Republican Party Doomsday Clock: Default Countdown

Although Pelosi said on Tuesday that Boehner apparently needs to humor his troops, she claimed that the chances of a deal to prevent a default tomorrow are good-- even if poor McConnell is being pilloried by DeMint, Cruz and the crackpot suicide caucus for "leading the surrender." In case yours got stuck in the spam folder, his is from the letter DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund sent out to their supporters claiming McConnell "has made winning virtually impossible" for the far right, while McConnell and Reid were trying to hammer out a compromise that both sides could live with and that would prevent a default:

McConnell has consistently worked to sabotage the effort to defund Obamacare. He pressured senators to withdraw their support, he falsely accused conservatives of wanting a government shutdown, and he voted to give the Democrats the power to fund Obamacare.

Now Mitch McConnell is working with the Democrats on a plan to fund Obamacare AND raise the debt limit. Not only will his plan force Americans to pay for a law they oppose, it will force them to borrow more money to do it.

Yesterday, minutes after Heritage said they would ecore the vote-- and that a vote for Boehner's proposal would be a bad vote, Boehner and Cantor, tails between their legs, pulled the bill… just when Fitch declared the U.S. is on a negative downgrade watch. This is clearly a reflection of intense right-wing anger and hatred a changing America. The GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning was, by all accounts, just dreadful. The extremists were demanding Boehner and Cantor commit to rejecting the Senate deal regardless of the consequences. They were "furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading tea-party congressman calls a 'mushy piece of shit.' Another House conservative warns, 'If Boehner backs this, as is, he’s in trouble'… [And, said one GOP House aide] the activists are still calling offices pushing for the full defund of Obamacare. The message has not been relayed to the grassroots that the defund option isn’t going to happen no matter how long we hold our breath or how much we wish it would happen."

And not all the animus is going in one direction. The House extremists in safe little rural red districts mostly in the South and Mormon Empire, can heap vituperatives on all the Senate Republicans they want, but the feeling is mutual. Yesterday Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) told his state's top political journalist that the House extremists are preventing a compromise. He says the compromise has nothing in it for Republicans-- all they got out of this mess are a lot of toxic polling numbers. But he isn't blaming McConnell for a bad deal. He knows who fucked up-- his state's whole House delegation was a big part of it too.

Chambliss said the blame for the bad spot Republicans are in lies with the arch-conservatives in the party who pushed defunding the new health care law as part of a deal to keep the government open. He did not name names, but Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has managed to anger many in his own caucus over the issue. The government shut down Oct. 1 when Democrats refused any concessions related to the law, and now the debt ceiling and "continuing resolution" fights have merged and Republicans are taking a beating in the polls. Said Chambliss:

"The president’s made it pretty plain that [Obamacare is] non-negotiable. And what are you going to get that’s of any substance at this point? In my opinion, that was not a very good strategy to start with and folks got backed into a corner on that-- 'By God, it’s got to be this!'-- and now I think folks are starting to realize, well, that wasn’t a very strong position to be in, because we didn’t have leverage on that. We had leverage on the debt ceiling, but we’re fast losing that."

Chambliss' position matches that of delegation mate Johnny Isakson, who called the shutdown "a dumb idea." It also squares with the original position of House Speaker John Boehner, one of Chambliss' closest friends, who wanted to extend government spending without too much fuss and then seek a deficit-reducing deal attached to a debt-ceiling increase.

I asked Chambliss if a Senate deal puts Boehner in a jam with little time to go until Thursday's debt ceiling deadline. His reply:

"Well, he’s in no more of a jam today than he was last Friday when they said, 'Have at it, Senate.' You know, he hasn’t been able to get anything passed on his side, basically. We know what he sent over. But basically he’s got some hard-liners that are making it very difficult to get the government back open again and much less the debt ceiling. But John’s goal, I know, has been to put some separation between the CR and the debt ceiling, and let’s get some agreement on the CR that gets the government reopened, and let’s have a fight on the debt ceiling."

The "hard-liners," needless to say, include some of those Georgians competing to take Chambliss' spot in the Senate.

Some? How about all?  Meanwhile, back in the House, this morning's NY Times describes the sordid scene through the eyes of Georgian senior wingnut Tom Price: Boehner was herding cats.

"It was yet another moment of decision for Mr. Boehner, who finally finds himself at the crossroads he has been marching toward for weeks: an imminent financial default on the one hand, and on the other an unyielding conservative rank and file that persists with the futile effort to take down President Obama's health care law even if they also take down the speaker in the process."

"While his colleagues sang about how what once was lost had now been found, Mr. Boehner did not tell them a more dispiriting truth: With less than 48 hours left before the nation is set to exhaust its authority to borrow money, he and his lieutenants were running out of ideas-- a fact made starkly evident by the mad and fruitless scramble on Tuesday to come up with a measure that could win enough support from his members. Around 7 p.m., he sent the House home and canceled all votes for the day."

“He’s herding cats,” said Representative Tom Price, Republican of Georgia.

Mr. Boehner initially tried to unite his conference around a plan that had a little bit for everyone. For his hard-line conservative members, Mr. Boehner’s proposal would have eliminated government contributions for the purchase of health insurance on the new exchanges for lawmakers, White House officials and their staffs, as well as forbidden the Treasury Department to use “extraordinary measures” to extend its borrowing capabilities. For his more moderate members, Mr. Boehner offered a simple appeal-- his plan would have reopened the government through Dec. 15, and extended the nation’s borrowing authority through Feb. 7.

But conservatives and their advocacy groups balked, and Mr. Boehner was forced to set his plan aside.

UPDATE: Appommattox Court House Revisited

Not quite 150 years ago treason-minded Confederates surrendered at Appomattox and this morning the white flags of surrender were unfurled by the same right-wing idiots again. This time their whole shut down the government escapades accomplished nothing-- except to make the GOP even less trusted by normal Americans.

With a deal to reopen the government apparently imminent Wednesday, it's worth taking stock of what it was all for—the two and a half weeks without a fully functioning federal government, the nonstop chaos on Capitol Hill, the tiptoeing to the brink of default.

For Republicans, it was basically for nothing.

The GOP will actually get less out of the final deal being brokered than the party would have gotten had House conservatives never staged their revolt on Obamacare. In fact, the drama is likely to end with Republicans ceding policy concessions to Democrats.

Let's review: Had the House passed the "clean" continuing resolution it was offered on September 30, the government would have remained open only until November 15, at the reduced funding levels determined by the "sequestration" cuts imposed by the 2011 debt-limit deal. Republicans still would have had the debt-ceiling deadline Thursday, plus another budget fight on the horizon a month later, as perceived points of leverage. (Democrats insist this leverage is illusory as the White House would refuse to negotiate, but to Republicans, that's what these deadlines are: valuable bargaining chips.)

Instead, the House is poised to pass a measure that funds the government through January 15 and lifts the debt ceiling until February 7-- taking the heat off Congress for months and eliminating three pressure points (the September 30 funding expiration, the October 17 debt-ceiling target, and the hypothetical November 15 funding expiration) in one go. The proposed deal negotiated by Senate leaders also would force the two houses to convene a budget committee, something Democrats have been demanding since the Senate passed a budget in March-- and conservative Republicans have repeatedly blocked, for fear that any compromise negotiated between the two houses would mean selling out their principles.

The "concession" extracted by the GOP in the deal, the sole change to the health-care law, is purely cosmetic: a reinstatement of the requirement that people seeking subsidies under the Affordable Care Act furnish proof that they qualify. That requirement was in the original law, but the administration delayed it when implementation hit snags in July.

Obamacare will not be repealed. Obamacare will not be defunded. Obamacare will not be delayed. The individual mandate will not be delayed. The medical-device tax will not be repealed. The health-insurance subsidies given to members of Congress and their staffs will not be taken away.

  Democrats will get the government funded at levels they (grudgingly) sought in the first place, for longer than they originally sought, and without the looming threat of default.

So what did Republicans get for shutting down the government for 17 days? Their poll numbers tanked. Their gubernatorial candidate in Virginia appears headed for defeat in next month's election. The business community is rethinking its support. Veterans and the elderly are pissed. And any leverage they ever had to push their goals of reducing the size of government and chipping away at health-care reform is gone. All in all, it's been a worthwhile exercise for the GOP.

At least they didn't murder people this time. Of course, now we have to see if Obama and Boehner have a side-deal a couple weeks down the road on a Chanied CPI-fueled Grand Bargain, which is what I expect. Check back.