TPM reporter Sahil Kapur gets the context of this story just right, in my view:
“After nearly a year of resistance that has damaged them politically with women voters, House Republicans have found a clever way to back down on the reauthorization of an expanded Violence Against Women Act, aides confirmed to TPM late Tuesday. …[snip]…
The Rules Committee instead sent the House GOP’s version of the Violence Against Women Act to the floor with a key caveat: if that legislation fails, then the Senate-passed version will get an up-or-down vote.
The big admission implicit in this latest move is that House GOP leaders don’t believe they have the votes to pass their version of the bill but that the Senate version is likely to pass the chamber. So this way they’ll give House conservatives the first bite at the apple as a way of saving face and still resolve an issue that has hurt them politically.“
The 1994 Violence Against Women Act (lead sponsor, then-senator Joe Biden), and was reauthorized by Congress in 2000 and 2005. Last year House Republicans blocked reauthorization because, well, because for some reason they concluded it would be a bad idea to expand the law’s protections for Native Americans, undocumented immigrants and same-sex couples.
Now, after suffering through a year of self-inflicted political violence for that position, the House Republican leadership has changed course (or caved, or given up, or cleverly maneuvered its way around the issue—choose your own phraseology).
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) offered the kind of gracious, face-saving words savvy political winners offer: “I applaud those moderate Republicans in the House who are ready to put politics aside and help us get this over the finish line.“
Meanwhile, Kapur quoted an anonymous House Democratic aide who put it more bluntly: ““This is the third time in the last two months that John Boehner has tried so hard to appease the crazy wing of his party, and it’s the third time that he’s failed to do it,” said the aide, referring to votes to avoid the fiscal cliff and to provide Hurricane Sandy relief, which passed with mostly Democratic support. “There’s no bridge that he can construct between what the tea party caucus wants in Congress and what the rest of his partners in government are open to doing.”“
Right-wing Republicans aren’t giving up easily. (Nor should they be expected to.) But this is exactly the kind of political battle—hard-fought, persistent, even ugly—progressives will have to keep waging if they want to keep winning.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
