In 2008 a political wave occurred that completely changed the balance of political power in this country. Democrats had a huge majority in the house, 59 (or 60 depending on how you look at it) seats in the Senate and the White House. They also had a majority of governorships and state legislatures. Yes, it was a good time to be a Democrat. Then a curious thing seemed to occur – the conservative movement lost its collective mind. All of a sudden it was in fashion to question authority, and everything Barack Obama did made him the worst President in American history.
The first target that truly became the Conservative call-to-arms was the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Protesters streamed to Washington and a new movement, the Tea Party, sprang up to battle this massive wave of government intervention they viewed as anathema to America. They pushed for a generation of the most conservative lawmakers in American history and created one of the biggest Republican waves ever, sweeping Republicans into a majority of governorships, state legislatures, and the House.
Almost immediately the GOP attempted to repeal virtually everything the President did, and refused to allow him to advance ANY agenda he set forth, and for the most part they succeeded. At this point you may be wondering why I am giving you a recent history lesson. Had the GOP any sense when they were swept into office, instead of attempting to repeal a law, an action with zero chance of success, they would have attempted to gut the law in exchange for something else the President wanted, but in their zeal to win elections their mouth made promises that their legislative hands couldn’t keep. You see, when a movement paints something as “evil”, “monstrous”, and “UnAmerican”, it makes negotiating impossible. After all, to negotiate with such forces is appeasement. So any talks with the President, by the Republican House would be seen as a betrayal by the grassroots. In short, while electing a GOP House to stop the President’s agenda, it also made any sort of functional government impossible.
The next great battle was over the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling was raising the amount of debt the Federal Government could gain. As you might expect, the conservative movement believed that the Federal Government should live within its means and did not want to raise the debt ceiling, forcing a partial default of the Federal Government. Had this occurred the economic damage would have been enormous. So the President and Speaker Boehner had an idea. They came up with a plan that would have made modest cuts to spending, and creating a modest tax increase on the wealthy. The plan would have reduced the deficit by 3 trillion dollars over 10 years. This is how adults work, you give up part of what you want in exchange to get something more important. If you are wondering what occurred with this deal, the answer is depressingly predictable. The far right balked at any tax increase and demanded even great spending cuts. Bohner, being the intelligent politician he is, knew the White House wouldn’t agree and so the deal fell apart.
It was during this time that the bright idea of Sequestration came about. Massive across the board cuts and tax increases that can only be offset by tax increases and spending cuts in other areas. The cuts were designed to be so painful that not only the laziest, most incompetent Congress would allow them to go though, hence why we are dealing with sequestration.
If you are seeing a pattern emerge of a conservative movement that is so incapable of compromise that they cause damage to not just the country but to their own interests, you are not alone. Time and time again the President will offer some sort of compromise and it will barely be considered. Then the GOP will be blamed for a very avoidable crisis.
This brings us to the government shutdown in 2013, in which the GOP attempted to cut funding for Obamacare, in exchange for funding the entire government. If that sounds like extortion to you, that means you have a good working understanding of the english language. The GOP views everything it stands for as being so important, that to give even an inch on ANY issue, is akin to surrender. Time and time again a crisis of Washington’s own making will occur, the Democrats will propose a centrist, or center left solution, the GOP will reject the entire proposal and will come up with zero alternative, knowing that anything the House would produce would be used against them in the next election. Even if you disagree with President Obama, at least he has the guts to propose a budget every single year. The House hasn’t produced a new one since 2012. They have only approved the same budget over and over and over again.
This bring us to Senator Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran. We have already talked about the letter in an earlier post but what I want to talk about is the intent of the letter. Now, if you are going to tell a hostile state “any deal struck my be modified by congress” before the talks are concluded, your goal has to be to undermine those talks. Now I am sure some of you are saying “Well Iran is a hostile state, a sponsor of terrorism, Iranian backed militias have attacked U.S. and Israeli forces, Iran has even threatened to destroy Israel. Why should we be talking to these people at all?” Because we won’t attack them. Iran is a geopolitical foe and is likely to remain one. Not only that but that, but with Iran pursuing Nuclear weapons their power will only increase. At this stage there are only two routes to remove those weapons: war or for Iran to disarm. The GOP seems to think Iran can be bullied and threatened into giving up its weapons, that we can force them to give up nukes without lifting any sanctions first. To many in Iran, negotiating with the United States “whom they see as evil” is wrong on any level and to do so is a sign of surrender. Gee, doesn’t that sound familiar? Any deal that the President strikes would more than likely be killed by the hardliners in Iran. If that had happened the world would have seen the United States negotiate in good faith while Iran backed out. However, now that it looks like the United States is trying to sabotage the deal before it is even struck will give states like China the perfect out for not pushing even tighter sanctions on Iran. Had we been able to get China to stop buying Iranian oil, it could very well cause the Iranian economy to collapse and a nuclear program would’ve been extremely difficult to continue. But by sending the letter, it will give the hard liners a perfect out and make tougher sanctions from states that still heavily trade with Iran nearly impossible.
This is the problem of the GOP. They only see a world of black and white and will not tolerate any way but their own. While the GOP has been able to cripple Democrats all over the country, they are once again only reacting to his agenda instead of creating one of their own. Obama has mastered the art of getting bitten on the hand. He reaches out and allows his hand to get bitten and when this occurs it allows him to set much more of the agenda than he would otherwise. This was his strategy with Iran and had the GOP not interefered it would have very likely worked.
This idea has created a gridlock in Washington that even with a GOP controlled congress they have difficulty passing legislation just to get to the President’s desk, let alone getting enough votes to override a veto, so, logically, you would think some attempt at compromise on tax reform, immigration, infrastructure, and a whole host of other issues would at least have been attempted in the GOP controlled house, yet to date virtually no bills have passed the House on these issues. The GOP wants to govern yet doesn’t want to make sacrifices to do so. This is why, even though the GOP has the larges House majority in a century, they still need support from some Democrats to pass the most basic of budget bills. If we are to have a functional government we need a Republican party that is more akin to a well oiled machine and less like an episode of Jerry Springer.
Willis and law Online 