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Boehner’s Fumble Played Big Role in GOP Payroll Tax House Republicans Fiasco
Last night while listening to some news channels and talk shows on XM Radio, there were some analysts who said Tea Party members in Congress were almost giddy over stopping the payroll tax plan bipartisan Senate compromise. They feel it’ll also be good for them politically. But that isn’t the view of most independent Republican analysts, even those who are now trying to go on attack against the Democrats and spin this Christmas gift to rising-in-the-polls Barack Obama. But the question now is: who was to blame?
Who could have been so politically incompetent or political impotent to let it get to the point where the Republican House defeated a Senate plan that had substantial Republican support (and issue statements about how bad the Senate plan was)? The Washington Post gives us some info about that:
Repeatedly, over the past year, he has allowed some of the most conservative members, particularly an influential group of freshmen, to call the shots at crucial moments.
This time, Boehner and his leadership team may have allowed the House Republicans to place their party in real political peril with no obvious exit strategy.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) left a meeting with House leaders on Friday believing that Boehner and his top deputy, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), would find the votes to approve a two-month extension of the tax holiday. Both Boehner and Cantor have since disavowed giving McConnell the go-ahead to make the deal, and McConnell has issued a statement supporting Boehner’s position.
Regardless of what exactly was said, McConnell, a 27-year member of the Senate, has a reputation as a master negotiator, known for playing hardball and then cutting the best deal possible; he has no history of communication errors.
McConnell allied 39 of the GOP’s 47 votes in the Senate to pass the measure, allowing the chamber to triumphantly close for legislative business this year.
Then came the House rebellion.
McConnell has not been seen in public since Saturday’s vote, and a growing number of Senate Republicans have urged Boehner to cave, while rank-and-file House Republicans have called their Senate counterparts “lazy” for accepting the deal and demand that the extension be for an entire year.
It brings to mind this classic film moment:
YOU decide who fits each road…
5 Responses to “Boehner’s Fumble Played Big Role in GOP Payroll Tax House Republicans Fiasco”
Seems to me there are a number of issues that created this problem.
1. The current new members of the house came to represent their constituents, not their party. They are not the old style members that came in and bowed to anything the leadership demanded, they are bringing their voters positions to the table.
2. It has always been that the members of the senate were more moderate, while the house were more liberal or conservative. This is due to districts electing house members are more farther left or right, while the senate is elected statewide and the candidate usually has to be more centrist to attract enough votes. Gerrymandering of district lines have intensified the ultra left/right representation, as both parties in state governments have drawn lines to help get their party more representatives, thus splitting the centrist voters into much more polarized districts. Like it or not, the new members are more conservative, came to represent their conservative districts and are not one to play games with their positions unless those positions are acceptible to their voters. Pressure from leadership holds nothing on them at this time.
3. Boehner is not a leader. A leader would known going in beforehand what he could and could not sell to the house. He got fooled more than once by the tea party members of congress. Knowing this, he should have rounded up the votes beforehand, received info that he would have used in negotiations to retain those votes and not given anything in negotiations that he had not received prior knowledge of acceptance by the far right in his party.
But too, this was a great political move on the part of Reid. Send something to House, get the hell out of DC and watch the Republicans crash and burn. Who could have written a better script for an election year?
RC, I basically agree with you, but I hope you are wrong about Boehner. Herding cats and trying to get them to meow Merry Christmas together is a steep challenge.
No, they did not come to represent the voters. They came to represent their ideological positions, which they assumed got them into office instead of the normal reaction of the voters to a really bad economic situation. Most of what they want to do would in fact make things worse but they can’t understand that.
Jim has the right of it. The current House Republicans are likely to find out the (extremely) hard way that they were NOT, in point of fact, sent there to represent their ideology. They were sent there to balance the equation (something they did not do). Most voters know that one representative does not a congress make. Behaving like a spoiled child does not a representative make–that is the lesson the voters need to learn.
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