Month: October 2013

Dispatch from the TEAlamo

by digby

Dave Weigel reports from the TEAlamo, where a few hearty Tea Partiers make the case thatthey really won:

Human beings have been putting their best spin on defeats since the invention of “winning” and “losing.” Obviously, the many Republicans who don’t want to trash their colleagues on the record are going to look for the Alamo underneath the rubble of this loss. But this shutdown had meant a lot to the party. Only a few dozen current members of the GOP conference had endured the last shutdown in 1995–1996. Those who hadn’t—and some of those who had—have insisted for years that it was not truly a defeat for the party. In his 1998 memoir, Newt Gingrich blamed the media for making that shutdown a “story of Republican heartlessness.” By 2010, when he reminisced about the shutdown, Gingrich argued that its real lesson was that his GOP had held onto the House in 1996 and balanced the budget—and that if the GOP shut down the government to stop Obamacare, the country would rally to the cause.

As dealmania spread across the Capitol on Wednesday, this spin remained battered but alive. “I haven’t been home now for close to a month, and so it’s not an easy venture all the way across the board,” said Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, a class of 1994 Republican who returned to Congress this year after a decade in retirement. “As we saw last time, in 1996, we had the last government shutdown, 20-some days, and just a couple of years later we did the unimaginable: We balanced the budget for the first time in 40 years. We got through some of the most meaningful welfare reform that this country never believed was possible. I think part of it is that when both sides see that you’re actually willing to stand and fight on principle, it changes the dynamic. It’s not evident right now, but I think it will be.”

They really do sound pathetic. And they sounded pathetic in 1995 when I heard all this claptrap the first time. The shine was permanently off Gingrich who was threatened by a coup within a couple of years and ended up resigning after they lost seats in 1998. But … they also turned the entire government into a sexy soap opera for over a year (with the giddy help of the Village press corps) culminating in a presidential impeachment they knew was doomed to fail but proceeded to do it anyway. And then they stole the next election. So much for lessons learned.

It’s tempting to think they’ve been vanquished for good this time, that they’ll settle down now and behave like responsible adults charged with governing the most powerful nation on earth. But I’m afraid that’s just not who they are. Barring a legitimate crisis, President Obama’s second term is very likely to be a series of brutal confrontations with the Republicans over … something. It may not be the budget — perhaps they did get their hair singed on that. After all, all they really have to do is hold the line on sequestration and they’ll have successfully crippled the economy and caused untold amounts of suffering among the American people (which they’ll probably blame on Obamacare, so it’s a two-fer.) If they do nothing but name post-offices for the next three years, their job is done.

In any case, as I wrote yesterday, as long as the Democrats keep putting the “entitlements” on offer, the activist left must remain on alert. Assuming that nobody really means it or the right will never accept it is foolish. It’s right there in the president’s current budget, ripe for the picking:

The president proposes repealing the automatic cuts of sequestration and instead pursuing other deficit-reduction measures, meaning that discretionary spending – both military and domestic – would receive fewer cuts than if sequestration remained in place in 2014. The budget would reduce agriculture subsidies and prevent individuals from receiving unemployment and disability payments simultaneously, among other cuts. The use of chained CPI in Social Security and elsewhere in the budget would reduce deficits by $230 billion over a decade. And the budget includes $392 billion in savings from Medicare and other health programs, in part by raising Medicare premiums for wealthy retirees and negotiating for lower prescription drug prices. 

Recall that Social Security is not included in the budget so there is no reason it should be included in any deficit reduction package. One must suspect that this is being done at least partially to obscure the fact that the Chained-CPI is a tax increase on working and middle class workers. Interestingly, Republicans have a way around that:

Conservative groups are warning lawmakers they have “strong concerns” that a proposal to slow the rate of inflation for government programs could result in tax increases. .. “We are not opposed to chained CPI under any circumstances,” the groups wrote in a letter to lawmakers dated Monday. “In the context of bracket-flattening tax reform which is revenue-neutral or a net tax cut, chained CPI may be an acceptable component. But as a standalone tax measure, chained CPI is a $100 billion tax increase in the first decade alone.”

“Bracket flattening” is a long-standing component of the president’s own tax reform proposals so they really aren’t very far apart on that. The GOP’s main objection is to the Buffet Rule and other proposals to raise revenue from the wealthy. Naturally.

The next few weeks are going to be about how to “replace” the slash and burn sequester cuts with something less immediately brutal. (I haven’t heard a peep about repealing it, which should be the rallying cry of the left.) Reports are that the Republicans hate it as much as the Democrats so there is incentive on both sides to find a better way. But keep in mind that even though the president has held fast on his pledge to “ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more as part of a balanced approach”, both sides remain committed to deficit reduction whether they are able to lift the budget caps a little bit or not. So the question is really about where these cuts will fall not whether these cuts will fall. You can certainly see the incentive to push the pain into the future in the form of “entitlement cuts” that will hit long after most of these people will have moved on to their comfortable K-Street sinecures.

The American people got their government open again, avoided default and lived to fight another day on entitlement cuts. This is a good day. But the battle isn’t over until the Democrats stop buying into the deficit obsession and fool themselves into thinking that if they can just “get that out of the way” they will be able to do all the things they’d really like to do. The last 20 years have proved that to be an absurd delusion that has brought us to the point at which a Democratic President has repeatedly offered up the signature achievement of the Democratic Party — and the only thing standing between some of the most vulnerable citizens in our nation and indecent poverty — as a form of human sacrifice. Until that proposal comes off the Democratic agenda permanently, the fight must go on.

.

When Ross Douthat is the voice of reason…

by David Atkins

This is really something, coming from Ross Douthat:

But with tonight’s vote done and the government open once again, I want to return to the theme of my Sunday column, and stress once more the essential absurdity of the specific populist gambit we’ve just witnessed unfold, drag on, and now finally collapse. However you slice and dice the history, the strategery, and the underlying issues, the decision to live with a government shutdown for an extended period of time — inflicting modest-but-real harm on the economy, needlessly disrupting the lives and paychecks of many thousands of hardworking people, and further tarnishing the Republican Party’s already not-exactly-shiny image — in pursuit of obviously, obviously unattainable goals was not a normal political blunder by a normally-functioning political party. It was an irresponsible, dysfunctional and deeply pointless act, carried out by a party that on the evidence of the last few weeks shouldn’t be trusted with the management of a banana stand, let alone the House of Representatives.

This means that the still-ongoing intra-conservative debate over the shutdown’s wisdom is not, I’m sorry, the kind of case where reasonable people can differ on the merits and have good-faith arguments and ultimately agree to disagree. There was no argument for the shutdown itself that a person unblindered by political fantasies should be obliged to respect, no plausible alternative world in which it could have led to any outcome besides self-inflicted political damage followed by legislative defeat, and no epitaph that should be written for its instigators’ planning and execution except: “These guys deserved to lose.”

And it’s important for conservatives and Republicans to recognize this, and remember it, because what just happened can happen again, and next time the consequences may be more severe. The mentality that drove the shutdown — a toxic combination of tactical irrationality and the elevation of that irrationality into a True Conservative (TM) litmus test — may have less influence in next year’s Beltway negotiations than it did this time around, thanks to the way this has ended for the defunders after John Boehner gave them pretty much all the rope that they’d been asking for. But just turn on talk radio or browse RedState or look at Ted Cruz’s approval ratings with Tea Partiers and you’ll see how potent this mentality remains, how quickly it could resurface, and how easily Republican politics and American governance alike could be warped by it in the future.

It wasn’t too long ago that Ross Douthat was a True Conservative standard bearer himself.

Yes, Grover Norquist is happy. But I’m not sure anyone else on the right is. There’s a fine line between moving the Overton Window and simply marginalizing oneself and one’s ideas. The Right has heretofore been fairly good at doing the former without veering into the latter.

But with the Tea Party, they may well have crossed that line. If so, it really will hurt them a great deal. Particularly if they try to replicate this foolishness again come January.

.

by digby

For those of you with lives to live, jobs to do or baseball playoff games to watch, here are the parameters of the deal that was made to temporary lift the debt ceiling and re-open the government:

• Government funded through January 15 at sequestration levels
• Debt limit extended until February 7, subject to vote of Congressional disapproval, which Obama can veto
• A budget conference established to come up with long-term spending plans by December 13
• Income verification for recipients of subsidies under Obamacare’s newly-established exchanges
• Backpay for furloughed workers

Also, notably, here are some of the demands that Republicans have made in the last few days, but that are NOT in the bill:

• No repeal of the “extraordinary measures” provision that allows the Treasury to do accounting tricks to avoid default
• No ‘Vitter Amendment‘ that would have taken away employer contributions from the health plans of Congressional staff
• No provisions related to birth control access
• No flexibility in how government agencies make budget cuts to their programs, as they are required to under sequestration
• No repeal or delay of the medical device tax
• No repeal or delay of the reinsurance tax
• No repeal, replacement, or delay of any aspects of Obamacare’s exchanges or individual mandate

Think Progress notes:

It might look like this is overall a good deal for Democrats given the number of things that Republicans aren’t getting. It is good: It reopens the government and lifts the debt ceiling without doing any major additional damage to existing programs. 

But it’s important to remember that the baseline for negotiations wasn’t exactly even: Democrats accepted the major budget cuts of sequestration (slated only to get worse on January 15, the same day their budget deal expires), and their only demand was actually the status quo: Keeping the government running and having the country fulfill its financial obligations. They didn’t request to restore the funding sequestration took away, they didn’t demand any new programs or initiatives that Democrats support. 

And if the previous budget conference is any indication, the one established under this deal has the potential to blow up in Democrats’ faces, leading to more cuts instead of an actual, long-term budget. In that sense, while it is the best, cleanest deal the American people can get, the Democratic party has been pulled slightly from center to right, not from left to center. 

Meanwhile, Republicans threw everything but the kitchen sink into their negotiations. It’s no surprise they’re taking a lot of losses.

I would note that school is still out on whether the drop in public approval will have disciplined the right to stop taking the nation to the brink of default all the time. Although, depending on how these upcoming budget negotiations go, I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility that it could be the left that takes it to the limit next time.

(I know … just kidding.)

.

Must read piece about health care: “I very much want to kill you Jon Schwarz”

by digby

Jon Schwarz has written a very personal piece today about a recent scary brush with serious illness and how it’s informed him about Obamacare:

[T]he reason it cost me nothing is because I have America’s best health insurance via my job with Dog Eat Dog Films, Michael Moore’s production company. He didn’t just make an entire documentary, SiCKO, about our disastrous healthcare system, he puts his money where his movie is. My coverage has no deductible, and most doctor’s visits have no co-pay. (The dental coverage is great too – I had three wisdom teeth removed for a total cost to me of $242.) I’ve never had insurance like this before in my life and probably never will again unless I move to Ontario.

So you can understand why I’ve been closely following the GOP’s attempts to defund Obamacare. I’m suddenly much more interested in everything about healthcare policy, in the same way you’re suddenly much more interested in the safety instructions in the seat back in front of you when the pilot announces you’re ditching in Lake Superior. And every time Ted Cruz has gone on TV, what I’ve heard him say is: “I very much want to kill you, Jon Schwarz.”

That’s because Obamacare requires insurance companies for the first time to cover everyone, regardless of any preexisting conditions. There’s no more disqualifying condition than cancer; without Obamacare, I would now almost certainly be uninsurable if someday in the future I try to get insurance on the individual market. And we know what happens to people without health insurance in the United States: they die.

He does not let Obamacare off the hook — he’s looking at it with eyes open, glitches and screw-ups and everything. But with all that he doesn’t miss the larger point:

… If I’d delayed because I had to pay, it easily could have ended up costing the system $500,000 worth of interferon, CT scans and radioimmunotherapy, plus the additional downside of me being dead. Multiply that by millions of people and you’ll understand why the right’s crusade against health insurance is more than just evil and cruel, it’s evil, cruel and incredibly stupid.

So we don’t have to just beat Ted Cruz so hard he flees back to Alberta. We have to get rid of the parts of Obamacare that may help the private insurance industry keep squeezing us like an anaconda. And we have to keep and improve the good parts, so the Affordable Care Act is just the first step to the only system that’s ever worked anywhere on earth: universal, high-quality health insurance and healthcare for everyone.

Yes.

Please read the whole thing.

Also too this:

And while we’re working on this, seriously – please please use lots of sunscreen and don’t skimp on dermatologist appointments.

.

Boehner safe at home

by digby

Heard more about conference from House Rs. Surprisingly at ease. Many will vote no, but appetite for revolt/plot isn’t there
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 16, 2013

Nope:

I’ve actually been really proud of Speaker Boehner over the last two and a half weeks. I don’t think he should be ashamed of anything he has done,” says Representative Raul Labrador, who made the remarks at the “Conversations With Conservatives” lunch.

“I would give him an ‘A.’ I think he’s done a very good job over the last few weeks,” says Representative Tom McClintock.

While some on the right have been sniping about peripheral issues, Boehner largely embraced the playbook put together by conservatives like Senators Ted Cruz, who wanted to use the continuing-resolution bill to wage a fight over Obamacare.

So now that the fight has been lost, it’s not Boehner whom they blame, but the GOP’s moderates, who pushed to end the government shutdown earlier.

“Actually I think the speaker stood up and said ‘this is what we’re going to do.’ I remember at conference on Thursday he said ‘there’s only one way out of this, and that’s to win.’ Well, that’s not the way it ended up,” says Representative Tim Huelskamp.

“But it’s pretty hard when he has a circle of 20 people that step up every day and say, ‘can we surrender today, Mr. Speaker? Can we just go away? Can we make it easy?’ I mean, whining and whining. I would say surrender caucus, but it’s a whiner caucus. And all they do is whine about the battle, as if they thought being elected to Washington was going to be an easy job,” he says…

Conservatives, including a group of senior conservatives that privately huddled after the Republican Study Committee meeting, declined to comment specifically on whether they approve of Boehner violating the Hastert rule on the vote.

But they were clear that, despite rumors to the contrary, there is no movement afoot to unseat the speaker.

“Absolutely no talk of anything along those lines. No talk,” former Republican Study Committee chairman Jim Jordan says.

Was this ever really in question? Could we please stop talking about how Boehner is a grown-up who is “forced” to do things against his will?

.

They really do hate democracy

by David Atkins

The common thread in the budget hostage negotiations for Republicans was the idea that Democrats lack legitimacy to rule. President Obama’s re-election didn’t matter because Republicans are right, dammit, and his voters are just moochers anyway. Democratic control of the Senate doesn’t matter because blue states are dens of iniquity. That Republicans only hold the House by virtue of gerrymandering doesn’t matter, because the 1.4 million more voters who chose Democratic House candidates are parasites of the 47%. That none of these things are true doesn’t matter. They feel true to a certain kind of scared, suburban, mostly male, mostly Southern white Republican voter who thinks of himself as John Galt.

Democratic elected officials are irrelevant to them because in their minds, Democratic voters shouldn’t even have the right to vote. Where Republicans have the ability to do so, they’re restricting voting rights as much as they dare, including in Virginia:

Virginia elections officials say they have already purged nearly 40,000 names from the voter rolls that are the subject of a lawsuit filed by Democrats seeking to keep those voters registered. 

The Democratic Party of Virginia filed suit in federal court earlier this month over plans to purge as many 57,000 names ahead of November’s gubernatorial election based on evidence the voters had registered in other states. Democrats say the list is riddled with errors. 

In a court filing late Tuesday, the State Board of Elections said it has already purged 38,870 names, while keeping more than 11,000 on the rolls after county registrars conducted their own reviews.

After all, who cares if the voters would prefer even a tattered Democrat like McAuliffe over a nutcase like Cuccinelli? They’re not the right voters, so they don’t count.

.

Are the Dems considering dropping the millionaire chump change demand?

by digby

If I’m reading this story headlined “Democrats should surrender on taxes” right, Ezra Klein is saying that Dems should give up on “revenue” and ask for something else, like immigration reform and infrastructure spending — in exchange for tax reform, lifting sequestration and/or entitlement cuts in upcoming negotiations.

He explains that revenue is no longer necessary (as if it ever was) now that deficits are coming down so democrats should shift their demand to something more meaningful. Here’s how he puts it:

…[Democrats] should see their leverage clearly: Republicans badly want entitlement cuts, but they don’t want them enough to trade for taxes. They badly want to replace sequestration, but not enough to trade for taxes. And they badly want tax reform — but, again, not enough to trade for higher taxes.

One answer to that is to keep sequestration in place until something changes. That’s basically the answer Democrats have come up with. But it’s a terrible answer. It’s bad for growth, bad for government, and bad for the people who depend on government programs.

Democrats should use their leverage to get something they actually want. Immigration reform and infrastructure investment are obvious places to start. They mean vastly more to the economy and to people’s lives than slightly higher taxes on rich people. And they’re things that many in the Republican Party want, too.

The reason I ask if I’m reading it correctly is because he doesn’t mention entitlement cuts explicitly as something to which the Democrats should concede. He talks instead about the opportunity to get defense cuts, immigration reform and infrastructure spending. But the implication is that Republicans might go for those to get what they “badly want” — which he defines there as entitlement cuts, replacement of sequestration and tax reform.

So, how would that deal look in the end? Well: It would replace the sequester with defense cuts (not many — both parties are subject to tremendous pressure on the defense budget) entitlement cuts, tax reform and immigration reform and/or infrastructure spending.

I have always believed that “tax reform” as currently defined by the so-called Very Serious People was something of a joke and the president calling Chained-CPI for the regular Americans in exchange for “asking the rich to pay a little bit more” a “balanced approach” is kind of a bait and switch. Certainly, immigration reform and infrastructure spending are worthier goals than temporary chump change for millionaires. But let’s be clear here — Chained-CPI is a terrible, terrible idea that needs to be tossed on the same rubbish pile as as SS privatization. Cutting Social Security as far as the eye can see at a time of dislocation and economic insecurity is not a “win” regardless of what the Democrats get in exchange.

This proposal would change the dynamic in one very important way. By pitting Immigration Reform against protecting Social Security, the left will be divided. Right now it’s easy for everyone to be on the same page — nobody is harmed if tax hikes for millionaires don’t go through. But this is a matter of millions of people being able to come out of the shadows and be treated like human beings in the here and now against vulnerable seniors of the future. Not nice.

Let’s hope I’m reading Ezra wrong on this — and if not, that he doesn’t reflect the broader thinking among the Democratic establishment. Tax hikes have long been the one thing the wingnuts will not agree to do even in exchange for cuts to entitlements. It’s possible that some kind of immigration reform or defense cuts would be equally unacceptable — but we don’t know that and I’m not anxious to find out.

It would be best to take all the earned benefits programs out of the budget negotiations altogether and then see where we are. The fact that Democrats continue to refuse to do so, despite the fact that the deficit is no longer a major issue (and SS was never part of those numbers in the first place) is very worrying.

Update: Apropos of nothing, there is this:

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that stalled immigration reform would be a top priority once the fiscal crisis has been resolved.

“Once that’s done, you know, the day after, I’m going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform,” he told the Los Angeles affiliate of Spanish-language television network Univision.

We have no reason to believe this is in any way tied to the new budget negotiations in the next couple months. But you never know.

.

The Nuge steps up

by digby

… to remind everyone that Cruz isn’t the only looney-tunes Ted in the Republican Party:

National Rifle Association board member and conservative columnist Ted Nugent claimed on a Florida radio station that the federal government shutdown could be resolved if the United States were “run like the Nugent household.”

He also suggested that a single person could do a better job than 5,000 federal employees and revived his previous claim that members of the military are committing suicide at a record rate because President Obama is “the enemy of the country.”

Asked how he would resolve the government shut down during his October 14 appearance on The Gater 98.7, Nugent said, “I celebrate that they’re shut down because Fedzilla is a bloated monster.”

Noting that his previous “threat” to run for president is “alive and well,” Nugent added, “I would love to see America run like the Nugent household. You get up early, you maximize your productivity, you be the best that you can be, you live within your means, you save for a rainy day and you don’t be some gluttonous, slovenly, criminal, wasteful paycheck fire-torching bastard like most of the people in politics today.”

During his rant, Nugent also blamed “liberal Democrats” for requesting funding for the government while “refus[ing] to be accountable,” and said his message to President Obama and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is, “Eat me!”

Nugent also claimed that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are both racists because of their involvement in the George Zimmerman trial, echoing a previous claim he made after making racially charged comments following Zimmerman’s acquittal. After Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder charges for fatally shooting unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, Nugent referred to Martin as a “dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe.” He also claimed that African-Americans could solve “the black problem” if they just put their “heart and soul into being honest, law-abiding, [and] delivering excellence at every move in your life.” During a separate radio interview, he suggested that African-Americans be profiled like a dangerous breed of dog.

I’m pretty sure people like this exist solely to make guys like Ted Cruz look normal by comparison.

.

Republican bunny sex

by digby

I know it’s kind of stomach churning to even think about it. But Alex Castellanos — who does appear to be a little bit, shall we say, impaired a good part of the time, made me do it. From Raw Story:

“A friend explained to me today, finally, what Ted Cruz is doing,” Castellanos said. “And I finally understand, he’s having bunny sex.”

“This is the late-night edition of 360,” Cooper gasped.

“In nature, there are boom and bust cycles,” Castellanos continued. “The snowshoe hare, every ten years, multiplies six fold.”

“Are you high?” Cooper wondered.

“I’m high,” Castellanos admitted. “I wish I was. The snowshoe hare — I thought it’s a marvelous explanation — every ten years, multiplies six fold. Bunnies like sex apparently. But the boom produces a bust. They press their food supply, they invite predators.”

“Right now, Ted Cruz, what’s he’s doing, feels good,” the GOP strategist added. “He’s growing his supporters. It’s leading the Republican Party, I think, into a bust.”

QOTD: Erick Erickson

by digby

“You will see no defunding of Obamacare because Republicans are giving up.“

Hahahaha. No, Erick, you will see no defunding of Obamacare because it was a delusional goal that was never going to happen in a million years. In fact, making this round about Obamacare instead of the budget pretty much ensured that you far right wingnuts were going to be publicly humiliated.

What were you smoking? Barack Obama was never going to repeal, delay or defund a law that everyone in the country calls Obamacare. The idea that you could make him do that with only the power of the rump Tea Party caucus in one house of congress just shows that you need to get out more.

Moreover, you are missing the forest for the trees, you silly fellow:

Look, these were the guys who thought sequestration was a great win for them and who made 85 percent of the Bush tax cuts permanent. You shouldn’t spend too much time thinking you’re dealing with political geniuses here…Sequester is the big win. It defines the decade… — Grover Norquist

Sahil Kapur lays it out:

… [W]hat is actually up for grabs: how much the government will spend when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. But conservatives were so successful at putting Democrats on defense over Obamacare that Democrats barely even waged a fight on spending.

The House-passed continuing resolution funds the government through Dec. 15 at a spending level of $986.3 billion, roughly what the government is currently spending after the sequester. Senate Democrats plan to strip out the bill’s language that prohibits funding for Obamacare, but senior aides privately concede that they’ll reluctantly accept the sequester level and won’t risk a shutdown for higher spending. The White House has steered clear of using its primary leverage — a veto threat — to unwind the sequester.

The Budget Control Act calls for a fiscal 2014 spending level of $1.058 trillion, before the sequester cuts that to $967 billion. The sequester would bring down the spending level to $967 billion either way. Senior Democratic aides insist this is temporary and the low spending levels won’t be locked in. But voting to establish a lower top-line spending level in the short term cedes their leverage to ultimately scrap sequestration cuts.

“By extending last year’s post-sequester levels, Speaker Boehner is trying to lock those additional spending cuts into place and create a new baseline from which future negotiations must begin,” read the CAP brief, written by President Neera Tanden and economic expert Michael Linden. “Having Congress adopt those levels in the short term is likely to make it easier for conservatives to keep those cuts in place for the long term.”

The sequester was designed to be a sword of Damocles that forced both parties to strike a deficit-reduction agreement. The cuts were never supposed to be permanent — neither side liked the thoughtless way they were apportioned. But where Democrats still want to replace it with a mix of targeted spending cuts and new tax revenues, Republicans have decided they’d rather maintain the sequester-level spending than give up even a penny in new taxes.

It’s largely unheard of for a party that controls only the House to threaten a shutdown to demand the party controlling the Senate and White House gut its signature legislation. And yet that’s where conservatives, through scorched-earth tactics and a fierce pressure campaign directed at reluctant GOP leaders, have steered the debate.

None of this means the battle is a win-win for the GOP. The squabble over Obamacare is hurting the party politically by shining a light on its deep divisions over tactics. It’ll hurt Republicans even more if the government shuts down, polls suggest. But on the substance, conservatives are poised to score another victory in the real fight that has torn Washington apart since 2011 — just months after they were crushed in an election.

And on top of that, the right wing proved that its iron grip on the GOP leaders, particularly in the House, remains as strong as ever, by coercing them into a dead-end Obamacare fight that even they wanted to avoid because they knew it would be irrational and self-defeating for the party. But they’re poised to score a big policy victory anyway.

Democrats are going to get another bite at the apple in the negotiations leading up to January 15th, where they hope to use the defense cuts (which are heavily weighted in that round) to force some sequester relief. That means the dynamic is going to change substantially with the GOP on the more familiar ground of demagoguing defense spending and “supporting the troops”. But keep in mind that Democrats aren’t exactly immune from those arguments either. Here’s the president back in 2012:

President Barack Obama said on Friday a bipartisan panel’s deficit reduction recommendation went too far on spending cuts, especially for defense, but set the right tone by also proposing revenue increases.

Obama said the plan put forward by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission – and held out by some as a model compromise that distributes the pain evenly – cut defense spending too deeply.

“They wanted … defense cuts that were steeper than I felt comfortable with as commander in chief,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Democrats can’t prevail, of course, but it’s important to keep in mind that negotiation will not be a replay of this round. Just as they have been doing successfully with abortion rights, the GOP will instead launch an incremental campaign to destroy Obamacare and will take new terrain one battle at a time — screaming all the way about how they are powerless and persecuted. It’s how they roll. The question in the short term will be, as it has been since sequestration was first proposed, if it can achieve what it was designed to achieve:

From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb. 22, 2013

Bob:

…The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)

I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.

My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.

Gene

Needless to say, sequestration vs entitlement cuts isn’t exactly win-win for the people. And some token “revenue” won’t make up for it, either way.

Update: One excellent outcome in all this is that Ted Cruz had turned himself into a loathed figure among the Party establishment that is needed to help finance any successful national campaign. He’ll still run and the faithful will follow. But unless he tempers his clownishness very quickly, his new role is to be the Michele Bachman of the Senate. That’s quite an achievement.

.