Skip to main content

Why Republican Leadership is Getting the Willies

The Republican "establishment" is flailing around in search of some way to raise the debt ceiling, given the refusal of rank-and-file Republicans in the House to vote for any increase in it unless they get a significiant reduction in the federal deficit without any increases in tax revenues (which is to say, unless they get a significant reduction in the federal government, or more precisely the non-military aspect of the federal government).

We thus have Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offering an absurdly convoluted plan to let the President raise the debt ceiling on his own, along with a NY Times op-ed piece advocating raising the debt ceiling authored by a politcal crony of George W. Bush.  (In an earler and less partisan era, we would have been presented with a photo-op of former presidents, "from both parties," lined up at the White House to express their unanimous support for raising the debt ceiling).

But why, in any case, are "establishment" figures in the Republican Party now fleeing from the position of the Republican caucus in the House? -- and fleeing from what is now, unquestionably, the views of the electoral base of their own Party?

Has McConnell suddenly developed a concern to make good policy, rather than score political points? 

Far more likely is that "friends" of his at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- or at the Business Roundtable -- have made a call to him and made clear that they find unaccpetable the prospect of default.

This is to say that McConnell and his ilk are really caught between a rock and a hard place at this point; or more precisely, they are caught between their voters and those who are their puppet-masters.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 14, 2011 at 6:35 AM

    I don't think leadership is "flailing" at all. You say:
    "Far more likely is that "friends" of his at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- or at the Business Roundtable -- have made a call to him and made clear that they find unaccpetable the prospect of default"

    But why can these same business leaders not whip Cantor into line? Or Boehner? Or Kyle? There are divisions within the Republican party that are hard to forecast, but they do exist.

    And is this idea all that bad, after all?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/in-praise-of-mcconnells-plan/2011/07/11/gIQAoiHHBI_blog.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel A. SegalJuly 14, 2011 at 8:34 AM

    The same business leaders have Boehner in line (he has said he will support the McConnell plan). Cantor, it appears, is throwing his lot in with the principled but wild no-nothings of the Tea Party movement, who really believe we should have much lower taxes, a balanced budget, and a fair smaller non-military federal government. This is good. Let them battle among one another. The goal for progressives should be to shrink the over-sized and dangerous military, and to restore a more progressive tax structure to support a more democratic and just social order.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Response to the Pitzer Administration's "Statement on Ukraine"

On Tuesday, March 15, Pitzer's president and vice-president for academic affairs co-signed a statement of support for, and solidarity with, Ukrainians .  That statement ended with this comment: " We stand with Ukrainians who are demonstrating tremendous bravery, resilience, unity, and courage as they defend their homeland."   What's tragic and disturbing is that this valuable statement against state oppression when Ukrainians are the victims entirely contradicts the administration's opposition to taking a stand against state oppression when Palestinians are the victims.   The recent "Statement on Ukraine" evidences jarring dissonence when read next to  this statement of March 14, 2019 , when the same Pitzer president issued an unprecedented veto of shared governance, in order to block the Pitzer community's taking a stand against Israeli state apartheid and ethnic cleansing.   What follows is my public response to the administration's recent ...
5 comments
Read more

SECULAR STUDIES IN THE NY TIMES AND HERE AT PITZER

Back on May 7th, the headline in the NY Times read: "Pitzer College in California Adds Major in Secularism." The problem is that this headline was simply false.  No major was proposed; and none was approved. The NY Times article also reported the founding of a "department of secular studies" at Pitzer College (along with the major).  The truth or falsity of this second claim is more complex than the claim about the major--but this claim too is largely misleading.   To start, Pitzer prides itself on not having any "departments."  The closest analog to "departments" at Pitzer are odd beasts known as "Field Groups," and these "Field Groups" come in two kinds at the College.  The kind that is most like a department at other colleges are known as "Type A" field groups; there are also "Type B" field groups (which I will explain in a moment).  And the grain of truth in the NY Times story was that Pitzer Colle...
9 comments
Read more

Occupy Wall Street & "We are the 99%"

One of the few things that seems certain about "Occupy Wall Street" and related protests is that these are the most positive and hopeful political events in the United States at this time.  Beyond that, I find myself curious and uncertain. I do believe, however, that those of us who embrace these protests should be thinking and talking about how to make them better--or more precisely, how it might be possible to build on them to foster a robust social justice movement in our time.  Such a social justice movement would work to build a society--indeed, a world--in which the pursuit of profts and pursuit of economic growth (as measured in GDP or other monetary terms) are subordinated to insuring universal access to high quality health care, high quality education, and food security. In terms of thinking and talking about how to build on the Occupy protests with this g...
7 comments
Read more