Well Shuck My Corn And Call Me Bubba

Looks like they managed to do it.  Ironically, this means that a government contractor will not be closing a rather large deal with my wife tomorrow morning, since they will need to keep doing their work for the government and won't have time for training until the fall or something.  Oh well.

It's been interesting, to say the least, to see GOP Presidential hopefuls like Huckabee and Bachmann push for a deal to be made.  They, especially Bachmann, don't want to have the blame for the shutdown on their campaign's shoulders. 

But I really think that this deal is as much about Boehner doing everything in his power to become an effective Speaker of the House rather than the impotent fool he's been shown to be so far.  What remains to be seen is whether he managed to get his caucus in line or if he's going to rely on the Democrats to save his ass again.  No matter the outcome tonight, though, he's amost assured to become the most ineffective, weak Speaker the House has ever seen.  His inability to keep his caucus in line is going to become worse for him as time goes on, and will hamper the GOP's messaging in 2012.  Well done, teabaggers.

Comments

[Gene O'Grady]

And the competition is? I can only think of two speakers from the 19th century, Henry Clay, probably the greatest of all time, and Nathaniel Banks, apparently a better speaker than he was general.

[Paula B]

Hey, it's only 11:15 p.m. Are you really surprised they pulled it off? My question is, at what expense? Will the Affordable Care Act keep its teeth? Can EPA inspect and enforce air and water quality? Are we going to punish young rape victims who ask for an abortion, but can't prove they were raped? ARe we ditching consumer protection in favor of tax breaks for the rich (again and again and again)?

[oddjob]

...To the extent that the United States does have an immediate fiscal problem, it can be traced to three causes -- two systemic, one acute, and none Obama's fault: Bush tax cuts, unfunded Bush administration spending policies (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Medicare Pard D) and plummeting tax revenue following the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession....

[Sir Charles]

Stephen,

Yeah, still waiting to see the details.

I think it became evident to even the most obtuse right wingers that a shutdown of the government in pursuit of the defunding of Planned Parenthood was not going to fly with the voters.

I think cutting $38 billion from the budget is pretty crazy right now, but given the make up of the House right now I guess that's the reality we're living in.

Proud of Harry Reid for standing strong for Planned Parenthood.

[big bad wolf]

i'm not so sure that i think boehner is doing a bad job (doing terrible things to the country, yes, but that's different). he is walking a fine line pretty well and without running his mouth overmuch. as a political performance it ain't bad, and he does keep getting the dems to cut spending, which is dumb dumb and harmful of the dems.

harry reid is a mensch

[Stephen]

I think the best political outcome would be to shut the damn thing down and wait out the freaks in the GOP. The Dems have been surprisingly strong an on-message about this, and of course every time one of the whackjobs like Kyl get up and open their mouths, they're just making the Democrats' case.

But people would be hurt by a shutdown, and even as cynical as I am, I believe that Obama and at least a majority of Congressional Dems don't want to see people hurt by this.

I'm looking forward to the utterly symbolic vote in the Senate on Planned Parenthood. It helps give the issue the finality it desperately needs and outs the Senate's misogynists. And any Republican that votes against it will get on the Tea Party's shit list and might even face a strong primary challenger.

[Sir Charles]

Gene,

Sam Rayburn would get my vote on think.

Weakest in memory -- maybe Carl Albert.

oddjob,

I find the notion that we have a fiscal crisis to be preposterous -- as long as the feds can sell ten year bonds at 3.5% interest suggests the absence of any crisis.

Paula,

As far as I know, all of the riders and strings came off as part of the deal. But this is going to be a constant struggle until at least the 2012 elections. (And it's oing to be worse at the state level.)

[Sir Charles]

Stephen,

A shutdown would be incredibly bad for the economy -- especially around here.

We really can't afford to have any unnecessary bumps in the economy right now -- there are signs of life, but they are still weak.

[low-tech cyclist]

And I'm disgusted with the Dems for letting themselves get played like a violin. In the end, the GOP got $78.5 billion of the $100 billion of cuts (measured from Obama's 2011 budget) that the teabaggers wanted.

Let's face it, the closer Boehner got to getting what the teabaggers wanted, the smaller the rift inside the GOP. The way for the Dems to exacerbate the rift was to stand firm in demanding very minimal cuts, let the GOP shut down the government, and have them come away with diddly-squat.

Where does this leave the GOP? In the driver's seat for next time. They know they can get the Dems to cut tens of billions of dollars from the budget just by threatening to shut down the government. If they threaten not to raise the debt limit, they ought to be able to double or triple their gains, because unlike over the shutdown, the Dems really can't afford NOT to cave over the debt limit. They've got no leverage.

Meanwhile, Boehner's demonstrated his effectiveness in a tight spot, using his crazies as a means of extracting more from the Dems. They'll trust him a little more next time, though they'll probably keep the same kabuki going.

Oh, here's the good part, from Brian Beutler (at oddjob's link): "Republicans have been promised up-or-down floor votes in the Senate on riders to defund Planned Parenthood and health care implementation."

Are we really sure we won't have 4 defections on either of these? We'll probably lose Manchin on both, because he's pretty worthless. Guys like Webb and Tester have been pretty shaky recently. And Ben Nelson's required a lot of effort to keep on the reservation for some time now.

I'm going to bed before I get any more depressed.

[Krubozumo Nyankoye]

Death by a thousand cuts.

Where is the debate over taxing the rich? The corporations? Just repealing the idiotic concession of extending the upper tier tax cuts for two years would bring things into better focus.

Why is the minority calling the shots here? It is fine for the corporations and speculators to push up prices on everthing from gasoline to milk, but the idea of government raising taxes is taboo.

I think there needs to be a lot more confrontation than what we are seeing.

JMHO.

[Davis X. Machina]

Boehner's got real problems -- there were 27 defections on the vote on the short-term CR.

My prediction -- after the debt ceiling fight, when his owners call in their markers, and the increase passes only with votes Pelosi hands him, he's toast.

He won't be speaker by Christmas.

There’s the real possibility of a general ‘get thee to the right of me’ death spiral, through a series of leadership elections, perhaps starting with Cantor, and culminating in a Speaker Peter King and a rump of about 150-160 True Believers, waving their freak flag for the world to see just in time for the 2012 elections.

I think the odds on the Democrats retaking the House are now 1 in 3, maybe a little better.

[low-tech cyclist]

Davis, I must beg to differ.

Sure, Boehner had 27 defections on the short-term CR last night. But that's just half the number of defections he had three weeks ago, on the CR that got us from March 18 to April 8.

It's hard to imagine how anyone could have played his end of this negotiation any better, and I bet even a lot of those 150-160 True Believers will come to accept that over the coming weeks, especially knowing that this was just their first bite at the apple, and they get to do this all over again in June with the debt ceiling, and then in September with the 2012 budget.

If he gets the sort of cuts he ought to be able to negotiate in the debt ceiling negotiations, when the Dems will have less freedom to say "that's too high a price to pay - no deal, shut it down," he'll be a hero to most of those wingnuts.

And that's the thing that bothers me about the Dems' handling of this set of negotiations. Our guys could have said that, rather than this:

Mr. Obama said...that some of the cuts accepted by Democrats “will be painful.”

“Programs people rely on will be cut back,” said Mr. Obama, who said Americans had to begin to live within their means. “Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed.”

The Dems could have said, "We don't like seeing the government get shut down, but there are some cuts we just won't accept," rather than accepting those cuts.

Here our side has the White House and the Senate, and they just have the House, but all we're doing is acting as a modest brake on the representatives of our Galtian overlords. It's that wonderful Clinton Administration feeling again, only without the tech boom to ease the pain.

It's pretty painful. I really have to keep reminding myself, "vote for the scared rabbits - it's important!"

[Davis X. Machina]

Wait six months, and we'll see who's right.

There are a lot of people who can claim they delivered the goods on this one. But what goods? To which people? And to how many people?

On each of those scores, especially the last one, the deal works politically in the Democrats' favor.

Check back after the vote to raise the debt ceiling.

[low-tech cyclist]

Hell, I may just drop off the Interwebs, turn off the TV and radio, and stop the newspaper subscription, between now and the debt ceiling vote. That one scares me more than I can say. It's easy to see how to play the black pieces, but I don't see any good way to play the white pieces. I'm expecting serious carnage.

[janinsanfran]

How come the "painful" cuts are always to people who are already hurting, never to the people inflicting the pain?

I am disgusted with Democrats.

[Gene O'Grady]

I'd hold the disgust on "the democrats" and focus it like the proverbial laser on the putative economic experts like Summers and Geithner who were so busy taking care of their people (the bankers and the high testosterone traders) that they sold the country down the river protecting them.

[low-tech cyclist]

There's plenty of reason to be disgusted with both.

In my ideal world, we'd have the equivalent of a war-crimes investigation to find out exactly who destroyed our economy last decade and how, and who cushioned their fall afterwards and how, and who helped put them right back up on their pedestal and how. Followed by the equivalent of war-crimes trials for those who were in this up to their armpits.

But in a few days, there's going to be a vote on the 2011 budget. Wonder what the over/under is on how many House and Senate Democrats will vote 'Aye' to this abomination?

There are 192 Dems in the House, and 53 in the Senate. I bet so many Dems vote for this monstrosity that the Teabaggers in the House can cast their symbolic votes against it with impunity, knowing it won't matter because over 100 House Dems - probably well over 100 - will vote for it, which will mean that more than half the House GOP caucus could vote against it and it would still pass.

IOW, we'll own this sucker just as much as they will. Hell, we already do, thanks to Neville Obama's endorsement. And the same thing will happen when they make either even bigger cuts, or some of those riders, the price of increasing the debt limit.

I fucking expect that there will be evil in the world, although it increasingly astounds me, the degree to which one party actively advocates and fights for evil.

But dammit, I also expect that there will be an organized opposition to evil. The absence of just such an opposition is a failure that I take personally, because I desperately want to do what I can to aid such an opposition.

But the Dems occupy the place that such an opposition would occupy, without actually being such an opposition. They neither lead nor follow, and they're not getting out of the way.

And that's why I'm disgusted with the Democrats, and why IMHO every left-of-center person worth his or her salt should be as well.

Being disgusted doesn't mean refusing to help them win elections, because at this moment in our history, there isn't any better alternative. The Dems may be awful, but staying home and letting the Party of Evil win more elections and solidify their control over our republic is to be at least as morally repugnant. Vote for the goddamned scared rabbits - it really IS important.

But we've GOT to find a means of fighting back that the Scared Rabbits' capitulationist instincts don't undermine.