I don’t know how the whole debt limit crisis will shake out. I suspect that McConnell’s kabuki will prevail. Regardless, I can already see some fallout for the Republicans. The party has been rent in two. A precursor of this was seen when Rand Paul defeated Mitch McConnell’s preferred candidate to replace Jim Bunning in the Senate. It showed that even at the very top of the Republican Party, the Establishment had lost control of their base. It took a while for this to manifest itself in a way that will have negative consequences for the party, but that time has come. Speaker Boehner is either an empty husk or a smoking crater. Pick your simile, but his leadership position is pretty much destroyed. Minority Leader McConnell is still alive and kicking, but by forcing the Republicans to eat their peas, he’s not going to be popular.
The problem obviously extends to the presidential primaries. The Establishment has been unable to find an alternative to Mitt Romney, and they need a champion now who can stand up against the Tea Party movement and defend Wall Street. But that’s probably not going to happen. What’s worse is that all the presidential candidates will probably spend the next year making incoherent arguments about the debt that are more properly aimed at the Tea Party that scuttled the president’s effort to achieve a grand bargain to tackle the debt problem.
Insofar as reality is acknowledged at all, the Republican candidates will argue that Congress is filled with insufficiently radical politicians. In other words, the GOP will be campaigning against themselves. This really is beginning to be reminiscent of 1964.
Now, a lot of people have been saying that things are shaping up a lot like 1948, when the Republican nominee was far to the left of the Republican-led Congress. In that election, President Truman ignored that fact and ran against the Do-Nothing Congress that couldn’t get anything done. It worked. But I don’t think Romney has really positioned himself far to the left of Congress. And even if he had been doing that, I don’t think he could continue to do it and have any hope of winning the nomination.
For a long time, the Republicans’ most notable feature has been their unflinching unity. Those days are over.
Love the optimistic take. I have personally been growing more and more receptive over the last few weeks to arguments that Bachmann will be the GOP nominee. It’s starting to seem plausible.
I was of that opinion as well, but it is becoming a possibility that before January either Bachmann’s husband or both of them will have to come out of the closet. We will see how many of those foster children will come to mom’s and dad’s defense between now and then.
If that happens, the whispering campaign will begin about the “first lady” in a Bachmann presidency and the campaign will be toast.
And with Sarah Palin’s flop at the boxoffice, the Teahadists will roll out the Goodhair.
Goodhair being Perry?
Yep
Yes, a Bachmann candidacy is completely out of the question. It’s not like Sarah-Palin where her stupidity makes her dangerous. the Bachmann campaign is already an object of ridicule in the blogosphere. It’s just going to get worse for them – Jon Stewart with Jerry Seinfeld both going after them?! There may or may not be some rentboys showing up as well.
If unity is over, is this when DeMint makes his Cantorian move for McConnell’s job?
Good question!
I’ve been thinking for a while that the real Republicans, what’s left of them, would really like to dismount the tiger they have created, if they just knew how to do it without getting eaten. I saw a clip of McConnell’s presser on Countdown last night. He looked scared. Visibly, palpably scared.
I’ve had my teeth grinding moments, listening to Mitch’s smug rebuttals to anything and everything the Democrats tried to do. I didn’t hear any smugness last night.
Seems like Perry could be a compromise candidate who would be acceptable to both wings of the republican party.
What do you think?
Rick Perry is your next President.
Why?
JOBS!
Rick Perry is looking at Obama’s $86 million and figuring “what’s the point?”
Money is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Just ask Meg Whitman.
Obama had loads of money against McCain…and he was down five points in early September before Lehman collapsed…without that event, he would have lost.
Rick Perry campaigning on jobs?????
That bull may stampede in Texas but in the rest of the country they know a shitdropper when they see one.
And after LBJ, GHWB, and GWB, I think the country’s grown wary of big aw-shucks talking walking catastrophes.
Yeah, I think Perry is the nominee. But I just don’t see the country voting for someone who looks and sounds like W. The negative reaction will be visceral.
Rick Perry is not popular in Texas.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/local/article_ce9ca005-2496-5566-944f-ecd43cc19d5e.html
I don’t think that’s quite fair to GHWB. He may have been a problematic president, but I wouldn’t call his administration a catastrophe. Certainly not in the way that LBJ and Dubya’s terms in office caused such long-term damage to the country, particularly in the foreign policy realm.
Hi, I’m Rick Perry!
I’m a right-wing southern governor with a history of saying favorable things about secession, and guess what? I’m going to spend the next year and a half talking trash about the first black president!
Don’t worry, I won’t say anything stupid, and also, I won’t be looking over my shoulder all the time, or having to spend a lot of time explaining things because somebody keeps raising uncomfortable questions in the media. No black marks on me!
I mean…I mean…I didn’t mean…wait, what am I supposed to be talking about?
The last polling I saw suggested that Perry would struggle to win Texas agains Obama, and Republicans seem to be extremely unenthusiastic about the idea of him running in general.
Comparing Meg Whitman to Barack Obama?
That’s like comparing Sharron Angle to Ronald Reagan.
Money can’t make a horrible politician into a good one.
Barack Obama is the best politician I have ever seen. He’s considerably better than the second best, Bill Clinton.
Clinton lacks discipline. Obama is completely disciplined.
Also, Clinton was all tactics – and don’t get me wrong, he was great at them – whereas Obama has a terrific strategic mind.
Or maybe Clinton just didn’t have the discipline to stick to his strategies.
“he was down five points in early September before Lehman collapsed”
You mean immediately after the Republican convention, September 1-4?
It’s called a bump.
OK, here is an instructive exercise.
August invoices for the US government; in the absence of an agreement, which get paid and which are deferred until we can pay them. I wish Bloomberg had put up September invoices as well. And I wish that the exercise permitted scaling payments. For salaries for example, the ability defer part of a salary (like that of the President and Congress) until after the crisis is over.
August Invoices Show U.S. Treasury’s Limited Choices
The interesting part is that it is possible to continue to pay Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, military pay, VA benefits, and civil service payrolls, and the interest on the debt ($29 billion for August).
The other interest thing is the $42 billion in the aggregated Other category. I says that some are entitlements — but which entitlements? Pensions for former Presidents and members of Congress?
Easy!
Don’t pay politicians, and corporate contractors to the Government of any kind. Big business will go ballistic…
While you and I might agree, that’s not the way the invoices come in in Bloomberg’s model.
I recommend deferring all pay for elected and appointed officials, military brass, and civil service Senior Executive Service that is above the median family income of $60,000. Just the savings for one month from 535 members of Congress would be around $4 million, another $14,000 for the President and slightly less for the VP. That could mount up. And the good part is it would be felt in the Village itself.
And since we are talking about deferring payments, not necessarily canceling them. Almost every contract the government is involved in could defer payments for 90 days. That would have a salutary effect for the federal contractors and subcontractors who want to drown the government in a bathtub.
The federal government does pay its bills on presentation now, doesn’t it? If not, there’s an accounting change that could make lots of private businesses happy.
My second proposal is to increase IRS tax evasion enforcement and agency inspector general fraud enforcement. And instead of deferring, cancel the contracts of companies with serious histories of fraud (cough, Haliburton).
That champion is Obama.
Oddly enough, Wall Street doesn’t agree.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703461504576231121265117538.html?mod=WSJ_article_Lates
tHeadlines
Check out the awesome graphic about the Hedge Fund managers’ donations.
Obama took their money and he $&%*ed them. I love that.
I bet they’re feeling really great about that decision now.
Totally off topic for this thread, but I just got a call from the DNC. In our conversation I mentioned Citizens United. The caller said that a recent court decision placed some limits on the supposedly unlimited campaign contributions made possible by Citizens United. He mentioned a figure of $5,000. First I’ve heard of it from anywhere. Am I the only one who didn’t get the memo?
There was a memo?
Was it from a district court? How many jurisdictions will that affect?
I’m wondering too. As soon as I got off the phone I started googling. Closest thing I could find was this, but I don’t think that’s what he was talking about.
Iowa response to Citizens United upheld by court | Iowa Independent