Robert Costa has his fingers on the pulse of the House Republicans. His twitter feed is a good place to look for the latest thinking on the Republican side of the aisle. What we can see is that the leadership is now exercising its will to avoid a default on our debts, and they are doing it as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is testifying before the Senate Finance Committee.
The wingnuts are being told that they need to cave on the debt ceiling or Harry Reid will gain the initiative and dictate the terms. Their idea is that they can raise the debt limit for six weeks without passing a continuing resolution to open the government. But that’s bullshit. That’s just what the leadership is telling the mouth-breathers to force them to provide the votes they need to avoid default without having to ask Pelosi for support.
Once the debt ceiling is raised for six weeks, the Democrats will just stare blankly at the Republicans until they open the government.
In any case, anyone who argued with me when I said that Boehner would never, ever, shoot the hostage now owes me an apology.
And I’d respond to Boehner, “If you agree that the debt ceiling has to be raised, you also agree that you have zero leverage. And if you agree to raise it for 6 weeks, there’s zero reason why you can’t raise it indefinitely. So go whip votes for an elimination of it entirely, or an attachment that states when funding is passed, the debt ceiling goes with it.”
No, you don’t say that. You just know it. Boehner knows it too, and he knows you know it, and you know he knows you know it. Saying it just creates problems.
If I didn’t know any better .. I’d think Boehner is stabbing Eric Cantor in the back. After all, if the GOP controls the House come Jan. ’15, who will be Speaker?
I’m holding off on my ‘you told me so!’ until the whole thing is resolved, but goddam will I be glad to say it.
The GOP is now in a state of almost open internecine warfare. Want proof? Just read these two stories.
On the one side, a young schmuck named Michael Needham and the Tea Party diehards (now officially dissociated from by the Koch Brothers, but until yesterday funded by them), full of piss and vinegar. On the other side, pretty much the entire world business and banking sector, who are starting to get a wee bit tired of all the shenanigans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-shutdowns-enforcer-in-chief/2013/10/09/0b86d
924-312d-11e3-89ae-16e186e117d8_story.html?hpid=z3
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html?_r=0
I think I know who’s going to win this war, but in the meantime I advise everybody to buy popcorn futures.
And by the way, to those who have expressed worries that the business and banking sector are about to transfer their affections to the Democratic Party — it ain’t gonna happen. Read the last two paragraphs of the second story.
It’ll be easy to fire that poor schmuck who thinks his job is worth a damn. And then after their “disassociation,” they’ll hire someone else just like him.
Remember that Needham (Heritage Action) works for Jim DeMint.
Absolutely.
And DeMint is totally “down” with the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, Citizens United, and everything that’s happened is vintage Koch. But the point is, they’re being forced to back off a bit right now, and I’m not sure Needham (and maybe even DeMint) have got the memo yet. Maybe they won’t. But their bosses have.
Ed Meese is not only one of the nastiest people in American public life, he also has a record of screwing up everything he touches. But he was a special Koch pick.
we’re looking at a major strategic screw up that once again exposes the fundamental weaknesses of today’s GOP. They tried to make it a replay of the 2012 elections, and yes indeed, they will lose again.
The big boys are admitting, sure we were happy with the Tea Party from 2010 up to the present, but this is starting to get ridiculous.
So our fight’s not over by a long shot, but the tide is turning. I suspect the Republican Party is going to feel some impact from this in 2014.
“They tried to make it a replay of the 2012 elections, and yes indeed, they will lose again.”
That horrible Amy Kremer woman from the Tea Party Express was on one of the 24-hour news stations last week, and when the Democratic strategist on the panel pointed out that the ACA was a Constitutionally passed law that passed Supreme Court review and that the President was re-elected over an opponent who had pledged to repeal Obamacare and was soundly rejected…
Kremer whined “Well if we knew then what we know now about this train wreck of a law the results of the election would have been different!”
The ultimate skewed poll- retroactive reversal of a Presidential election result, BECUZ AMY SEZ SO! Honest to God, pointing and laughing is the most appropriate response sometimes.
And their plan for what happens after the six-week debt limit reprieve expires is?? They’re still in la-la land.
They have no viable plan. They’re going to want to try some extension of this, but every time they do it the American people just get more fed up with them.
My argument against you never was about Boehner. He’s not the one holding Republican unity of the so-called “moderates”. As best I can tell from the reporting, Boehner is not exerting leadership but taking whip counts or conducting meetings.
The question is whether the political dynamics of the GOP caucus are such that the lemmings would shoot the hostages just through disagreement and inaction in the caucus. That question is not yet settled.
Democrats must take away the debt limit gun for good as a part of this first round of negotiation. If they negotiate for six weeks, that negotiation must be about raising the debt limit until December 2014 and restoring the Gephardt rule.
You still don’t get it. Read that Tweet again.
Boehner to caucus: “raise the debt ceiling or I will capitulate entirely.”
That is what he told the caucus this morning.
I read it very carefully. Not time for champagne yet.
THD, Boehner’ just got the tacit signal from the Koch brothers themselves to go ahead and settle this thing, not to mention the rest of the business and banking sector, who are even starting ot talk about primarying against Tea Party candidates.
Boehner is a guy who knows which side his bread is buttered on, but he is not and never has been a Tea Party loyalist. I see no reason why he has to be beholden to these crazy back-benchers any more.
You’re also assuming the president won’t tell him to go fuck himself. I’m thinking the response will be “Open the government too and we’ll talk.” At that point, he’d be essentially daring the Republicans to try this crap again. I don’t think they’d do it.
Did he just say a short term debt ceiling hike would be okay? I thought he closed off that avenue.
I agree. They absolutely must get the damn gun!!
Who’s capitulating? The inn is a National Park Service vendor.
NC Inn Stays Open; Declares Victory over Shutdown
Did you see this description of a rule change in House that guaranteed a shut-down?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/the-house-gop-s-little-rule-change-that-guaranteed-a-shutdown
Interesting. So Boehner wanted a shutdown so bad he was willing to leave his fingerprints on it and not just trust his whip count. The country wasn’t dragged over the cliff by the Tea Party, it was pushed by Boehner, and pushed hard.
In a way, it makes sense. If Boehner didn’t want to default, he had to have it out in advance. So he closed the gates of regress. Not a great strategy if you’re actually trying to win, but if you’re real goal is to keep your job as asswhipe-of-the-house, not bad.
Great catch by that reporter.
Well, first of all, unhatched chickens and all that. It’s not time to start dancing yet.
But- Looks to me like Boehner is executing more-or-less the plan many guessed he had, which was to shut down the government and use the resulting brouhaha to get the Teahadis to knuckle under to a debt limit increase. It’s going to be very politically costly for the Republicans, though.
Seeing the Koch brothers at least pretend to switch sides is interesting. And they switched on the CR as well as the debt limit. I wonder what motivated them? Did they do some focus groups and find, as I suspect, that either a default or an extended shutdown would send the Republicans the way of the Whigs, and them with it?
“I wonder what motivated them?”
Wonder no more. This is what motivated them:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html
It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but it’s nice to see the knives coming out.
Several have said that Cruz’s plan was never to succeed, but rather to force votes that could be used against moderates in the primaries. If so, I wonder if he foresaw another likely outcome: establishment money realizing it had created a monster, and then pulling out the financial support. If the Tea Party loses a substantial chunk of its cash flow over this, well, Merry Christmas!
I am sure, absolutely positive, that that thought never crossed Ted Cruz’s mind.
he’s a barn burner, not the most prudent fellow in the world.
And he believes he is absolutely protected by the unlimited resources of the Kochs:
“I would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Senator Jim DeMint.” — Ted Cruz
“I would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Senator Jim DeMint.”
Sorry, I meant to paste in the link for that quote, not repeat it.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-long-arm-and-hidden-hand-of-jim-demint-20131001
Following that link made me feel dirty. Now I know why I’ll never make a truly effective activist: Seeing the pictures of all those conservative zombies just makes me want to shoot myself in the face. It’s like we’re psychologically two different species.
Maybe so. Homo sapiens and homo sociopathicus.
Well I didn’t argue with Booman, but I did sell some stock anticipating a sharper drop than what we’ve seen. Then I was gonna get back in. I thought it would go to the 11th hour. Hell it’s only 9 p.m.
Old saying – “A Bull can make money, a Bear can make money, but a Hog always loses.”
Definitely NOT calling you a hog, just warning about reaching too high for profits.
A lot of wise folks say trying to time the market seldom works, and I usually follow that logic. I’ve gotten a lot right over the last several years, but the market’s a wild beast and always eager to teach a lesson. Still learnin’.
I think it’s fair to say that when even crazy-eyes is beginning to sound reasonable, you know the end of days is upon us.
If the Democrats have any guts, they’ll tell Boehner to pass a clean CR and raise the debt ceiling, or fuck off.
Period.
Ok, this made me LOL
>”anyone who argued with me when I said that Boehner would never, ever, shoot the hostage now owes me an apology.”
I never thought Boehner would shoot the hostage – I’m afraid Obama will shoot the hostage (me) by cutting social security with chained CPI – and I would very much love to issue you an apology on that.