Or he’ll do what?
by David Atkins
Leverage is a tricky thing. The first rule of leverage is that in order to use it, a person has to either have something to trade or some extra pressure they can apply. People who are in a maximally hostile position don’t tend to have political leverage over their opponents, because there’s nothing they will trade for, and there’s nothing they can do to their opponents that they’re not already doing.
Case in point: John Boehner threatening the President today about the use of executive orders.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday delivered a blunt message to President Obama ahead of his plan for increased unilateral action: We’re watching you.
House Republicans urged Obama not to go around Congress, and Boehner warned that Congress would act if the president’s orders did not pass muster under the Constitution.
The House GOP “will continue to look closely at whether the president is faithfully executing laws, as he took an oath to do,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting of the Republican conference. “We’re going to watch very closely, because there’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him, and following the Constitution is the basis for House Republicans.”
Or he’ll do what? What can he possibly do to scuttle the President’s agenda that he isn’t already doing?
Asked what the House would do if lawmakers determined Obama skirted the Constitution, Boehner said only, “There are options that are available to us.” Republicans, he said, would discuss them at their annual retreat, which begins Wednesday in Cambridge, Md.
That’s what I thought. A lot of nothing–or else options so disgusting and distasteful that he can’t tell the press about them.
They’ve already shut down the government, forced cuts to food stamps and denied long-term unemployment benefits. Short of impeachment (which would be a godsend for Democrats), what else is there?
That’s the problem with becoming the insane party. Once you’ve gone over that edge, there’s not much leverage left. A President’s calculus quickly becomes to ignore Congress completely and do whatever is possible through executive order. Nothing else is left.
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