I’m a lifelong Democrat, so the word “hope” is not really significant in my vocabulary, but I would be most pleasantly surprised if last week’s farm bill debacle knocked some sense into a few Repub heads. And I’m very, very glad that we’ve got Pelosi on our side while the GOP only has Boehner. Greg Sargent, on Friday:
… In an interview today, Pelosi said she hoped Boehner and Republicans had learned “lessons” from the farm bill debacle about the consequences of moving legislation too far to the right, and warned that doing so on immigration reform would alienate Dems just as Republican amendments to the farm bill did.
“They were asking us to abandon our values, because they couldn’t get their act together,” Pelosi said of the farm bill debate, a reference to a GOP amendment that allowed states to impose work requirements on food stamps on top of $20 billion in cuts to the program. “Hopefully they learned a lesson that you cannot go too far.”
Embedded in these comments is a stark warning that underscores Boehner’s dilemma on immigration in the wake of the farm bill mess. Yesterday’s vote showed again that there is a sizable bloc of conservative House Republicans that simply can’t be counted on to pass legislation — even if it contains massive concessions to them — forcing a reliance on Dem votes to get big items passed. Boehner has insisted nothing will get a vote in the House unless it is supported by a majority of Republicans. But it’s unclear whether a majority of Republicans will support anything with a path to citizenship in it, unless it perhaps contains extremely tough border security triggers as preconditions for it. (GOP Rep. Tom Price said today it’s “highly unlikely” that citizenship can win over House Republicans.)
And Pelosi’s warning today to Boehner means that anything that can win a majority of Republicans is likely to alienate Democrats en masse, making passage perhaps impossible. Pelosi repeatedly warned that Boehner must not embrace immigration reform that “undermines our values,” lest that cost Dem support….
Pelosi’s remarks are a reminder of the dilemma Boehner faces. There really may be nothing that a majority of Republicans could support that can also win over Dems in any significant numbers. Anything that can pass the House with almost entirely Republican votes — whatever that would be — won’t get the support of Senate Democrats or President Obama. Which means, as Brian Beutler put it, that the only way Boehner can get reform through the House that has a chance of becoming law is if he accepts the need to “dispense with the member management theatrics and throw in with Democrats.”
Pelosi seems eager to use the farm bill debacle to sharpen the reality of the choice Boehner faces. “He’s going to have to work with us,” Pelosi says. “Hopefully they’ve learned something about legislating.”
Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly – “SNAP! It’s a Different Political System“:
Nancy Pelosi began her remarks at Netroots Nation having some fun at John Boehner’s expense at the “amateur hour” represented by the Farm Bill Fail earlier this week. She noted in particular that the GOP leadership took a huge risk by adding the Southerland Amendment to the bill—a real provocation to House Democrats—and then couldn’t even deliver the votes of those in their own conference who insisted on “reform” of the SNAP (food stamp) program…
The multi-year Farm Bill is the ultimate, eternal, iconic example of “must-do” legislation put together in a messy, log-rolling process full of impure but essential compromises. Ideological issues—particularly the long battle for and against farm subsidies—have always played a part in Farm Bill politics, but regional and commodity issues have predominated, and no fight was vicious enough to prevent final enactment for more than a session or so…
Just now Pelosi talked about the shocking willingness of all but a handful of House Republicans to vote against a defense authorization bill—a defense authorization bill!—because of their opposition to the policy overturning “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
And that’s why I just have to shake my head when so many pundits so frequently predict, with no real evidence, that the “culture wars” are safely in the rear-view window. Culture-based ideological warfare has a firmer grip on the Republican Party than ever, and it has expanded to virtually every policy front. The “fever” may break, as the president piously hoped before his re-election. But for now, its persistence is a much better bet than any resumption of the old familiar ways of governing.
Jay C
Well, to mix a metaphor or two, the culture wars may or may not be in the rear-view mirror as much as we would like to believe, but – more importantly – they may not be quite as much of the roadblocks they once were: more like speed-bumps.
c u n d gulag
Nancy’s message:
Ya wanna f*ck us?
OK!
But don’t ask us to f*ck ourselves.
You wanna to us to f*ck ourselves?
FOHGETTETABOUTIT!!!
Don’t ask us to f*ck ourselves!
YOU go ahead and f*ck yourselves,
We won’t do it!!!!
We’ll just stand by, and enjoy watching you do it! :-)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If we were a more coherent Democratic party, I would wish for our next candidate to be a Jewish African American who is a lesbian. We would all have to have her back even more than Obama needs ours, but we are going to have to keep having our Cold Civil War until all the racists, bigots, oligarchs, and theocrats are defeated.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@efgoldman: I’ll give you that one. I know who Will Rogers is.
Mr Stagger Lee
I think the thing to remember is that the Republicans are doing the bidding of the billionaires. Citizens United and control of the congressional districts, I doubt if any of them really cares, if there is no real legislating going on. This is Koch Brothers Disneyland.
Baud
@efgoldman:
I had hoped that would have happened in the last election, but I think it ended up being all about Obama and local issues weren’t aired. Maybe 2014 will be different but it’ll partly depend on how the GOP plays it with their internal politics.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Technically, turnout differential. But I’m with you 100%.
MattF
Do you think any of the winger Congresscritters have reflected on the fact that their extremism has empowered the She-Devil Pelosi? Personally, I’m guessing that it’s too subtle for them. LIke, ‘Politics, OMG!!!’
bill d
Boehner doesn’t have many good options left. My hunch is that he flees to Ecuador.
Baud
@bill d:
Heh. Maybe we could do a prisoner exchange.
Lolis
Pelosi is pretty damn smart. I was at Netroots Nation when she got heckled by Code Pink in 2008. I heard she got booed this year. I think Democrats don’t always know a good thing when it bites them in the ass, cause Pelosi is a really good leader.
Redshirt
If Cindy Sheehan were President and Daniel Choi the House Leader, we’d have everything, already. If you can think it – gold plated hovercraft, for example – we’d have it by now.
Jay C
@Baud:
Naaah, let them keep him: all he’ll require is a railroad-tank-car full of Scotch, 750,000 cigarettes, and cable for C-SPAN, and he’ll be set for life….
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshirt:
I want mine to be dark blue.
Baud
@Jay C:
Sorry, wasn’t clear. I meant we’d give them Boehner in exchange for getting Snowden.
Don’t know why Equador would go for it though. Unless they have a really high booze tax, then they’d rake it in.
MattF
@efgoldman: To be fair to Boehner, note that he has some color (besides orange) in his family now:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2013/06/john-boehner-interracial-marriage.html#entry-more
gogol's wife
@Omnes Omnibus:
and full of eels.
bill d
@Jay C:
Won’t Boehner have a hard time keeping his Camel Ultra Lights lit in Quito?
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: Yes, my nipples explode with delight.
Baud
@efgoldman:
A conviction could come it. I call that good.
beergoggles
The culture wars aren’t over but the democratic political homophobia and willingness to stab gays in the back repeatedly to appease republicans never ceases to amaze me.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@beergoggles: I missed something…where did that happen recently?
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@beergoggles:
Put down the fruity Brazilian drink, Glenn – you’re not fooling anybody.
dmsilev
@beergoggles: You’re going to have to unpack that. How did Obama fail you today? Alternatively, what did the farm bill have to do with gays in particular?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
OT: According to LGF, Snowden is asking Equador for asylum. You know, the place that had a national assembly member and activists for supposedly slandering the president, and, more interestingly, has implemented the first nation wide voice and facial recognition program in any country.
dmsilev
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Maybe Ecuador is looking for an expert consultant?
Baud
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): @dmsilev:
To be fair, I think the Republicans insisted on provisions to exclude gays from some of the benefits. It’s a fair issue to complain about
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@dmsilev:
It didn’t include jail time for verbal expressions that could be construed as homophobic by a panel including Dan Choi and Glenn Greenwald.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Baud: OK, I’ll grant that. It got lost in the cut $20B from foodstamps.
Daniel
O/T but this is going to be a huge week: SCOTUS, Senate immigration bill vote on Tuesday, POTUS to Africa while Nelson M. is now barely alive (just let him go, please)…it boggles the mind.
This ain’t no party/this ain’t no disco/ this is no fooling around/ This is no Mud Club/Or CBGS/I ain’t got time for that now…
Chris
@Daniel:
… not to mention my Persian midterm.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Chris: Cats or rugs?
Villago Delenda Est
The teatards are not sane.
It’s that fucking simple.
rikyrah
watching Hoyer bitchslap Cantor on the floor of the House after this vote went down was hilarious
Hoyer (to Cantor, who was trying to blame the Dems for the failure of the Farm Bill): When we were in charge, we didn’t whine. We got the 218 votes…and did it without you.
MikeJ
@dmsilev:
Ever hear Dan Savage talk about his favorite call on his radio show? It was soon after the guy was killed fucking a horse in Enumclaw. A guy called up and talked about how he liked to have sex with farm animals. Dan asked if he had sex with male horses or female horses, and the guy responded, “I ain’t no fag!”
The Dangerman
@Mr Stagger Lee:
This. I saw some talking head on Fox News complain that the immigration bill would suppress wages (imagine, Fox giving a shit about low end wage earners). Well, duh…
…but the Hard Right won’t pass a bill unless it turns the border into a free fire zone. Welcome to the party splitting.
Just Some Fuckhead
@MikeJ: lolz
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@The Dangerman:
Remember the somewhat endearing episode in 2008 when McCain, in an effort to do some outreach to Latino youth, had Daddy Yankee play “Gasolina” at a Phoenix high school. McCain wasn’t aware of the double entendre in the song, but played it off like a good sport.
You’d never have that kind of outreach from conservatives now, even as a failed effort.
Chris
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Yes.
askew
@Daniel:
And the media will spend most of their time talking about Snowden.
Chris
@The Dangerman:
Immigration’s a fascinating issue because it’s one of the few where there’s actually still a break in the Republican Party (even though they don’t admit it out loud) – big business wants the immigrants, the vast majority of their voters don’t, but because of the way the GOP is set up, it’s big business that’s wearing the pants.
As a Democrat, that gives me hope for the future.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew:
I think we should all leave the ex-husband of the late Princess Margaret alone.
quannlace
The Hard Right won’t be behind any immigration reform bill untill they’re assured Hispanics are now voting Republican
Chris
@quannlace:
No, not even then. Republicans have zero qualms about turning on minorities even when they’re on their side. Muslim Americans were a solid Republican demographic right up until the 2000 election. Didn’t stop most of the Republican Party from turning them into their latest Emmanuel Goldstein right after 9/11.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not to mention the Catch 22 character.
Redshirt
@efgoldman:
Everything! Heck, if I’m following the Firebagger Brigade correctly today, if Sheehan – or gosh, some other Leader that I haven’t thought of cuz they never mention any names – was in charge, we’d have solid gold hovercraft, post-scarcity economies, and we’d be zipping to distant stars in our faster than light spacecraft.
But Obama sold us all out, apparently.
Oh well. Back on the attack – must heighten the contradictions!
drkrick
@Chris: Rove and Bush (but I repeat myself …) tried to fight that, but the lizard brain contingent can’t help themselves.
raven
@eemom: Yossarian
pokeyblow
@raven: You must feel like Dunbar, trying to stretch out the dwindling.
jl
If only that communist, GW Bush, had not expanded the program, we wouldn’t have this problem now.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: No, Snowden.
mk3872
Since the current immigration bill doesn’t provide citizenship for 10 years anyway, I’d rather see this version fail, voters blame the GOP and give us a Dem House in 2014 so that we can get a better bill in 2015.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Remember Boeing’s ill-fated attempt to build the SBI border fence along the Arizona/Mexico border? They managed to build a whole 53 miles of it before cost overruns and technical problems caused the project to be cancelled. Only a defense contractor could incur cost overruns and technical problems while building a fucking fence. It’s not over. Once those defense contractors and a heapin’ helpin’ of Halibrand (All spiced with yummy Eminent Domain proceedings) get sufficiently involved the Republicans will suddenly embrace inclusiveness.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
Davis X. Machina
@mk3872: Does it matter enough to enough voters to flip the House? The mid-term electorate’s median voter may not find the failure of the immigration bill to be actually a failure.
El Caganer
There are still some things that both parties can agree on. The new US trade representative was confirmed 93-4 in the Senate. For what that’s worth.
pokeyblow
@Omnes Omnibus: perdu.
Chris
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
As others here pointed out a month or so ago, the defense industry is essentially a giant graft machine, made much more essential by the fact that it’s the only kind of government spending that’s not controversial. And therefore, the only form of federal jobs program, infrastructure project, bailout, etc, that the feds can get away with. So, more than any other sector in America, the defense industry has become a giant machine designed first to spend money and then to do its job (with every large corporation, every state government, scrambling to get a piece of the pie).
jl
@El Caganer: Both parties can agree on gifting already filthy rich corporations with more legal tools to extract rental income from the lesser people in the US and around the world. Hurray! God bless our corrupt and deluded politicians.
Edit: It is very interesting to me that the GOP confirming a trad rep to negotiate more corrupt and bogus ‘free trade’ deals is one thing that is more important than obstructing or trying to humiliate our blah president.
Liberty60
@Davis X. Machina:
Flipping the House is not in the cards in 2014, but 2016 is possible. Hard to tell if losing this bill or winning it would do more to fire up the voters who care about this issue.
ericblair
@Chris:
The sort of ironic flip side of this is that this is where you can sneak in green technology development: solar and geothermal on military bases, biofuels, and the like, and take contingency planning for global warming seriously. If we had a congress that actually was sane, this could be taken out of the defense budget and expanded into a real national technological initiative. However, abortion and welfare queens driving Cadillacs, so therefore we can’t have nice things.
El Caganer
@jl: Funny how that works, innit? A lot of posturing and obstruction to throw red meat to the goobers, but when it’s time to get paid, all is comity.
beergoggles
@dmsilev: It was refusing to add SS spouses to the immigration bill.. because obviously it’s comprehensive immigration reform only if gays get kicked while at it. It was not challenging the def auth bill language that allows bigots in the forces to hate on the gays while on the job and be immune from consequences.. because conscience!
Kay
I disagree with Kilgore because he’s conflating the culture war stuff with the hate on poor people stuff.
There’s two tracks running here, an appeal to religious conservatives and an appeal to secular white working class.
They are two different groups of voters. Republicans need both.
What’s interesting to me is, they NEED an overt appeal to THEIR white working class voters. That’s the vulnerability, IMO, and that’s why Boehner can’t move.
Chris
@Kay:
Different, yes. But with a fuckton of overlap, especially because of the all-or-nothing approach Republicans have to ideology.