Jonathan Chait makes an observation that is probably kind of obvious to political junkies but that is, nonetheless, the explanation for both why the Republicans haven’t been punished for their obstruction and why they’re floundering on the immigration issue.
“The GOP has withheld cooperation from every major element of President Obama’s agenda, beginning with the stimulus, through health-care reform, financial regulation, the environment, long-term debt reduction, and so on. That stance has worked extremely well as a political strategy. Most people pay little attention to politics and tend to hold the president responsible for outcomes. If Republicans turn every issue into an intractable partisan scrum, people get frustrated with the status quo and take out their frustration on the president’s party. It’s a formula, but it works.”
“The formula only fails to work if the president happens to have an easy and legal way to act on the issue in question without Congress. Obama can’t do that on infrastructure, or the grand bargain, and he couldn’t do it on health care. But he could do it on immigration. So Republicans were stuck carrying out a strategy whose endgame would normally be ‘bill fails, public blames Obama’ that instead wound up ‘Obama acts unilaterally, claims credit, forces Republicans to take poisonous stance in opposition.’ They had grown so accustomed to holding all the legislative leverage, they couldn’t adapt to a circumstance where they had none.”
I’m not certain that the Republicans won’t wind up getting away with being wrong on immigration, too, but at least it doesn’t fit into the same old of making government suck in order to prove to the electorate that the government sucks and should be stripped down to its studs.
I’m not certain that the Republicans won’t wind up getting away with being wrong on immigration, too, ..
They got away with it this mid-term, didn’t they? And we know the corporate media is in their pocket.
Well, then it has to be about 2016. This mid-term was always going to be a prelude to 2014 anyway. And to my mind one of the main stories, and one of the main things the Democrats have to work with, is the disgracefully low turnout.
I was taken to task by some hard-bitten leftists at Salon the other because I was naive enough to think it might make a difference if three times as many people voted. But, what the hell. Assuming Obama is equally naive, he might make it a goal over the next two years to get more people motivated and involved in the political process.
And one thing about Obama, he’s shown in the past that he’s able to do that. Part of his success in 2008 was that he was able to break out of the news media–he became a celebrity, he got people excited. That’s obviously not where we are now, but it’s not like the 114th Congress is going to do anything productive anyway. He might as well start laying the groundwork to get people to the polls in 2016.
If politics has to compete with reality shows, maybe it has to become a reality show.
(Please note that this is not at all a prediction of what Obama is going to do. Just some speculation over what could happen.)
That’s true. In the case of immigration, they’re actually demanding positive action from the government, and on a monumental scale. But since their only tool is a sledgehammer, they’re reduced to making incoherent threats: “We’ll withhold funding!” As if that’s going to make 11 million people magically disappear.
It’s pretty weird, anyway. You’ve got these belligerently anti-government types in states like Texas and Arizona who are demanding a huge and militarized federal presence along their borders. My feeling is that we should keep asking them one simple question: How are you going to pay for it?
They have a simple answer – cut welfare.
They don’t oppose big government when it comes to police and the military, the very areas where they should be wary.
Once upon a time, conservatives opposed government surveillance and defended the fourth amendment even more than the second amendment. Now they welcome the spying, except for the IRS. They are no longer conservatives. What fits better? Fascists? Or reactionaries? Will some PoliSci major please categorize them.
BTW: In fiction, Newt Gingrich (pardon me for talking dirty) has even espoused monarchy and aristocracy. I think he thinks socialists led the revolution.
They are so used to the MAN backing their carp, that they don’t get that there is a whole other-language media that is telling this story. Plus it is quite simple..all the 2016 GOP Candidates will have to take a position on what POTUS did.. there will be something on record that all these families can judge on. They will know who would break apart their families. They will know who would hurt those that they know have been helped by the President.
Sorry.. not MAN…..
But MSM backing their Crap