POLITICS JANUARY 16, 2013
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Earlier this week Politico ran a piece about the mood of the House GOP that was highly revealing, if not quite the way the authors intended. The supposed take-away was that conservatives are so amped up and ornery they won’t think twice about leaving the debt ceiling where it is, consequences be damned. “GOP officials said more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes,” the piece warned. Which is to say, pretty much the standard meshugas we’ve come to expect from John Boehner's nuthouse.
But when you read between the lines of the Politico piece, the thinking of House Republicans looked a lot more rational. The upshot seemed to be that Boehner won’t let the government default on its liabilities, and that his members will settle for something much less damaging – a government shutdown – if they don’t get the cuts they want. (They will have the opportunity to engineer this a few weeks after the likely debt ceiling vote, when Congress has to pass a bill funding the government for the rest of the year.) “[Boehner] may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” a GOP leadership adviser told Politico, “so they have an endgame and can show their constituents they’re fighting.” The quote was meant to be ominous but was actually quite reassuring.
Ever since November, Washington has marveled at the “fever” the president hoped his re-election would break. House Republicans announced it was emphatically not broken when they resisted tax hikes until the grisly end of the fiscal cliff negotiations. But the fact that the deal got done at all suggests “fever” isn’t quite the right metaphor, at least not for most of the party. Yes, there are lunatics in the House of Representatives. And, yes, their lunacy isn’t likely to fade anytime soon. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to in order for the government to function.
The biggest problem with Obama’s fever metaphor is that it treats Republicans as monolithic. This wasn’t such a stretch during his first term, when the GOP calculated that relentless obstruction was the best way to undermine him, a goal they were united around. Back then, his gain was the GOP's loss, and vice versa. But with Obama having run his last campaign, the game is no longer zero-sum. Up to a point, Republicans need not fear his rising popularity, so long as they become more popular too. And this has created divisions within the Republican Party.
It’s useful in particular to sort House Republicans into three groups: moderates, pragmatic conservatives, and hard-core conservatives. The moderates have to run in closely divided districts and prefer to hew to the center when possible. The pragmatic conservatives tend to be in somewhat safer seats. But because they’re in a stronger position politically when their party is more popular, they have an interest in boosting the party’s overall image with voters. Finally, the hard-core conservatives are either jihadi extremists who value ideological purity above all, or pols who worry more about potential primary challengers than their general election opponents. They have no problem if the party is scorned nationally so long as they preserve their conservative bona fides.
What fraction of the 233 House Republicans does each group represent? It’s the key question given the so-called Hastert Rule, the longstanding House Republican practice of only allowing votes on bills if a majority of the caucus supports them. Thanks to that rule, the hard-core conservatives can theoretically veto anything that comes before the House. If there are 117 of them, the rest of us are out of luck.
Fortunately, the number of these conservatives appears to be much smaller than most people assume. I base this on the outcome of Boehner’s widely derided “Plan B” during the fiscal cliff negotiations, the logic of which was to pass a tax increase on millionaires in order to give Republicans a PR boost and strengthen Boehner’s negotiating position. In other words, it was all about helping the party politically at the cost of some ideological purity—the kind of exercise pragmatic conservatives should have supported but the irreconcilables would reject. According to this piece in The Hill, Plan B died when Boehner couldn’t convince some 25-30 holdouts to vote his way. Even those who understood what Boehner was up to complained that it would be “too hard to explain how it wasn't a tax increase” in a primary, as one member put it.
Depending on how you interpret that 25-30 vote figure, it implies the House has about 50 hard-core conservatives. (At the time, Boehner could afford to lose 24 votes thanks to the size of his majority, so I assume he came 25-30 votes short of holding his losses to 24.) Which means that the conservative extremists only represent about one-fifth of the House Republicans. I’d guess moderates make up no more than one-third, based on the 85 Republicans who voted for the final fiscal cliff bill. Which means the pragmatic conservatives make up roughly half the Republican caucus.
If these numbers are even remotely accurate – and they’re going to be slightly off because I’m basing them on votes from the last Congress, whose composition has changed a bit – then Democrats don’t need to break the fever of the hard-core conservatives to get anything done. They just need to isolate (quarantine?) them so they don’t infect the pragmatic conservatives. And the way to do that is to promise Republicans a political beating if the pragmatics lock arms with the crazies.
The evidence suggests this message has been received in recent weeks. It’s easy to look at the final fiscal-cliff vote, which 150-odd Republicans opposed, and assume that only the moderates came around. In fact, the reason Boehner was able to bring it up for a vote at all—in violation of the Hastert Rule—was that the pragmatic conservatives were with him too. That’s not just literally true, in that Boehner gave his troops the option of effectively killing the compromise, and he appeared to get few takers. It’s also true more figuratively, in that Boehner apparently wasn’t worried about pragmatic conservatives turning on him when he stood for re-election as Speaker two days later. "[I]n the end, most of our members wanted this to pass, but they didn't want to vote for it," he later told The Wall Street Journal. And the reason they wanted it to pass is that the public would have beat the party senseless for rejecting a deal, having largely accepted Obama’s case that taxes should rise on the wealthy.
Even more encouraging, the cliff deal wasn’t the only example of this dynamic recently. On Tuesday night, Boehner broke the Hastert Rule all over again, bringing up a $50 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill that only 49 Republicans voted for. As before, pragmatic conservatives were almost certainly behind his decision to do this, even if they didn’t end up supporting the bill. Also as before, it’s almost certainly the case that their views on this were driven by anxieties over public opinion, which was shaped in this instance by high-profile Republicans like Chris Christie.
The lesson in all this for Obama is simple: Don’t bother engaging Republican leaders behind closed doors. The only way to move the leadership is to move pragmatic conservatives. And the only way to move pragmatic conservatives is to arrange it so that the political consequences of siding with the pure conservatives are brutal.
To his credit, the president has opened the debt-limit fight doing just that. “If congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks, and veterans benefits will be delayed,” he said at his press conference on Monday. “We might not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small business owners.” Those words may not break a conservative’s fever. But they should make anyone sitting next to him flee as quickly as possible.
18 comments
I recall hearing a Republican congressman on NPR this morning saying essentially that the Hastert Rule was now a dead letter. If that is the case then some things can get done in the House this year. It would be a return to the norm, I believe; in the 80s, various Reagan proposals got through the Democratic-majority House on the votes of Republicans and conservative Democrats. It's true that the parties was more ideologically diverse then, but there is some hope.
- bjones
January 16, 2013 at 10:41pm
GOP supports government for Billionaires, by Billionaires. My latest proposal (perhaps 17,251 or so): sell the United States to Billionaires. Then isolate them into their own area -- perhaps Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, and Alaska. Confining them all there (as in something like a /c/o/n/c/e/n/t/a/t/i/o/n /c/a/m/p). All the gullible non-billionaires who support them can live in their "ghetto" also, working as indentured servants, enjoying the "tricke-down" saliva. Gates and Buffet and a few other sane billionaires get (not free) passes to live with normal people.
- skahn
January 16, 2013 at 11:28pm
I left an "r" out of the camp description.
- skahn
January 16, 2013 at 11:29pm
skahn can we throw the NRA in there with them?
- Sophia
January 16, 2013 at 11:54pm
I am with skahn and Sophia on this. Force the plutocracy to have each other as neighbors, and to be protected by the wingnuts at the NRA, armed to the teeth, with Bushmasters and AR 15s and Glocks and whatever brands they think make them so cool, with 100 bullet clips free for the taking. And then guard the perimeter with our Seal Team Six members and not let them leave. And I vote TX as their isolation camp, since it is so dried up due to climate change, that we probably don't won't it anyway.
- smabry03
January 17, 2013 at 7:07am
This focus on hard-care conservatives, or madmen, in the Republican caucus reminds me of the US attitude about our enemies: our enemies are run by madmen. Which reminds me of the Jeffersonian Republican attitude about the Federalists: they were madmen. Yes, madmen, out to destroy America and return it to the British. It's really remarkable, what they wrote and said about the Federalists, Adams especially, but even Washington: they were madmen. But reading the correspondence of Jefferson, Madison, and other Republicans suggests they, not the Federalists, were the madmen, their view of the Federalists unhinged. Who are the madmen today, the hard-care conservatives in the Republican caucus or Obama and the Democrats? While most if not all readers of TNR assume it's the Republicans who are madmen, they would disagree, believing as they do that Obama is a madman out to destroy America and the American way of life. Just like the Republicans' attitude about Adams and the Federalists in 1800. And the US attitude today about the leaders of our enemies. Madmen.
- rayward
January 17, 2013 at 8:34am
Don't forget for a huge issue like the debt ceiling a discharge petition can be initiated and there is nothing that the Republican leadership can do to prevent it besides threatening punishment after the fact. But I doubt they would go through with it. Shays-Meehan passed this way (we know it by the Senate name of McCain-Feingold) only 218 names are required for a discharge, which means only around 17 or so NE Republicans have to do it.
- blackton
January 17, 2013 at 8:36am
“And the way to do that is to promise Republicans a political beating if the pragmatics lock arms with the crazies. “ Actually, siding with crazies or not, the smart thing for the democrats to do is give the republicans a political beating anyway.
- Tobbar
January 17, 2013 at 10:10am
We will see . . . whether the republicans stick with their lowest common denominator or not. DonMc
- NR138704
January 17, 2013 at 11:25am
At least in ancient Egypt they waited until a plutocrat was dead before they shoved a tube up his nostril and sucked out his brain. It's all changed now.... By "selling" values around excitement, self interest, individual ownership, and competition /winning no-matter-what, our mindless/ heartless plutocrats control values and both divide and conquer whole populations. 'Love they neighbour as thyself.', are they kidding? 'F... 'em all but six and save them for pall bearers!' How about anti-psychotic meds for Radical Republicans?
- JohnC
January 17, 2013 at 12:19pm
Great and encouraging article. Based on this and other tea leaves, I'm very cautiously optimistic that Obama has finally grown a spine and/or learned his lesson about dealing with the Republicans. I also suspect that he feels relatively strong on this issue because he knows that if we get too close to the debt ceiling crashing down on us without an agreement he'll be on firm political ground in interpreting the Constitution to allow the payment of bills. Yes, he's said he wouldn't do that, but if push comes to shove he'll look good for saving the country from going over this very real cliff (unlike the fiscal one) and the Republicans will look even crazier for trying to shove us over it.
- Thunderroad
January 17, 2013 at 12:57pm
The biggest problem with the fever metaphor is that fever implies lack of agency. It suggests that the Republicans are suffering from a disease and that therefore lack responsibility for their actions. Obama should speak in explicit and unambiguous terms about the GOP's repeated attempts to usurp power over the democratically expressed will of the people.
- AaronW
January 17, 2013 at 4:56pm
Once again, it is neither the Fed nor government that is the chief engine of sustained job creation sufficient to bring the economy to its full potential. Discussions about what either the Fed or government should be doing to directly boost hiring are misplaced and largely futile. The focus should be on entrepreneurs and private job creators and what the Fed and government can do to raise business confidence, which in 2012 fell to a 30-year low because of the out-of-control tax-and-spend thrust of the Administration and the constant anti-business, anti-profit, rhetoric, policies and actions of the President and his supporters. Fortunately, the pace of job creation is about to pick up, no thanks to the Administration, whose anti-job-creation rhetoric, policies, and actions have been suppressing job creation for the past 4 years. Entrepreneurs and other job creators are sick of waiting for Washington to get its act together. They’ve been putting needed replacement and expansion capital spending and hiring on the shelf for 4 years now and the unused cash and borrowing power keeps piling up and returning next to nothing. Now that some of the uncertainties are moving toward resolution, they are ready to pick up the pace, and the resulting increase in hiring and capital spending will mean a stronger than expected economy in 2013. Entrepreneurs don’t worry about demand. They are the most optimistic persons on the planet. To a person, they believe that if they build it, demand will come. The demand needed to justify the new hiring will come from where it always comes from, from the newly created salaries and wages of the new hires, and not from lower saving or increased borrowing of those already employed (which incremental demand is unsustainable), or from government transfer payments from one consumer to another (which is a wash). That’s the process that has driven economic growth for thousands of years, even though many Nobel-prize winners in economics still don’t get it (academic economists tend to work from theoretical models and not understand how the real world actually works). An example is restaurants: Entrepreneurs open tens of thousands every year, each requiring a substantial investment in space, equipment, and workers, all before there is even a single dinner reservation. There is no line of people outside waiting to be fed. Jobs first, then demand. That’s what will drive the economy at an accelerated pace this year, not the Fed and not government.
- truthman
January 18, 2013 at 9:12am
"Obama should speak in explicit and unambiguous terms about the GOP's repeated attempts to usurp power over the democratically expressed will of the people." He has. In fact, even Kraut is getting it: "From a single house of Congress you can resist but you cannot impose. Aren’t you failing the country, say the insurgents? Answer: The country chose Obama. He gets four years."
- icarus-r
January 18, 2013 at 11:16am
Utterly ridiculous, truthman. Complete economic fantasy. Quite on a par with the earth is flat and 6,000 years old. Obviously you have never started a business or managed one. No one in their right mind invests money, in a new business or in an existing business, on the theory that if everyone else will just do the same thing THEN there will be demand for what that business has to offer. People will produce something because they think others are ready, willing, and able to buy it. It they don't believe that others are ready, willing, and able to buy their output, they don't go taking investment risk. In short, supply does not induce demand; demand induces supply. If there is demand, you can sell what you produce. If not, no one produces today in the hope that, if they wait long enough, the demand will appear. Business is not increasing employment, except very slowly, because there is insufficient demand for the output that business has the current capacity to produce. There is no other meaning to business confidence. Nor is government rhetoric, whatever you may think of it, remotely relevant. The ONLY confidence that anyone running a business cares about -- ever, ever, ever -- is the confidence that someone is able and willing to buy the output at a profitable price. That is all. If you learned just that one thing, you would at least understand something about economics.
- roidubouloi
January 18, 2013 at 12:15pm
Roid: I think truthman has been reading too many articles about Apply and how iPhone and iPad "created" markets and "demand". I found this particular line quite amusing "Entrepreneurs open tens of thousands every year, each requiring a substantial investment in space, equipment, and workers, all before there is even a single dinner reservation. There is no line of people outside waiting to be fed." As you note, it is evident that the author of this line has never been to a bank looking for a loan. "I am a creator; I will MAKE the market; I will CREATE the demand" will get you a rightly deserved boot in the butt.
- icarus-r
January 18, 2013 at 3:05pm
@truthman (snigger): If record corporate profits and stock prices under the Obama Administration are the result of "anti-business, anti-profit, rhetoric, policies and actions of the President and his supporters" then as a small business owner, I'll take a double helping, please.
- kkseattle
January 18, 2013 at 9:20pm
Yes, "If we build it, they will come," is a sure-fire way to get either loans or investment capital. However, the nonsense spewed by truthman is the "official" supply-side wacko explanation for how "job creators" are the engine of growth, rather than demand. From the fundamentally incorrect premise of supply-side wackery, it is then possible to draw all sorts of absurd and objectively false conclusions about economics. And they do. Incessantly. To our great loss. They are as completely oblivious to reality as creationists and climate-change deniers. Indeed, they are often the same people. These people actually believe that businesses hire and invest as an expression of being in a good mood rather than in anticipation of being able to sell their output to meet demand. That might be even crazier than creationism and climate-change denial since you cannot interrogate directly either the climate or the geological record, but you can ask business people why they hire and invest and they will tell you.
- roidubouloi
January 18, 2013 at 9:57pm