Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’
Ping-Pong
Sep26
By John Feehery
Ping-Pong is a wonderful game, requiring skill, finesse, great hand-eye coordination, and at times, power.
Ping-Pong is a different game in the Congressional sense.
When one legislative body ping-pongs back a piece of legislation to another legislative body (like the House jamming the Senate) it can be both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.
Last week, the House served up a continuing resolution plus some additional disaster assistance money to the Senate before leaving for its break for the Jewish holidays.
The Senate, which hoped to also break for the week, is not at all happy with what the House served up.
But to be successful in jamming back the House, the Senate has to act as one. The rules of the Senate make it awfully hard for that body to act quickly on anything if there is a disagreement between the political parties.
And on this package, there is intense disagreement.
The Republicans want to pay for disaster assistance. The Democrats don’t like how the Republicans paid for it, especially their efforts to isolate a particularly bad political scandal that is currently afflicting the Obama Administration.
But in trying to avoid political embarrassment for the White House, the Senate Majority Leader might actually be putting his own vulnerable members in danger.
And you have to ask yourself this question if you are a Democrat up for re-election in a red-tinged state: What has this President done for me lately?
The interesting dynamic here is that both Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senate Minority Leader McConnell have been coordinating with their House colleagues in such a way as to weaken their own legislative body’s power at the negotiating table.
Reid apparently negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner on the initial CR package, and then went over to the House side to help Speaker Nancy Pelosi round up the votes to kill the package he negotiated.
McConnell, in turn helped to craft the Boehner strategy to jam the Senate and force Senator Reid’s hand.
The rule to be learned here is that when the Senate is divided amongst itself, the House has a great opportunity to jam the Senate.
As a former House guy, nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing the lower chamber sticking it to the upper chamber.
My prediction? The Senate caves and they pass the House bill to keep the government funded.
Obama and His Critics
Sep21
By John Feehery
I was working out at the gym this morning (I know, miracles never cease), and I looked over briefly (I know, you don’t believe me), at the television and saw one of the hosts interviewing Rachel Maddow.
I am not the biggest Rachel Maddow fan in the world (ok, I am not really a fan at all) and I immediately assumed that the topic of conversation was on the President’s decision on “don’t ask, don’t tell”, an issue that apparently is important to the MSNBC host.
According to the headline blaring at the bottom of the television screen was “Is Obama losing his base?”
Interesting question, given that the previous day, the President struck a blow for some of his most passionate supporters by going through with change in a long standing military policy.
I will make this observation.
The President is not losing his base (if that is true) because he is moving to the middle. He is losing his base for largely the same reasons that he is losing the middle and losing the rest of the country.
Sheer incompetence.
Let me explain. The President’s policies are not working. We are going broke spending money we don’t have on programs that don’t work. The unemployment rate is still terrible. Economic growth is terrible. Consumer confidence is terrible.
The Obama Administration is going out of its way to destroy jobs with silly and stupid regulatory actions. Obamacare scares the hell out of small business owners. The NRLB is actively trying to stop the construction of a new airplane manufacturing plant in South Carolina. The Obama Justice Department is closing down a Gibson Guitar manufacturing company because of a stupid EPA rule.
The liberal base is made up largely of three groups: African American voters; women voters (in particular single women); rich people.
What has Obama done for these three groups? Unemployment with black Americans is at record highs, a fact that Obama never talks about, ever. A new book from Ron Susskind details how the Obama Administration really feels about the ladies. And Obama spends every speech talking about how evil rich people are.
No wonder he is losing his base.
A new poll just came out that shows Sarah Palin is just 5 points behind Barack Obama if she chose to run for President.
Sarah Palin?
Other polls show that just about any of the announced Republicans would beat Obama right now, including Ron Paul.
The President probably thinks that everything is going to be all right, and maybe that is true. Maybe the economy will come storming back and maybe people will start listening to Mr. Obama, after largely tuning him out for the last year and a half.
Maybe. But I doubt it.
I still think there is a possibility that the President will face a serious challenge from a serious challenger in his own party. His incompetence will catch up to him sooner rather than later.
