Republican conservatives are digging in their heels and becoming even more inflexible as they attempt to blame President Barack Obama and the Democrats for the conservative House-engineered government shutdown, and insist that there will be a default unless Obama negotiates on their terms — at the same time that a series of polls now show they could lose the House in 2014.
The poll comes as House Spearker John Boehner says that the United States will be on the path to default unless Obama accepts Republican demands. Meanwhile, Texas Senator and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz is cracking the ideological whip: he said any agreement on the debt ceiling limit has to include some kind of change to Obamacare.
The lines could not be drawn any more boldly:
Republicans are saying give us what we want, or the government is shut down, or we go into default — and it’ll be your fault that we went into default for not giving us what we wanted. The problem: this kind of politics, which has been referred to as “extortion” politics, has not been seen in American politics and suggests turning the system into a minority rule system. It would be a historical political shift in American democracy.
Never has President William McKinley’s quote seem more applicable: “The tyranny of the minority is infinitely more odious and intolerable and more to be feared than that of the majority.”
Should Obama agree to change Obamacare or negotiate under the threat of Republican conservatives hurting the American and international economies, it will most assuredly set a new precedent for the political minority of either party in the future and will qualify as election nullification. It would essentially change the political system under which the United States has operated for more than 200 years.
And polls suggest the GOP could be setting itself up to pay a stiff political price because they are not finding approval except in their well-funded echo chamber:
The Republican Party could be in danger of losing control of the House in 2014, new polls on Sunday show.
In a survey of 24 seats, Republicans fall behind in 17 head-to-head matches against “generic Democrat candidates” among registered voters and lag in an additional four districts when respondents are told the Republican candidate supported the shutdown, according to the surveys by Public Policy Polling which were funded by the liberal group, MoveOn.org
Democrats would need to pick up 17 seats to take over the House – something the polling reveals could be within reach.
….The poll also found that a majority of respondents opposed the government shutdown as a means to “to stop the health care law from being put into place.”[Politico]
But Boehner made it clear on ABC Today that he could allow the U.S. to go into default:
Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Boehner agreed that the risks of failing to raise the debt ceiling would be “catastrophic,” leading credit markets to freeze, the dollar to lose its value, and interest rates to skyrocket. But, he insisted that “the president is putting the nation at risk by his refusal to have a conversation”
Obama has stressed he won’t hold a political conversation under the threat that if he doesn’t do certain things the debt limit won’t be raised.
Meanwhile, Cruz underscored his status as the American politician who is most whipping up the GOP’s conservative base to stay the course come what may unless Obama and the Democrats give them what they want in their demands:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Sunday said changes to President Obama’s signature healthcare law should be tied to a debt ceiling increase.
The Texas Republican said any deal on raising the nation’s borrowing authority should include some “significant structural” plans to reduce government spending, avoid new taxes and “look for ways to mitigate the harm from ObamaCare.”
“The debt ceiling historically has been among the best leverage that Congress has to rein in the executive,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Of the 55 times Congress has raised the debt limit, Cruz argued that 28 of those times Congress has attached “very stringent requirements,” many designed to reduce spending, including the 2011 sequestration plan.
So, a debt-ceiling increase should “respond to real harms coming from ObamaCare,” Cruz said.
Cruz said Republicans have leverage because of “so many nasty partisan jabs from Democrats” proving that “we’re winning the argument —Obamacare isn’t working.”
Conservative Republicans don’t like the situation being compared to exortion and hostage-taking, but that’s exactly what many analysts from both parties, journalists and cartoonists believe it is. In fact, The Daily Beast’s John Avlon wrote this piece saying we need a hostage negotiator — and he interviewed one. Some highlights:
With the government shutdown entering its second week and debt ceiling default less than two weeks away, polarization has turned poisonous and confusion reigns on Capitol Hill.
“It actually reminds me of a prison siege,” says Christopher Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, as he surveys the dysfunctional congressional deadlock. “The opposition isn’t particularly organized. The smart move is to pick among the leadership on the other side who is the most reasonable. Then you empower them by talking with them and granting some sort of small concession. And they suddenly gain a lot of influence on their side.”
Yes, it’s come to this: Washington’s shutdown stalemate looks like a hostage crisis to high-stakes negotiators. And in their eyes, the inmates are running the asylum.
Republicans and Democrats are barely speaking and the right is divided, consumed with paranoid intra-party negotiations. Some conservative congressmen are now insisting that the shutdown was never their intention, despite repeated votes to the contrary. Emotions are running high and logic has left the building, best evidenced by this instant classic absurdist outburst by Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN): “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”
It’s time to call in a hostage negotiator.
So Avlon interviews Voss:
And if Voss is discouraged by the situation in Washington, it should be a wake-up call for all of us. Our democracy is in serious disrepair.
“I hate watching it break down to this degree,” Voss says. “Washington, by definition, is often run by compromise—and that’s not happening.”
So how did it get to this point? “Its fear-driven behavior,” says Voss. “They get angrier because they feel they’ve been defeated. People notice losses twice as much as they notice wins. It’s a sports metaphor you hear all the time: ‘I hate losing more than I like winning’…I think there’s a very strong sense of loss on their part over what they refer to as Obamacare and resentment over that is carried forward.”
But hostage negotiators aren’t the type to give up hope. “Ultimately, everybody wants success. And there are a lot of definitions of success,” Voss says. “Bottom line, they want to be made to look like they were effective and got things done for their side. So it’s a matter of refocusing on what’s in everybody’s best interests.”
He’s looking to the Obama White House to help start the reset: “I would ask them to start saying, ‘I understand that the people on the other side of the table have the best interests of the American people at heart.’ Simply recognize that. Everybody wants to do what’s best for the American public. Those sorts of statements repeated on a regular basis, it’s the start of dialogue. It’s not concession; it’s the beginning of dialogue.”
AND:
But the prison siege mentality Voss describes is exacerbated by an absence of strong calming leadership in the congressional GOP. “Those guys are sitting on the sidelines,” Voss says. “There are quite a few Republican politicians that I have a tremendous amount of respect for that are exceedingly silent these days.” He mentions House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: “I’ve never heard anything out of Mike’s mouth that wasn’t really thoughtful and nuanced.”
Another possible constructive calming voice on the conservative caucus could be former President George W. Bush. “I think there’s a possibility that he would be somebody that you would talk to behind the scenes, and potentially an intermediary himself. I think he absolutely has the ability to be a stabilizing influence.”
But how to do you deal with the hyper-partisan congressional bomb-throwers? “Well it’s like a game of tic-tac-toe with the tantrum throwers,” Voss says. “In tic-tac-toe, if you’re going second, the best you can possibly do is tie—if you play the game. There’s a first-mover advantage. The minute you stop playing that game the first mover advantage goes away. So you don’t play their game at all. That’s the way you respond.”
Go to the link to read the rest.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.