Honestly: why are some conservatives warning that it would be bad for the GOP if the government shut down for a few weeks? Talk about being held hostage…
Reid killed the omnibus deal. But he’s going to push now for a year-long CR — part of what I’m certain was a planned bait and switch. Will the GOP, giddy that the omnibus bill was pulled, declare victory and take Reid’s next offer, touting their willingness to “compromise” (while giving the current, unpopular Congress power over the next fiscal year, despite the express will of the electorate)? Or will they show a willingness to just go home.
If the Democrats threaten to shut down the government, please, let them. The electorate won’t care — and in fact, the part of the electorate that just ushered in strong conservative candidates would consider it a victory.
And the pragmatists don’t have to worry about how a shut down will make us look — at least, not for another two years, when they can push the next batch of Mike Castles and Lisa Murkowskis on us.
So win-win!
****
update: Crooks and Liars finds several reasons it believes Reid might cave on a short-term CR.
I like Krauthammer a lot, and most of the time agree with him, but he’s wrong on this. The GOP already caved on the Tax ‘n Pork bill, they don’t need to cave again. They will control the terms of the deal in a few weeks.
They still have the mindset of starting deep in Democrat territory and “compromising” on that. Where they should start here is, “no deal,” and end up with a CR that goes for a few months at most. They could easily get that, and if not, shut ‘er down.
Jeff, I think it’s a mistake to assume Harry Reid and the Democrats are that smart. In any case, just because the 111th passes a yearlong CR doesn’t mean the 112th can’t overrule that by passing an actual budget as soon as it convenes.
Past Congresses cannot dictate to future Congresses.
I’ll have to find where I saw this, but I was under the impression that Reid was conceding to a short term CR, a la McConnell. That would be a solid win, assuming that the House writes a proper budget next year.
If it doesn’t matter, McGehee, then they should REALLY be willing to show spine.
OK, here.
McConnell was talking February.
Galston, What Obama Should Do Next:
Wolf dressed as sheep, in other words.
If we had a real, nonpartisan media, it would be attacking the Dems without mercy for not even bothering to pass a budget for the last two years, and then all of a sudden wanting a budget once they will not be in control. It is some of the most blatant partisan crap since the “Health Care” bill (which also should have resulted in a firestorm).
How many notice this stuff? How many care? Not enough, apparently.
McConnell may be. Reid was still talking longer, last I heard, Pablo.
I wonder if the “compromise” will be a short-term CR for the DREAM Act.
Oh don’t worry, cranky-d, about that “nonpartisan” media — Al Sharpton has already had a productive meeting with the FCC about having members of the media in a Star Chamber next year and ‘splain themselves …
…oh, wait …
Last night it was reported that the CR would only fund the government into early next year, until a budget could be written, debated, and voted on ( http://tiny.cc/iqoqy ).
I mean, that could change any minute. And I disagree here with the Kraut; Rethugs! shouldn’t worry about shutting the government down. To begin with, the government doesn’t really shut down, but merely reduce to skeleton crew operations. And besides, it’s not like life would end for all Americans if it did!
I think in this instance it would be more on Obama than the Rethugs! anyway, regardless of how the MFM tried to spin it, since a majority of the public would side with them on budget reductions questions.
And really, this is where the Tea-Party rubber will hit the road. It will have to be a combined effort of the Rethugs! in congress and the Tea-Partiers burnin’ up the telephone lines to congress and holding rallies and demonstrations when necessary to counter any MFM, “The American people don’t want this fiscal responsibility!11!1!”, memes. Neither element can afford to take it easy. The legislators can’t become corrupted by the DC cocktail party circuit and the Rethugs! that have already sold out, and the Tea-Partiers can’t just sit at home and grumble, or allow themselves to be discouraged into inaction, because everything doesn’t immediately break to their way.
Which is where those of is who’ve been involved all along can be of assistance; by being encouraging, and reminding them to take a long view of results, and not view any setbacks as a reason to go back to being uninvolved.
Here’s some updated info and speculation from the proggs, for whatever it’s worth.
I’ll link it as an update.
Oops! Pablo beat me to the link. Sorry for the repost. We need ore riposte, less repost.
Off topic – Avlon’s no labels column today is glorious in it’s asshattery.
The ALG piece I linked that suggested Reid was looking for something longer came out this morning. The situation is clearly fluid.
Crooksandliars is aptly named. Can you imagine trying to share a meal with that harpy?
You’re right JD,
From Avalon’s Daily beast column today:
Man, that’s a RINO hall of fame, or should I say shame. Bloomberg? Castle? Effin’ Brooks?!? Mr. Pants-crease-admiring-Niehbur-burbling-Obama-endorser himself?
How come they don’t have any DeMints there, or even Paul Ryan? Seems to fly in the face of Avalons “Frummery” don’t you think?
cranky, the Healthcare bill DID result in a firestorm; it was a major motivator in taking back the House.
sometimes it’s just amazing what the aptly named crooks&liars cranks out …
stuff like Watching fox news makes you stupid or you’re stupid if you even watch FNC or something. And it’s scientifically proven so too (a study) .. because if you believe the Stimulus lost jobs or the economy has gotten worse or that climate change isn’t really happening YOU ARE STOOOOOPID!!!
wow
Forcing Reid to pull the omnibus bill, yeah that’s some contemptible squishiness right there.
Jeff, there was a recent poll that asked people what they think of the 112th Congress — weeks before it even convenes. That was a silly poll and the results are immaterial. Plenty of time to bash the new Congress and sink into an inescapable funk of pessimism after they actually start doing stuff.
If the Dems had kept control of the House, that omnibus bill would have been signed into law on Nov. 4, and the Bush tax cuts would be set to expire altogether.
From what I’m hearing, McConnell offered a one-page document. The Dems’ is over 300 pages.
Was there a media firestorm over the healthcare bill? I don’t remember if there was, but I think not. All I recall is the media reporting, helplessly at best, that it would pass one way or the other.
The problem is, people only seem to pay attention to the really big stuff. A more attentive media would result in a more informed public, I should think.
As for shutting the government down, as I recall nobody would have really noticed the 1995 shutdown if the MFM hadn’t gone all WORLD TO END TOMORROW, WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT, 24/7. And I say that as the spouse of a federal employee.
I really don’t think they could pull off the same spin in 2011 — especially not with Bar-epic Failbama sitting in Bill Clinton’s high chair.
Bob – look at the title of Avolin’s book, and then admire his brazen asshattery.
Figures the Dems could lard up a simple Continuing Resolution…
I wonder how long it would take the clerks to read that on the Senate floor.
Who said that was squishy? DeMint was leading that charge. Mark Levin had people calling the swing vote GOPers (and a couple Dems) who weren’t retiring.
And I posted on the poll you reference
I guess I’m not sure what your point is. The Dems DIDN’T keep control of the House, and the reason they didn’t was because of TEA Party types who don’t want more spending. So why would they care if the government shut down until the people they voted for are seated?
Yes, the “Wingnuts! Lunatic fringe!” no labels guy.
Avolin doesn’t like Rush Limbaugh’s unhelpfulness, the Big Fat Idiot.
McConnell surely understands he (and whoever is in the room with him from his own side of the aisle) is negotiating on behalf of the next Congress. He can’t be so stupid as to make insulting their powers his first act in their name, can he? I think not, and that he can’t help but stick to a short duration and extremely limited scope in any CR he can assent to.
Couple of quick things. We’re already almost a full quarter into FY ’11. The budget is around 6 mos. overdue.
I don’t see a need for the Republicans to reward Democrat mismanagement and fecklessness by helping them to pass a budget or a CR that gets us through the end of the fiscal year. If the Gov’t shuts down, that’s on them, regardless of what the media says.
And that brings me to my second point. The Republicans are going to get blamed regardless of what they do or don’t do. It’s what the Democrats and the Media (BIRM) do. It’s what Republicans are for. If they’re going to take the hit anyway, they might as well get something for it. Maybe that way we show a few more people how craptacular the entire politico-media statist infrastructure really is.
Is there any reason for all the legistlation, other than to be seen legistlating? What are the upper limits on laws that we need? Or are we [they] just piling crap on top of crap? After the founding of this country, Congress was considered a part-time job. Do a few weeks work there, then get back to your real life. This is a distinct possibility again with Internet access. Shut down the offices, send ’em all home to live among their constituents, work at their real jobs…away from the adoring cameras, lobbyists, staffers, flower allowances, Congressional dinning rooms, saunas, babershops…OK, I think the chocolate mescaline is wearing off now.
I give McConnell credit for pulling the RINOs and porkers back to reality and killing the omnibus. We have the momentum, we need to keep the pressure on: McConnell’s one page temporary CR or shutdown.
I just wish you didn’t seem so eager to see the glass as broken all over the sidewalk where we’re all going to have to walk barefoot.
I have a low tolerance for belaboring the negative. Ask happyfeet.
I’m coming from the mindset that if the GOP can’t act like they got the message now, when will they start doing so? They have to earn my trust again. I will not give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove they deserve it.
Eager? I’m not “eager” to see a path filled with broken glass. But I’ve come to expect it.
I’d be delighted if the Congress would just go home today. Everything this lame duck Congress does is a flipping of the bird to the electorate. We shouldn’t be “compromising” on anything with a Dem Congress whose approval rate is at 13% — and that we continue to do so is as discouraging as it is predictable.
If McConnell and the GOP can get out of there with a short-term CR that doesn’t increase spending and a defeat of attempts to push through the DREAM Act, I’ll be happier. But I’ll still think we should have done what was necessary to get the economy back on track — namely, hold out for permanent rates (or even push for cuts) and not allowed unfunded spending.
Losing a little is still losing, and the adding up of all those tiny losses has us where we are today, fiscally-speaking. What’s to cheer about?
Oh. Apologies, then.
Yay, same tax rates as we’ve had for ten years except if you own property like a ranch or such and then you die!
Okay, I’m too close to this shit. I need to get away for a bit.
Losing a little is still losing, and the adding up of all those tiny losses has us where we are today, fiscally-speaking. What’s to cheer about?
I disagree – i think its a couple of big losses that got us here. Tarp, Son of Tarp, Auto Bailouts and Healthcare. The tournique is being applied, the wound will still spot a little blood.
I’m ready to jump all over OTT because I think the GOP has been doing lots of little things wrong since forever, and that stuff adds up. I’m living up to my self-selected handle. I think I’ll work instead.
And he’s twenty feet tall, eats babies for breakfast, and shits fire, too!
If you never accept a victory, all you’ll ever get are defeats.
its a couple of big losses that got us here
Only a couple? I hate to think about the GOPs big win/big loss ratio. I think the Washington Generals thanks god every day that they’re not the Washington Republicans.
When’s the last time the GOP had a big win? I guess that would depend on what your definition of a big win is. Welfare Reform? Reagan’s Tax Cuts?
“When’s the last time the GOP had a big win? ”
Iraq?
I bet few are going to like that answer…
I bet few are going to like that answer…
I’ll accept it Lee.
Reid and Pelosi are like zombies. Really bad zombies.
Reid and Pelosi are like [r]eally bad zombies.
Instead of eating your brain, they eat your wallet?
Or your immaterial liberties.
Shut. The. Whole. Fucking. Thing. Down.
Tar. Feathers. Pitch. Pitchforks. Boiling oil. The Iron Maiden.
And if you keep accepting losses as victories, you’ll wonder why you have so many trophies and so little freedoms.
Yes. Please take us back to the heady free days of a post-Great Society America!
See? That’s what I mean.
We’ve been more than steadily losing since the 19 aughts. I think that something that gets lost at times is that Jeff isn’t necessarily thinking about GOP victories as much as classical liberal victories. In that, I’m as pessimistic as Jeff. I do admire, and appreciate more than you guys may know, the optimism, however.
Definition of LIBERTY
1
: the quality or state of being free:
a : the power to do as one pleases
b : freedom from physical restraint
c : freedom from arbitrary or despotic control
d : the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges
e : the power of choice
I’d add an
f: The ability to say “NO” and make it stick.
Can’t we simply write Dr K down to “fighting the last war” syndrome? Or is that too facile?
No, not too facile, sdferr. It’s not 1995 any more.
To be sure, the MFM will do everything they can to convince people that the gubmint was shut down by mean old Republicans, but they don’t control the message as effectively now as they did back then.
Or better Jim, as more than a few have pointed out — Steve Hayes contra Doc K among them — the people may damn well want it shut down, at least in large enough numbers to cushion the pols against any backlash in the event.
Shut. It. Down. That is a good way to start cutting the budget.
I think Team R would come out the worse for a shutdown. The double-chinned fuckhole and Boehnerfag are simply not compelling to where they elicit trust in any measure.
If Team R had more better leadership it would be a different story.
it would be a different story maybe
nobody in Washington has a meaningful amount of goodwill anymore really…
failshittery is not without consequences
So long as the consequences don’t actually come to caning them with pool-cues, or some similar measure sure to get their attention, that is.
If the government shuts down, beware of the public sector pushback. Watch for, say, the Park Service closing the popular attractions, while still going around booting illegally parked cars. Citizen who don’t pay any attention to politics will be slow to understand what’s going on.
I’m just so disappointed in everyone involved
James Capretta takes a stab at big-pic thinking on the next Congress. Haven’t read it yet m’self but merely pass the link along. h/t Contentions.
I haven’t slept so I might be a shade more despairing than usual
Catch me up on the Boehner-hate happy. What’s the deal?
I talk later I am too tired Mr. al I am sorry
I am fading
Not your best stage-exit I must say. You need to eat more grass-fed beef.
Cutting spending will be a good start.
john lennon’ what if they had a war
and no-one showed up?
imagine!
raindrops keep falling on my heead
Shel Silverstein. Just sayin’ is all.
here another lennon singy
lucy in the sky,with diamonds
My girls are having a Victoria Justice marathon. I have been castrated.
a king
will
always sing
for his supper
a horse, a horse, a kingdom
for my horse
congress is not healthy
for children
or other living things
Someone sent me 8 Omaha steaks filets and 8 rib eyes. I am about to eat.
here Mr. al I leave you with a heartwarming tale what is befitting this holiday season
yay!
that is many meat
Per the Capretta article, the main thing I think the House can do in the next two years is to put the Senate and the White House on the defensive, and start changing the terms of the debate. Start spamming the Senate with small, sensible, single-issue bills, and force the bastards to debate and vote on them. No more 2,000-page monstrosities filled with indefensible crap that gets through because it’s been larded on top of “must-pass” legislation. No more treating a less-than-expected increase as a “cut.” No more pretending that stealing from the productive counts as charity, nor that a union goon makes a better charity worker than a neighborhood volunteer.
While they’re at it, they can start clawing back their regulatory authority from the unelected bureaucracies that usurped it. If they can’t defund the EPA altogether, they can at least make sure that CO2 is treated as less harmful than water vapor (which it is).
I’m not expecting for the grownups to get their way every time over the next two years; hell, I’m not expecting all that many victories, period. But even if we can’t win every legislative battle, at the very least, we can keep the statist bastards off-balance, and sow the seeds for the next big reformist election of 2012. Get these transitions years right, and there’s a decent chance that the coming campaign will be debated on our terms, for a change.
let’s shit on johnny lennon
it’s yoko approved!
mmm/ i..shoulda known better with a girl like you..
no
dear prudence..
no..
chains?- my baby’s got me locked up in chains
and they aint the kind
that you can see
these chains of love
got a hold of me
yea.yeah
bjork got a hail down version
imitates
of yoko
performance art?
yeah, u first..
yoko,bjork death fight!
i am in
1
Alan Wolfe, Why Conservatives Won’t Govern (h/t Pete Wehner at Contentions — (neither link will pass WordPress muster, so cop it at Contentions)):
And of course, blah blah blah from there.
Let me second Squid on what he wrote. That’s a darned good start, and considering that the Senate is theoretically out of reach (unless we can get some Dems to vote as fiscal conservatives), it might be as much as possible.
The small, single-issue bill approach is great because all the ideology is right out in the open. There needs to be a clear demarcation in philosophy for all to see. Certainly there needs to be an end to these omnibus bills that no one has read or even can read.
Wolfe
So, Alan Wolfe is a statist idiot. What “work” is government supposed to do, I wonder? Most of what it’s doing now is outside its scope.
I’m getting annoyed again. Time to go to my happy place.
as yoko says u really shoudn’t fart. barf
or have an ‘accident’ on him
my john..
he wasn’t the fat beatle..
paul is a meanie!
Bills should be limited to one issue. They should be able to fit on one sheet of paper.
And Althouse on Nunberg who goes arm in arm with Wolfe. h/t IP
Yes, really, Wolfe brings this shitclaim on the heels of a Democrat dominated full-government-monopoly which has managed to not produce a budget, nor a single appropriations bill to emerge from committee, nor a single appropriations vote on the floor, but manages instead to pile a 1900 + page omnibus on the desk in a lame duck session mere days prior to the surprising advent of national holidays (they surely didn’t know those holidays were coming, did they?).
I wonder why they didn’t let that coyote drift to the Island of Misfit Toys.
to every season turn turn turn Mr. al
You have to admit, though, JD, that Victoria is fucking hawt.hawt.hawt. So there is that. Yeah, I’m a dirty old man, so what.
Part of that Squid should be the 11 or 13 distinct appropriations bills for the rest of the current FY. Make the Senate block good legislation or the president veto them. Get out and advance the positive vision of America’s future that comes about from fiscal responsibility.
I try to not think about that, OI. But yes, of all the choices, I would rather they watch her than the others.
My wife bumped into Yoko once on the side walk and knocked her down. It was Yoko’s fault.
If Bjork screamed in Iceland with no one around, would she make any noise?
sdferr,
Thank you for the link to the Wolfe piece. I see it is part of a series there.
I’m so looking forward to learning some “new progressive facts, ideas, and metaphors.” It should be a nice break from brousing through my recently arrived copy of the Midwest Academy’s Organizing Manual.
This one is precious too.
yoko,bjork death fight!
Boy, howdy.
NYT, Carl Hulse:
Slash? That’s doubtful at best. Modestly trim — if even that — is closer to the truth.
More bullshit from Hulse:
Blockade, eh? Get that straight from the White House talking points, Carl? What I hear is that it was Democrats who put Reid’s bill underwater. But Hulse can’t seem to find them.
As to the CR, Hulse reports the Dems drive for a year-long bill, but doesn’t seem sanguine about it:
Hulse further notes that with Dan Inouye in the chairmanship of Senate Appropriations, gridlock is the most probable outcome. Ever the imperator, Inouye rebukes the public sentiment against his Omnibus product, if somewhat indirectly:
Evidently the little people just don’t know what’s good for them — thanks God Dan Inouye is here to take care of us.