Tornado Alley (PROG)

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GOP leaders must free themselves from the Tea Party’s grip

By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: July 20[, 2011]

Media reports are touting the Senate’s Gang of Six and its new budget outline. But the news that explains why the nation is caught in this debt-ceiling fiasco is the gang warfare inside the Republican Party. We are witnessing the disintegration of Tea Party Republicanism.

The Tea Party’s followers have endangered the nation’s credit rating and the GOP by pushing both House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor away from their own best instincts.

Cantor worked amicably with the negotiating group organized by Vice President Joe Biden and won praise for his focus even from liberal staffers who have no use for his politics.

Yet when the Biden group seemed close to a deal, it was shot down by the Tea Party’s champions. Boehner left Cantor exposed as the frontman [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cantor-pulls-out-of-white-house-budget-talks/2011/06/23/AGxVMOhH_story.html ] in the Biden talks and did little to rescue him.

Then it was Boehner’s turn on the firing line. He came near a bigger budget deal with President Obama, but the same right-wing rejectionists blew this up, too. Cantor evened the score by serving as a spokesman for Republicans opposed to any tax increase of any kind.

Think about the underlying dynamic here. The evidence suggests that both Boehner and Cantor understand the peril of the game their Republican colleagues are playing. They know we are closer than we think to having the credit rating of the United States downgraded [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sandp-warns-that-chance-of-downgrading-us-credit-rating-is-50-percent/2011/07/14/gIQAvUzwEI_story.html ]. This may happen before Aug. 2, the date everyone is using as the deadline for action.

Unfortunately, neither of the two House leaders seems in a position to tell the obstreperous right that it is flatly and dangerously wrong when it claims that default is of little consequence. Rarely has a congressional leadership seemed so powerless.

Compare the impasse Boehner and Cantor are in with the aggressive maneuvering of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. He knows how damaging default would be and is working with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to concoct a way out.

McConnell can do this because he doesn’t confront the Tea Party problem that so bedevils Boehner and Cantor. Many of the Tea Party’s Senate candidates — Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska — lost in 2010. Boehner and Cantor, by contrast, owe their majority in part to Tea Party supporters. McConnell has a certain freedom to govern that his House leadership colleagues do not.

And this is why Republicans are going to have to shake themselves loose from the Tea Party. Quite simply, the Tea Party’s legions are not interested in governing, at least as governing is normally understood in a democracy with separated powers. They believe that because the Republicans won one house of Congress in one election, they have a mandate to do whatever the right wing wants. A Democratic president and Senate are dismissed as irrelevant nuisances, although they were elected, too.

The Tea Party lives in an intellectual bubble where the answers to every problem lie in books by F.A. Hayek, Glenn Beck or Ayn Rand. Rand’s anti-government writings, regarded by her followers as modern-day scripture — Rand, an atheist, would have bridled at that comparison — are particularly instructive.

When the hero of Rand’s breakthrough novel, “The Fountainhead,” doesn’t get what he wants, he blows up a building. Rand’s followers see that as gallant. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that blowing up our government doesn’t seem to be a big deal to some of the new radical individualists in our House of Representatives.

Our country is on the edge. Our capital looks like a lunatic asylum to many of our own citizens and much of the world. We need to act now to restore certainty by extending the debt ceiling through the end of this Congress.

Boehner and Cantor don’t have time to stretch things out to appease their unappeasable members, and they should settle their issues with each other later. Nor do we have time to work through the ideas from the Gang of Six. The Gang has come forward too late with too little detail. Their suggestions should be debated seriously, not rushed through.

Republicans need to decide whether they want to be responsible conservatives or whether they will let the Tea Party destroy the House That Lincoln Built in a glorious explosion. Such pyrotechnics may look great to some people on the pages of a novel or in a movie, but they’re rather unpleasant when experienced in real life.

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© 2011 The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gop-leaders-must-free-themselves-from-the-tea-partys-grip/2011/07/20/gIQAuFQcQI_story.html [with comments]


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GOP is bad for business


A majority of House Republicans turned their backs on TARP, the author writes.
AP Photo

By REP. SANDER LEVIN | 7/19/11 4:43 AM EDT

The debt ceiling debate [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59223.html ] highlights an increasingly evident fact: the Republican Party is bad for business.

This, of course, runs contrary to the GOP’s carefully crafted image. But it’s hard to come to any other conclusion after reviewing the party’s actions [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59244.html ] in congressional economic debates. Time after time, Democrats stepped up to take the tough actions needed to prevent economic collapse while Republicans buried their heads in the sand.

First, nearly three years ago, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke flatly told Congress [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/ ] that our financial system would implode without immediate and direct intervention. The remedy they proposed — the Troubled Asset Relief Program — was not popular with anyone, including Democrats.

Yet, there was a broad recognition that failing to act would result in economic calamity. A majority of House Republicans, however, still turned its back on the measure; even as Democrats voted nearly 3 to 1 to pass President George W. Bush’s policy.

Second, our nation was losing more than 750,000 jobs per month when President Barack Obama took office. He proposed a combination of tax cuts and targeted spending to support consumer demand and promote business investment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said his legislation took “a necessary step toward getting the U.S. economy back on track.”

While our economy continues to confront significant challenges, every credible assessment of Obama’s legislation shows it helped pave the way [ http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/zandi_financial_rescue_and_sti.html ] for 16 straight months of private-sector job growth. Yet every House Republican voted against it.

Now, congressional Republicans again threaten our economy by risking default [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/opinion/01krugman.html ] on our debt. The business community has clearly laid out that default would have dire consequences for our economy. But many congressional Republicans act as if they don’t believe them or care.

Even after Obama expressed willingness to cut our debt by $4 trillion – proposing [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58525.html ] $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in new revenue – Republicans still shirk their responsibility of maintaining our nation’s full faith and credit.

These three debates have affected the U.S. business climate more than any other congressional matter of recent years. Each time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and many other influential business groups have urged action. But on each occasion, Republicans have walked away from business.

Republicans stress the important economic role of business, but when the chips are really down, they take a walk. They are now the party of “no” when the U.S. economy’s stability, growth and preservation are at stake.

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) is the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

© 2011 POLITICO LLC

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59321.html [with comments]


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Signing Away the Right to Govern

Editorial
Published: July 18, 2011

It used to be that a sworn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution was the only promise required to become president. But that no longer seems to be enough for a growing number of Republican interest groups, who are demanding that presidential candidates sign pledges [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/us/politics/17pledge.html ] shackling them to the corners of conservative ideology. Many candidates are going along, and each pledge they sign undermines the basic principle of democratic government built on compromise and negotiation.

Both parties have long had litmus tests on issues — abortion, taxation, the environment, the social safety net. The hope was that the candidates would keep their promises, and, when they didn’t, voters who cared deeply about those issues could always pick someone else next time. Human beings, after all, do not come with warranties.

But iron-clad promises were just what the most rigid Republican ideologues wanted. They had seen too many presidents — specifically Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush — bend when confronted by a complex national reality. Both those presidents agreed to new taxes and some Republicans said they did not fight hard enough to outlaw abortion or cut spending to the point where government was unrecognizable. In other words, they compromised a bit, to keep divided government from destroying itself. Washington, the ideologues decided, corrupted true conservatives into moderates.

More was needed to keep them in line, which gave birth to the signed pledge — no more enforceable than a spoken promise, but a politician’s actual signature was seen as more binding. The oldest and most pernicious of these modern oaths was dreamed up by Grover Norquist, the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, who has managed to get 95 percent of all Republicans in Congress to pledge never to raise taxes [ http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge ] for any reason. If they end tax deductions, Mr. Norquist’s pledge-takers say they will match the increase in revenue with further tax cuts.

That pledge is the single biggest reason the federal government is now on the edge of default. Its signers will not allow revenues in a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Its success has now spawned dangerous offspring. There is the Susan B. Anthony pledge [ http://www.sba-list.org/2012pledge ], in which candidates promise to appoint antiabortion cabinet officers and cut off federal financing to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. It has been signed by Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum. There is the cut, cap and balance pledge [ http://www.cutcapandbalanceact.com/ ] to gut the federal government by cutting and capping spending, and enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. It has been signed by all of the above candidates, plus Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.

And there is the particularly bizarre Marriage Vow [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/59632577/THE-MARRIAGE-VOW-document ], in which candidates agree to oppose same-sex marriage, reject Shariah law and pledge personal fidelity to their spouse. Until it was changed after a public outcry, it also contained a line saying that a black child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by a two-parent family than a similar child raised in the Obama era. It was signed by Mr. Santorum and Mrs. Bachmann.

Only one candidate, Jon Huntsman Jr., has refused to sign any pledge, saying he owes allegiance to his flag and his wife. It is refreshing in a field of candidates who have forgotten the true source of political power in America.

© 2011 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19tue1.html [comments at http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19tue1.html ]


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