Will Republicans Screw Up Again? Some Are Already Overreaching

Some Republicans are so excited at the thought of multiple controversies dogging the White House over the next few months (or longer) that they are already foaming at the mouth.

For example, on his syndicated radio show late last week, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee compared reports of the IRS targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to what happened in Nazi Germany.

And, of course, you knew that some conservatives and Republicans (such as Glenn Beck, Oklahoma Sen. James M. Inhofe and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann) couldn’t resist mentioning the “I” word — impeachment — almost immediately as they struggled to show their anger and contempt for President Barack Obama and his administration.

But Republicans ought to remember that they have seen this movie before, and the ending was not what they hoped for or expected.

There’s no doubt that the three controversies — Benghazi, the IRS and the Associated Press — play into the GOP’s hand by raising questions about “big government.” They give Republicans an opportunity to challenge the administration’s truthfulness and to argue for a check on the president during his final years in office.

While the president hasn’t been implicated directly, that certainly doesn’t eliminate the political risk for the White House or for Democrats over the next few month or possibly all the way to next year’s midterm elections.

But let’s not forget: Republicans failed to capitalize on President Bill Clinton’s inappropriate conduct by over-playing their hand and pushing impeachment. Not only did they fail to drive him from office, the GOP ended up losing a handful of House seats in the 1998 midterms instead of adding seats as initially expected.

Republicans allowed themselves to look as if they were primarily interested in scoring political points and overturning the results of the 1996 election, even if it meant paralyzing the government.

That same danger exists once again for the GOP.

With fundraising playing such a huge part in our politics, some conservative groups will be tempted to use the trifecta of controversies to play to their bases to boost anger and fundraising.

This, in turn, will make the issues appear more and more partisan, giving the president the same opportunity that Clinton used when he sought to rise above “politics” and called for members of both parties to address public policy challenges.

Of course, there are differences between 1998 and 2013.

Though Clinton undoubtedly lied about his behavior and besmirched his office, he was caught in a personal scandal. As we have seen repeatedly, while personal scandals provide fodder for late-night comedians and social commentators, voters seem willing to overlook them. Just ask current South Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Sanford.

Obama’s problems certainly haven’t yet been laid at his doorstep, and there’s no reason to believe that he was directly responsible for the controversies in the ways that Clinton and then-Gov. Sanford were. But the current controversies go to the heart of how government operates and how it communicates with its people, raising more fundamental questions than the Clinton and Sanford personal scandals did.

In other words, voters easily understand the notion of individual weakness — and redemption. But they have a much harder time accepting government mistakes and misjudgments.

If Sunday’s TV appearances by big-name Republicans are any indication, party leaders have decided to use a “culture of cover-ups and political intimidation” argument to link recent controversies and put them in a far broader context, making it easier to link them to the White House. Columnist George Will even identified potential fourth and fifth scandals in his May 16 column, “Obama’s Tapped-Out Trust.”

Democrats used the same strategy during President George W. Bush’s second term — and only a slightly different phrase, “culture of corruption” —  during their effort to regain the House in 2006. Winning 30 seats and the majority showed that they were successful.

Obviously, the great danger now for the president and his party is that one of the existing controversies expands dramatically or even that another controversy emerges that fits neatly into the GOP’s storyline. While the just-released CNN poll doesn’t show the president has been hurt by the controversies, those findings shouldn’t lull Democrats into a sense of security. They already have reason to worry about candidate recruitment.

Republicans certainly can continue to raise questions about the administration’s behavior, but they would improve their prospects if they can use those controversies to raise questions about the Obama team’s performance and goals.

The White House, on the other hand, must hope that Democrats can portray Republicans as placing a higher priority on embarrassing the president than on dealing with the day-to-day concerns of real people. For Obama, a foreign policy crisis might even be just what the doctor ordered.

Obama’s New Political Reality Is Bad News for Dems in 2014

Forget background checks and gun control, divisions within the GOP on immigration, and Republican intransigence on negotiating a budget deal with the president. The current triple play of Benghazi, the IRS and now the Justice Department’s seizure of journalists’ phone records has the potential to be a political game changer for 2014.

It’s hard to overstate the potential significance of the past week. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a dramatic reversal of the nation’s political narrative — from how bad the Republican brand is and how President Barack Obama is going to mobilize public opinion against the GOP in the midterm elections to whether the Obama administration has become so arrogant that it believes it can stonewall Congress and the public.

The series of revelations presents an unflattering picture of an administration that just 10 days ago looked poised and confident. Now it looks out of touch and unresponsive.

The danger for Obama, of course, is that many Americans will start to doubt his administration’s veracity and values. If that happens — and for now it is only a danger, not an inevitability — then the president could well turn into a serious liability for Democrats in next year’s elections.

The recent revelations seem to confirm some of the complaints and accusations coming from some of the GOP’s most conservative elements, and that could both damage the Democratic brand and improve the Republicans’.

In the near term, the controversies could help the candidacies of Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee in the June 25 Massachusetts Senate special election, and even Ken Cuccinelli, the presumptive GOP nominee for governor of Virginia. Given the administration’s problems, voters are more likely now than they were two weeks ago to use this year’s contests to send a message of dissatisfaction to the White House.

Longer term, it isn’t clear whether the current controversies will hurt the president and his party in 2014. But if the administration’s problems linger or even grow, Democratic enthusiasm could wane, depressing turnout in next year’s elections. Weaker turnout would have serious ramifications for Democratic candidates, particularly in swing and red districts and states. It could also hurt party recruiting and lead to a flurry of retirements.

It’s unlikely that the three controversies will pass quickly. The IRS scandal, in particular, is likely to linger, as drips of news and allegations come out over the next few weeks.

The White House is likely to have to spend many hours and much energy responding to questions and generally dealing with these issues, making it more difficult for the president to push his legislative agenda. If history is any guide, that could add to the impression of an embattled president who is merely trying to keep his administration afloat.

And that definitely is not the message that Democratic strategists have been hoping would carry the party to a successful 2014 midterm elections.

Obama Administration Heading for a Tough Few Weeks

Maybe it’s because two-term presidents suffer from hubris, or merely that after an administration has been in office for years, it inevitably makes mistakes (and too often tries to cover them up). But recent news reports ought to make Democrats at least a little nervous about the next few months and even 2014. Full story

How Will Divided Attention Affect Obama, Congress?

Obama has a lot of different issues to manage as he seeks to build his legacy in his second term. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

Not much going on these days, huh? There are only a few things on the president’s — and Congress’ — plate, including:

• Guns
• A big budget compromise
• Immigration overhaul
• North Korea
• Bombs at the Boston Marathon
• Iran’s nuclear program
• And oh yes, jobs and the economy

Recent events once again prove that while politicians — and particularly presidents — like to believe that they can always set the agenda, much of political leadership involves responding to circumstances.

“Stuff happens” is the way I like to put it. It can be an oil spill, a shooting, a foreign leader firing on his own citizens, a trial of a doctor who killed women and children at an abortion clinic or some crisis manufactured by a largely unknown young political leader who needs to solidify himself at home. Full story

Five Takeaways From the New NBC/WSJ Poll

(Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

A few observations on the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll:

• This is the first time the president’s job approval numbers have been “upside down” — more people disapproving than approving — since June 2012.
• After spiking around the election, the right direction/wrong track numbers have slipped back to where they were last June. More than 6 in 10 people think the country is headed on the wrong track.
• The president’s handling of foreign policy numbers have never been worse. Only 46 percent approve of his performance in that area, which has been a strength for Obama. Interestingly, the president’s job approval for his handling of the economy, 47 percent, is higher than for his handling of foreign policy, 46 percent. That’s a reversal of where public opinion has been since he has been in office. Full story

New Jobs Numbers Raise Economic — and Political — Questions

The unemployment rate slid slightly in March, only because people stopped looking for work. (Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

The jobs numbers just reported for March — an increase of only 88,000 jobs — are horrendous, especially coming after February’s strong job surge (236,000 new jobs revised up to 268,000).

Forget the unemployment rate sliding from 7.7 percent to 7.6 percent. As The Assocaited Press noted, that drop resulted “only because more people stopped looking for work.”

One bad month of new jobs data isn’t likely to have a huge effect on President Barack Obama’s job approval numbers, and good news in the April report would quickly erase concerns about the March numbers.

But any sense over the next few months that the growing optimism about the economy has been misguided could send the Dow Jones industrial average down hundreds of points and put pressure on the president. Full story

About That Terrible GOP Brand …

I certainly agree with pollster Andrew Kohut’s overall assessment of the Republican Party’s image and positioning problems in his March 24 Washington Post piece. I, too, have written about the GOP’s problems.

But in the piece, Kohut compares the GOP’s current position to the Democrats’ “in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” when the Democratic Party became known as the party of “acid, abortion and amnesty.” He argues the Democratic Party’s radicalization back then stood “in the way of its revitalization.”

It’s worth noting, however, that Democrats retained control of the House and Senate throughout the 1960s and 1970s even if the party was significantly to the left of the public and the electorate.

Yes, Democrats lost the presidential race narrowly in 1968 and by a huge margin four years later, but the 1972 defeat had more to do with the party’s nominee than anything else.

I know this next point will shock some, but here it is: Politics is not only about the presidency. Control of Congress matters, too, and Democrats were able to control both chambers of Congress even when the party had an unflattering image — that is, even when the national brand was damaged. Full story

The GOP: A Party Increasingly at Odds With Itself

“I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat,” humorist Will Rogers said many years ago. But if Rogers were alive today, he’d undoubtedly see his party as a model of organization and unity when compared to the GOP.

The Republican Party continues to fracture more seriously than I expected following last year’s re-election of President Barack Obama.

Instead of uniting the GOP’s various constituencies against the president’s agenda, Obama’s re-election seems to have encouraged Republicans to spend much of their time harping on their internal disagreements and fighting over how the party should be positioned for 2016 and beyond.

Everyone — from party insiders to journalists to those at the grass roots — has noticed the GOP’s problems, and everyone has solutions, from revising party positions on immigration and same-sex marriage to moving away from international commitments to electing more conservatives who will refuse to compromise on conservative principles. Full story

GOP Doubles Down on Ryan to Change the Narrative

“We aren’t going to be fighting about the Ryan budget,” one Republican promised about the political jockeying to come. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call)

In what can only be regarded as an interesting gamble, Wisconsin Rep. Paul D. Ryan and House Republicans this week are proposing an economic agenda oddly similar to the one they have been offering for the past two years.

Among other things, the Ryan budget plan, which intends to balance the federal budget in 10 years, rolls back the health care legislation passed in 2010, transforms Medicare and creates just two personal income brackets, 
10 percent and 25 percent.

Whatever you think of the proposal as a policy document, Republicans are gambling that they will benefit from a comparison between the Ryan budget and a budget that Senate Democrats are offering.

“The whole point of the Ryan budget is to have a fight with the Democrats,” one GOP strategist told me recently. “The alternative is the status quo, and we haven’t done very well with that.” Full story

Looking to 2016: Is It Still Either Bush or Rubio?

Bush hasn’t done anything lately to tamp down speculation that he will run for president in 2016. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

As former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush continues to do nothing to end speculation that he might run for president in 2016, his Florida ally, Sen. Marco Rubio, twists in the wind.

Florida and national insiders have been operating under the assumption that the two Florida Republicans would never run against each other for the nomination in three years.

Rubio, after all, owes his seat in the Senate to Bush’s quiet backing during the initial stages of 2010 GOP primary, which pitted Rubio against then-Gov. Charlie Crist. And when Crist dropped out of the primary to run as an independent, Bush quickly delivered a full-throated endorsement of Rubio.

But could the Bush-Rubio relationship change over the next year and a half?

Bush, 60, is widely regarded as one of his party’s brightest lights — a successful governor who is smart and politically appealing, and who is both the son and the brother of a former president. On the other hand, Rubio, 41, is still only a rising star in his first term in the Senate.

But Bush has a few liabilities that Rubio doesn’t have. Full story