I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

By Ezra Klein, Published: October 1 at 4:14 pm

Robert Costa is the National Review's Washington editor and one of the best-sourced reporters among House Republicans. Like many others, I've relied on his reporting in recent days about how House Republicans are strategizing around the government shutdown. But it left me with some questions, particularly around Speaker John Boehner's strategy. We spoke by phone this afternoon, and a lightly edited transcript follows.

Ezra Klein: Walk me through the math of the House GOP a bit. Most people seem to think Boehner has around 100 members who largely back him and don't want a shutdown, and it’s a much smaller group, a few dozen or so, who want to take this to the brink. So why doesn’t Boehner, after trying to do it the conservative’s way as he has been in recent weeks, just say, we're voting on a clean CR now, as that’s what the majority of the House Republican majority wants?

Robert Costa: Ever since Plan B failed on the fiscal cliff in January and you saw Boehner in near tears in front of his conference, he’s been crippled. He’s been facing the consequences of that throughout the year. Everything from [the Violence Against Women Act] to the farm bill to the shutdown. The Boehner coup was unsuccessful but there were two dozen members talking about getting rid of him. That’s enough to cause problems. Boehner’s got the veterans and the committee chairs behind him, but the class of 2010 and 2012 doesn’t have much allegiance to him.

The thing that makes Boehner interesting is he’s very aware of his limited hand. Boehner doesn’t live in an imaginary world where he thinks he’s Tip O’Neill and he can bring people into his office and corral them into a certain vote. So he treads carefully, maybe too carefully. But he knows a clean CR has never been an option for him.

EK: But why isn’t it an option? A few dozen unhappy members is an annoyance, but how is it a threat? Wouldn't Boehner be better off just facing them down and then moving on with his speakership?

RC: So there are 30 to 40 true hardliners. But there’s another group of maybe 50 to 60 members who are very much pressured by the hardliners. So he may have the votes on paper. But he'd create chaos. It'd be like fiscal cliff level chaos. You could make the argument that if he brought a clean CR to the floor he might have 100-plus with him on the idea. But could they stand firm when pressured by the 30 or 40 hardliners and the outside groups?

EK: How much of this is a Boehner problem and how much of this is a House Republicans problem? Which is to say, if Boehner decided to retire tomorrow, is there another House Republican who has enough trust and allegiance in the conference that he or she could manage the institution more effectively? 

RC: What we're seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power. It’s not so much about Boehner. It’s things like the end of earmarks. They move away from Tom DeLay and they think they're improving the House, but now they have nothing to offer their members. The outside groups don't always move votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members. And so many of these members now live in the conservative world of talk radio and tea party conventions and Fox News invitations. And so the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire. The members begin to believe they can achieve things in divided government that most objective observers would believe is impossible. Leaders are dealing with these expectations that wouldn't exist in a normal environment.

EK: Why does that happen, though? It would absolutely be possible for liberal members to cocoon themselves in a network of liberal Web sites and liberal cable news shows and liberals activists. But in the end, liberal members of Congress end up agreeing to broadly conventional definitions of what is and isn’t politically realistic. So how do House Republicans end up convincing themselves of unrealistic plans, particularly when they’ve seen them fail before, and when respected voices in the Republican and even conservative establishment are warning against them?

RC: When you get the members off the talking points you come to a simple conclusion: They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don't get heat from back home.

EK: Is there a plausible replacement candidate for Boehner who could actually threaten his speakership in the near term? You used to hear a lot about Cantor, for instance, but he seems a little more closely allied with Boehner these days, and perhaps even a bit tainted in conservative circles because of it.

RC: Some of Cantor’s allies in the House actually worry he’s becoming too tied to Boehner. He used to almost cast himself as the conservative alternative. But I don't think Boehner is seriously threatened. He won't be threatened so long as he goes along with conservatives in the House. He listens to them. He follows their advice. He’s often led by them. And as long as that’s true, how will there ever be a coup attempt? Boehner got so burned by the fiscal cliff that he’s been defanged. There’s no talk now about mounting a coup against him because he never goes against the right. The other candidates you hear about, like Tom Cole or Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor or Kevin McCarthy, you don't hear them clamoring for the job, because they'd have to handle the same situation.

EK: This may be a bit of an odd question, but why does Boehner want to do his job like this under these circumstances? From the outside, it seems like a miserable existence. 

RC: I think John Boehner is frustrated by leading the Republicans in the House but I think he very much loves being speaker. To understand him you have to understand that. He gets to the Capitol early. He relishes the job and the position but he doesn’t relish being at odds so often with his members. He loves being a major American political figure, but he’s not a Newt Gingrich-like figure trying to lead the party in a certain direction. He’s just trying to survive and enjoy it while it lasts.

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I love Ezra Klein.  He goes straight to the heart of the matter -- I really enjoy his analyses of political and economic issues.  He is my next fave to Paul Krugman!

And it is as I said - Boehner loves the power.  He loves the bigger office, the extra salary, the 24/7 security detail, the home-to-work chauffered car, the bowing and scraping and ass-kissing.  He prostitutes himself for the perks.  Great guy, isn't he?

By Greg Sargent, Published: October 2 at 9:27 am

House Republicans are set to vote today on several measures funding parts of the government piecemeal, to reduce the political fallout from shutting the government, a move that’s being widely interpreted as a sign we may be headed for a protracted shutdown. Dems will reject these measures and continue to insist Republicans buckle and pass a “clean CR.”

In another sign Dems may well hold firm and not let Republicans escape from this predicament on terms more favorable to them, there’s now serious talk among Democrats of not accepting a GOP budget offering unless it also includes a debt limit hike if this shutdown crisis drags on.

Several Senate Democratic aides told me this morning that this is seriously being considered, confirming a report in Politico. As one put it to me: ”We are less than two weeks away from the deadline. If we were not having this shutdown fight, this is the week we would be moving a debt ceiling bill.” A second said: “It doesn’t make much sense to do a short term CR only to have to turn around and do it again with the debt ceiling.”

Needless to say, if it comes to this, the stakes in this battle will escalate dramatically — and the pressure on Republicans will intensify. This also comes as two new polls show Dems with an advantage in the overall battle.

A new CNN poll finds that Americans say by 56-38 that not raising the debt limit would be bad for the country, and would blame Republicans over Obama by 53-31. Also tellingly, a majority say raising the debt ceiling is more important than delaying major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. While it’s true some polls have found opposition to raising the debt limit, others have found clear opposition to tying the debt limit debate to Obamacare.

Meanwhile, a new National Journal poll finds a plurality of Americans — and of independents — think the GOP’s top priority is causing political problems for Obama, far more than say the same about Dems. As I’ve argued here before, it’s very possible public perceptions of a protracted standoff will be shaped less by details of the budget debate and more by already existing perceptions of which side is more committed to constructive governing and which is actively trying to prevent the system from functioning for political reasons.

But here’s the problem: Conservative Republicans remain convinced the public is on their side in this battle. Despite multiple polls showing disapproval of the law does not translate into public support for GOP sabotage of it, multiple Republicans are quoted today claiming the public will side with them over time.

The real danger here is that many Republicans — who are in an anti-Obamacare bubble where no good news about the law ever penetrates; where the most minor glitch confirms the law is collapsing under its own weight; and where huge majorities will support any tactic, no matter how destructive, designed to hasten that supposedly inevitable collapse — will remain convinced the public is with them as this showdown drags into a debt ceiling crisis. This makes miscalculation about the Dem resolve not to cave on the debt limit more likely, which in turn makes default more likely. And with it, unpredictable levels of economic havoc and destruction.

* CONSERVATIVES THINK THEY’RE WINNING SHUTDOWN FIGHT: The New York Times nicely illustrates the degree to which House GOP leaders have fallen under the control of a radical faction of conservatives committed to a Total War posture against Obamacare. Here’s GOP Rep. Raul Labrador claiming they’re winning:

“The moment where Republicans are least popular is right when the government shuts down. But when the president continues to say he’s unwilling to negotiate with the American people, when Harry Reid says he won’t even take things to conference, I don’t think the American people are going to take that too kindly.”

Conservatives think if they hang on long enough, opinion will turn against Dems for failing to “negotiate.” Surely Dems will take a hit too. But again, majorities already perceive the GOP as the uncompromising, unreasonable party here.

 * BUT SHUTDOWN VETERANS KNOW GOP IS IN WEAK POSITION: The Post’s big overview today notes GOP leaders think a shutdown is preferable politically to letting Obamacare go forward, but also quotes GOP Senator Tom Coburn, who was in Congress during the 1990s, warning of his GOP colleagues: 

“What they’re going to do, they’re going to dig in harder until the pain becomes so bad they yell uncle,” he said. “And it isn’t going to be pain from the president, it’s going to be pain from their own constituents.”

The question now is whether enough House Republicans who want a vote on a “clean CR” will come forward and press for one.

* ANECDOTE OF THE DAY, GOP SABOTAGE GOVERNING EDITION: This, from Jonathan Weisman, deserves more attention:

To many Senate Republicans, the House conservatives’ position has become mystifying. In a meeting of Senate Republicans, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee rose to ask how the party would respond if it controlled the White House and the Senate and a Democratic House insisted it would not finance the government unless Washington rolled back laws hampering unions.

Oddly, many neutral commentators seem unwilling to state the problem as clearly as this Senate Republican did.

* THE CRISIS IS THE FAULT OF THE GOP: A Washington Post editorial today pins the blame for the shutdown crisis directly and unequivocally on the Republican Party’s Obamacare obsession:

Republicans have shut much of the government in what they had to know was a doomed effort to derail the Affordable Care Act. That law, in case you’ve forgotten in the torrent of propaganda, is hardly revolutionary. It is an effort to extend health insurance to some of the 40 million or so people in this country who have none. It acts through the existing private-insurance market. Republicans tried to block its passage and failed; they hoped to have it declared unconstitutional and failed; and they did their best to toss Mr. Obama out of the White House after one term in order to strangle it in its cradle, and they failed again….their methods now are beyond the pale.

* REPUBLICANS HAPPY NOT TO NEGOTIATE WITH OBAMA: Given GOP complaints that Dems won’t “negotiate” with Republicans to find a way out of the government shutdown crisis, this, from Paul Kane, is instructive:

Some House Republicans, who have largely driven this strategy against the wishes of most veteran GOP lawmakers, rejoiced at having avoided direct talks with Obama and instead passing bills without any heavily negotiated process.

Wait, so it’s easier to pass anti-Obamacare bills that Senate Dems will never accept than it is to enter into budget talks?

* DEMS MOCK GOP GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN “GROUNDHOG DAY”: The White House-allied Bridge Project is out with a new Web video that casts the government shutdown as the GOP’s ”Groundhog Day” by recapping talking-head media coverage pinning the blame for it on Republicans — again. The serious message here, which you’ll be hearing a lot of, is that Republicans are ideologically incapable of breaking with the crisis-to-crisis mode imposed on them by the GOP’s Obamacare-obsessed faction, rendering the party incapable of engaging in constructive governing.

* AND AMERICANS SUPPORT STARBUCKS ON GUNS: A new Quinnipiac poll finds 66 percent of Americans, and even 41 percent of Republicans, say it’s a “good idea” for Starbucks to ask customers not to bring guns to its stores. Oh, by the way, 89 percent still support universal background checks, and 54 percent want stricter gun laws, but still: gun control is dead forever.

What else?

A reasonable follow-up question is: Why not?

Robert Costa, a reporter with National Review, tells Ezra Klein (emphasis added):

There are 30 to 40 true hardliners [in the House demanding that government funding be tied to Obamacare's defunding]. But there’s another group of maybe 50 to 60 members who are very much pressured by the hardliners. So he may have the votes on paper. But he'd create chaos. It'd be like fiscal cliff level chaos. You could make the argument that if he brought a clean CR to the floor he might have 100-plus with him on the idea. But could they stand firm when pressured by the 30 or 40 hardliners and the outside groups?

So, by one close observer's count, less than 10 percent of the House of Representatives is preventing the government from opening unless the White House defunds its signature legislation. Not a 51-percent majority. Not a 41-percent "filibuster majority." A 10-percent "bully majority" that has prevailed upon another 10 to 15 percent of the House. Meanwhile the shutdown is already endangering assistance to low-income families, preventing cancer patients from participating in NIH clinics, and shutting down Head Start programs.

Democracy is messy, but some aspects are straightforward. For example, to pass a law (like health-care reform) you need a majority. To get a majority, you win an election. Divided government usefully prevents a slim majority in one part of government from running roughshod over a large minority. But nowhere, to my knowledge, is there a theory of democracy defending the idea that minorities should have or expect the power to pass laws over majorities or that their efforts to do so should suspend government indefinitely. (emphasis mine)

Martin Wolf asks if the U.S. is a functioning democracy. As an optimist in pessimistic times, I would answer: Check back later. (emphasis mine)

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/the-third-basic-fact-that-every-government-shutdown-story-should-include/280189/