Danger Lurks for GOP in Overdoing ‘Message’ Votes

Last week’s party-line House vote to repeal the 201o health care law was arranged so the 70 freshman Republicans could go on record in support of a campaign promise. Such messaging votes have their place, argues Don Wolfensberger of the Wilson Center and the Bipartisan Policy Center, but only if paired with debates that might actually produce some changes in policy.

And Wolfensberger, a Roll Call contributor and former House Rules Committee staff director, says the GOP is running a risk by not doing more on the legislative front these days. In light of the party’s new interest in investigating potential Obama administration scandals, his analysis is worth noting. Here’s Don:

“There must be 50 ways to leave your health care law.” That’s how  songwriter Paul Simon might describe repeated attempts by House Republicans to disengage from the president’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Actually, by last count the House has only voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare in whole or in part.  The most recent effort occurred on May 16 when the House voted 229-195 to pass a total repeal bill sponsored by Tea Party Caucus founder Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.  This was the first run at the law in the 113^th Congress. Nevertheless, the exercise has become so old hat that none of the nine House committees of jurisdiction bothered to report the bill this time.  Full story

IRS ‘Scandal’ Touches More Nerves as Sign of Incompetence

The second congressional hearing on the IRS scandal, scheduled for Tuesday morning in the Senate Finance Committee, may offer solid clues about which of two possible ways the Republicans plan to play the imbroglio.

One choice is to pursue the matter as a potential scandal. The other is to portray the situation as emblematic of Big Government’s fundamental flaws.

The latter claim is what has created the ripest opening — if not the most obvious one to party fire breathers — to reverse the electoral fortunes of the embattled GOP. If not driven by malevolence, the only other viable reason for the IRS’ actions would be incompetence.

Concentrating on that second approach looks like the way many senior Republicans want to go. That’s in part because they’ve been given a wide opening to head in that direction by President Barack Obama himself and in part because they see the strategy as having a very high likelihood of underscoring their core criticisms about the failings of the administration and the ideology it espouses. Full story

IRS Scandal Is a ‘Crime’ in Boehner-McConnell Echo Chamber

The three-ingredient stew pot of Obama administration controversy got a personal stir this morning from the top Republicans in Congress — both of whom suggested that federal crimes were committed when the IRS targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny.

Separate statements by Speaker John A. Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, just a few minutes apart, suggested a coordinated decision by the GOP leadership to turn up the political pressure on the president as high as possible. It may serve to prevent the White House from shaping the narrative as one in which thorough punitive follow-through will follow the exposure of bad behavior.

“Now, my question isn’t about who’s going to resign. My question is who’s going to jail over this scandal?” Boehner told reporters after the first of two GOP caucus meetings today. “Someone made a conscious decision to harass and hold up these requests for tax exempt status. I think we need to know who they are, whether they violated the law. Clearly someone violated the law.”

McConnell was just one notch less emphatic in his suspicions. “If there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those that the administration disagreed with in the middle of a heated national election, it actually could be criminal and we’re determined to get the answers,” he said on the floor. Full story

GOP Throws Rulebook at Obama to Block His Agenda

Republican resistance to President Barack Obama’s second-term plans intensified another couple of notches today.

Speaker John A. Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced they would simply ignore a provision in the health care law calling on each leader to pick someone for a new panel with the power to dictate Medicare spending reductions without fear of congressional reversal.

The two said in a letter to Obama that such a bureaucratic maneuver was the best way they knew to protest the new Independent Payment Advisory Board, in light of their inability to kill it by repealing Obamacare completely.

At the same time, all eight Republicans boycotted this morning’s meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which under a wrinkle in the rules prevented the panel from advancing Gina McCarthy’s nomination to run the EPA.

The protest came less than 18 hours after the Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions panel leveraged another obscure procedural obstacle to stop Thomas E. Perez’s nomination for Labor secretary from getting to the Senate floor.

The question for the GOP is whether those oppositional tactics, which are all about passive parliamentary maneuvering rather than overt ideological argument, will provide any traction for their policy objectives or if they will only succeed at further annoying an electorate wary of partisan hijinks. Full story

Ted Cruz Leads the Twitter Pack in Texas

Ted Cruz remains combustibly in the news again this week — a high-profile speech to Republican faithful in early-primary South Carolina followed up with another tart public spat in the Senate, with Majority Harry Reid likening him to a schoolyard bully.

Four months into his time as the junior Republican senator from Texas, Cruz appears to operating on the principle that no amount of publicity is too much — especially for someone who’s suddenly tilting toward a run for president. His affect will get plenty more media attention starting Thursday, when the Judiciary Committee on which he sits opens debate on the immigration overhaul, probably lasting until Memorial Day. Cruz is going to work to slow or derail the bill at every turn.

All the while, the 42-year-old has been working diligently to cultivate his conservative base on social media, with what looks to be decent success. If he runs for the GOP nomination in 2016, he’ll potentially be doing so with the help of more Twitter followers than anyone else in the field.

Some enlightening detail about this has been assembled in recent days by the Houston Chronicle, the senator’s hometown paper. Its Texas on the Potomac blog made Cruz a test case of an effort to gauge the social media usage of all 38 members of the state’s congressional delegation.

Cruz is averaging 353 new followers every day and he sends out an average of 3.5 tweets daily — Wednesdays being his most prolific days. The favored conservative hashtags #defundobamacare or #2ndamendment are in more than half the posts @SenTedCruz has sent so far. He’s only tweeted 405 times from his Senate account, but those missives have collectively been retweeted almost 105,000 times. (The most recent, about the Benghazi embassy contretemps, went out at breakfast time and had been retweeted almost 4,000 times before noon.)

And get this: 86 percent of Twitter sentiment about the senator has been positive, by the Chronicle’s calculation.

Mom to Jeb: ‘We’ve Had Enough Bushes’ in White House

Barbara Bush is getting ready to hear a sarcastic “Thanks a lot, Mom,” from both of her sons.

The former first lady declared this morning that she doesn’t think Jeb Bush will — or should — run for president in 2016 because “we’ve had enough Bushes.” In doing so, she not only complicated things for her second-born boy, who has signaled that he’s contemplating a bid for the Republican nomination next time, but simultaneously stole some of the warm headlines her first-born was expecting from the dedication of  his presidential library. Full story

Putting Ryan Out Front Alters Immigration Debate Dynamic

This week’s most important development in the immigration debate has nothing to do with those testy exchanges at Monday’s Senate Judiciary hearings. It didn’t even happen in Washington. And the central player is one of President Barack Obama’s most prominent critics.

The event was a daylong swing through Chicago on Monday by Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who ran for vice president last year on the Mitt Romney “self deport” platform and who has continued to make deficit reduction the focus of his congressional career and his 2016 national aspirations.

That all changed yesterday, when Ryan became by far the most prominent House Republican to endorse a comprehensive overhaul of immigration law. Full story

Can Rubio Make Immigration a Non-Issue for 2016?

Assuming the Senate “gang of eight” unveils its immigration legislation, as promised, a disproportionate share of this week’s media attention will once again be aimed at a single senator in that octet.

That’s even though this chapter of the Marco Rubio story has hardly changed in recent weeks — certainly not since Sunday, when the Republican from Florida appeared on a record seven network TV news shows. His logistical feat should have ended any mystery about his intentions on immigration: He’s decided, without ambiguity or room for backtracking, to defy the vituperative warnings from fellow conservatives and take the lead for his party on the most comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws since 1986.

Even though the “will he or won’t he?” question has been answered, the coverage will continue to be enormous because of the consequences for the Republican Party’s electoral fortunes — and for Rubio’s own aspirations to become the first Latino in the White House. But the mystery on both those fronts seems to be dissipating as well. Support for creating a multi-requirement pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people who reside in the country illegally stood at a solid 57 percent majority among Republicans in a Gallup Poll released on April 12.

Full story

Maybe Obama Dinner Guests Voted With Their Stomachs

Evidence that the Obama charm offensive is starting to pay legislative dividends becomes available by comparing three lists: the 12 GOP senators who dined with the president last week, the 12 others whom Obama treated to supper a month ago, and the 16 Republicans who voted Thursday to begin debating gun violence legislation.

Among that last group of 16, all but three had attended one of those dinners, where the Senate guests were chosen mainly for their perceived willingness to entertain ideas for a budget deal.

Nine senators were guests in March at the Jefferson Hotel dinner, where the president launched his overt new effort to improve legislative relations:

1. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire
2. Richard M. Burr of North Carolina
3. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia
4. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
5. Bob Corker of Tennessee
6. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
7. John Hoeven of North Dakota
8. John McCain of Arizona
9. Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania

Four more Republican votes he secured from the roster of people he entertained at the White House just 12 hours before the vote:

1. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee
2. Susan Collins of Maine
3. Johnny Isakson of Georgia
4. Roger Wicker of Mississippi

Maybe the dinner fare had something with it: Senators at the hotel supper had a choice of four appetizers including crab risotto; entrée choices of roasted striped bass, grilled lamb, beef filet or lobster thermidor; and for desert peanut butter crumble, chocolate tart or an “iced Tahitian vanilla and praline bar.” The White House menu, by contrast, was the same for everyone: a relatively pedestrian grilled and sliced ribeye, sautéed vegetables, green salad and coconut sorbet with pineapple.

In any event, it’s impossible to view their cloture votes as a coincidence. It’s more likely that Obama’s good-food-and-candid-conversation strategy has helped him find the baker’s dozen who are most likely to break with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his super-conservative rank-and-file. They won’t vote that way as a group or all of the time, of course. But perhaps enough of them will, especially on the top-tier items that could make or break the president’s second-term legislative legacy.

And the other three senators who voted to advance the gun bill?

1. Jeff Flake of Arizona
2. Dean Heller of Nevada
3. Mark S. Kirk of Illinois

In the immortal words of comedian Red Buttons: They never got a dinner!

‘Entitlement Trap’ Is Alive and Well on Capitol Hill

It’s been a full two days since Greg Walden, who runs the House GOP’s political arm, derided the Obama budget as a “shocking attack on seniors” — and his fellow Republicans are still working to recover from their gob-smacked whiplash.

It’s no surprise, of course, that the congressman in charge of recruiting and financing GOP candidates in 2014 would have little nice to say about the president’s plan. But the focus of Walden’s criticism was so surprising that many people in both parties assumed he’d misspoken on Wednesday — and would surely row back his comments on Thursday.

But Walden is sticking by the view that Obama should be derided for his embrace of “chained CPI,” the shorthand for changing how the government calculates inflation in order to reduce cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and some other benefits.

No matter that the proposal would cost the typical senior about $50 next year, and that it is just the sort of modest limit on entitlements that Republicans howl is long overdue, mainly because Democrats starting with Obama haven’t been willing to embrace them. No matter that Walden’s derision of Obama for “trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors” is impossible to square with the budget endorsed last month, not only by Walden but also by almost all the fellow Republicans he’s trying to re-elect next year. It would achieve balance by altogether ending federal medical benefits for the elderly under Medicare as an entitlement.

And no matter that he’s made the top leaders of his caucus furious and prompted the prominent conservative Club for Growth to encourage a 2014 primary challenge against Walden in eastern Oregon.

“This is the least we must do to begin to solve the problem of Social Security,” Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday. “Chairman Walden and I have had a conversation, and we’ll leave it at that.”

The head-spinning situation could be laughed off as so much pandering and posturing were Walden another backbench tea partyer or even in that rare camp of GOP House members vulnerable to defeat in a swing district. But instead he is the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, someone who’s won wide praise as a savvy strategic thinker for his party.

Does this mean House Republican candidates are going to be urged to run away from even the most modest of the entitlement curbs they’ve clamored for? Does it mean the NRCC has concluded that voters have no memories or respect for ideological consistency? Does it mean Obama has just found a convenient exit hatch from the grand bargain budget talks that he probably didn’t know existed on the GOP side of the talks just a few days ago.

Those were some of the questions MSNBC’s Karen Finney, Indiana GOP spokesman Pete Seat and I talked about with Chuck Todd on “The Daily Rundown” this morning. You can watch it here.

Guns Make a Risky Filibuster Gambit for GOP

Senate Republicans will be deliberating over lunch Tuesday just how far to push one of the most politically risky filibusters they have contemplated in many years.

Guns hold such a unique spot in the political and cultural climate that it’s a tossup to predict that will happen. But assessing all the usually relevant factors leads to a pretty easy conclusion that the wiser course is to stand down and permit a wide-ranging debate on the legislation at hand.

Public opinion is solidly in favor of the background check expansion at the heart of the bill. Public opinion is even more overwhelmingly opposed to governance by obstructionism. President Barack Obama shows every sign of staying in the bully pulpit to pound on both those themes for as long as it takes. Full story

Could Margaret Thatcher Win a GOP Primary?

An abiding aphorism for the Republican Party’s rightward shift is that Ronald Reagan  couldn’t win a party primary today. Something very similar could be said of Margaret Thatcher.

The ocean of hagiography that poured out from congressional conservatives after her death Monday belies a simple truth. A quick read of the Thatcher record reveals a lot of daylight between the way she ran Britain in the 1980s and the way the GOP would run the federal government now. Full story

Ignoring Young No Longer Possible for GOP’s High Command

The Don Young “wetbacks” incident offers an object lesson about the dramatically different levels of credibility and attention so often afforded the same member of Congress inside the Capitol versus out in the actual world.

The sea captain’s face and craggy voice of Alaska’s solitary House member was all over the cable news networks Friday because he used one of the most universally disdained racial epithets available for disparaging Hispanic migrant workers. “We used to have 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes” on the California ranch where he grew up, Young said in an interview with a radio station back home about the role of technology in advancing economic development. “It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

The comment became an instant national story and a hot topic on social media for several obvious reasons. Young is the second-longest-serving Republican in the House, one of only three whose tenure dates to the 1970s, which means he can be credibly called an elder statesman for the GOP. In the world of Washington coverage, any provocative sound bite from a lawmaker has a better chance to make air on a slow news day when Congress is in recess. Full story

Gay Marriage Cases Offer Perils for GOP — Win, Lose or Draw

For gays and lesbians, the marriage cases being debated at the Supreme Court this week hold the potential for either a landmark expansion or a painful contraction of their civil rights, some narrower changes, or really nothing meaningful at all. But for members of Congress — Republicans, in particular — their political lives will be shaped profoundly by whether the justices go big, go small or essentially stay home on the issue.

The case with the broader constitutional, as well as political reach, being argued Tuesday challenges the California prohibition on same-sex marriage known as Proposition 8. The arguments Wednesday, about the constitutionality of the law denying federal benefits to legally married gay people, hold additional import for Congress as an institution and for every Republican running in 2014. This is especially true for those who voted to enact that law 17 years ago, those who pressed the House to take the legal lead in the current case, and those with statewide or national dreams.

A ruling upholding Proposition 8 would provide the most culturally conservative wing of the GOP a huge shot of momentum for its goal of keeping the party the bulwark against attacks on marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. It would also stand to trigger a wave of ballot initiatives on both sides of that issue, complicating the lives of dozens of congressional candidates — especially in California, where advocates of lifting the ban will be counted on to ask voters to do what the court did not. Full story

3 GOP Reasons for Immigration Revamp — in 1 Day!

The dam may be crumbling in front of the reservoir of Republican resistance to an immigration overhaul that allows almost 11 million people now in the country illegally to get on the road toward citizenship.

Three significant cracks have emerged in the past 24 hours, potentially the most important one this morning. Rand Paul, who’s made plain his interest in becoming the tea party’s next presidential candidate, spoke emphatically in favor of that idea in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “Prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into becoming and being taxpaying members of society,” the Kentucky senator said.

One day earlier, an embrace of “comprehensive immigration reform” — the code phrase for a policy overhaul that includes eventual citizenship for illegals — was the singular legislative policy proposal included in the Republican National Committee’s recommendations for spurring a GOP revival, which was otherwise entirely about campaign tactics, rhetorical shifts and branding.

Also on Monday, a coalition called Evangelical Immigration Table, which includes some the country’s most prominent conservative Christian groups, for the first time explicitly urged Congress to put “clear steps to citizenship” for illegal immigrants in any overhaul package.

Beyond the breadth of support represented by that trio, it’s important to note that they offered somewhat different rationales for their new-found stances. Paul said he was interested in growing the economy, boosting the federal tax base and improving the American work ethic, declaring, “I’ve never met a new immigrant looking for a free lunch.” The RNC conceded that the endorsement was a bow to its horrible standing in the polls with Latinos. “If we do not,” its 100-page report warned, “our party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only.”  And the evangelicals said their embrace was “rooted in our biblically informed commitment to human freedom and dignity.” Full story