As most of you know by know, the House in fact passed the defund resolution, but as most of you also know by now, people like NR’s Rich Lowry are sniffing at the efficacy of the thing, noting that once Harry Reid strips out the defund measure and sends the resolution back to the House, a committee will then produce a “clean” resolution, which will pass — the Republicans having gained cover by attempting the defund measure (and telling constituents they voted for it), while being able to blame the Senate for not compromising, even as they give Reid and Obama what they want, caving yet again to the left and destroying the last hope (outside a delay measure) of preventing the permanent implementation of Obamacare.
This is precisely what happened with cut, cap, and trade: the House passed it knowing it would be killed in the Senate, and then let it die. More symbolism that is sound and fury, signifying not nothing, but rather the absolute craven impotence, fecklessness, and statist tendencies of the status quo GOP establishment.
Compare and contrast. First, here’s Jim Geraghty, noting all the reasons the defund strategy won’t work:
Discussing this with Greg Corombus on the Three Martini Lunch podcast the other day, he asked me, because I’m a skeptic of the Cruz-Lee plan, how I’d recommend eliminating Obamacare. I said that because the Senate was unlikely to pass a budget eliminating funding for implementation of Obamacare, and because Obama is extremely unlikely to sign that budget into law, and that it’s similarly extremely unlikely an Obamacare-erasing budget could pass by veto-proof majorities, we’re still where we were last year: We need a president committed to repeal and replace, a Senate majority committed to it, and a House majority committed to it. We’ve only got one-third of that right now.There are a bunch of folks who believe that because Obamacare is unpopular — and indisputably, it is deeply unpopular — that when push comes to shove, Americans will stand with the GOP against Obama in such significant numbers, that Obama will be forced to sign into law a budget that defunds and effectively destroys his signature domestic policy. (Some presidents get a federal building named after themselves; Obama gets the entire U.S. health care system renamed after him.) I’d love to see that happen. But we make a major mistake when we confuse what we want to see happen with what is likely to happen.Could it happen? Sure. It’s just not likely. Maybe the odds are good enough to try it . . . but if it doesn’t turn out the way folks on the Right hope, they need a Plan B.
Geraghty presents this in the way of dispassionate observation of procedure and politics, but what he fails to take into account is that it is precisely the fact that Republicans didn’t unite on this and make the case to the American people in the lead up to this vote, that ultimately affects the political dynamic that he suggests has always been and always will be the state of things. To which I would tell Jim, see: principle, Heisenberg.
Robert Romano, Americans for Limited Government, has a different take — and it is the more “idealistic” one, according to those who lay claim to pragmatism but instead practice impotence:
[…] does House leadership really mean it? Anticipating that the proposal might not be all that serious, Americans for Limited Government President Nathan Mehrens commented, “If the plan is to just send this continuing resolution to the Senate to die, then that is unacceptable.”
Now it looks like that might be the plan after all.
According to Slate.com’s David Weigel, although the plan presented to House Republican conference members would indeed call for a vote on a defunding continuing resolution, it also contemplates a complete failure of the approach in the Senate.
For, after the Senate, as expected, defeats the measure, the House would then “Grudgingly pass a CR that funds Obamacare after all. This might mean a rump of Republicans join the mass of Democrats,” writes Weigel.
In other words, the House’s vote to defund Obamacare would be no more effective than its 40 prior votes to repeal the law. Simply unbelievable.
If that’s what was indeed presented to House Republicans, this would be simply a repeat of the Cut, Cap, and Balance fiasco of July 2011.
One will recall that in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, House Republicans presented a united front that would institute immediate spending cuts, enact into law statutory spending caps, and require passage of balanced budget amendment to the Federal Constitution.
But they never really meant it. They passed it, and then two days later the Senate voted to table it, effectively killing it. After that, Cut, Cap, and Balance was forgotten, discarded to side. Never really a sincere proposal to begin with.
Instead, on the debt ceiling, we got the failed Supercommittee, but thankfully, sequestration, which has resulted in real savings for taxpayers. It wasn’t a total loss, but nowhere near what might have been achieved if the House had stuck to Cut, Cap, and Balance.
For, by advertising openly that the defund Obamacare continuing resolution is not a real line in the sand, and that leadership plans to discard just as soon as the Senate kills it, House leadership is exposing the weakness of its own negotiating position.
Pressing the point, at a news conference, House Speaker John Boehner essentially pushed responsibility off on the Senate to kill the measure: “It’s time for the Senate to have this fight.”
ALG’s Mehrens has a better idea: “When the Senate responds with a so-called ‘clean’ continuing resolution, the House needs to respond with another bill that funds the government except for Obamacare. If Obama and Reid want to shut down the government, that’s their choice.”
Then, at least, House Republicans could negotiate from a position of strength, escalating their efforts with each vote on a new continuing resolution. The first could reduce food stamps, the second could defund the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon endangerment finding, and so forth. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will get the message.
That is how you deal with a school yard bully, not cave into his demands, as Boehner and company appear prepared to do with Reid. The Senate may not even present any alternative to Republicans.
In 2011, when House Republicans presented Cut, Cap, and Balance, Reid tabled it in the Senate, and killed subsequent measures that would have raised the debt ceiling in an attempt to back Republicans into a corner. Now, it appears the same thing is going to happen again, leaving Republicans to negotiate with themselves. That is why they must hold firm.
Attaching language to the continuing resolution that defunds the health care law is a great idea. Americans for Limited Government has supported passage of just such a plan for weeks.
For, it is the only plan that might get rid of this law before it goes in effect. The only plan that will defund in full the Medicaid expansion and the insurance subsidies under the state exchanges. The only plan that will prevent the destruction of the 40-hour work week. The only plan that will keep the best health care system in the world, and keep you on your insurance policy of choice.
But the only way it will work is if the House stay resolved to see it through, even in the face of a government shutdown. When Harry Reid and the Senate rejects this continuing resolution, the House must respond with more continuing resolutions that defund Obamacare.
Members should beware that any approach that ultimately allows Obamacare funding to go into effect is unacceptable. Simply sending the defund Obamacare bill to the Senate to die is not an option.
In the end, any member that votes for continuing resolution that funds Obamacare will own it.
[…]
If House Republicans cave on the continuing resolution, they’ll be little more than a paper tiger — or better yet a paper elephant — when it comes to the debt ceiling. And then we’ll be stuck with Obamacare.
There is no reason at all that a full-fledged political throw down over a demonstrably unpopular law, with an accompanying set of constant roll call measures that can be pointed to directly — and with an information campaign that details exactly what it is the GOP is attempting and why — isn’t every bit as “pragmatic” a strategy as the bien pensant strategy of always calling for delay, and never finding a hill worth fighting and dying on.
I wrote long ago — back when people still cared what I had to say — that it is often pragmatic to foreground idealism. And in this case, we’re seeing that play out: the American people hate this law; the grassroots has forced the hand of the GOP establishment; and if the GOP follows through and has stones enough to show who is really causing the government shut down — and that he’s doing so out of imperial Executive petulance and narcissism — they can win this battle.
And to that the very easy case that they can make that Obama has already broken the law and rewritten it on the fly — that he has exempted some, while others are forced to comply; that the government will be collecting data on the sexual proclivities of patients and storing them in a database — and the whole progressive narrative about “fairness” and “privacy” is laid bare for the fraud it is.
But this will take steel and spine. And the GOP House leadership has shown that it is determined to work harder finding away out of fighting than it is to engage in a political battle for what is, at its heart, the very soul of individual liberty.
When I contemplate the spinelessness of the current GOP “leadership,” I become physically ill. I can only conclude, they wish to continue to feather their own Beltway Nests and have no thought for the havoc wrought on their constituents.
They ought to be banging on vulnerable Senate Dems. Obamacare has already ended more than a couple of its proponents’ careers.
They’re always preparing for the next battle and saying that’s when they will fight. And once we get there, they cave and put off fighting until the next battle. That way they can pretend to fight without doing it.
This is as good a time as any to go for it. It may be the last time to go for it. They really don’t care to fight because they want what they claim they are fighting against. They must balance that with their desire to be career politicians, because the GOP establishment is about to start losing elections in droves if they don’t start demonstrating a real willingness to fight against Obama and his administration (they have already shown they are willing to fight the base).
They are not going to get the “who else are you going to vote for” votes any more. At least, not from me, and probably not from a lot of others around here.
It isn’t spinelessness as such that troubles me, but the complete abandonment and forgetting of the meaning of the American regime of government, i.e., of a people who rule themselves through their representation — and abandonment for the sake of a different regime entirely, a regime of rule by the few, against the better choices of the vast majority, who can’t see to muster even an afterthought of themselves in their representatives. And worst of all, the loss of understanding of the meaning of the American regime of government, the American Framing of political order, not in the self-regarding grasping oligarchy, but in the minds of the people at large. They don’t even know.
who can’t seem, apologies
Just sent the following to my representative:
People who say if you don’t fight you can’t lose, are full of shit. If you don’t fight, you can only lose.
I learned that growing up with a big brother.
“You need to get out of this trench. Yeah, if you leave the trench you might catch Jerry’s bullet. But if you stay in the trench you’ll catch Sam’s. So you face death either way. Now HOW do you want to face it? With Jerry’s bullet in your front or Sam’s in your back?”
The Clown Disaster is happy to punish those who don’t accede to his wishes. That is, he’s itching to punish the American people, who have the good sense to reject his DisasterCare for the unhealthy abomination it is. He has a bad case of skin disease I guess, like he’s been rolling around naked in the poison ivy or something.
>because Mr. Reid won’t allow Obamacare to be defunded, then I expect the House to produce another CR, defunding the EPA< and obamacare
thus spaketh the baracky
Obama at times sought to belittle GOP lawmakers. “The most basic constitutional duty Congress has is to pass a budget,” said the president, a former constitutional law lecturer. “That’s Congress 101.”
“>because Mr. Reid won’t allow Obamacare to be defunded, then I expect the House to produce another CR, defunding the EPA< and obamacare "
Well that approach worked okay for the Cumaean Sybl.
>Well that approach worked okay for the Cumaean Sybl.<
i have a small armadillo brain please help, explain
nr, at least you have the excuse of the armadillo brain. Me, not so much. So, yes, please explain, palaeomerus.
A foreign woman walks into the court of Tarquin the last king of the old -oman kingdom.
She says that she is a prophetess inspired by the god Apolllo. She offers him 9 books of prophecy and asks a very high price.
He says no.
She burns three of the books and leaves.
She shows up again later and offers him the six remaining books for the same price. He says if hewouldn’t pay that much for nine books why would he pay the same for six?
She burns three more books.
When she shows up the third time and offers the three remaining books for original price he accepts.
The three books of prophecy are kept for hundreds of years and consulted in emergencies through the republic and the empire. At one point the original copies are lost to a fire so the emperor, to allay public fears, buys copies of fragments from anyone who has them anywhere in the empire and pays scholars to reconstruct the books as completely as possible, and throw out the fake bits you get when you pay for rediscovered knowledge from private collections. The books are viewed as crucial to the survival of Rome because they are thought to have predicted and provided the solutions to several huge historical crises throughout Roman history.
Eventually during christian Rome the “new originals” are are publicly burned as a pagan nuisance and crutch. Shortly thereafter the goths under Alaric sack Rome because they are not allowed to settle in the land they were promised for filling out the auxiliary legions.
Basically you make each refusal of your offer more and more expensive instead of backing down in the hope that it gets harder and harder to refuse you since you believe that your offer is firm and that the other side must give ground eventually.
Excellent story and history lesson, palaeomerus.
Thank you for explaining and enlightening.
I loved the harridan who was caterwauling about those horrible Republicans who are trying to get rid of Obamacare, ranting that “it’s the law of the land!” (Didn’t pay attention to who, doesn’t matter, they’re all harridans, even the men.)
And I said to my radio, “Yeah, Obamacare is the law of the land! Just like slavery!”
If Obamacare is the law of the land, why is Obama altering it at whim?
The President has already admitted its not working*. So there’s no reason to continue funding something unworkable, is there?
*except that it is of course, but in this instance we really ought to take him at his word.
Also, since all appropriations must originate in the House, the fact that Boehner et. al. are sending this over as an omnibus continuing resolution instead of one spending bill at a time (y’know, like they used to do it when Congress actually passed a budget), saving Health & Human Services for last, indicates to me that the fix is in.
Just as Jeff said.
“They really feel he has put them in this corner that they can’t get out of gracefully and they’re not very happy with him.”
Now that‘s interesting [“he has put”], for it elides so very much. For we merely ask, was it Sen. Cruz who made these ruling elites choose to side with greater government control of the lives of ordinary Americans against the wishes of those Americans? Or was this choice of political position a choice these ruling elites made for themselves? How exactly was it that Sen. Cruz could cause these ruling elites to make that choice in opposition to the aims of the majority of Americans to rid themselves of The Clown Disaster’s DisasterCare?
And why is it that the fancyman Chris Wallace doesn’t see fit to ask this question?
” . . . instead of one spending bill at a time . . . “
It’s possible that there is, and even possible that there has been, a plan to do just this [send one bill at a time], after the attempt at passage of the whole continuing resolution. Sen. Cruz, just this morning, suggests that, supposing the whole continuing resolution fails in the Senate, the House then will send shorter and narrower continuing resolutions one after another, each with a defunding provision attached, beginning with a Defense Dept. appropriation with defunding DisasterCare attached, to see if Sen. Reid and his caucus are willing to vote to shut down national defense for the sake of the preservation of DisasterCare.