It was just over two years ago, shortly after Republicans had retaken control of the House and elected John Boehner speaker that Rachel Maddow first articulated her “John Boehner Is Bad At His Job” hypothesis. Maddow said on her MSNBC show (Feb. 15, 2011), “I think he’s really outstandingly bad at his job. What’s the opposite of the Midas touch?” She next proceeded down a list of examples that supported her hypothesis. Since then, she’s regularly expounded further on the notion that—ideology aside—John Boehner is, quite simply, bad at his job of being speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ryan Lizza’s in-depth profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the current issue of The New Yorker adds damning evidence for a related hypothesis: Eric Cantor is bad at his job, too. For purposes of building this hypothesis, three examples from Lizza’s reporting will suffice:
1) The July 2011 Debt-Ceiling Negotiations – “On July 21st, Boehner paused in his discussions with Obama to talk to Cantor and outline the proposed deal. As Obama waited by the phone for a response from the Speaker, Cantor struck. Cantor told me that it was a “fair assessment” that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama’s deal. He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and “have it out” with the Democrats in the election. Why give Obama an enormous political victory, and potentially help him win reelection, when they might be able to negotiate a more favorable deal with a new Republican President? Boehner told Obama there was no deal. Instead of a Grand Bargain, Cantor and the House Republicans made a grand bet.
The bet failed spectacularly.“
As majority leader, Cantor’s primary responsibility is the care and nurturing of the House Republican caucus. Listening to members’ concerns, finding out what’s happening in their districts, shaping committee assignments and bills so that members have a record to run on, etc. With his debt-ceiling decision, Cantor weakened the credit rating of the United States government, and forced his members into a vote that left them exposed, far out on a limb of anti-tax, anti-government extremism.
As an immediate consequence of that decision, President Obama concluded that his 2 1/2 years of offering compromises to and seeking compromises from congressional Republicans—often at the expense of his relationships with Democrats in Congress and across the country—were at an end. Obama came back from the August 2011 recess touting his $450 billion American Jobs Act and proceeded to spend the next 15 months campaigning against the extremist, intransigent Republican party. Obama won re-election and Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate.
2) The Janury 2013 Fiscal Cliff Vote – “In the end, Boehner’s bill passed, 257-167, but only eighty-five Republicans, mostly from states that Obama won in 2012, voted for it. Cantor watched the vote from the floor. It was one thing to tell his colleagues that he didn’t support the bill, as he had done that morning. But now he had to decide how to vote. When it was clear that the bill would safely pass with Democratic support, he quickly marched down the aisle, voted nay, and left the chamber. The Speaker of the House does not normally vote unless he or she wants to make a statement. But on New Year’s Day Boehner voted for the fiscal-cliff deal, which included more than six hundred billion dollars in higher tax revenue over the next decade. After almost two months of unity, the old Boehner-Cantor divisions had broken into the open. And again it was the Speaker, not Cantor, who was trying to lead the Republicans in a more responsible direction. According to a Republican who spoke with Boehner shortly after the drama of New Year’s Day, the Speaker was blindsided by Cantor’s public opposition to the bill: “He couldn’t believe it.”“
On tough votes—which this undoubtedly was within the Republican caucus—the majority leader almost always votes with the speaker, the party’s leader. Cantor not only waited until it was clear the bill would pass without his support and took a “free” vote against the bill, he did so without working out his differences with Speaker Boehner in advance and in private. “Free” votes against bills that are necessary but unpopular in some members’ districts are something that a good majority leader delivers to vulnerable members, not something he does for himself at the last minute.
3) The February 2013 Debt Ceiling Vote – Raising the debt ceiling is a routine matter to allow the executive branch to borrow money needed to pay bills Congress has already authorized. In a radical departure from precedent, House Republicans now seek to use debt ceiling votes to win budget victories they can’t win through normal legislative channels. On the first debt ceiling vote in the new Congress,
“To win over the right, House leaders promised three things. They would demand that the Democratic-controlled Senate write a formal budget, which Senate Democrats have avoided doing for several years; if the senators didn’t pass a budget, they wouldn’t get paid. Second, they promised conservatives that the cuts in the sequester would be kept intact or replaced with something equivalent. The final promise was far more daunting: Paul Ryan would write a budget that balanced within ten years.“
So, the solution Cantor & company came up with (remember, Cantor’s job is to protect his members from unpopular votes) includes:
- letting the sequester take effect in early March;
- facing a government shutdown vote in late March;
- voting for a budget more draconian than Ryan’s last budget; and,
- another debt-ceiling vote in May.
So much for protecting members from unpopular votes. I think Eric Cantor is bad at his job.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
