GOP Controlled House Approves Higher Debt Limit Without Condition

By a narrow margin the U.S. House of Representatives approved an increase in the United States' debt limit without imposed conditions suggesting that at least a minority of GOP House members learned at least something from last year's government shut down.  Far too many members of the House GOP proved too spineless to challenge the demagogues and saboteurs of the GOP's Christofascist and Tea Party base.  It would be nice if this vote offered evidence that the GOP is steering back towards sanity, but that is probably too much to be hoped for.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Ending three years of brinkmanship in which the threat of a devastating default on the nation’s debt was used to wring conservative concessions from President Obama, the House on Tuesday voted to raise the government’s borrowing limit until March 2015, without any conditions.

The vote — 221 to 201 — relied almost entirely on Democrats in the Republican-controlled House to carry the measure and represented the first debt ceiling increase since 2009 that was not attached to other legislation. Only 28 Republicans voted yes, and only two Democrats voted no.

Simply by holding the vote, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio effectively ended a three-year Tea Party-inspired era of budget showdowns that had raised the threat of default and government shutdowns, rattled economic confidence and brought serious scrutiny from other nations questioning Washington’s ability to govern. In the process, though, Mr. Boehner also set off a series of reprisals from fellow Republican congressmen and outside groups that showcased the party’s deep internal divisions.

“He gave the president exactly what he wanted, which is exactly what the Republican Party said we did not want,” said a Republican representative, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, who last year unsuccessfully tried to rally enough support to derail Mr. Boehner’s re-election as speaker. “It’s going to really demoralize the base.”

The vote was a victory for President Obama, Democrats and those Senate Republicans who have argued that spending money for previously incurred obligations was essential for the financial standing of the federal government. 

But outside Republican groups were sharply critical of the speaker. Both the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America, for example, had put out a “key vote” alert urging members to vote against the measure.

Mr. Boehner stunned House Republicans on Tuesday morning when he dropped a package that would have tied the debt ceiling increase to a repeal of cuts to military retirement pensions that had been approved in December and announced he would put a “clean” debt ceiling increase up for a vote.

Enough Republicans had balked at that package when it was presented Monday night to convince the speaker he had no choice but to turn to the Democratic minority. 

For Mr. Boehner it was a potentially momentous decision. Conservative activists, including the Tea Party Patriots, FreedomWorks, L. Brent Bozell’s ForAmerica and commentators on the website RedState.com are all circulating petitions to end Mr. Boehner’s speakership.

I hold no love whatsoever for Boehner, but thankfully he grew a partial spine and stood up to the lunatics of the GOP.

 

Are Moderate Members of the GOP Today's Dixiecrats?

If one looks at where most of the effort to nullify the last two presidential elections and over turn the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Affordable Health Care Act, its for the most part the same states that long opposed desegregation save and except some far right ideologues from Midwestern and Western states who want to utterly destroy since the poor and unfortunate apparently deserve to die despite the Gospel message (which these very sane people claim to honor) that speaks an altogether message.  But, back in the bad old days of the so-called Dixiecrats, enough Southern Democrats cooperated with the national party to allow governance to occur.  A column in the New York Times looks at the growing risk of America going into default as the blackmail and extortion by the Republican Party, especially in the House of Representatives, continues.  It also looks at the possibility of some Republicans - locally, Scott Rigell may be one - to act like the Dixiecrats of old and save America from lurching into an economic train wreck.  Here are highlights:

Stocks surged last Friday in the belief that House Republicans were getting ready to back down on their ransom demands over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. But what Republicans were actually offering, it seems, was the “compromise” Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article: rolling back some of the “sequester” budget cuts — which both parties dislike; cuts in Medicare, but with no quid pro quo in the form of higher revenue; and only a temporary fix on the debt ceiling, so that we would soon find ourselves in crisis again. 

I do not think that word “compromise” means what Mr. Ryan thinks it means. Above all, he failed to offer the one thing the White House won’t, can’t bend on: an end to extortion over the debt ceiling. Yet even this ludicrously unbalanced offer was too much for conservative activists, who lambasted Mr. Ryan for basically leaving health reform intact. 

Does this mean that we’re going to hit the debt ceiling? Quite possibly; nobody really knows, but careful observers are giving no better than even odds that any kind of deal will be reached before the money runs out. Beyond that, however, our current state of dysfunction looks like a chronic condition, not a one-time event. Even if the debt ceiling is raised enough to avoid immediate default, even if the government shutdown is somehow brought to an end, it will only be a temporary reprieve. Conservative activists are simply not willing to give up on the idea of ruling through extortion, and the Obama administration has decided, wisely, that it will not give in to extortion. 

So how does this end? How does America become governable again? 

One answer might be that we somehow stumble through the next 13 months, and voters punish Republican tactics by returning the House to Democratic control. Recent polls do show a large Democratic advantage on the generic House ballot. 

There is, however, another solution, and everyone knows what it is. Call it Dixiecrats in reverse.

Here’s the precedent: For a long time, starting as early as 1938, Democrats generally controlled Congress on paper, but actual control often rested with an alliance between Republicans and conservative Southerners who were Democrats in name only. You may not like what this alliance did — among other things, it killed universal health insurance, which we might otherwise have had 65 years ago. But at least America had a functioning government, untroubled by the kind of craziness that now afflicts us. 

And right now we have all the necessary ingredients for a comparable alliance, . . . . everyone I talk to believes that it would be easy to pass both a continuing resolution, reopening the government, and an increase in the debt ceiling, averting default, if only such measures were brought to the House floor. How? The answer is, they would get support from just about all Democrats plus some Republicans, mainly relatively moderate non-Southerners. As I said, Dixiecrats in reverse. 

The problem is that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, won’t allow such votes, because he’s afraid of the backlash from his party’s radicals. Which points to a broader conclusion: The biggest problem we as a nation face right now is not the extremism of Republican radicals, which is a given, but the cowardice of Republican non-extremists (it would be stretching to call them moderates). 

The question for the next few days is whether plunging markets and urgent appeals from big business will stiffen the non-extremists’ spines. For as far as I can tell, the reverse-Dixiecrat solution is the only way out of this mess.

Unease with America Grows Around the World

No one seems to worry more about America's image around the world or blather more about "American exceptionalism" than the self-anointed super patriots of the Republican Party.  Yet no one is doing more damage to America's image and standing in the world at the moment that these very same far right Republican lunatics.  The message being heard loud and clear around the world is that America cannot even mind its own house, so why should other nations listen to its pontificating on issues, not the least on democratic self-governance.  Right now, the far right of the GOP is trying to destroy America's constitutional system that has until now functioned for 224 years and survived the fratricide of the Civil War.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the damage being done by the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

An unmistakable sense of unease has been growing in capitals around the world as the U.S. government from afar looks increasingly befuddled — shirking from a military confrontation in Syria, stymied at home by a gridlocked Congress and in danger of defaulting on sovereign debt, which could plunge the world's financial system into chaos.

While each of the factors may be unrelated to the direct exercise of U.S. foreign policy, taken together they give some allies the sense that Washington is not as firm as it used to be in its resolve and its financial capacity, providing an opening for China or Russia to fill the void, an Asian foreign minister told a group of journalists in New York this week.

The U.S. is still a pillar of defense for places in Asia like Taiwan and South Korea, providing a vital security umbrella against China. It also still has strong allies in the Middle East, including Israel and the Gulf Arab states arrayed against al-Qaida and Iran.

But in interviews with academics, government leaders and diplomats, faith that the U.S. will always be there is fraying more than a little.

"The paralysis of the American government, where a rump in Congress is holding the whole place to ransom, doesn't really jibe with the notion of the United States as a global leader," said Michael McKinley, an expert on global relations at the Australian National University.

The political turbulence in Washington and potential economic bombshells still to come over the U.S. government shutdown and a possible debt default this month have sent shivers through Europe.

Germany's influential newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung bemoaned the U.S. political chaos. . . . .  "At the moment, Washington is fighting over the budget and nobody knows if the country will still be solvent in three weeks. What is clear, though, is that America is already politically bankrupt," it said.

As Europe worries about economics, Asian allies watch in some confusion about what the U.S. is up to with its promise to rebalance military forces and diplomacy in the face of an increasingly robust China.

McKinley, the Australian expert, said Syria and the U.S. budget crisis have shaken Australians' faith in their alliance with Washington.   "It means that those who rely on the alliance as the cornerstone of all Australian foreign policy and particularly security policy are less certain — it's created an element of uncertainty in their calculations," he said.

In short, those in the GOP who claim they want to "save America" are on the verge of destroying it.  Frankly, I am not surprised.  The GOP is now largely controlled by the Christofascists and no one lies more often or more thoroughly than the "godly Christian" crowd.

It's Time to Shut Down the GOP

Years ago I never thought I'd be saying this, but in the best interests of America, it is time to shut down the Republican Party.  And in the process, it is time to drive the Christofascists and Tea Party extremists back into the political wilderness where they belong.  They have broken the social contract if you will that is required for democracy to work and are no out only to destroy our system of government.  The GOP has become a political terrorist organization that engages in hostage taking and the willing infliction of economic harm on others.  Bob Felton summed it up well:

By waging the civil analogue of guerrilla warfare upon the government over the Affordable Care Act — for 3.5-years, now, losing repeatedly in the courts and in the Congress as other needful business is neglected — the Republicans have essentially repudiated the social contract and made manifest their unfitness for democratic self-governance.

Ironically, it was none other than Republican heavyweight Barry Goldwater who warned this might happen someday:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

 Felton has plenty of company in condemning today's irrational and dangerous GOP.  Conservative Jennifer Rubin has a good denunciation of the GOP in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts:

[T]there have now been multiple votes in which, contrary to the claims of the defunders, no Democrats have broken with the White House.

The White House and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid are practically gleeful. White House spokesman Jay Carney began to list the parade of horribles that a shutdown will entail. He sweetly implored the House Republicans to, you know, stop holding up the show and allow the government to stay open. The Republicans are trying to paint Reid’s decision to take Sunday off as the cause of a potential shutdown; it’s an operatives’ line and not a convincing strategy.

Unfortunately for the defund crowd, the Senate will have a clean CR on the table to point to as the “reasonable” way to end this. A disgusted Republican aide said of the defund protagonists: “These guys basically dug a grave, forced Boehner in and then walked away.”

At some point, the Republicans in the House, with or without the Vitter Amendment and with or without the Dems, will pass a clean CR. Anyone who imagined they’d obtain something monumental by threatening to blow themselves up must have been, well, working for Heritage Action or one of its comrades.

The nation simply can no longer function with such an irresponsible band of saboteurs controlling one of the major political parties.  It's time for the GOP to either throw out the crazies or die.  Right now, I hope it dies.