House Republicans plot their comeback

October 19, 2007

One need not be a political junkie to see that House Republicans are in a tough spot, and their short-term prospects appear bleak. The GOP’s House committee has $1.6 million in the bank, but is $4 million in debt. The polls look one-sided in the Dems’ favor. The party has struggled to stop retirements and recruit favored candidates. The Republican leadership has been so discouraged with the National Republican Congressional Committee that House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) threatened to fire its chief strategists, and NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) considered resigning.

But never mind all of that, the party says. Now, they’ve crafted a comeback plan.

Confronting a dire outlook for next year’s elections, House Republicans have begun to fight back with a new three-pronged strategy: painting the new Democratic majority as part of an unpopular Washington status quo, forcing Democrats to make unpopular votes on tough issues and locking arms around a new GOP issues agenda. […]

Brian Kennedy, communications director for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said the GOP plans to portray its opponents as “the same old tax-and-spend Democratic Party people remember from the 1970s.”

At the same time, Kennedy said, his party is working to “re-establish the Republican brand” by using parliamentary maneuvers that require Democrats to take tough votes on problematic provisions that have been added to popular legislation.

That’s it? Wedge issues and “tax and spend”?

Republicans, in other words, plan to do exactly what they’ve been doing for the better part of my lifetime. This isn’t a “three-pronged strategy,” so much as it’s “the only play in the playbook.”

Of course, I don’t want to sell the GOP completely short. Apparently, they’re working on something they haven’t had in years: a policy agenda.

As a third part of the strategy, Republicans will unveil an agenda after January 2008 that Boehner has described as “innovative, dynamic solutions to the challenges Americans face every day.” However, the GOP leader has yet to spell out exactly what those solutions are, and the promised agenda is already months late in being formulated.

Jessica Boulanger, the NRCC’s communications director, [said,] “There really is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Yeah, we’ll see. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d wager that these “innovative, dynamic solutions” include tax cuts for millionaires, tax cuts for billionaires, and tax cuts for the party’s corporate benefactors.

I will say, however, that the “parliamentary maneuvers” part, objectionable as it is, is working. By ensuring that a change in majority control does not result in a dramatic change in agenda, the Rethugs (a) contribute to the unfortunate myth that there is no difference between the parties, (b) set up an argument that the D’s cant run things, (c) disspirit the Democratic base, and (d) get the meme out that Congress is wildly unpopular – even though a look at the internals of such polls shows that a majority blames the Republicans.

Dems cannot be complacent about this. They need to get a whole lot better, pronto, at confronting and overcoming the Rethug tactics or the Rethug plan really might work.

There is a 4th prong, of course – solve the cash problems by sucking up the left over funds from retiring members.

  • “Republicans will unveil an agenda after January 2008 that Boehner has described as “innovative, dynamic solutions to the challenges Americans face every day.” However, the GOP leader has yet to spell out exactly what those solutions are, and the promised agenda is already months late in being formulated.”

    Lemme guess: tax cuts?

  • As your previous post on the hissy-fit shows, the old style GOP politics just isn’t working — which is one allure of a Hillary campaign. They can’t NOT go after Clinton as they did before, but it’s jumped the shark. All they’ll end up doing is redeeming the Clinton legacy.

    I’ve noticed this in myself. I just don’t fear these guys any more. No matter how obviously bad things were going, I always had this sense of dread that they were just Machiavellian enough to pull it off, but I think there’s a reason Rove left: he sees the writing on the wall. He looked at his own numbers, and there’s just no way it works any more.

    I don’t think people are terrified of the likelihood of another terrorist attack as they are terrified our government can’t figure out a way to stop hemorrhaging. Dems have yet to show they’re willing to do anything but aid in the hatchet job, let alone stop the bleeding. Let alone break out the needle and thread.

  • I wonder how hard it would be to get one of those creeps to say out loud that they wish there would be another terrorist attack? Someone with access, please do a hidden camera interview.

    zeitgeist: “…the Rethugs (a) contribute to the unfortunate myth that there is no difference between the parties…”

    Unfortunately they’ve had a lot of help from the Democratic “leadership”. There is a difference, but the difference is way too small for most progressives’ liking. Their inability to honor their oaths to defend the constitution will do more to level the playing field than anything the Republicans could ever do.

  • Since I am doing calling for the DNC lately, I can speak to what people feel about the Democratic congress and their responses to the Republicans, since I hear what rank-and-file Democrats have to say. We had our best day ever yesterday, pointing out to people what would have been different had we had 13 more Democrats in the House.

    Even people who start the conversation being upset with the Democratic congress for doing nothing, it is easy to explain to them how we are so easily stymied by the Republicans because of the narrow majority, and the shamelessness of the Republicans in using every obstructionist tactic they used to scream and yell about when Democrats even talked about them.

    People understand when it’s explained to them that it is entirely the fault of the Republicans that there is no progress, that they are determined to stymie everything. The party can attack the Republicans on efvery point they try to make about our “inability to govern,” and they should. Since the party has money, we need to finance a campaign against the Republicans – people will listen and it’s not hard to do.

  • For some crazy reason I got a fundraising pitch from the RNC. I sent them $0.08, enough to bump up the postage they were required to pay.

  • Whoops, I didn’t notice in my earlier post that CB already sarcastically mentioned ‘tax cuts’ as their plan.

    I’ll be fascinated to see what their ‘plan’ consists of. I’m guessing it actually will be a lot of tax cuts, along with the privatization of lots of government services, coupled with new ‘services’ for people that are in fact just a giveaway to corporations (ala the prescription drug plan). The one thing I’ve noticed is that R’s really can’t do anything that benefits the citizens more than it benefits big biz.

  • OT, but…
    Do we have instances where Boehner has referred to “the Democrat party”? If so, shouldn’t every Dem pronounce his name as Boner, and a little emphasis would not hurt.
    And then there’s Rep Crapo…..

  • The primary reason progressives are moving farther and farther away from the Democrats who were elected by them in 2006 is because the Democrats refuse to recognize that their most urgent charge is to restore the government to its Constitutional basis, beginning with ending the war in Iraq. NOTHING else is more important to America.

    Even with a small majority, a majority party holds all the cards — the majority decides what bills get out of committees and onto the floor for votes. Instead of standing strong on constitutional grounds, the Democrats instead decided to take impeachment off the table and negotiate with Congressional Bush supporters on unconstitutional bills, when they should NEVER have done that. Their reputation has gone down the tubes because of this extremely unwise approach, and in fact, before 2006, they did not stand as a minority for what was constitutional either, with a few shining exceptions — Russ Feingold comes to mind, as does Dennis Kuchinich.

    This is NOT the time for Democratic consensus building, when the Republican agenda is to firmly entrench and keep the illegal unconstitutional programs of the Bush administration. It has been knock-out time since the Democrats gained the minority in the 2006 elections, and yet it seems they can’t even blow out a candle. You don’t fight criminals and bullies with the elaborate rules of fencing — you fight to disable them.

  • Sorry, but I think the Republicans have achieved what they wanted with this Congress. It will go down as the sorriest, the most unpopular, the most do-nothingest and the most disappointing in history. Even worse, it could dramatically and adversely impact the presidential election in 2008.

    Look, Bush is the worst president in history and everybody knows it, Republicans included. And yet they might just eke out a victory in 2008 with one of these pathetic Bush clones. That’s incredible.

  • Do they really suppose a “tax-and-spend Democratic Party” is seen as worse than a “bribe and spend Republican Party”?

  • “the same old tax-and-spend Democratic Party people remember from the 1970s.”

    Why doesn’t the Democratic Party start calling the GOP “the same old borrow-from-our-children-and-give-it-to-the-rich Republican Party we remember from the last 25 years?”

  • If Congressional Democrats were even remotely competent next year would already be a slam dunk for the party, such is public disgust with Bush and Republicans in general. Reid in particular is in the process of blowing one of the biggest electoral advantages a political party has ever had.

  • Here comes ‘Contract with America II: Re-Duping the Nation’ and you better believe they’ll have some success with it. The great Republican Noise Machine will start cranking and MSM will treat it as if it’s really something special (and serious).

    The only way this doesn’t work is if America comes to realize that conservatives have zero credibility and ignore them. Dems might want to consider helping voters get to that point.

  • I see in their three pronged strategy the word IRAQ doesn’t present itself. I wonder where it went, and what Republicans seeking office in ’08 have to say about it! Wedge issues and tax and spend spin may be mainstays in time of peace, but last time I checked this Republican president and his Republican Congress has us in a war zone they don’t want us to think about, let along hold them accountable for, largely because it is such a failure. Just a note to this unelectable crowd, the Republican party is on the verge of going the same route as the Federalist party of 1814 – they just won’t know it until early November next year! -Kevo

  • “innovative, dynamic solutions to the challenges Americans face every day.”

    I will be very interested to learn what constitutes a “challenge” in the Republican brain.

    Doesn’t matter, Republicans are better con artists than Democrats; where a Progressive will create a strategy that convinces people of the human rightness and morality of issues; Republicans create strategy that camoflages really awful, regressive policies, and obfuscates the true costs and ramifications. Examples:

    No Child Left Behind
    Medicare Part D
    The War in Iraq
    The war on terror
    Habeus Corpus
    Illegal Wiretapping
    The FDA
    The EPA
    Clear Skies
    Healthy Forests
    The Supreme Court
    The Justice Department
    No-Bid Contracting
    The Unvarnished Truth.
    Bush’s Legacy

  • Why doesn’t the Democratic Party start calling the GOP “the same old borrow-from-our-children-and-give-it-to-the-rich Republican Party we remember from the last 25 years?”

    Am I the only one who read this and thought “maybe we should turn the old Monty Python ‘Dennis Moore’ skit into a campaign ad?”

    “Steals from the poor, gives to the rich, stupid b…. (rhymes with ‘Mitch!’)”

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