Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah like to get attention, but they don’t necessarily have any strategic sense. This is particularly true about short-game strategic thinking, although they may be having more long-game success at influencing American politics. After all, pretty much everyone thought that closing down the government in 2013 distracted from the disastrous rollout of the healthcare.gov website and was going to damage the Republicans’ prospects in the midterms. The latter obviously did not happen.
Likewise, it’s possible that the Republicans will benefit from Cruz and Lee forcing a weekend of unnecessarily partisan acrimony in the Senate only to get crushed 22-74 in the final tally on their point of order vote. The fact that half the existing Republican caucus voted against Cruz and Lee highlights how unpopular their gambits are among their own colleagues. But most of them didn’t want the government shutdown in 2013, either.
In the short-term, this wasn’t just an inconvenience. It was a huge blunder.
The decision irked Republican leaders because it allowed Reid to begin setting up votes on a controversial surgeon general nominee that has linked gun violence and public health, the elevation of a White House adviser to the State department, a politically charged ICE director and lifetime court appointments that the GOP has fought tooth and nail. McConnell had sought to have no confirmation work this weekend, preserving the GOP’s leverage next week as the Christmas holiday approached and Democrats’ patience ran thin.
Informed that confirmation of nominations was now rolling on Saturday much earlier than expected by Republicans, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) replied: “I wish you hadn’t pointed that out.”
…Had Cruz and Lee agreed to Reid and McConnell’s deal, the conservatives could have received the same constitutional point of order vote on Monday, though they attracted extra attention from both their colleagues and political watchers by forcing the Saturday session. But the point of order was defeated, so the result was the same: The omnibus was sent to the president without defunding the immigration order — and Obama appears set to win quicker approval of his nominations.
The immediate result is that the administration will almost certainly get more nominees confirmed (and sooner) than they otherwise would have. The vote also demonstrated a split within the Republican caucus that may be less ideological than personal. Cruz and Lee’s effectiveness will be muted by the fact that they are loathed by many of their caucus colleagues.
Yet, they don’t seem to care so much about legislative accomplishments as they do about being party scolds and gadflies who enforce wingnuttery on their erstwhile allies.
In the greater scope of things, Cruz and Lee may be winning despite appearances.
With some very slight editing to removing the period- specific historical info from the description, it seems like they are the modern GOP’s version of the Brown Shirts.
Sounds about right to me.
Cruz got the attention he sought and can still expect tea party support. It’s a net positive for him personally despite the expedited confirmations.
Blunder? Or a twofer that cost them nothing? More creds with the anti-immigrant voters and more Obama appointees that they can rail for two years? That assumes that the Cruz-Lee stunt moved the confirmation of those nominees forward and wasn’t part of the backroom GOP-DEM deal to pass the budget bill.
It’s not as if the “DEMS” could have gained more with their liberal base by disclosing such a deal to why they voted to chuck one of the compromise components of Dodd-Frank in order to pass the budget bill. Nor are they keen to mention that the Clinton backed repeal of Glass-Steagall is what opened the floodgates to banksters behaving badly that led to the financial meltdown. They correctly believe that a majority of the general public has bought into the notion that the meltdown was all the doing of the Bush administration.
Then there was the GOP (and the oddly unmentioned “DEM”) bonus that Matt Taibbi points out in Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits
The DRINOS are now fully in charge. The only open questions are how soon the economy will collapse under their management and who will get the blame for it.
I like Taibbi, but his tone here is so cynical that he almost sounds like he’s condemning Elizabeth Warren along with everyone else. She at least is standing for something here, isn’t she? His only reaction to that is to repeat the Republican view that it’s political suicide, but I don’t see how we can know that at this point.
I mean, are bank bailouts really that wildly popular? The way I look at it, even if the rest of the Dems don’t follow her lead, Warren might as well go for broke in the 114th Congress. Of course the Republican Senate isn’t going to pass anything she proposes, but at least she’ll be presenting a real alternative to whatever garbage they do come up with. And I don’t think it’s safe to assume that this is going to make her a pariah.
They might be winning what? Making themselves look good to the wingnut crowd? That’s winning?
Well, there is a certain logic here. They shut down the government, and in the next election they won control of the Senate and increased their majority in the House. So in their minds, they won.
Of course, past results are not necessarily indicative of future performance. If these two idiots go around acting like alpha chimps throughout the next Congress, there’s no telling where things are going to stand two years from now.
So they think, with their impaired logic, that shutting down the government is why they won control of the Senate? Having nothing to do with Republicans having a serious advantage that was baked into the process. Okay then. Or is that they think the reason people didn’t vote is because the almighty government shutdown that affected a microscopic number of people, resonated so deeply with Americans (who probably forgot it even happened)?
Totally. And they don’t care a fig about nominees or any partisan cards left on the table. The disapprobation of their colleagues matters little either; though destructive, it is their recklessness which unmasks their naked power.
The target is the GOP and the unwitting senate majority leader who said, “See ya’ Monday” to the press and went home. As if we didn’t already know this is Cruz’ campaign kick-off; Warren’s too interestingly and their votes were the same.