Helping out John Boehner

Helping out John Boehner

by digby

Dave Weigel deconstructs the GOP strategy in the payroll tax fight and sadly, despite my earlier hopeful post, I think he’s probably got it right:

The cynic’s bet is that the story of GOP dysfunction won’t matter, so long as there’s eventually some compromise. Eyes on the prize: If the other side blinks, and it always does, what can Republicans get out of them?

They want a few things. The House’s version of the one-year extension included reforms that Republicans plan to stick to. On unemployment, the GOP wanted to cut the maximum duration from 99 weeks to 59 weeks and add in some new requirements. Beneficiaries who didn’t have GEDs would have to try to get them. States implementing unemployment insurance could require drug tests. These and other reforms were necessary, according to LaTourette, because “you couldn’t get 218 votes that extended unemployment benefits without reform.” In his district, employers were tired of having jobs open but lacking workers with the skills to fill them. Here was a chance to fix that.

They need to do this to validate the GOP in their belief that “those people”, the lazy-good-for-nothings who haven’t earned their benefits, are the ones who must pay the price for this bad economy. The “jaaahb creators” certainly aren’t to blame — they’d love to hire if it weren’t for all the “urban youth” and “illegals” and “drug users” and “hippies” who can’t or refuse to fill the good jobs they are offering. “Welfarizing” unemployment is very important to keep the rubes focused in the right direction.

Weigel also points out that they want to give the EPA a big fat finger and jam the President on Keystone (although they explain it as “job creation,”) and concludes:

Yes, the Republicans are coming off as intransigent. But Democrats want to re-elect the president, so they’ll ultimately give up a lot to extend a tax cut and unemployment benefits. In the meantime, Republicans can figure out what leverage they have to weaken the welfare state. Despite how it looks right now, it doesn’t make sense to doubt them. After all, they’ve had a lot of practice at this.

Indeed they have.(Read the whole piece to see just how often this has worked.)

It’s always possible that it really will blow up in their faces this time and they will capitulate to the Senate compromise and just come back in two months and do it all over again. What looks most likely to me that that the Dems will end up giving them a little something now with a promise for more later. (I’m surprised there isn’t another women’s rights issue in there to bargain away, but maybe after Plan B, they figure they’ve played that out.) But however it goes down, Weigel is right: they are showing their usual willingness to ride out any short term bad press to get what they want in the long run.

When you see things like this, you can see why: