And Now The Real Problem
By Mitch Berg
So the GOP has won, and won big.
That’s great. And it’s still worth taking a moment to savor the win.
But the time is coming soon – tomorrow? Monday? – when it’ll be time to ask the GOP “OK. Now – what have you done for us lately?”
And the answer is, outside the realm of the Tea Party, it’s been pretty mixed. The Karl Rove “Slick Consultant” wing of the GOP – which is less allied to conservative/libertarian principle than it is to at least theoretically putting numbers up on boards – still wields way too much control over the GOP.
This piece from Politico is clearly dated; it was written last week, before the election results blew away some of its statements…:
It doesn’t seem to matter much that the political track record of this GOP consultancy-industrial complex is execrable. Targeted Victory, LLC—which was co-founded by Michael Beach, the “national victory director” for the Republican Party during the 2008 campaign—played a key role in the development of “Project ORCA,” the now infamous Romney technology effort to win in 2012. It failed spectacularly. The manager of that effort for Targeted Victory was Tony Feather, who is now the “F” in FLS Connect, a powerhouse Republican consulting firm that handles much of the GOP’s voter contact. The “L” in FLS is Jeff Larson, who had been chief of staff for the Republican National Committee. FLS Connect also, at one time, employed Rich Beeson, who also worked at the RNC and went on to become Mitt Romney’s political director.
Understanding the incestuous ties between Republican consultants—the unending referrals of business between these friendly and insular consultant cliques—and the group think they promote is vital to comprehending the Republican predicament in 2014. Many of the groups that profited from Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 are now helping Republicans in 2014. Ron Bonjean, who worked for former establishment Republican leaders like Dennis Hastert and Trent Lott and is also a partner at a bipartisan firm, Singer Bonjean Strategies, in September took up an independent position with the NRSC. (The “Singer” in that firm, by the way, would be one Phil Singer, who worked for Chuck Schumer and served as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s communications director in 2006.)
The coveting of power for the sake of power and consultant-led group think have misdirected the GOP to strategic blunder after blunder.
…that are dated in terms of specific facts but still accurate. Indeed, that may be the big downside of Tuesday; the consulting class is going to claim the victory, notwithstanding the fact that it was more a vote against Obama, his policies and his malaise than for the GOP.
Republicans in Washington who declared war on their very base are now shocked that conservative voters have little interest or motivation in helping Pat Roberts, Thom Tillis, David Perdue, or a host of other candidates. A Republican establishment that has spent several years badmouthing Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and outside groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund now find themselves openly begging the Senate Conservatives Fund to engage in races while they fly Ted Cruz around the country to motivate the base.
And so the base was motivated.
But are the GOP’s problems fixed?
Not by a long shot.
It’s still the party that went with the flow with George W Bush on his deficit spending. It’s still the party that caved in to a bunch of neanderthals in purple Viking outfits and yellow wigs to give public money (appropriately laundered) to Zygi Wilf, to try to avoid losing political points.
Ask Jeff Johnson how many political points that saved us.
And I get it – compromises are going to have to happen, and no politician who actually gets into a position to to change things escapes without some compromise to their ideological purity (unless they turn themselves into self-satirizing caricatures like Paul Wellstone and Ron Paul, always voting pure unadulterated principle and rarely actually affecting policy). But it would be just great if the GOP would provide a consistent, sharp contrast to the Democrat Party and the DFL.
Republicans who are congratulating themselves this week had best keep it short and tasteful. The GOP has a lot of problems, and even some of us in the party are questioning the party’s commitment to being different from the Democrats in Washington and the DFL in Saint Paul.
Which GOP is going to show up at the capitols in DC and Saint Paul next January? The real one that is an actual meaningful alternative – the Tea Party – or the chuckleheads in the suits and the binders and binders full of excuses?
November 6th, 2014 at 8:48 am
I believe that the GOP in DC will be very busy simply trying to control Obama. He’s gone crazy, or at least sharp, historical losses in back-to-back mid terms has revealed the ‘true’ Obama. “Obama to Those Who Did Not Vote: ‘I Hear You, Too’”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/obama-those-who-did-not-vote-i-hear-you-too
Obama was closely watching the election returns. He got his start in politics by getting the ‘right’ people in the ‘right’ place to vote. Obama knows that the demographic that sent him to the White House in 2008 and 2012 did not show up to vote for him in 2010 and 2014. But he will pretend that they did. Obama believes that they will tacitly support his far-left policies and that his will protect him and this ‘majority’ will justify his tyranny.
Jesus Christ.
November 6th, 2014 at 8:58 am
The 70% who don’t show up, minus those who were disenfranchised, consent to whatever the other 30% decide. On the other hand, Democrats have been stopped in their ruination of America. Now it’s the Republicans’ turn. ;^)
November 6th, 2014 at 9:22 am
Jonathan Chait, NY Mag.:
“Hillary Clinton is the only thing standing between a Republican Party even more radical than George W. Bush’s version and unfettered control of American government.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/democrats-have-2-choices-gridlock-or-disaster.html
G. W. Bush was the most liberal Republican president since Nixon. If G.W. Bush’s Republican party was radical, what word will Chait use to describe the Tea Party?
People on the Left consider Jonathan Chait is considered to be a brainy guy.
November 6th, 2014 at 9:27 am
I think Boehner, McConnell and Obama could easily agree on a comprehensive plan to reform taxation, including lowering and making corporate taxes more uniform. The problem will be the legion of lobbyists whose client has something to lose/win in the process. It will require these three leaders to remain firm and resolved.
November 6th, 2014 at 9:49 am
If Obama wanted to reform corporate taxation, Emery, he could have done so any time in the last six years.
If you believe that Obama is willing to compromise, please explain why you believe this, if not to me, try to explain it to yourself.
It might be illuminating.
Like asking a liberal who believes that Obama saved the world economy with the 2009 stimulus where, exactly, Obama picked up his economics savvy. As an undergrad at Occidental or Columbia?
November 6th, 2014 at 9:58 am
That doesn’t sounds like where I live. It sounds like the America you read about if you chose the wrong blogs. We’re doing better than anywhere else.
November 6th, 2014 at 10:09 am
I didn’t write anything about America, Emery.
Have you had a stroke?
November 6th, 2014 at 10:11 am
“Like asking a liberal who believes that Obama saved the world economy”
Reading is a skill.
November 6th, 2014 at 10:25 am
“Like asking a liberal who believes that Obama saved the world economy”
This statement neither states nor implies anything about America. It would be just as valid if unemployment was 2% and GDP was growing at 6% as it would be if unemployment was 12% and we were in deep recession.
The statement says that more than one liberal believes that Obama saved the world economy in 2009. I can provide evidence for this:
Happy Birthday, Stimulus! You Saved the World
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/happy-birthday-stimulus-you-saved-the-world/283950/
November 6th, 2014 at 10:28 am
If you believe that Obama’s stimulus saved the world economy (or even the US economy), where do you think Obama learned all about economics? Why did he believe it would work?
What you know is not as important as why you know it. Epistemology is a bitch.
November 6th, 2014 at 11:09 am
“We’re doing better than anywhere else.”
November 6th, 2014 at 11:17 am
“We’re doing better than anywhere else.”
That’s what the people sitting in the back row of the bus said, as it plunged off the cliff. “Those people sitting up front by the driver are MUCH closer to the bottom of the canyon than we,” they thought, smugly.
November 6th, 2014 at 11:22 am
“If Obama wanted to reform corporate taxation, Emery, he could have done so any time in the last six years.”
How interesting. Aren’t these things they could have done last year or before? That meant the Democrats would have gotten credit.
Will Boehner and McConnell stand up to the fringe Tea Party types like Cruz? If not, then nothing happens. If they do, then maybe the grownups are back in charge. We’ll see.
November 6th, 2014 at 11:55 am
“Aren’t these things they could have done last year or before?”
Who are “they”?
November 6th, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Are you asking rhetorical questions for any particular reason?
November 6th, 2014 at 12:49 pm
“Aren’t these things they could have done last year or before?”
The subject is unclear. Who are ‘they’? Martians? Episcopalians?
November 6th, 2014 at 1:10 pm
When Democrats talk about tax reform, they talk about reducing tax expenditures (loopholes). Tax reform for Republicans is primarily about lowering the rate of taxation. These two concepts need to be reconciled in a bipartisan manner before any tax reform is to take place.
November 6th, 2014 at 1:41 pm
The last time Obama floated a corporate tax compromise (2012), it kept revenues the same (in theory), but shifted the tax burden from industries he didn’t like (fossil fuels) to industries he did like (renewable energy). In a democrat administration, politics is not only the first consideration, it is the only consideration. Increase taxes on corporate jets and luxury yachts? YES! What about the workers who are laid off as result of diminished sales? SCREW ‘EM!
November 6th, 2014 at 2:50 pm
The Powerline boys included this in a list of Dem foul-ups this year:
10. Mary Landrieu claims her independence from Obama, but because Reid won’t let anything of substance come to the Senate floor her voting record is 97% with Obama. She will lose the run-off in December.
This demonstrates how Obama and Reid have poisoned politics at the federal level. Reid destroyed the tradition of the Senate floor being the place where compromises were worked out. Reid refused to allow GOP legislation to be voted on, and he refused to allow amendments to bills to get roll-call votes, all to keep dem senators, and Obama, from having to go on record as opposing things that were popular with the public (like strengthening the border).
This is Chicago-style, winner-take-all politics, and Obama’s participation in it in the Illinois legislature should have set off alarm bells in the media when he was running for president in 2008. You can’t run a country this way, as Obama is (finally) discovering. Obama’s biggest problem is that he is not smart enough to occupy the office he holds. I honestly believe that Biden would be a better president. Biden knows how to be a national politician. Obama does not.