Bill Kristol advises the House Republicans to pass nothing to address the crisis at the border involving a flood of unaccompanied minors arriving from distressed Central American countries.
If the GOP does nothing, and if Republicans explain that there’s no point acting due to the recalcitrance of the president to deal with the policies that are causing the crisis, the focus will be on the president. Republican incumbents won’t have problematic legislation to defend or questions to answer about what further compromises they’ll make. Republican challengers won’t have to defend or attack GOP legislation. Instead, the focus can be on the president—on his refusal to enforce the immigration law, on the effect of his unwise and arbitrary executive actions in 2012, on his pending rash and illegal further executive acts in 2014, and on his refusal to deal with the real legal and policy problems causing the border crisis. And with nothing passed in either house (assuming Senate Republicans stick together and deny Harry Reid cloture today), immigration won’t dominate August—except as a problem the president is responsible for and refuses seriously to address. Meanwhile, the GOP can go on the offensive on a host of other issues.
When you think about it, whether the House Republicans pass something to deal with the crisis or not, they are basically going to have to go to the public in the fall and defend their decisions to do nothing about anything.
In fact, their pitch to the electorate will be “reelect us and we’ll continue to do nothing.”
I think they may be overestimating the allure of that pitch.
Seriously? Their strategy is to blame “Not Me” and “Ida Know”? Somewhere Bil Kane is smiling.
Thomas Jefferson said that it takes an informed electorate for democracy to function. Faux news, complacency and cynicism have led us down the rabbit hole.
Actually, it can be very effective for their midterm voters:
“I’m standing against them there liberals in Washington and that Kenyan usurper – we need more real Americans with the backbone to stand up to those people so we can take our country back! I remember when…”
If you feel that the country is heading in the wrong direction and being led by someone you feel to be illegitimate then a representative who stands in the gap to thwart everything that the other tribe tries to implement is a very appealing thing.
It can work; we have to work harder.
Perhaps, but a basic problem the Republicans have right now is that they have to figure out how to motivate their base without motivating everyone else even more.
In this case, Kristol is saying that the Republicans should make a virtue of their refusal to do anything about immigration. They should actually go around boasting about their total refusal to work with the president. That will work great with the Know-Nothing Tea Party base, but how’s it going to look on Univision?
As long as they don’t nationalize the midterms they can work it – their districts are gerrymandered to the hilt so as long as they keep it local they can selectively utilize the weaponized crazy.
<quote>I think they may be overestimating the allure of that pitch.</quote>
It’s worked okay for them so far.
What’s darkly amusing is the self-fulfilling prophecy of all this. If you’re a politician who gets elected on the premise that “government is the problem, not the solution”, then you have a vested interest in making sure that’s true. Even if you have to block, poison, or sabotage potential solutions. The more you can fuck things up, the more low-information voters will think you’re right.
They’ve been running that scam with great success since the days of Saint Ronnie, so why would they change?
… who gets elected on the premise that “government is the problem, not the solution”, then you have a vested interest in making sure that’s true…
And they do this all the while they’re working like mad to keep their government jobs.
You just made me think of Representative Rice this morning on CSPAN talking about how much the DNC didn’t want to work w/ the GOP. No matter what the Republicans do, they always have more outlets/more $ to reach for their message to trounce the democrats for messaging.
Other than positivity, hope springs eternal, what do we do about that?
We should not. But, unless there is good turnout, I think somebody will.
I’m not convinced it really matters what Republican incumbents use as their message. What matters is how hungry are the Democrats to GOTV. I’m guessing there must be enough winnable districts to flip the House where the right GOTV effort would actually work. It’s all about getting people who don’t normally vote to vote. That’s the message delivery we need to focus on right now.
We will have the same type Congress if voters do not understand that they must get out and vote! All voters need to recognize that not voting is a vote for the GOP and their policies. Voter apathy paves the road to the destruction of the USA. Look at all of the wonderful benefits to this country it has caused already.
No Jobs
outsourcing jobs
VA Bill a joke on funding
Infrastructure falling apart
Millions homeless and hungry
This is just some of the adverse effects of GOP policies.
The GOP policies have worked well to turn the USA into a 3rd world status country. They practice the motto of “Let them eat cake”. Anyone that does not believe that the GOP will destroy the USA if necessary for them to regain full power is sadly mistaken. They do not care about the USA. They have been waging a WAR using the scorched earth strategy. They will not stop until they get what they want.
Just how long are the American people going to continue to take this abusive behavior from the GOP?
Everyone is swept up in the spectacle rather than the actual reality we are facing.
If only a “do-nothing Congresses” actually did nothing we might be better off today. Truman coined the term for the Congress that passed and then overrode his veto on Taft-Hartley and passed the first national security state legislation. Almost all the legislation passed 1981-2008 was negative and created new problems. (The S&L meltdown in the late 1980s was the first such disaster and the 2008 financial meltdown was a much bigger version.)