Remember that, when I talk about cleaving the Republican Party in two, I am looking at a kind of de facto situation and advocating that we formalize it so that it can work efficiently. I see that the House of Representatives cannot function on even the most minimal level so long as the “majority” is made up of Republicans. Look at the appropriations process:
“I’m a process guy, I believe in the process … and it goes for naught,” said appropriator Steve Womack of Arkansas. “We end up with continuing resolutions, and a lot of things we’ve done in our appropriations work is pushed aside.”
Appropriators pass bills with bipartisan cooperation through the committee and then watch them flounder on the House floor, where spending levels mandated by the sequester and the House-passed budget resolution are too deep for Democrats and some Republicans and not deep enough for others.
They watch their Republican peers vote for amendments to appropriations bills on the House floor that appeal to the far-right contingent of the party and then vote against final passage.
What’s more, Republicans on the Appropriations Committee feel the odds are stacked against them, with nothing likely to improve until their leaders agree to make some changes.
From their standpoint, and the standpoint of GOP aides familiar with the process, the chief reason appropriations bills can’t pass the House now is because of an unworkable topline number.
“We’re losing votes on all sides,” said veteran House appropriator Tom Cole of Oklahoma.
House Republican leaders could empower their four members serving on the bipartisan, bicameral budget conference committee — including Cole — to work with the Senate on coming up with a new, higher number, one that Democrats could also stand behind.
Should that happen, leaders would likely face another choice: Will they commit to bringing measures to the floor that forgo, in the words of one GOP aide, “the obsession with getting to 218 Republican votes?”
“If we’re gonna pass a Republican budget that’s largely or entirely with Republican votes, we’re gonna need 218 Republican votes to pass the appropriations bills that conform with the Republican budget. It’s pretty basic,” said appropriator Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. “But a lot of members are voting for the budget and then voting against appropriations bills.
“Bipartisan coalitions are going to have to be assembled in order to get these things done,” he concluded.
To paraphrase what Rep. Charlie Dent is saying, the Republicans are incapable of passing spending bills that conform with their own ideology, their own budget numbers, or the spending levels set by sequestration. As a result, their only option is to keep punting by passing continuing resolutions that are agnostic about priorities. They simply cannot govern.
The only way to solve this problem is to recognize that the only functional majority in the House is bipartisan and dominated by Democrats. That’s the coalition that avoided the fiscal cliff, that provided emergency relief after Superstorm Sandy, that reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, and that ended the government shutdown and avoided a default on our debts. It’s the coalition that can pass immigration reform, that can pass farm and transportation bills, and it is the only coalition that can pass appropriations bills to avoid the full brunt of the coming sequester cuts in 2014.
All the coalition needs is a willing Speaker. The Republicans are slow learners, but the logic of this is incredibly compelling, and time will continue to drive this point home.
“That’s the coalition that avoided the fiscal cliff…”
I’ve heard this tune before. Republicans think they can govern by telling the Democrats to shove their “librul utopia”, the one that exists only in the minds of the fever swamp, up their ass.
That hasn’t changed much in my entire adult life, not since Reagan was elected.
They can talk the talk. Let’s see them walk the walk. They can’t make government work by saying it doesn’t work.
A bipartisan majority with a new vote for speaker raises some interesting questions about committee chairs and majority-minority rules issues, does it not? Or do all the current bad practices carry over until the end of the term?
The whole thing would be unprecedented and the existing rules on committees would be incompatible with it, so I would not expect the committee assignments to change unless the Republican majority wanted to exact revenge on their wayward brethren.
It may be unprecedented, but it’s not too much of a stretch from the de facto Republican control of the House throughout much of 1981-82. Tip O’Neill retained control as speaker only by allowing the Boll Weevil Democrats to vote with Republicans on a whole host of issues.
If moderate Republicans jump over to the Dems for legislative purposes, would they serve as part of a coalition headed by Pelosi? Seems to me the Republicans have spent a lot of time demonizing her, it would be hard to suddenly let her review the troops. I doubt that Boehner would be able to run a coalition, he can’t run his own party.
So who leads the House out of darkness?
I suspect that the Republicans are forced by their own scripts to muddle down the road to oblivion, at least for this election cycle.
I think the theory is that if Boehner can deliver 50-80 votes, Pelosi can deliver 160-190 votes, and they agree on an agenda like the one Booman sketched out, then Boehner can remain speaker for the rest of the term (at least).
No, it isn’t. And in the unlikely event any Republicans would bother reading this blog, they would recognize your words as poison.
If Republicans wanted to be Democrats, they would be Democrats. They don’t want to be Democrats. Democrats hire open homosexuals, trade unionists, critical race theorists, consumer and civil rights lawyers, community organizers, and environmentalists. Once upon a time, Republicans built up the Contras. The future mayor of New York fell in love with the Sandinistas.
The GOP is in a bad way right now. Their only option is to hope their most treacherous white supremacists and confederates have had their fill of failure and lie low for a while. If they can salvage their House majority even by one seat next year, they can keep the legislative schedule bottled up, revenues can be punted to the 2016 election, and they can wait out their hated enemy as he and his party is inevitably roiled as these succession fights always turn out.
Becoming “Democrats” and passing another avalanche of liberal legislation is what you want for them, not anything they would want for themselves, no matter how much they’re struggling at the moment.
I agree. The Republicans are content to gum up the works of government and frustrate liberals even if they can’t get their own agenda passed.
I think this is similar to how we thought Republicans would fail with McConnell’s no on everything strategy. We we were not able to force them to moderate then and I doubt they will do so now.
Do some reading.
It doesn’t matter what the Republicans want to do. They can’t do it.
Yeah, you say that and yet every time the senate leadership emerges from some back room at the eleventh hour and bam, problem solved.
The problem that presents for House Republicans is they’re stuck having to vote for deals they had no say in…because the deals were cut in the Senate.
Now maybe that’s preferable for Boehner and the 80 or so House Republicans who vote for these deals to having to ally themselves with most of the Democratic caucus around a centrist agenda like the one Booman sketched out.
But maybe not. And there’s no harm (that I can see) in Democrats continuing to use those issues as wedges to try to divide House (and Senate) Republicans against each other.
There’s not going to be a coup.
Who’s one of the potential leaders mentioned? Tom Cole.
What’s he doing right now? Running for Senate.
What happens if the Republican Party fractures? He loses.
If a section of the Republican House Caucus revolted and put in some kind of coalition the resulting intraparty war would put probably every last one of them out in the next election. They’re only going to support bipartisan measures when the alternative is worse (i.e. a disaster for the country, or for the Republican party). In other words, we’re going to see more of the same, with Boehner allowing votes only on absolutely critical stuff, and only after he’s gone to ludicrous measure to avoid that vote.
Bear in mind that while the Republican Representatives aren’t all nuts, they are basically all wingnuts. None want to see the kind of Dem-leaning bipartisan legislation that would come from the kinds of bipartisan coalitions under discussion.
You’re probably right. But there are 80 or so Republicans who vote for these last-minute deals that come over from the Senate. And at this point issues like immigration reform, the farm bill, transportation and infrastructure investments aren’t “liberal” causes; they’re planks in a mainstream (even conservative) agenda.
Immigration is way too hot for the Republicans to vote for it. I could see a farm bill or infrastructure bill getting through, but the overarching problem is the sequester. They can’t put through sensible appropriations without busting the sequester and that will likely be too hot for more than minor changes.
I expect the only legislation we will see is a CR on basically sequester levels with maybe 10 to 20 billion in tweaks (in January), and a punt on the debt limit in mid-summer. That’s going to be it.