interference" in cases where employees are raped on the job, and kill a bill to award health care to 9/11 first responders. 

The last two months of the 111th Congress saw more of the same blind Republican opposition that had defined their presence in Washington, really, since Democrats won the majority in 2006. In the final days of 2010, Republicans followed up their backward opposition to the DREAM Act and the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" by fighting vigorously against even the no-brainer nuclear arms treaty with Russia, New START. 

They railed against excessive government spending (without acknowledging their role in the unpaid-for prescription drug program, the Bush tax cuts, and the two wars that created a $1.3 trillion deficit by the end of Bush's second term), but then balked when it came time to identify specific spending cuts. Perhaps in their most egregious display of hypocrisy, Republicans threatened to shut down the government if President Obama and the Democrats didn't get on board with the GOP priority of extending Bush's tax cuts for another two years. 

It worked. The rich kept their disproportionate tax breaks, but the result didn't quite live up to the Republican Party's pledge to cut spending back to 2008 levels, as outlined in their "Pledge to America" campaign manifesto. Conversely, it cost about $100 billion more than the 2009 economic stimulus bill they so loathed. 

The empty promises, the lofty and impractical goals, the "repeal and replace" agenda that has thus far come up empty on both fronts – these have all proven mere strategies in a shell game of hallow rhetoric meant to brainwash taxpayers into thinking that their new leaders in Washington are well-deserving of the $174,000 (plus health care benefits) that we pay them for representing We the People.

The naysayers and witch hunters of anything smelling of liberalism have demonstrated that they are not patriots defending against Socialism as much as they are stalwart defenders of the Bush-era status quo. The people loved them for it throughout the last congressional session, they praised them for it throughout the campaign season, and they turned out in swaths to reward them for it at the ballot box on Nov. 2, 2010. Now a month into the 112th Congress, Republicans are enjoying their highest popularity rating in years.

Republicans interpreted the last election as a mandate against the progressive agenda. Voters, they said, showed unequivocally that they wanted whatever was the opposite of progress and change. 

This is about as close as it gets.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.) 

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Background photo of John Boehner from National Journal.

Republican favorable/unfavorable chart from Gallup.

Earmark this, Teabaggers!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So the Teabagging Republicans are so very fiscally responsible, right? And, putting principle before politics, they're so very much against all those politics-as-usual earmarks, right? Er, not so much:

Members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus may tout their commitment to cutting government spending now, but they used the 111th Congress to request hundreds of earmarks that, taken cumulatively, added more than $1 billion to the federal budget.

According to a Hotline review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, the 52 members of the caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010, the last year for which records are available.

"It's disturbing to see the Tea Party Caucus requested that much in earmarks. This is their time to put up or shut up, to be blunt," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. "There's going to be a huge backlash if they continue to request earmarks."

Well, they're not going to shut up, but I doubt they'll put up either. They'll play the anti-earmark card if they think it can win them votes, but ultimately they'll all figure out that winning votes back home means bringing home as much bacon as possible.

But there'll only be a backlash if they're not given a free pass by the media, and if their partisan hypocrisy is exposed for what it is.

Behind the rhetoric, it's still politics as usual, just with an extreme right-wing twist.

Elephant Dung #3: Inhofe defends earmarks, refuses to back down over ban

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Mitch McConnell finally capitulated on earmarks, handing a big (if largely symbolic) win to Jim DeMint and the right-wing Republican rebels (even if it's also a win for good government), but at least one leading Republican is refusing to back down -- the ever-so-crazy, ever-so-extreme James Inhofe:

Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe is going down swinging, insisting he'll still send earmarks to his state even though his fellow Senate Republicans are poised to adopt a two-year ban on pet projects.

"I'm going to look out for my state of Oklahoma," Inhofe told POLITICO. "Obviously, that's what the Constitution says I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it. Let's keep in mind this is over. I'll be the last conservative standing."

The Constitution? Really? Inhofe claims that the (non-binding) earmark ban "trashes the Constitution and violates our oath of office." This is stupid. While Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution requires Congress to pass legislation regarding all federal appropriations, it does not, as Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) writes, authorize "the contemporary practice of earmarking, which typically involves individual members of Congress identifying specific projects for which they obtain exclusive funding."

Still, Inhofe certainly appreciates the power of pork, both for his state and for him personally -- not that he needs the votes, but what he brings home helps make him largely invincible in what is already a solidly red state. And he is quite right that earmarks total just a small percentage (1.5) of federal discretionary spending. Not I think he's right -- this really is a good government issue -- but he's got a point. Members of Congress serve their constituents, after all, and one of their jobs is to do what's best for them.

But what does he mean when he says that he'll be "the last conservative standing"? Is he suggesting that the earmark issue will be the undoing of his fellow Republicans?

As Walid Zafar puts it at Political Correction, a Media Matters blog, "[r]egardless of who is right or wrong, or whose side ultimately prevails, it's becoming abundantly clear the gap between the Republican old guard and the anti-government forces is starting to widen."

Good times. 

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Senate Republicans approved the two-year ban last night, propelling DeMint's star even higher.

Inhofe isn't alone. Sen.-elect Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also came out against the ban. "He thinks it's the prerogative of the legislative branch, not the bureaucrats, to fight for projects in their states after they've sought the lowest possible budget," said a spokesman. One assumes that Blunt is rather more sober than Inhofe on this issue.

Thanks but no thanks, and I'll take it, but I didn't

By Capt. Fogg

Got another e-mail this morning about how the Supreme Court is "quietly reviewing" those claims that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. "This may have some discrepancies" but it's "still interesting." says the serial offender who forwarded it to me.

Is it time to leave the country? Because we have no real way of returning America to a body of informed and rational citizens. Still, as a lover of understated humor, I have to enjoy the way a libelous fabrication "may have some discrepancies," including the discrepancy of not having any basis in fact. It does seem to me that the flat Earth some on the right believe in is floating on a huge sea of malicious lies and has an atmosphere of pure hypocrisy.

Take Senator John Ensign, senator from the Silver State and one of those dedicated public servants who thinks we can change our "reckless spending" by curbing federal earmarks, which constitute a rather tiny fraction of what the government actually spends or as I see it; whittling at the whiskers and calling it a close shave. But that's just the basic background hypocrisy of the GOP. Ensign has his own to account for, because while railing at "Obamacare" and promising to undo the health care reform bill we elected a president to promote, he's out there actively soliciting -- and getting -- a million taxpayer dollars from that Affordable Care Act he so despises to spend on health care in his state. Perhaps there's a discrepancy there somewhere too, but it's still interesting.

Is this another "thanks but no thanks" moment for Republicans? I mean one where you take the money and say you didn't and blame the other party while you pose as a cost cutter? Maybe I can call it the Palin Precedent. Maybe it's better to call them liars and greedy little power hungry bastards.

Oh, and please spare me an example of where some Democrat did the same thing. That's not the point and it isn't the Democrats trying to assert dogmatic policies that have failed each and every time to bring prosperity and have each and every time produced recessions -- as if we could keep repeating the past until it becomes a better future. The question of whether to leave the country is the point and that question is fast becoming moot because the country is leaving us.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Shelby backs down, American democracy makes slight recovery

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama has ended his "hold" on 70 of President Obama's nominees, effectively filibustering them (and requiring 60 votes for confirmation).

And why? Is it really because he got "the White House's attention" on a couple of issues, as his office claims? Or, putting aside the spin, is it rather because his largely indefensible tactic got some negative media attention, Democrats pushed back, and he was forced to cave?

You have to be a partisan fool to take him at his word.

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But what of the tactic itself? As TNR's Jonathan Chait explained the other day, the rise of the "hold," like the rise of the filibuster (or, rather, the more common usage of it), is a sign of historic "Senate dysfunction":

The "hold" is a now similar tool to what the filibuster was forty years ago. It's a sparingly-used weapon meant to signal an unusually intense preference. A Congressional scholar reports that putting a blanket hold on all the president's nominees has never been done before. But there's no rule that says you can't. It's just not done, until it is.

Shelby is using his blanket hold to demand pork for his state. It's a telling sign of the decay of the process, another indication of the power parochial interests have to block rational policymaking. But what's to keep the minority party form simply blocking all the president's nominees, from day one? Sure, they might catch some heat. But the president would eventually catch even more heat as his undermanned administration slid into dysfunction. And politics is a zero-sum game.

That may sound like a crazy scenario. But history shows that you can't count on social norms to prevent competing parties from trying to maximize their advantage. The only way to change this kind of behavior is to change the rules.

It's a sign of "the decay of the process," yes, but also, and more dramatically, of the corruption and decline of American democracy. This is what it has come to, after all -- at least as long as Republicans try to prevent the majority party from governing, that is, as long as they try to grind America's federal government to a halt.

And they call themselves patriots?

Paul Krugman makes an apt historical comparison (with more here):

So, here's the news from the Senate. Martha Johnson was nominated to head the General Services Administration, and was confirmed by a nearly unanimous vote -- but only after having had her nomination held hostage for nine months by Senator Kit Bond, who wanted more pork for Kansas City. And now Senator Richard Shelby has placed a hold on -- are you seated -- all, all, Obama administration nominees, until he gets some pork for Alabama.

What's going on? The Senate has rules based on the idea that it was a chamber of gentlemen who would find ways to work together. But now, 41 Senators belong to a party that has no interest in a working government, no desire to work with the majority in good faith.

There's a precedent for all this. In effect, we've now become 17th-century Poland.

Things weren't good there and then, and they aren't good here and now.

Back then, you could blame various "Polish magnates" for taking Poland to "the brink of collapse." Now, you can blame the Republicans for doing just in a country that is supposedly, and still proudly, a "democracy."

Truth in Comics

By Creature


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