Watching the Republicans - Runaway Train

[richlevy]

Not too many years ago, the Republican party was a well oiled machine. With majorities in both houses and control of the White House, members of both houses moved almost in lockstep.

Today, the Republican party seems to be in disarray. The recent miscalculation that had the Republican Senate leader filibustering his own proposal demonstrated the amount of political miscalculation and desperation present in the Republican Senate caucus.

McConnell was hoping to put Democrats in the awkward position of having to vote for ceding Congress’s authority over the debt ceiling to the president. As he put it in his morning remarks, “by demanding the power to raise the debt limit whenever he wants by as much as he wants, he showed what he’s really after is assuming unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit.”
Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada objected, putting Democrats in the position of blocking a vote on their president’s proposal. Yet within hours, Democrats sensed a way to turn the tables – and were ready to call McConnell’s bluff.
They returned to the floor and offered to bring the matter up for a vote immediately, concluding that, politically speaking, they would be happy to argue that fixing the debt ceiling permanently was the fiscally responsible thing to do – even at the cost of congressional authority.

So what did Mitch McConnell do, facing a vote on his own suggestion from just hours before?
He offered two magic words – “I object” – and filibustered his own suggestion.

A few weeks later, the Speaker of the House, who has a real majority instead of a simple obstructive mechanism, attempted a similar maneuver. He attempted to push through his own budget proposal, weighted heavily but not entirely with provisions favorable to his party's positions and without agreement from the Democrats, hoping to force a veto from the President and to label the President obstructionist. He failed to get a majority of votes from his own party, forcing a very public failure which highlighted party divisions to the public.

Had there been a vote on Republican House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" to avert the so-called U.S. fiscal cliff on Thursday night, it would not have been close. He was probably 40 to 50 votes short of the number he needed to avoid a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own party, according to rough estimates from Republican members of Congress and staff members.

When the Democrats were a minority party under Bush Jr., I do not believe that I ever saw this level of self delusion and infighting.