Which is more important, if you are a Republican in Congress: working to solve the nation’s problems, or working to make sure Barack Obama is a one-term president? Perhaps more to the point, how do we think most Americans — including the Americans who voted for Republican candidates in the election just passed — would define “working to solve the nation’s problems”? Would they define it as Republicans and Democrats working together to create more jobs and lower the unemployment rate? Or would they define it as the Republicans working to repeal legislation that has already been passed, and if that can’t be done, working to prevent the writing of regulations and authorization of funding necessary to implement and enforce that legislation? Would they define it as Republicans and Democrats working together in good faith to pass the best legislation they can, even though they don’t agree on what good legislation is, or would they define it as the Republican majority in the House rejecting any legislation with which they don’t agree 100 percent, and the Republican minority in the Senate using filibuster threats and obscure Senate rules to keep every item on the legislative agenda from even getting to the floor for debate and a vote?
Polls cited by an article in the Bemidji Pioneer show that 72 to 80 percent of voters want the two major parties to work together to solve the nation’s problems. Only 15 to 22 percent say they want the Democrats and Republicans to stand firm on their convictions. Unfortunately, some politicians in Washington do not appear to be getting the message. McConnell has said that the Republican Party’s top priority should be defeating President Obama in 2012, not working with Democrats to create jobs or fix the economy.
To this end, Mitch McConnell told an audience at the Heritage Foundation that the Republicans’ strategy will be to put up the health care reform law for repeated votes, and obstruct any new legislation (emphasis is mine):
“Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office,” McConnell will say. “But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.”
“On health care that means we can – and should – propose and vote on straight repeal, repeatedly,” McConnell will add. “But we can’t expect the president to sign it. So we’ll also have to work, in the House, on denying funds for implementation, and, in the Senate, on votes against its most egregious provisions.”
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The potential for gridlock runs well beyond health care, too. Yesterday, Obama also announced that he’d meet with Republican leaders in the coming weeks to reach a compromise on the Bush tax catus. Before Congress adjourned for campaign season, though, McConnell introduced legislation that would make the Bush tax cuts permanent for all income brackets. That doesn’t leave a great deal of room for compromise.
McConnell also shared his plans with the Richmond Register:
McConnell said Republicans will work with President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats — if they agree with the Republican interpretation of the election results.
“We’ll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront it when they don’t,” McConnell said. McConnell recently said the No. 1 priority for Republicans is to ensure Obama is a one-term president.
One area that he obviously intends to confront Obama is health care. When asked if he thought a Senate vote to repeal the health care reform legislation will come up in the Senate, McConnell did not hesitate.
“Obviously it will — I guarantee it,” McConnell said, chuckling.
“If we could put full repeal on his desk, we would do it,” McConnell said. “If that’s not possible or if it is possible and he vetoes it, then we want to go back after it piece by piece.”
Is it really true that “the people” agree that trying to repeal the health care reform law either entirely or “piece by piece” is what they want Congress to be doing right at this moment in time? (Emphasis is mine.)
Republicans should tread very carefully, however. The most predictable sin in politics is over-reading a mandate or creating one that simply wasn’t there on Election Day. Voters are much more articulate about expressing their frustrations than their desires.
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Unquestionably, part of this election was ideological and substantive. Voters reacted with hostility to the details and direction of health care and cap-and-trade. Some was certainly a blowback on the bank bailout, which was ironically passed before Obama was even elected president. Yet a big piece of this hostility had to do with the economy. Any party holding the presidency and majorities in the House, Senate, governorships, and state legislatures would take a hit when unemployment is 9.6 percent and the economy is stalled.
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Voters want to see focus. Remember back to 1992 when then-Gov. Bill Clinton said that, if elected president, he would focus on the economy like a laser beam. Voters were focused on the economy and jobs last year, but they found a president and Democratic Congress seemingly obsessed with health care and cap-and-trade. It’s no wonder that we saw something that to me is unprecedented: polls showing that the public doesn’t think a Democratic president has done enough to create jobs.
If the economy had been good and jobs plentiful, Americans would have welcomed a national discussion of health care reform and climate change. But the situation changed, and the president and the Democratic Congress did not seem to realize it until it was way too late.
So, having spent the entire midterm election cycle attacking and ridiculing the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress for not listening to the American people — for forcing on them what they didn’t want and refusing to give them what they did want — Republicans are about to make the very same mistake. All I can say is, 2012 will come just as quickly as 2010 did.
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