Letter 2 America for September 20, 2013

Dear America,

It's toe hunting season again, and the Republican Party has reloaded its foot shooting pistol once more, and with the same gauge ammo as well: extortion.  Last week, John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, floated an informal straw poll on a bill that would have increased the debt ceiling but de-funding "Obamacare."  But his conservative disloyal opposition within the party balked and the bill never came to a vote.  And the reason for the balk wasn't that they didn't think they could manage to de-fund Obamacare; it was that they didn't want to increase the debt ceiling.  A Tea Party style conservative measure wasn't far enough right for them, so they held out for something farther out in right field, and today they are going to get it.  Boehner has a new plan.  This time he wants to pass a continuing resolution--that is an extension of the present levels of sequester spending--until December, and to that he wants to attach the de-funding of Obamacare.  Maybe he thinks that the difference is too arcane for us humble Americans to follow and he can put over on us some things that he failed to accomplish on several other attempts, but because he has bundled a couple of them together we won't notice that it's the same old song and this time we'll feel different about it.  I haven't seen a Pew Research Poll on it yet, but I think he is taking dead aim on what few toes his party has left to shoot off.

The difference between the two bills is that the first one would have resolved the issue of the debt ceiling for probably another year or so without any budgetary implications except for the de-funding of universal insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.  But Boehner underestimated the obduracy, not to mention the irrationality and single mindedness, of his intra-party rivals.  As he has discovered on several occasions in the past two years, conservative isn't conservative enough anymore.  The Tea Party caucus within the Republican Party--and by the way, the fact of a Tea Party caucus within an elected body certainly suggests that the IRS was right to scrutinize organizations with the phrase Tea Party in their names that were looking for tax exempt status based on the lack of a political agenda--won't have anything to do with extending the debt ceiling once and for all when they think that opposing it with anti-social austerity instead is a winner for them.  That is why the second try for Boehner doesn't increase the debt ceiling but just puts off the fight over it with a continuing resolution that would prevent default on our national debt in the short term while it creates a current fight over the debt but preserves the issue for a rematch in December when the continuing resolution is scheduled to expire.  They see the national debt and deficit as the apple, as in Garden of Eden, and they think that no one will notice that they are trying to take two bites.  But recent history, which goes back now to 2010 when the "super-committee" was created and to 2011 when it yielded nothing but the sequester about which everyone is now complaining but about which no one is doing anything, makes that unlikely.  Everyone will see, especially when the Democrats start pointing it out, that we've been here and done that already on a couple of occasions.

It is likely that in 2014 by contrast, when we all go back to the polls, even conservative voters will repudiate the advocates of that strategy in light of its persistent failure and its withering effect on Republican hopes for redemption in the popular consciousness.  I understand that Boehner has no choice since his party is what it is, and if he wants to be speaker he has to mollify its most powerful contingent: the Tea Party.  They aren't the majority of Republicans, but they claim that they represent the nearly universal trend in the party, and the moderate Republicans are afraid they are right, which is prudent for a bunch of career politicians.  The nomination is now the election that must be won in many districts, so the question in those districts is, are you conservative enough to comport with the parochial political bent.  If you get nominated you'll win the general election because Republicans are the majority in those districts on account of redistricting, which drives the candidates in the district further and further right, and further and further out of the main stream nationally.  In consequence, these people have entrenched positions that cannot result in legislation because they are in the minority nationally even though they feel the pulse of their home district voters.  And as self-interest is what motivates them, they do what they have to do to get reelected and ignore the national interest.  But there has to be a limit to the tolerance of conservatives for failure, and until someone on the conservative side comes up with a better plan, every time they brush it off and re-float it they are alienating a few more staunch conservatives who don't give a damn about the Tea Party; they just want to see some change.

So, by the end of the day we will either have another Boehner humiliation to discuss with the defeat of even this effort to pander to those who are giving conservatism a bad name, or The House will have passed yet another bill that cannot become law and they will have to eat it when the Senate revises it and sends it back.  Either way, the Democrats...if they are subtle and smart enough...will take another pound of flesh from the Republican oppositions political body, rendering it that much more moribund, and just in time for the start of the 2014 electoral season.  I say, here's to you boys.  Keep on pulling the trigger on that foot shooter.  You seem to hit your mark every time.  

Your friend,

Mike