David Drucker reports in Roll Call that the House Republicans have a new strategy. They will eschew negotiations with the administration and the Senate Democrats and begin passing “message” bills that they know will have no chance of becoming law. The idea is that there isn’t much profit in spending all their time fighting the White House. They need to give the American people a taste of what life would be like if they were actually in charge. Apparently, their model will be based on a speech Eric Cantor gave last week at the American Enterprise Institute, and the theme will be “Making Life Work.”
I think that is unintentionally funny. I read it as “Turning Life into Nothing But Work.”
My opinion of this strategy is that it is fairly stupid. It’s kind of like the old question about whether a tree makes a sound when it falls in the forest if there is no one around to hear it. The House can pass all the bills it wants, but no one will do much reporting about those bills if they have no future.
It can always be profitable to force the opposition to take unpopular votes, but the House Republicans are not in a position to effectively pursue that strategy. For starters, Republican ideas (even moderate ones) are generally unpopular, especially in Democrat-held districts. Second, if a bill has no prospect of becoming law, Democrats have no reason not to support the bill if it might cause them some heartburn to oppose it. Nancy Pelosi is not going to set her Whips loose on votes that don’t matter in the real world.
If they aren’t making Democrats uncomfortable and they aren’t getting any press coverage, then all their votes are just a form of wanking.
What do you think?
Ah, the rebuttal to the state of the union, a place where ambition goes to die..
It amazes me the way the press corpse will fap this meaningless speech as proof that this assignment will somehow elevate the speaker into national status, never has, never will. If Rubio is such a tactical, serious pol, he wouldn’t touch this with a twenty foot pole. Apparently he aint that smart.
As to the rest of this, I reckon it all plays pretty good at home.
Rubio — the Republican’s great brown hope.
In a word, fundraising…
Can’t wait to see what shade of lipstick the Republicans dream up for their pig.
How is this strategy different from what they’ve been doing the last two years? What is passing the Ryan budget or repealing Obamacare 33 times if not symbolic measures that won’t go anywhere?
That said, I’m totally in favor of this strategy; if past expereince is anything to go by, the effects will range from nothing (33 repeals and counting) to actively harmful to the GOP (Ryan budget).
Hey, this is a center-right nation. Politicians have never been punished for taking real conservative positions. Didn’t you get the memo?
This latest strategy appears to be worse than nothing. Really they are forcing their members to vote on things that are really unpopular, will have no chance of passing, but puts them on the record for having voted for it, sort of like the Ryan Budget.
I feel like the there is a chance that the political climate of this country is like a huge bunch of water building up behind a dam – the dam being the house repubs who are so out of step with what the country wants. They will prevent stuff from happening that is increasingly desired by a larger and larger % of the country. Hopefully the dam will break in 2014, and they will get washed out of the the majority.
The repubs think they are in the majority, or are the majority- math challenged types thing 2>3! NOT.
It’s the least-problematic approach they can take. Their ideas are wildly unpopular, so if their bills are publicized they will look very bad and lose votes. If bills are getting passed and signed, or close to it, they will get a lot of publicity and scrutiny because people will be affected by it. “Message” bills will be ignored by the press because everybody knows they go nowhere. So fewer people will realize exactly how horrible the Republicans are.
Laugh if you want, but I can prove we are a center right country…
There are three speeches Tuesday night, one by a Democrat, two by Republicans. So because the far left (Socialist Obama) and the far right (kook Paul) cancel each other out, that leaves the middle as……Rubio!
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What do I think? I think Drucker has even less here than the Republicans do. Read that story again. No named sources at all? For chrissake, even the (claimed) lobbyist is allowed to go unnamed. In addition, Drucker apparently failed to ask any of his anonymous sources the logical question: this planned “strategy” of refusing to get into fights with Obama by refusing to engage in negotiations cannot is impossible, because a refusal to govern with the sequester/debt ceiling/next manufactured crises coming up all spring and summer is FIGHTING WITH OBAMA.
I think there’s a small but real chance that Drucker took the day off and made up the whole thing, down to the attribution and quotes. After all, who could say they’re misquoted or misinterpreted?
These Capitol publications are going to ever greater lengths to destroy real journalism in this country. My junior college editor wouldn’t have allowed me to place a story without a named source, yet outlets covering important Congressional work have editors who allow this shit to be published.
Sorry about my own horrendous editing in the first paragraph here. Hopefully my writing is still understandable enough to gain more credibility than Drucker’s story.
My junior college editor wouldn’t have allowed me to place a story without a named source, yet outlets covering important Congressional work have editors who allow this shit to be published.
What MSM publication ever has a source on the record any more? None of them. Of course, you can tell who their source is by the way they frame whoever the source is.
So…they’re going to do what they did for the last two years? Is this a long-term thing or some crackhead idea they have of avoiding the sequester?
The coming furloughs from the sequester should be real fun. Agencies seem to be treating it like a government shutdown, but bringing people back and forth from furlough to work. My dad’s is thinking of giving everyone Friday off, ie 20% paycut. Here’s a strategy: repeal the sequester and call it a day.
Round and round we go. It is a really slow flush though.