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“Obama’s agenda faces governors’ revolt”

So argues Noemie Emery, who evidently wrote the column before Mitch Daniels lent cover to fleeing Democrat lawmakers in Indiana.

But still:

For the first time since the Civil War ended, the federal government and a large number of the states and their governors are at open and few-holds-barred war.

States and their governors defying the White House, is, of course, nothing new. In the 19th century, the United States survived three different secessionist movements, the first two involving Aaron Burr (in 1804 and 1807), and the Southern secession 60 years later, that gave us a long, bloody war.

In the 1950s and ’60s, some Southern governors stood “in the door of the schoolhouse,” but those acts of defiance were regional, racist, and doomed. None of these instances serves as a guide to this new breed of battlers.

Despite thinking in terms of nullification and interposition (made famous by John C. Calhoun in an earlier fracas), this new states’ rights movement has no plans whatever for leaving the Union.

Unlike prior movements, it is based on neither region nor race: It runs from Alaska through the upper Midwest, down to the two southernmost bastions of Texas and Florida; it is strong in the red states, and in purple and blue ones: It is home to the male and the female, the pale and the brown, the WASP and the ethnic, the urban and rural, the fat and the lean: to Gov. Susana Martinez, R-N.M., and to Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Va.; to New Jersey’s Christie, and to Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; to Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., and to Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.; to good old boys and to children of darker-hued immigrants.

If its composition is different, so is its operational strategy. Instead of raising armies, it is raising objections. It fires off lawsuits, not guns.

Twenty-six states have filed 24 law suits, aimed at declaring the health care reform act as unconstitutional, which one court in Florida has already done. Scarcely a day goes by without one governor or another tossing sand in the gears of Obama’s agenda.

South Carolina’s Haley is in Obama’s face constantly. Gov. Sean Parnell, R-Alaska, says he won’t start enforcing Obamacare, as the court in Florida has labeled it unconstitutional.

Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., says “no, thank you,” to Obama’s plans for light rail. And Wisconsin’s Walker has started a war with Obama, confronting his unionized friends.

The GOP gains in the House were as stunning as those in the state houses, but the House is one-half of one branch of the federal government, and can only stop things, not start.

This is why the lead in confronting Obama has passed to the governors, who, on the day they take office, have the power they need to make policy. This is why the war has moved to, and outside of, the state capitols.

“States’ rights” may be saving the party of Lincoln. And what could be stranger than that?

Well, establishment GOPers believing the country is craving compromise comes to mind. But I take your point.

10 Replies to ““Obama’s agenda faces governors’ revolt””

  1. dicentra says:

    Jeff? The Mitch Daniels thing was JUSTIFIED!

    Here’s why:

    1. [T]here are important differences between public-sector unions (the topic in Wisconsin) and private-sector unions (the topic in Indiana).

    2. Mitch Daniels decertified all public unions, entirely rescinding their collective-bargaining rights, on his first day in office in 2005.

    3. [T]he Democratic minority in the Indiana legislature wields considerable power that Daniels has no choice but to deal with.

    4. [A]s much as Republicans may not like it, quorum requirements are effectively quite similar to U.S. Senate filibusters, and unless those quorum requirements are modified, the Indiana minority can block all legislation. Indiana’s legislative calendar is only four months long, meaning that other pressing reforms that Daniels campaigned on will wither.

    5. Back in 2005, Indiana House Democrats used the same tactic, leaving the capitol and boycotting votes on dozens of pending bills just before a critical deadline…. Jim Geraghty asks, “If the Indiana House Democrats get what they want through this tactic, what’s to prevent them from using it again and again every time they think they’ll lose on a big issue?” The answer is, they already have, and Republicans can’t do much about it.

    IN CONCLUSION: Daniels may or may not run for the White House in 2012. But the courage of those who do run should be judged by one issue above all: their willingness to put substantive entitlement reform on the table, instead of vague but crowd-pleasing rhetoric.

    Take THAT, you filthy racist teabagger! Insisting on playing hardball with the Dems in Indiana is vague, crowd-pleasing rhetoric!

    QED.

  2. Jeff G. says:

    Yes: the vague, crowd-pleasing rhetoric of “don’t let Democrat lawmakers fleeing the state get away with setting the agenda as a result of behavior you can hammer them with in the eyes of the public” vs the more substantive reform of “I have my legacy to think of, and the deal is, I get my legacy if I don’t rock the boat too much.”

    Got it.

    When Republicans block legislation and “shut down the government,” they’ll be punished for it. When Dems do it, they’ll be praised. And there’s nothing we can do to change that. So. Take what we can get and be happy with it.

    Pragmatism.

  3. narciso says:

    No,the nutrooters are reduced to ‘crank calling’ the Governor, pretending to be Lord Koch, to make a point.

  4. John Bradley says:

    “Lord Koch”? Isn’t that Abe’s avatar?

  5. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Speaking of revolting, is this a game anybody can play? ‘Cause I can think of any number of federal laws that I’d like my state to deem other than the law of the land; state laws that I want the mayor and city council or the county commission to review. Hell, I’d like to practice some selective enforcement of the local zoning ordnances, myself. What are the rules in this brave new world brought about by Hope! and Change!?

  6. dicentra says:

    Mitch Daniels decertified all public unions, entirely rescinding their collective-bargaining rights, on his first day in office in 2005.

    Well, you DO have to give kudos for that, but with the momentum on our side, there’s no reason NOT to take absolutely every opportunity that presents itself, especially when it comes to busting union strangleholds on the workplace.

    Sorry, Mitch, but the world doesn’t order itself to your pieties–or mine. Carpe diem or get out of the way.

  7. newrouter says:

    Union Unrest in Idaho
    February 23, 2011 5:29 P.M.
    By Brian Bolduc

    Few elected officials have tasted the vitriol that public-employee unions are spewing against Gov. Scott Walker these days. But Tom Luna is one of them.

    The superintendent of public instruction in Idaho, Luna has offered a bill to the state legislature to reform the Gem State’s education system. It is a teacher union’s worst nightmare: The legislation phases out tenure, removes seniority as a criterion for layoffs, makes student achievement at least 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation, and includes a pay-for-performance bonus. But wait, there’s more: Luna’s bill would require the state to publish a “fiscal report card,” so parents could go online and evaluate their school district by the numbers: average teacher salary, expenditure per child, administrative expenses, etc. To top it all off, the bill would mandate that towns hold teacher-contract negotiations in the open. “I think this is probably the most comprehensive package that is working its way through a state legislature in the country,” Luna tells National Review Online.

    link

  8. Swen says:

    Well, establishment GOPers believing the country is craving compromise comes to mind. But I take your point.

    It’s not the country, it’s the GOP establishment that wants compromise. They’d really like to come to some accomodation with the Dems so they can get back to Business As Usual, defined as shoveling money to their cronies. You don’t seriously think the GOP establishment objects to $1.5 trillion deficits, do you? They just want their cut.

  9. Nolanimrod says:

    Be different this time Jeff. Won’t need no shootin’. They doin’ it to themselves.At least while they at it they kissing themselves, too.

  10. Pablo says:

    You don’t seriously think the GOP establishment objects to $1.5 trillion deficits, do you? They just want their cut.

    Some of them get it. A lot of them are new. The ones that don’t need to get thrown out on their asses. We ain’t done yet.

Comments are closed.