Goper vs Goper
by digby
As we watch Luke Russert breathlessly report the latest maneuvering from the halls of congress over this DHS spending bill drama, it’s a good idea to remember that this is not really about the DHS. It’s not even about immigration. It’s about the Republican Party.
Stan Collender called it a while back:
The Republican vs. Republican budget war is now wide open for all to see. The House’s intransigence on this particular issue — it insists that the DHS appropriation include language that somehow reverses President Obama’s executive orders on immigration -– is being matched by the Senate’s unwillingness to take the steps needed either to match what the House wants or develop its own alternative.
And, as I also predicted, the unwillingness of Senate Democrats to provide any votes for their GOP colleagues even on issues where there is some agreement has backed Republicans so far into a political corner that it’s not at all clear how they will fight their way out.
This is not an aberration over the very hot button immigration issue: No matter how this showdown ends, it’s virtually certain to be repeated over and over and over again this year on everything budget-related.
The current budget stalemate and those to come were inevitable the day after Election Day. Even though the House and Senate both have Republican majorities and are controlled by the same political party, the GOP representatives and senators have very different constituencies and, therefore, vastly dissimilar political needs.
Because the 2012 redistricting created more reliably one-party congressional districts, House Republicans are more concerned about intra-GOP fights in primaries than general elections and the voters in those races tend to be extremely anti-Democrat, anti-Obama and conservative. They are also far more willing to support militant tactics like shutdowns.
By comparison, reelection for many Senate Republicans depends on them appealing to a much broader and more moderate (even if it’s only just relative) statewide base that is not as comfortable with confrontational politics. Add to that the fact that 24 of the 34 senators up for reelection in 2016 will be Republicans and that many of them are from states that Obama won and you start to understand the substantially different political needs between the two GOP-controlled houses of Congress.
That makes it anything but surprising that on many or even most issues what the GOP House demands won’t be acceptable to the Republican Senate and what the Republican Senate needs will be completely intolerable to the GOP House.
The country will just have to suck it up and suffer because the Republican Party is at war with itself.
I think that most people believe this is the big crucible and that the grown-ups will finally assert themselves and vanquish the radicals forever. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on it.
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