If Republicans Obstruct again they do so at great Peril

[Tom Rinaldo]

Nothing is the same this time around, other than the fact that Barack Obama once again got elected President. He isn’t the same as he was four years ago. The nation isn’t the same as it was four years ago. Even the Republicans aren’t the same as they were four years ago, and now they have lost the element of surprise that played such a large part in their ambush of a then first term President. I’m a long time hard core cynic of Republican politics, and I’ll admit that they caught me off guard at first also. I honestly didn’t expect Republicans to rival Stalinists of old in the lock step unbending public unity of their Party Line – full bore un-nuanced opposition to anything and everything that the newly elected President Obama proposed.

I can’t fully fault the President for failing to see it all coming. A lot had changed since the Republicans in Congress impeached the last Democratic President. Nine Eleven happened for one, and Democrats and Republicans frequently worked closely together in the months and years that followed to respond as one nation to an attack on American soil. Obama took office in the midst of another major crisis, a global economic melt down. The times again called for laying aside partisan differences wherever possible, so no doubt Obama didn’t anticipate Republicans holding a secret war council on the day of his first inauguration to plot defiance toward his every step. But now he’s seen it all, and so has the nation.

In January of 2009 we were, by and large, a frightened people. Most of us put our hope in a newly elected President, but fewer of us were firmly convinced that he had all the right answers. Obama was as yet untested and therefore he was also unproven, which left the Republicans room to sow their seeds of doubt. People, lots of people, were angry over what was happening to our economy, and anger breeds bitterness and the President is an obvious target when times are hard and stay hard.

Republicans milked that anger, and because President Obama made it his priority to fix our financial system rather than to demonize it, that gave the Right the opening they needed to demonize government instead. Hence the emergence of the “Tea Party” movement and the red electoral mid term tide that restored the House to Republicans in 2010. I don’t need to go into all those details because all of us were there, and that’s the point. We all saw that movie, we all were actors in it, America knows how it all played out and there is no need for any spoiler alerts. We even had another national election that rehashed everything that happened and Barack Obama won it, soundly.

America reelected the President and gave Democrats more seats in both he House and Senate. Despite what George W. Bush used to like to say, the voters are the real deciders in America and they decided – and did so without equivocating. Republicans may still hold a (smaller) majority of seats in the House of Representatives due to their gerrymandering after 2010, but Democrats got more votes. Voters don’t like to be ignored. They want our problems fixed and they chose a team to fix them, and this time they did so with their eyes wide open with none of the guess work that 2008 entailed.

We have fully experienced Republican imposed gridlock; it did not win rave reviews. If Republicans choose obstruction again they do so at their own deep peril. They don’t possess a winning hand, our economy is recovering. Mitt Romney tried to slip in under the recession wire and ride a rebounding economy to 8 years in the White House. He was confident promising voters 12 million new jobs because that is what experts agree can be expected naturally from a recovering U.S. economy. Americans wants to put the Great Recession behind us, and that means putting the politics of the Great Recession behind us also.

Public approval for the Tea Party has plummeted since 2010 and Sarah Palin is little more than a punch line for political jokes. America has little patience now for more of those extremist antics. Choose wisely G.O.P. The course they have been plotting is headed toward the Whigs.

[annabanana]

1. He will no longer be negotiating against himself.

He can hold firm & watch the repubs tear themselves apart along class lines.

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. I realy believe that too

So many things are differentin important ways, and I think it had a profound effect on the President to have campaigned on his record as a known entity and to have been rewarded with a vote of confidence. He is wiser AND his position is much stronger.

[kairos12]

3. Would Like to Share Your Optimism But Can't

Tea Baggers have gerrymandered their districts so that they will be re-elected if they crash the economy over fiscal issues, not if they don't.

Fear of a primary from the right, not a collapse of the economy, that is the state of the Tea Thugs.

[annabanana]

4. Even gerrymandered districts are subject to demographic change...

And the less reasonable the teabagger, the softer their support.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. I'm not at all sure you are wrong on that

Actually I think they will obstruct again, they are almost incapable right now of doing anything else ("Stop me before I obstruct again!&quot But the consequences for them if they do, for the Republican Party as a national party, I think will be more severe this time. Yes what you say about primaries from the Right will have a huge sway on this Congress, but then they will need to run in the next mid terms against Democrats after those primaries. Given how skewed the districts now are they may not even lose control of the House in 2014 even if they remain in full obstructionist mode, but they will be caught in a downward spiral that it will be hard for the Republican Party to pull out of - IF they attempt to be anywhere near as obstructionist a force during Obama's second term as they were in his first.

There are plenty of ways for an opposition party to score plotical points without making a mockery of the concept of loyal opposition. Republicans could pull that off, but they may not be capable of showing the degree of moderation needed to fill that role without becoming a parady of themselves.

[kairos12]

9. Good Points

I think as a National Entity the Tea Baggers pose a threat to the Republican brand which could eliminate the tea bag control of the house. My concern is that I see the Tea Thugs as the final mutation of the Reagan "the government is your enemy" strategy. Meaning, that destroying the economy to prove the government is inept, I believe, is not beyond their reasoning. Perhaps it is possible the National Republican party adults, if there are any left, can prevent this from happening. Boner does not appear up to the job. Hopefully, the Tea Thugs will flame out over the next two years and return to their Tora Bora Bircher caves from which they came. I can only hope.

[tblue37]

13. But they must be careful, because if they do too much damage to the economy and

to US global credit, their paymasters might take a financial hit, too, and that would not make those uber wealthy folks happy.

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. Exactly. They are on the verge of biting the hand that feeds them. n/t

[Bandit]

17. The great threat now though is changing the rules of the electoral college

Because of their gerry-mandered districts and if they make the changes they want they will be guaranteed more electoral votes than any Democratic Candidate.. Once that happens America is done....

[Tom Rinaldo]

18. That is clearly a major threat, but I wonder...

What form will the backlash take when Americans understand that had Republicans rigged a system like that for the 2012 elections BarackObama would have won over 5 million more votes than Mitt Romney and still the latter would have easily "defeated" him?

If we go down that stream we are heading into uncharted waters. George W. Bush lost the popular vote and was elected but it was a narrow margin, and the electoral vote was razor thin. Even so it was at a low level unsettling to the nation. I think the response would be "explosive" if Republicans attempt to rule in the way you point to, though I'm not sure what "explovive" would mean in that context. Can you imagine the protests in Washington if a Republican President elect shows up to be sworn in after losing the popular vote by 6 millioin - which could happen under the Republican scheme?

[Bigbluebrush]

7. The primary is the threat

but couldn't the primary challenge come from a socially conservative angle, or a Pat Buchanan angle? There ought to be more than one political axis for these cats.

[Tom Rinaldo]

10. They are splintering into different flavors of far right

All of them have limited appeal to the full public. It's the politics of shirinking tents.

[Bigbluebrush]

11. Yes...

and all these tents don't necessarily share the fetish of spending cuts. Many conservatives want to spend too, just on different toys. Bush was quite the spender!

[socialist_n_TN]

6. I'm not sure I'm going to agree with the perspective of 12 million new jobs.....

in the next four years. And if there ARE that many jobs created, at what wage? I think we're in a long "depression" type of situation, at least as far as the working class is concerned. Maybe not technically a recession, but very low growth and low consumption. Not enough, IOW, to spur any sort of robust recovery. I don't foresee much change in job numbers and the jobs that do come about will not be solid "middle class" types.

Of course, you've also got to factor in Republican obstruction and global economic shocks because I don't think they HAVE learned any sort of lesson. Also thanks to gerrymandering, their seats are pretty safe. Probably in the best case scenario, the Dems capture each and every one of the few toss up seats left and MIGHT eke out a bare majority in the HOR.

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. I'm not that hopeful about good jobs either

We may hit those job numbers but I agree most of them will be relatively low wage. There are no short term fixes without a robust progressive plan and a Congress and Chief Executive willing to not only execute it, but barn storm around it also.

I agree Republicans might hold the house in 2014, but if they continue as hard core obstructionists I think that puts them into a long term death spiral that would be hard to pull out of. If only the most rabid right Republicans win primaries for the safeest Republican seats, that Party's swing away from the main stream will only gather momentum in a snow ball type effect.

[DirkGently]

12. Not sure they remember any other way to play it.

Yes, they're suffering politically. And keeping things crappy to blame it all on Obama paid off only in 2010. But they're full up with clowns and crazies. If they don't find a way to shut that down and discover rhetoric that doesn't include extremist views of everything from economics to science to womanhood, they're just going to run around in the same circles as before.

We shall see.

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. Yes, they drove themselves down a right wing dead end

They chose a dramatic strategy that did pay off in 2010 and they gambled they would pull down Obama in 2012 also because of it, but it was always high risk and obviously it fell short. Now their electoral convoy is stuck at the end of the road with the rabid followers they incited boxing them in cutting off any retreat. Ultimately they will have to find away back toward the mainstream of American politics but they may have to fight their own civil war to get there.

[randome]

16. Peril away!