Revealed!
Inside look at why GOP won't fight Obama, Democrats 'want us to shut down the government', by Garth Kant,
9/3/15, WND
WASHINGTON – Why won’t Republican leadership in
Congress fight President Obama? It’s the question that frustrates 75
percent of GOP voters and
an issue that has likely helped Donald Trump skyrocket in the polls.
Now, WND has obtained a revealing look into the
thought process of the congressional Republican elite during a candid email
exchange with a Senate leadership aide.
It showed why GOP leadership is apparently so
reluctant to effectively confront Obama on such key issues as defunding
executive amnesty, Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.
The dialogue also revealed why Republican
leadership employs a strategy of confronting the president with words, but has
expressed a reluctance to take risks and to use perhaps the only potent tool in
lawmakers’ arsenal: the power of the purse.
It was not a confrontational exchange but one of
substance. The Senate aide was gracious enough to take the time to spell out
GOP leadership’s position clearly and thoughtfully. WND responded with what it
believed to be the views of the GOP party base.
These are the key points to arise from the
dialogue:
GOP
leaders appear to be truly afraid of the extremist label and are sensitive
about their image.
They
appear mortified by the notion of another government shutdown.
They
believe the 2013 shutdown hurt the party even though the GOP went on to a
landslide win at the polls in 2014.
It
seems they want to avoid actual confrontation and prefer to go on record as
opposed to Obama.
Perhaps the most revealing element of the
exchange: When GOP leaders say they will use all means at their disposal to
confront Obama, they do not mean all means.
That became clear after the leadership aide
asserted to WND, “We absolutely are using all our available means to confront the
president,” but then dismissed the notion of using the power of the purse in
the form of threatening a government shutdown, in this case, to defund Planned
Parenthood.
The following is a summary of the exchange.
WND sent an email to a member of GOP leadership,
asking:
Doesn’t
a majority of GOP lawmakers want a showdown over defunding Planned Parenthood?
Isn’t leadership defying the will of the party by not doing so?
Why
fear a shutdown? Despite polls that showed the GOP getting the blame last time,
the party stormed to a landslide victory in 2014.
On
the other hand, since the election, the approval rating of GOP leadership has
plummeted, specifically for not keeping campaign promises to stop the Obama
agenda.
Would
it not be in the GOP leadership’s own best interest, as well as that of the
party and the American people, to at least try to confront the president with
all available means?
The Senate leadership aide initially responded
with an example of what leadership felt was “using all of our available means”
– the July vote in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood.
The aide conceded it was a losing effort from
the start because the GOP does not have a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes
in the Senate. So, even though the bill got the 54 GOP votes, it was still
doomed.
Why did leadership consider it an effective
tactic to call for a vote it knew it would lose?
“That vote allowed us to put the Democrats on
the record for standing by Planned Parenthood,” said the aide.
WND responded by pointing out that leadership
really did have another means at its disposal – the shutdown threat.
Shouldn’t the GOP at least retain that option?
WND also noted that, despite what popularity
polls said, it appeared the 2013 shutdown actually helped the GOP at the ballot
box in 2014 – after the party showed it was willing to fight for what it
believed. Was that not so?
The aide replied, because the Senate was not “a
majoritarian institution like the House,” the 60-voter threshold imposed
limitations. The aide noted the value of that when the GOP was in the minority,
allowing it to block Democratic proposals such as those favoring unions or
imposing a carbon tax.
OK, but what about using the threat of a
shutdown?
“As to the shutdown, I’m not sure I agree,” was
the reply.
So, WND pressed on, asking if the threat of a
shutdown was what was meant by those who advocate using “all available means.”
And, despite Senate rules, since Republicans
still had majorities in Congress, wasn’t a shutdown the only way to enforce
lawmakers’ power of the purse?
“I don’t think so,” came the response. “But the
question is to what ends, right? And is that end achievable?”
Suggesting a shutdown would be fruitless because
it could never force the president to budge, the aide was concerned the
tactic would play into Democrats’ hands and allow them to win the war in the
media.
“If we start from a basic understanding that the
Democrats want us to shut down the government (look up what they’ve been saying
about us for months, that we are extreme and want a shutdown) to blame us and
are more than happy to do it to ‘defend’ Planned Parenthood, as they try to
portray us as hating women …”
The aide continued, “My point is that they want
us to shut down the government, and when your opponent wants you to do something,
makes you think, right?”
The Democrats may believe a shutdown would help
them, but it didn’t in the 2014 election, right?
The aide responded, “You think we wouldn’t take
a hit if we shut down the government? Well, on that score, we’ll respectfully
have to disagree. But I can assure you that we are working through different
means of trying to get at Planned Parenthood. Believe me.”
WND acknowledged it was unlikely a shutdown
would be effective in terms of defunding Planned Parenthood, but perhaps there
would be another important tactical benefit.
There appeared to be just one real point of
contention between leadership and conservatives over strategy: Would a shutdown
not be effective in signaling to Republican voters that leadership was at least
willing to put up a fight? Would it not boost GOP voters’ approval of Senate
leadership?
WND asked the Senate leadership aide to comment
on three points provided by an aide to a conservative senator:
The
fight itself is worth it – the results are beneficial.
If we
tell the American public the Democrats are prioritizing the shutting down of
government over defunding Planned Parenthood, Obamacare, or executive amnesty,
that in itself is worthwhile.
It
sends the message to American people that we are on their side and fighting for
the things they want.
The leadership aide responded, “The fight is
worth having – and we are having it and will continue to fight it. And
we’ll do it while keeping the government open.”
That clearly meant leadership was not willing to
use all available means. And the aide made clear that was because leadership
feared another shutdown would hurt Republicans.
Other Capitol Hill aides told WND that
conservative lawmakers do not believe the 2013 shutdown hurt them, but what
does hurt the party is not fighting the Obama agenda.
The polls back that up.
A
full 75 percent of Republicans want GOP leaders to challenge Obama more often;
just 15 percent say they are handling relations with the president about right
and 7 percent say GOP leaders should go along with Obama more often.
Just
23 percent of Americans say congressional Republicans are keeping the promises
they made during last fall’s campaign, while 65 percent say they are not.
Just
22 percent of Americans approve of the job performance of Republican
congressional leaders.
Just
41 percent of Republicans approve of the job their party’s leaders in Congress
are doing.
By
comparison, in April 2011, 60 percent of Republicans approved of GOP leaders’
job performance and in April 1995, 78 percent approved of GOP leadership’s
policies and proposals.
Nonetheless, on
Aug. 8, Majority
Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., ruled out the possibility of using the
threat of a government shutdown to defund Planned Parenthood, or to oppose any
part of the Obama agenda. And this week, he
told television
station WYMT in his home state of Kentucky: “The president made it very
clear he is not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned
Parenthood,” which is embroiled in a scandal for apparently selling aborted
baby parts.
McConnell’s strategy is evidently to wait and
hope the next president is a Republican. He called defunding Planned Parenthood
“another issue that awaits a new president.”
Conservative lawmakers contend it does not
matter if the current president does not sign bills opposing his agenda; what
is important is to send those bills to the president so the American people
know where Republicans stand and that they are willing to fight.
An aide to a leading Senate conservative
emphasized these three points to WND:
GOP
leadership warned that not only would we lose our chance of regaining the
Senate but we would lose the House following the 2013 shutdown. Instead, we had
a historic victory in the Senate and gained 12 seats in the House.
They
said the shutdown distracted from the disastrous roll-out of Healthcare.gov.
False, we talked about that for about 5 months.
No one
senator can cause a shutdown. Blocking consideration of a bill requires at
least 41 senators to vote against cloture.
In other words, most GOP senators favored
confronting the president with all means available. Leaving the question: Why
won’t Republican leadership do the same?
The answer appears to lie in between the lines
of the answers provided by the Senate leadership aide who was concerned about
who would get the blame for another government shutdown.
Follow Garth Kant @DCgarth
The US Senate leaders
specifically referenced in this article and their legislative scores on
Conservative Review Scorecard are:
Majority Whip, Sen. John Cornyn,
R-Texas Score 59% - F
Conference Chair Sen. John Thune,
R-S.D. Score 52% - F
Policy Committee Chair Sen. John
Barasso, R-Wyo Score 61%-D
Conference Vice Chair Sen. Roy
Blunt, R-Mo. Score 38% - F
Majority Leader, Sen Mitch McConnell
R-Ky Score 52% - F
http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/revealed-inside-look-at-why-gop-wont-fight-obama/
Comments
The fear of a government
shutdown smells like a lame excuse to me.
The RNC delivered weak campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and lost both
elections. I have 2 theories about this lack of effective action on the part of
the Republican Congress in 2015.
My first theory is that
the Republican establishment has always thought that the US voters would need
to be in dire straits before they would give up any of the welfare state. They
thought Romney would win in 2012, because it was clear by then that Obamacare
was going to be a disaster.
My second theory is much
darker. I think they are all following what their major campaign contributors
want, The House, the Senate and Obama have the same campaign contributors. They
actually paid bribes to Republican Leaders up to $5 million to get TPP Trade
Authority passed.
The current Senate
Leadership has low legislative scores from Conservative Review Scorecard; they
vote with the Democrats. They allowed excessive immigration since 1989 without
saying a word. They overspend and pile
on the debt and some say it is not possible to repay the debt, so why
bother.
They need to be replaced
by Senators with higher scores like: Mike Lee R-UT 100% A, Ted Cruz R-TX 96% A,
Rand Paul R-KY 93% A, Tim Scott R-SC 85% B, Ben Sasse R-NE 80% B, Jeff Sessions
R-AL 80% B, Marco Rubio R-FL 80% B and David Perdue R-GA 80% B
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