Failure isn’t Obama’s problem [icopyright one button toolbar]
Turns out it’s John Boehner who faces defeat. Mitch McConnell is hanging in there, but doesn’t seem to have a strong grip on reality or, perhaps, his own Kentucky constitutency.
The tea party is back, relishing its primary successes, and ready for action.
A legislative year in which Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio set out to publicly marginalize the more vocal right-wing members of his conference ended with them emboldened, and with new leaders ready to bring the right back into the fold. …NYT
So the image of the Republicans holding on to the Republican party fades and the tea party activists — with some new moves, particularly in immigration issues — are still forcing the Republicans to pay attention. Their leaders aren’t letting go on immigration or anything else, for that matter.
Those involved in the fight say its outcome could be a sign of things to come, in clashes brewing over raising the federal borrowing limit, funding the government beyond Sept. 30, and staving off extinction for the Export-Import Bank, which underwrites private foreign sales and expires at the end of next month.
“Before now, our leadership was looking at what can pass in the Senate,” Mr. [Raul]Labrador said. “That’s not my concern. I want the most conservative piece of legislation that can pass the House.” …NYT
That Republicans spend so much time and effort trying to paint a picture of a failed presidency is hardly surprising. Their party is in trouble and without clear leadership. The merciless floodlights of the media could just as easily focus on their inability to legislate, their disarray, their leaders’ fumbling leadership, their future as a fractured, angry political minority.
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To the extent that polls are to be believed and (more to the point) useful, the Obama factor votes this year doesn’t seem to be that great. Greg Sargent writes:
A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds the president’s approval rating in familiarly low territory — 40 percent. But the poll also finds that a large majority of Americans say Obama is not a factor in their vote. …What’s more, Obama is only a major factor for tea party Republicans, and not a factor at all even for Republicans who don’t identify with the tea party. ...WaPo
Boehner’s law suit is still out there, though. Only the tea partyers want to impeach Obama. But “this lawsuit is about keeping hard-core GOP base voters in a lather right through election day, giving them something that will (temporarily, at least) quiet the baying for impeachment.”
Of course, with a majority of tea partyers favoring impeachment, if and when Obama pursues executive action on deportations this fall, some namby-pamby lawsuit may well no longer cut it and that baying could grow a whole lot louder. …WaPo
If, say, the second week of October finds us talking about a renewed effort to impeach the president, how would that affect the November vote?
Maybe the tea party will, after all, save the nation. Just not in the way they’ve hoped.