The new Republican House Majority

GOP ignored Ryan plan red flags
By: Glenn Thrush and Jake Sherman
May 23, 2011 04:48 AM EDT

It might be a political time bomb — that’s what GOP pollsters warned as House Republicans prepared for the April 15 vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, with its plan to dramatically remake Medicare.

No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch — casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors — the Ryan budget’s approval rating barely budged above the high 30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation.

The poll numbers on the plan were so toxic — nearly as bad as those of President Barack Obama’s health reform bill at the nadir of its unpopularity — that staffers with the National Republican Congressional Committee warned leadership, “You might not want to go there” in a series of tense pre-vote meetings.

But go there Republicans did, en masse and with rhetorical gusto — transforming the political landscape for 2012, giving Democrats a new shot at life and forcing the GOP to suddenly shift from offense to defense.

It’s been more than a month since Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenant, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) boldly positioned their party as a beacon of fiscal responsibility — a move many have praised as principled, if risky. In the process, however, they raced through political red lights to pass Ryan’s controversial measure in a deceptively unified 235-193 vote, with only four GOP dissenters.

The story of how it passed so quickly — with a minimum of public hand-wringing and a frenzy of backroom machinations — is a tale of colliding principles and power politics set against the backdrop of a fickle and anxious electorate.

The outward unity projected by House Republicans masked weeks of fierce debate, even infighting, and doubt over a measure that stands virtually no chance of becoming law. In a series of heated closed-door exchanges, dissenters, led by Ryan’s main internal rival — House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) — argued for a less radical, more bipartisan approach, GOP staffers say.

At a fundraiser shortly after the vote, a frustrated Camp groused, “We shouldn’t have done it” and that he was “overridden,” according to a person in attendance.

A few days earlier, as most Republicans remained mute during a GOP conference meeting on the Ryan plan, Camp rose and drily asserted, “People in my district like Medicare,” one lawmaker, who is now having his own doubts about voting yes, told POLITICO.

At the same time, GOP pollsters, political consultants and House and NRCC staffers vividly reminded leadership that their members were being forced to walk the plank for a piece of quixotic legislation. They described for leadership the horrors that might be visited on the party during the next campaign, comparing it time and again with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to ram through a cap-and-trade bill despite the risks it posed to Democratic incumbents.

“The tea party itch has definitely not been scratched, so the voices who were saying, ‘Let’s do this in a way that’s politically survivable,’ got drowned out by a kind of panic,” a top GOP consultant involved in the debate said, on condition of anonymity.

“The feeling among leadership was, we have to be true to the people who put us here. We don’t know what to do, but it has to be bold.”

Another GOP insider involved to the process was more morbid: “Jumping off a bridge is bold, too.”

Time will tell whether the Medicare vote, the most politically significant legislative act of the 112th Congress thus far, will be viewed by 2012 voters as a courageous act of fiscal responsibility — or as an unforced error that puts dozens of marginal GOP seats and the party’s presidential candidates at serious risk. That question might be answered, in part, this week during a special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District, in which Republican Jane Corwin appears to be losing ground to Democrat Kathy Hochul.

The GOP message team is already scrambling to redefine the issue as a Republican attempt to “save” Medicare, not kill it.

But the party’s stars remain stubbornly misaligned. Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich candidly described the Medicare plan as “right-wing social engineering” — only to pull it back when Ryan and others griped. And Priorities USA Action, an independent group started by two West Wing veterans of the Obama administration, was out Friday with its first ad, a TV spot in South Carolina using Gingrich’s words to savage Mitt Romney for saying he was on the “same page” as Ryan.

“The impact of what the House Republicans have done is just enormous. It will be a litmus test in the GOP [presidential] primary,” said former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, one of the group’s founders.

“I couldn’t believe these idiots — I don’t know what else to call them — they’re idiots. ... They actually made their members vote on it. It was completely stunning to me,” said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat who worked hard to win over the western part of his state, which has among the highest concentration of elderly voters in the country.

It was also the site of some of the Democrats’ worst losses in 2010 — three swing House seats Democrats hope to recapture next year, largely on the strength of the Medicare argument.

“Look at [freshman House members in the Pittsburgh-Scranton area], they make them vote on this when they’re representing one of the oldest districts in the country?” Rendell asked.

“We have a message challenge, a big one, and that’s what the polling is showing,” conceded Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a former Karl Rove protégé who enthusiastically backed the Ryan plan. “There’s no way you attack the deficit in my lifetime without dealing with the growth of Medicare. Do we get a political benefit from proposing a legitimate solution to a major policy problem? That’s an open question.”

The House Republican leadership had hinted at an emerging plan to tackle entitlement reform on Feb. 14 — the day Obama released his budget without reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Cantor caught Hill reporters by surprise when he said, nonchalantly, that the Republican budget would be a “serious document that will reflect the type of path we feel we should be taking to address the fiscal situation, including addressing entitlement reforms.”

But there were also internal motivations in the decision to go big on Medicare, rooted in Boehner’s still tenuous grasp of the leadership reins, according to a dozen party operatives and Hill staffers interviewed by POLITICO.

Republican sources said Boehner, who has struggled to control his rambunctious new majority, needed to send a message to conservative upstarts that he was serious about bold fiscal reform — especially after some of the 63 freshmen rebelled against his 2011 budget deal that averted a government shutdown.

Then there’s the ever-present friction between Boehner and Cantor, who, along with Minority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), has positioned himself as the next generation of GOP leadership and champion of the conservative freshman class.

Boehner’s camp said the speaker has always supported the Ryan approach — which would offer vouchers to future Medicare recipients currently younger than 55 in lieu of direct federal subsidies — and proved his support by voting for a similar measure in 2009.

“Boehner has said for years, including leading up to the 2010 election, that we would honestly deal with the big challenges facing our country,” said his spokesman, Michael Steel. “With 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day, it is clear to everyone that Medicare will not be there for future generations unless it is reformed. The status quo means bankruptcy and deep benefit cuts for seniors. It’s clear who the real grown-ups in the room are. We’ve told the truth and led, while the Democrats who run Washington have cravenly scrambled and lied for partisan gain.”

But that message hasn’t always been quite that clear. On several occasions, Boehner has seemed squishy on the Ryan budget. In talking to ABC News, Boehner said he was “not wedded” to the plan and that it was “worthy of consideration.”

Still, even if Boehner had opposed the plan — and his top aide, Barry Jackson, expressed concerns about the political fallout to other staffers — he probably couldn’t have stopped the Ryan Express anyway, so great was the push from freshmen and conservatives.

That’s not to say some of the speaker’s allies from the Midwest didn’t try. Camp and Ryan hashed out their differences in a series of private meetings that, on occasion, turned testy, according to several GOP aides. Camp argued that the Ryan plan, which he backed in principle — and eventually voted for — was a nonstarter that would only make it harder to reach a bipartisan framework on real entitlement reform.

A few weeks later, Camp told a health care conference that, from a pragmatic legislative perspective, he considered the Ryan budget history. “Frankly, I’m not interested in talking about whether the House is going to pass a bill that the Senate shows no interest in. I’m not interested in laying down more markers,” he said.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) also made the case for a more moderate approach — but his principal concern was the Medicaid portion of Ryan’s plan, an approach he believed wouldn’t do enough to reduce burdens of indigent care on states.

But even as Democrats high-five over the possibility of Medicare-fueled political gains, Republicans are trying to muster a unified defense. Cantor, for his part, stumbled by suggesting to a Washington Post reporter that the Ryan Medicare provisions might be ditched during bipartisan debt negotiations being led by Vice President Joe Biden.

Cantor later clarified his remarks and claimed he still backed the Ryan principles, but no GOP staffer interviewed for this article believed the Medicare overhaul has any realistic chance of passage.

Republicans and Their Debt-Happy Policies

Jamelle Bouie | May 23, 2011 | TAPPED

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities revises its widely-used deficit chart to reflect the chief drivers debt since the beginning of last decade. The results are nearly identical:



Together, the Bush tax cuts -- and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- account for a huge chunk of current and projected public debt.

Relatedly, it's amazing how much of this has evaded public conversation over debts and deficits. With few exceptions, Republican scaremongering on the debt has come from lawmakers who wholeheartedly supported the offending policies. Both Paul Ryan and John Boehner voted for the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare Part D and deregulatory policies that contributed to the financial collapse. As director of OMB under President Bush, not only was Mitch Daniels chief advocate for the president's tax cuts, but he consistently lowballed the cost of the Iraq War, promising a $60 billion adventure instead of a trillion dollar quagmire. And now, we're treated to a host of Republican proposals that promise to increase debt over the next decade, cut taxes for the wealthy, and reduce the social safety net to tatters.

Actual budget seriousness has evaded the Republican Party for at least a decade, if not more, but this has yet to make a dent in the public consciousness. It's baffling.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri's tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

"If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental," Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term "pay-fors" is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

Fantasy Island
Are Republicans losing their grip on reality?

By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, May 20, 2011, at 12:22 PM ET



At a press conference last week, someone asked Chris Christie for his views on evolution vs. creationism. "That's none of your business," the New Jersey governor barked in response.

This minor incident, which barely rated as news for a few political blogs, offers a glimpse of Christie's personality, which seems increasingly grumpy and snappish. But it says even more about the current state of the national Republican Party, where magical thinking trumps rationality, and even to acknowledge basic realities about the world we live in runs the risk of damaging one's political future.

Christie is not part of the natural constituency for Darwin-denial. He's an intelligent man, a lawyer, a fiscal rather than a social conservative. But Christie is also someone who might want to run for president someday, or be selected as someone's running mate. For those purposes, he must constantly ask himself the question: Am I about to say something to which a white, evangelical, socially conservative, gun-owning, Obama-despising, pro-Tea Party, GOP primary voter in rural South Carolina might object? By this standard, simple acceptance of the theory of evolution becomes a risky stance. To lie or to duck? Christie chose the option of ducking while signaling his annoyance at being put in this ridiculous predicament.

Moments like this point to a growing asymmetry in our politics. One party, the Democrats, suffers from the usual range of institutional blind spots, historical foibles, and constituency-driven evasions. The other, the Republicans, has moved to a mental Shangri-La, where unwanted problems (climate change, the need to pay the costs of running the government) can be wished away, prejudice trumps fact (Obama might just be Kenyan-born or a Muslim), expertise is evidence of error, and reality itself comes to be regarded as some kind of elitist plot.

Like the White Queen in her youth, the contemporary Republican politician must be capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Foremost among these is the claim that it is possible to balance the federal budget without raising taxes. Most Republican politicians are intelligent enough to understand that with federal revenues at 14.4 percent of GDP and expenditures at 25.3 percent, it is, in fact, impossible to close the fiscal gap with spending cuts alone. But GOP candidates acknowledge this reality at their peril. Grover Norquist, the right-wing lobbyist and former collaborator of Jack Abramoff's, has appointed himself chief enforcer of the party's anti-tax catechism. If Republican candidates won't sign his no-new-taxes pledge, Norquist and fellow inquisitors at the Club for Growth threaten them with excommunication, social death, and the punishment of being "primaried" by a well-funded conservative challenger.

Reality-denial is not limited to the Republican inability to utter words like evolution and revenue. The long-range forecasts in the Paul Ryan plan, which show spending falling to 3 percent of GDP to allow for additional tax cuts, express an impossible libertarian fantasy. So too does the current Republican effort to bring this utopia about by refusing to raise the federal government's credit card limit. It is not a matter of conjecture, but something closer to a universal understanding among economists, that failing to raise the debt ceiling could cause another global economic crash. The plutocratic populist Donald Trump recently answered this objection on behalf of the party. "What do economists know? Most of them aren't very smart."

Another series of Republican fictions relates to climate change. This starts, at one extreme, with the outright denial of Michele Bachmann, progressing through the various "not-man-made" and "the jury's-still-out" dodges offered by the likes of Sarah Palin and John Thune. Christie handled this issue in the same evasive way he did the evolution question, albeit with less aggression, shortly after being elected. "I'm skeptical—I'm skeptical," he said. "And you know, I think at the end of this, I think we're going to need more science to prove something one way or the other." The conservative press has gone after Newt Gingrich merely for saying the country must do something to address climate change. But if you're one of the conservatives who had the misfortune to accept science during the pre-Tea Party era, don't worry–you can still escape extinction by expressing doubt about any possible solution. This describes the position of Mitch Daniels; Mitt Romney; and Tim Pawlenty, who once supported cap-and-trade but has simply reversed himself, offering a self-flagellating apology and confession ("it was stupid").

Then there are all the mundane, material facts that Republicans choose to "doubt." The market in Obama lies has moved in rough parallel to the recent silver bubble. Over a period of months, the paranoid and foolish bought in, driving up the price. Republican candidates tried to find sly ways to signal skepticism about the President's American-ness and Christianity without sounding like complete imbeciles. Then Donald Trump, for whom that's not a problem, started buying in bulk. This infuriated the outflanked Sarah Palin, who used to have this wackadoodle territory to herself. Then President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, the bubble burst, and Trump was publicly ruined at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. With birther sentiment deflated, Palin has moved on to a new, no less idiotic slander, that William Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader, might have written Obama's memoirs.

Even after the release of Obama's birth certificate, however, nearly one-quarter of Republicans still refuse to believe that the president was born in the United States. Conspiracy thinking is flourishing on the right like no time since the McCarthy era. The GOP rank and file is in desperate need of a cold shower, a slap in the face, a wake-up call. But instead of telling the base to get a grip on reality, the party's leaders are chasing after the delusional mob. To get to the front of the line in 2012, Republican candidates must pretend to believe a lot of nonsense than isn't so. Or do they actually believe it?

These guys just kill me. I honestly cannot understand their mindset.

COLD CALL
Posted by Murphy On May - 23 - 2011
Volunteering at the Corwin Phone Bank



AMHERST–It was like any other day after the apocalypse. “This is the Sabbath!” an older woman shouts in my ear. “It’s supposed to be a day of rest!”

“I know, ma’am,” I say. “But–

“But nothing!” she yells. “I can’t believe you people are calling me again!”

“But there’s a very important election coming up this Tuesday and if you don’t vote for Jane Corwin horrible things will happen to you and the people you love…she was a successful business fetus…hello?”

[dial tone]

This was a fairly common exchange. I spent about three hours volunteering at Jane Corwin HQ, phoning potential voters, under the alias Steve Smith–an underemployed pet psychic and WNY repat most recently from Oakland, CA.

“That’s…interesting,” an organizer named Erin says, not really paying attention. “Well, thanks for helping out.” I probably didn’t have to go through the trouble, but I’d given myself a buzz cut, dyed my hair black and wore a pair of thick-framed reading glasses, for a disguise. After about ten minutes of sweating through my oxford shirt, it became clear that no one in that room thought I was anything other than Steve Smith, eager Republican wanker.

I actually spoke with roughly 100 people, and the majority of them were extremely upset with the harassment by phone. Unless they immediately relented and said they were voting for Jane, their name went back into the system, and we’d call them until their spirits were thoroughly crushed. It’s an odd campaigning strategy — one that is no doubt backfiring.

People are sick of the media saturation–the constant lies spewing from camp Corwin. These calls seemed to represent the last straw for a lot of folks.

“Um, Bob?” I beckon the supervisor.

“Yeah, Steve, what is it?”

“Some of these people are saying that Jane is going to end Medicare–just because that’s what the Wall Street Journal wrote. What should I tell them–should I lie?”

“Hmm…” Bob thinks about this for a few seconds. “They’ve been asking about Medicare?”

“Yeah.” And they were.

“****,” he mumbles under his breath. “Don’t lie. Tell them that, if they’re 55 or over, Jane’s plan won’t change their Medicare. And if they’re 54 or under tell them that Jane’s plan will…um…make things…better.” He walks away.

“But, Bob?” I call after him. “Some of these people are younger and they think Medicare is a problem…should I tell them that Jane’s plan will end Medicare?”

“Yeah, if it helps,” he says, running back to his desk. The ruminant Chairman of the Erie County Republican Committee Nick Langworthy is lingering in a back corner. They conspire about something terrible, no doubt.

“Sir!” shouts a phone-banker next to me named Francesca. “She is not trying to end Medicare!” This phrase was more common than the ringing of bells–we were supposed to ring a bell anytime someone said they’re voting for Jane. Francesca’s been on the phone with this one guy for 20 minutes. She’s forced to call in the resident old (and definitely crazy) lady I’ll call Old Lady. She waddles over to Francesca’s phone and launches into her spiel about Hochul’s non-plan for Medicare, which I’ve been listening to all day.

“She was on the radio this morning!” she screeches. “She has no plan!” The guy hangs up. Someone from the Corwin camp will be calling again. There’s about a solid dozen–mostly Young Republican types–manning the phones. Down the sidewalk of the strip mall, there’s another Corwin office with another two dozen volunteers. That’s where the pizza and wings are. I help myself.

“Ugh!” Francesca complains, slamming the phone down. “It wasn’t even a question. It was a ten-minute soliloquy about what a terrible person I am.”

“The longer you keep him on the phone,” Bob breaks in, “the more likely he is to change his vote.” He could not be wronger.

“Hi, sir, my name’s Steve and I’m a volunteer for the Jane Corwin campaign–”

“Jesus!” a guy screams at me. “You know, I was thinking about voting for Corwin, but this is too much! You people have called me a dozen times in the last two days! I am sick of it!”

“But Jane Corwin wants to rule over you with an iron fist,” I calmly relay. “Don’t you crave strong leadership?”

“What?!” he balks. “An ‘iron fist’?”

“Yes,” I assure him. “These phone calls are just the beginning. When Jane’s in Congress she will do everything in her power to crush you mentally and physically.”

“Don’t call me again!” he says and slams down the receiver.

“Corwin walked door-to-door handing out phone books!” Old Lady shouts into a phone. “She knows what hard work is!” We exchange glances. “Do you listen to Donald Trump?” she asks the person on the other end. I’m not sure why.

Not a lot of bell-ringing. “Should we use the word ‘Republican’?” one of the kids asks Bob.

“NO!” he yells nervously. And that’s really the crux of the thing. The Republicans have overextended themselves, Paul Ryan’s draconian budget rightly doesn’t sit well with most Americans, and Corwin’s support of it was a monumental blunder. And now, she’s trying to regain that lost ground with dishonest TV adverts and by phoning people to death.

But people are not having it. This race was Corwin’s to lose, and she’s doing exactly that.

The end is nigh.

Paul Ryan’s Anvil Into the Sea

A new CNN poll shows that majorities of every polled demographic group in the country -- including "Republicans" and "Conservatives" -- oppose the Ryan Medicare Phase Out plan. Overall 58% of Americans oppose it and 35% say they support it.

—Josh Marshall

Great left wing lies and fabrications guys, keep them coming!