Loss Of Control

by digby

The Village elder of elders weighs in:

The Votes Obama Truly Needs

Nothing was more central to his victory last fall than his claim that he could break the partisan gridlock in Washington. He wants to be like Ronald Reagan, steering his first economic measures through a Democratic House in 1981, not Bill Clinton, passing his first budget in 1993 without a single Republican vote.

The first way leads to long-term success; the second foretells the early loss of control.

This vote will set a pattern for Obama, one way or the other. He needs a bipartisan majority because, tough as this issue is, harder ones await when he turns to energy, health care and entitlement reform.


Do you notice the common denominator is here? In all three cases Broder references, Reagan, Clinton and now Obama, there is a Democratic majority. In 1980, the Democrats worked in good faith with a Republican president to pass a bill. In 1993, (most of) the Democrats worked in good faith with a Democratic president. In 2008, the Democrats are working in good faith with a Democratic president, just as they worked with George H.W. Bush and his son both in the majority and the minority.

The only time there is any cooperation from Republicans, on the other hand, is when there is a Republican president. They have a formula. They refuse to cooperate with any Democratic president on legislation that is supported by a majority of Democrats. And then they claim that the Democrats aren't being bipartisan.

Meanwhile, the Republicans who actually have to deal with this crisis beyond stepping over homeless people on the way to the airports, are far less willing to play games:

Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama's economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.

Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama's spending priorities...

Gov. Charlie Crist worked the phones last week with members of his state's congressional delegation, including House Republicans. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, the Republican vice chairman of the National Governors Association, planned to be in Washington on Monday to urge the Senate to approve the plan.

"As the executive of a state experiencing budget challenges, Gov. Douglas has a different perspective on the situation than congressional Republicans," said Douglas' deputy chief of staff, Dennise Casey.

Yes. They are feeling the effects of this recession and desperately need the federal government to step in with money, stat. Here's the latest from my state:

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette on Thursday rejected the Service Employees International Union's claim that it's illegal for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to force state employees take two days off each month without pay, reports The Los Angeles Times. So starting next week, on the first and third Fridays of each month, 238,000 state employees will be furloughed.

Marlette, however, called the governor's order "reasonable and necessary under the circumstances," adding, "This state is in a huge mess . . . the scope of which is unprecedented."

IT Business Edge's Ann All recently wrote Are Furloughs, Pay Cuts the New Layoffs? as organizations struggle to cut costs. California's furloughs, expected to last through mid-2010, are expected to save the state about $1.3 billion.

I don't even want to tell you what's happening with medicaid, hospitals, unemployment etc.

The article does say that there are a few Republican governors like Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindahl of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi who have said they weren't sure they could take the money because it goes against their principles. I applaud them for that and on behalf of California, will take their share. After all, we have been paying far more and getting less in federal dollars for decades compared to those three states, so it's only fair.

From what the congressional Republicans were saying on the gasbag shows this morning, they have been sent out with talking points that say that whatever is done must be a "shovel ready project" or a tax cut. Helping the states deliver necessary services and keeping the money flowing doesn't seem to be on their agenda. Indeed, I heard more than one complaining about the amount being spent on extended unemployment because that isn't "stimulus" either. (Apparently, the only money that spends is money that one gets from a tax cut. It has magical properties.)

The Republicans should, by rights, feel tremendous pressure to sign on to the popular president's bill. They should be cowed by the fact that they just got their asses handed to them in the election and are barely even hanging on to their power to filibuster. A normal American, who believes in democracy, would believe that they should probably adapt themselves at least somewhat to the will of the people, which the elections since 2006 has clearly been a repudiation conservative governance. But they don't really believe in democracy.They see politics purely as a power game in which their only job is to leverage whatever power they have to attain their partisan goals. Obama can try to unilaterally declare bipartisanship to be inoperative but it won't work if the other side doesn't sign on.

I suspect that the administration thought that because we are in a major crisis the conservatives would deal with them as the Democrats dealt with Bush after 9/11 in passing the Patriot Act. But that's naive. The past thirty years have shown that good times and bad are always seen as opportunities for the Republicans to leverage partisan power. That's how they roll. (Democrats just roll over.)

There is a problem with partisanship in Washington. But as Greenwald so deftly demonstrated in this post, it's a Republican problem. Democrats have, over the years, been nearly supine in their willingness to accomodate Republicans. And that including now, when the administration is working overtime to ensure that the bill is as Republican as possible despite the fact that they have the votes to pass it without their help.

I don't happen to think that partisanship is bad. (This fascinating piece by Henry Farrell partially explains why.) But I do think that it only works if both sides agree that it's a fight. If one side believes that things must be done by consensus and the other sides believe in dominance, it's a problem. You have two sides playing by completely different rules.

I have written a lot in the past about how Republicans are able to advance their agenda even in the minority. They are really good at it. This post at DKos, illustrates their current tactic very succinctly:

They are essentially weakening the bill as much as possible, making it less likely to work. Then they'll bail at the last second, in case it does fail, so they can point their fingers and assign all of the blame to Democrats.


Chuck Shumer said today that some Republicans would have to cross over and vote for the bill because it's going to pass anyway. That's how Democrats think. They are afraid that something will be successful and don't want to be punished for failing to support it. (Call that Gulf War syndrome.) Republicans, on the other hand, believe that they will not benefit from success but neither will they be held liable for failure. (They don't have to face Republicans, after all.) They are far more worried about being punished by their base for failing to advance the goals of the Republican Party. This is particularly true now that they are basically a rump regional party with very few members from swing districts and states.

I think the Obama team is smart enough to know that the village media are idiots. At least I hope they do. But they have not yet figured out how to manage them. Maybe a few more cocktails with David Broder and Cokie Roberts and few less with Charles Krauthamer and Bill Kristol would be in order if they want to influence elite opinion. They need to stop trying to influence the conservative operatives and try to get to the the elders, who validate the conservative line and call it "the center." They're the ones who have a problem understanding what the word bipartisanship really means. The Republicans get it --- and they reject it.

Or Obama could just forget the village and go to the people, something he may have to do frequently if he wants to save the country. He's certainly not going to get any help from the Republicans. In their cramped view of politics, saving the country is contrary to their interests.


Update: Via Crooks and Liars, Go Barney!

DEMINT: But this is the largest spending bill in history, and we're trying to call it a stimulus when it's just doing the things that...

FRANK: Well, let me tell you what I think is the largest...

DEMINT: ... you wanted to do anyway.


FRANK: The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq. And one of the things, if we're going to talk about spending, I don't -- I have a problem when we leave out that extraordinarily expensive, damaging war in Iraq, which has caused much more harm than good, in my judgment.

And I don't understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that's -- that's wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we're through -- yes, I wish we hadn't have done that. We'd have been in a lot better shape fiscally.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is a whole another show, so I'm going to...

(CROSSTALK)

FRANK: That's the problem. The problem is that we look at spending and say, "Oh, don't spend on highways. Don't spend on health care. But let's build Cold War weapons to defeat the Soviet Union when we don't need them. Let's have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars going to the military without a check." Unless everything's on the table, then you're going to have a disproportionate hit in some places.

Go over and watch the whole clip. It's a beaut.

I honestly don't know why this argument is off limits. I would imagine that it makes total sense to the vast majority of Americans.

More from Barney at MYDD

Update II: Dean Baker dispatches the latest fantasy by Amity Schlaes, the Laurie Myelroi of the economic set. All I can say is, thank God the democrats won the election or this person would likely be advising McCain. Puts things in perspective ...

Update III: Here's a simple common sense article by Jane Bryant Quinn on why the Revocery Plan will work.


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