House Speaker John Boehner. (photo: AP)
27 February 15
t has long been
the opinion of the management of this shebeen that obvious anagram
Reince Priebus is the emptiest suit in American politics. I see no
reason to change that now. However, as this ongoing brawl between the
Republican majorities in the two houses of the national legislature
makes painfully clear, Speaker of the House John Boehner is making a
strong bid to overtake Priebus, even though their problems are quite
nearly the same. Priebus's suit is empty because being the chairman of
the Republican National Committee doesn't mean a whole helluva lot when
you've got a flock of gozillionnaires willing to finance the campaigns
of people that the RNC would rather not see traipsing around the
landscape with their underwear on their heads. What power does Priebus
have over Sheldon Adelson? Or the Kochs? Or any of the other panjandrums
who can construct entire presidential candidacies from deep in their
vaults? Similarly, Boehner has no apparent control of his majority
because so many of them are from safe Republican districts and can find
electoral sustenance from the same new universe of sources on which the
presidential candidates can call. It is unimaginable that Boehner would
threaten a recalcitrant conservative House member with a primary. He'd
get laughed at. The fact is that almost every former source of political
power in the Republican party has been rendered largely a figurehead.
Thus does he find himself
being outmaneuvered in the ongoing cockfight over tying the funding for
the Department of Homeland Security to the president's executive orders
on immigration. Thus do we find Boehner looking for a way out and
flopping around like a trout in the canoe.
And on Wednesday morning, Mr. Boehner and House Republicans emerged from their private meeting saying they had no plans to act until the Senate actually sent them a bill. "I don't know what the Senate's capable of passing, and until I see what they're going to pass, no decisions have been made on the House side," Mr. Boehner said. "The House has done its job to fund the Department of Homeland Security and to stop the president's overreach on immigration, and we're waiting for the Senate to do their job."
That dog, he declines to hunt. Boehner knows that he's
already got Representative Steve King going after Mitch McConnell's
head because the Senate Majority Leader has proposed to decouple the
passge of DHS funding from the attempt to defund the president's
entirely lawful actions on immigration, because McConnell knows the
political stakes of being hung with a shutdown over such a transparently
fraudulent equivalence. Boehner knows he can no more control King and
the rest of the xenophobe caucus any more than he can make it stop
snowing. So he has no choice but to blame the Senate, which must endear
him to McConnell.
Several options that members have suggested, said someone with knowledge of the discussions, include a short-term funding measure until the House and the Senate can meet in a joint committee to resolve the differences between their plans; a short-term funding measure until the Senate passes Ms. Collins's proposal; or adding back in language to repeal Mr. Obama's 2014 executive actions, but leaving untouched his 2012 protections for the young immigrants known as "Dreamers." Another possibility is passing a bill to fund the department - but with the condition that the financing would end if a recent ruling by a federal judge to halt the president from implementing his immigration executive actions is overturned. "There wasn't really a clear message of where we're going," said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho.
This would not be a problem for an actual Speaker of
the House. Do you think that Sam Rayburn would take on an issue of this
magnitude without having "a clear message" of where his majority was
going? Tip O'Neill? Hell, Newt Gingrich? The fact is that Boehner has a
majority that is far beyond his control because a) he's not a deft
enough politician even to try, and b) he has nothing with which to
knuckle his people into line. To wit,
If Mr. Boehner and his leadership team do ultimately try to pass a "clean" funding bill that has no immigration-related amendments, probably with the support of Democratic members, the Republican base "would be extremely angry," said Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana. "So this is very, very delicate territory for our leadership."
There is no Republican party any more. There is only a
universe of competing power centers, some more influential than others,
but all of them operating on their own agendas and by their own
standards and for their own purposes. This apparently unwieldy system
can exist -- and even, for the moment, prosper -- because of how the
Supreme Court has changed the nature of politics in this country. But
the natural forces in this new universe are inescapably centrifugal.
They pull the politics away from formal central authority. It is going
to take politicians raised entirely within this new universe to set the
lines of authority within it, and that is most assuredly not John
Boehner. Until then, sooner or later, everything is bound occasionally
to fly apart.
and then answers it with:..........
There is no Republican party any more. There is only a universe of competing power centers, some more influential than others, but all of them operating on their own agendas and by their own standards and for their own purposes.
And we can thank good old Newt Gingrich for this.
The conservatives wind up advancing a progressive agenda, restricting a huge, dangerous and un-American agency which has been impinging on our civil liberties and enhancing fair immigration policies. I am amused to observe this.
That's the kernel. So what will be the strategy of "[Republican] politicians raised entirely within this new universe to set the lines of authority within it"? What can be the strategy for organizing a party that is hostile to all the forms & practices of government? a party that basically rejects organization by consent of the organized?
New leadership that may emerge within such context will, of course, be seen as an enemy to the rest of the party. That's the situation that Boehner finds himself in. It would be his situation even if he were the smartest guy in DC. It will be the situation of his successor.
The erstwhile Republican Party, as Pierce notes, is now in possession of a few rich men and various corporate interests. Its loyalty is to them; its enemy is government. It is becoming what was called in pre-War Italy a Fascist Party. The lines of authority in a Fascist party derive from a strongman and will entail, above all, threats & violence.
The politician raised within this new universe and creating its lines of authority will be wearing a black shirt. Force will constitute authority among a party that opposes, on principle, the civic basis of government.
The result is anarchy. I believe government is where "we, the people" work together to better our society and our lives. I believe in activist government. But when our united power is dismissed as the problem, then there is no check on the consolidated power of a few wealthy individuals. Do we want a "dollarocracy" where those few with the most money rule the rest of us, or a democracy where we work together in self-rule?
There is an interesting comparison with the Weimar Republic, Germany between the wars, where the society was continuously demeaning its form of democracy and fondly remembering the strong-arm autocratic rule of Bismarck. The result was the unmourned collapse of democracy and the rise of the Nazi party.
Where do we go when we so despise our own self-rule?