Tag Archives: GOP

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Burning Down the House

08/21/2013 Nativegrl77

Will GOP Obstructionism Hand the House to Democrats?

The Progress Report

As we’ve been discussing, the Republican Party is in the midst of a meltdown over Obamacare. The party is united in its irrational opposition to the law’s offer of health security to millions of Americans; however, the GOP is nevertheless engaged in an all-out civil war over whether or not to shut down the government in a last ditch effort to try and derail the law.

(Ironically, even Republicans admit that shutting down the government won’t actually stop Obamacare from moving forward.)

Dozens and dozens of Congressional Republicans have signed onto letters advocating a government shutdown over Obamacare.

Yesterday, Heritage Action began a national pro-government shutdown tour that NPR reports even Republicans think means “political suicide” for the party. The former Tea Party Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), now the president of the Heritage Foundation, told a town hall audience that any Republicans who are afraid of shutting down the government ought to be “replaced.”

DeMint may get his wish, sort of. Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Ruy Teixeira, an expert in political demography, explains how the GOP’s “coordinated campaign to alienate anyone interested in functional governance” could hand Democrats control of the House of Representatives in 2014.

Teixeira’s analysis is a bit of a longread for this space, but it’s worth it:

Why are Republicans so freaked out?

At this point, they have a good chance — perhaps around 50-50 — of picking up enough seats to take the Senate, while Democrats’ chances of picking up the 17 seats they need to regain control of the House look considerably smaller than that. And yet, as one Politico story put it, “it is almost impossible to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be.”

Politico suggests the reason for the glumness is fear about the political fallout from the GOP’s unyielding, nihilistic approach to governance on issues like Obamacare and the debt ceiling. That problem may be far worse than they imagine. A close scrutiny of the data reveals several demographic weak points that the current wave of Republican crazy could activate, leading to the outcome they dread the most: Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

Start with minorities. It’s not well-known, but Republicans in 2010 benefited not only from relatively low minority turnout (standard for an off-year election) but also from relatively low minority support for Democratic candidates. Emphasis here is on the relative: minority support for House Democrats in 2010 was 73-25 — high, but below the 77-22 margin that minorities averaged in the three off-year elections that preceded 2010. If minorities snap back to 77-22 Democratic support as a consequence of Republican misbehavior, and the expected 2 percentage point increase in the share of minority voters from population trends emerges, then the Republican 6.8 percentage point margin in 2010 will be immediately sliced in half. And if the minority vote goes even stronger for the Democrats, reaching 2012 levels, that would eliminate about three-quarters of the Republicans’ 2010 advantage all on its own.

Another demographic problem for the GOP comes from a more surprising quarter: seniors. As Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps noted in a recent memo:

There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors’ party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections.

We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare. To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

It is therefore quite plausible that the GOP will benefit far less from senior support in 2014 than in 2010. If the senior share of voters returns to normal levels (19 percent) and the Republican margin among this group drops to its post-2000 average (6 points, about where it is right now in the Democracy Corps polls) that would take care of the rest of the GOP margin from 2010, getting the Democrats slightly past the break-even point in the popular vote.

Of course, given the well-known GOP advantage in translating seats to votes, Democrats probably need to do substantially better than breaking even to attain a majority in the House. That won’t be easy, but there are certainly potential avenues to shift the 2014 House vote even farther in Democrats’ direction. There is the youth vote, for example, which was relatively poor for the Democrats in 2010 (55-42) and could certainly improve, as well as possibly turn out in larger numbers. The latter could also be true of the minority vote, whose projected 2 point increase in voter share, is due solely to population increase. If relative minority turnout is better in 2014 than 2010, then there will be an even larger increase in minority vote share over 2010, pushing the Democrats’ margin farther toward what they need to take the House.

Make no mistake about it: the Democrats face an uphill climb. But the possibilities outlined above inch closer to reality every day the GOP continues its coordinated campaign to alienate anyone interested in functional governance.

BOTTOM LINE: If Republicans shut down the government over Obamacare or their demands for more damaging austerity, they might get to personally experience repeal and replace after all.

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GOP Not “Shutting That Whole Thing Down”

08/20/2013 Nativegrl77

The Progress Report

The War on Women Marches On

Today is the one-year anniversary of former Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) infamous “legitimate rape” comments in which he remarked about the magical powers of women’s bodies to “shut that whole thing down” if they were victims of what former GOP presidential contender Ron Paul called an “honest rape.” Two months later, another GOP Senate candidate, Indiana’s Richard Mourdock, caused his own national firestorm when he said that pregnancies resulting from rape were a “gift from God.”

These sorts of inflammatory comments paired with the GOP’s policy positions in opposition to affordable access to birth control, abortion rights, equal pay legislation, and other family-friendly economic items like earned sick time represent an ongoing effort attacking women and their families.

Here are just a few things that have happened in the year since Akin made his noxious comments:

Threatening to shut down the government in order to deny millions of women and their families health care: As we’ve discussed previously in this space, Republicans are now threatening to shut down the government in order to defund Obamacare, which would deny the security of quality, affordable health care to millions of women and their families. Republicans, of course, have already voted more than 40 times to repeal Obamacare, including its no-cost birth control benefit and provisions that will ban insurance companies from being able to deny coverage because they consider breast cancer, having been a victim of domestic violence, or merely being a woman a preexisting condition.One conservative group, Heritage Action, launched a nationwide government shut tour today and said it will spend more than half a million dollars on ads to pressure lawmakers into shutting down the government unless Obamacare is defunded.

Congressman revives Akin-like rape talk, House GOP passes unconstitutional abortion ban: During the June markup of an unconstitutional ban on abortion after 20 weeks, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) made comments echoing Todd Akin’s infamous “legitimate rape” remarks. Franks, who defended Akin at the time he made those remarks, explained that the incidence of pregnancy from rape is “very low.” There are approximately 30,000 pregnancies resulting from rape every year in the United States.The full House of Representatives passed Franks’ bill the following week.

Renewed assault on abortion rights in states across the country: Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country continued the unfortunate recent trend of passing increasingly draconian and unconstitutional restrictions on abortion rights. As ThinkProgress noted today, this has already been one of the worst years for reproductive rights in memory and “abortion clinics are closing at a record pace.”Not only are Republicans enacting increasingly restrictive laws, they are going to increasingly desperate lengths to do so. Texas called two special sessions to pass its crackdown, while North Carolina legislators resorted to attaching a measure that will close most of the state’s abortion clinics to an unrelated motorcycle safety bill.

“Abortion Barbie” and “Retard Barbie”: Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) become well-known in Texas in 2011 for filibustering a bill that contained billions in cuts to public education and became a nationwide sensation earlier this summer when she filibustered a draconian crackdown on abortion rights in the Lone Star State. Since then, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson referred to the Harvard Law School graduate as “abortion Barbie” and, over the weekend, Texas Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Greg Abbott (R) thanked a supporter on Twitter after he referred to Davis as “Retard Barbie.”

Senators suggest offensive explanations for military sexual assault crisis: Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) blamed the growing problem of military sexual assault on “the hormone level created by nature.” His colleague, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), instead suggested that perhaps pornography is to blame.

GOP governor attacks working mothers: Gov. Phil Bryant (R-MS) was asked to explain why the American education system “so mediocre.” Bryant responded that working mothers were to blame. This came just days after several Fox News commentators lost their minds over the record number of women who are the primary breadwinners in their household.

We could go on, but you get the picture.

BOTTOM LINE: If Republicans care about winning over more women, they need to put an end to offensive comments about women and how their bodies work and, more importantly, stop supporting policies that undermine and attack the health and economic security of women and their families each and every day.

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From Bad to Worse

08/15/2013 Nativegrl77 2 Comments

GOP’s August Woes Continue

From birther eruptions to lonely diatribes against immigration reform to doubling down on their anti-science climate denialism, things are just not going very well out there for Republicans this August.

Here’s the latest news on Republicans’ long, hot August:
•GOP can’t turn off the climate science crazy: Salon’s Brian Beutler writes, “Going into August recess, GOP leaders were really hoping its members of Congress wouldn’t yield to a shared tendency to talk about climate science…To no one’s surprise, though, that’s a bit like hoping the scorpion won’t sting the frog. Already this month, several House Republicans have given in to their nature.”
•GOP Congressman calls for government shutdown unless Congress ‘defunds Obamacare this year’:
During a town hall meeting in a tony suburb outside Sacramento on Tuesday, McClintock brought up the upcoming continuing resolution, which is necessary to keep government open but which many conservatives are targeting as a venue for another showdown over Obamacare. McClintock told the audience that he will vote against the continuing resolution — and thus for a government shutdown — unless the bill “defunds Obamacare this year.”
•Rand Paul: ‘I don’t think there is any particular evidence’ of black voters being prevented from voting: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a tea party senator with a long history of opposition to civil rights laws, told an audience in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday that there is no evidence of black voters being excluded from the franchise.
•GOP Congressman argues against multiculturalism: ‘There’s only one race here, it’s the American race’: Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) took a strong stand against multiculturalism at a town hall meeting, arguing that immigrants need to shed their culture, become “the American race,” and if they’re unwilling to do so, “reevaluate” whether they want to be in this country in the first place. Fielding questions about immigration reform, McClintock told the audience on Tuesday evening that he worries current generations of immigrants aren’t assimilating like in the past but instead retaining the culture from their native land. “There’s only one race here, it’s the American race,” he implored to constituents.
•Rep. Steve King says Latino immigrants are from a ‘violent civilization,’ will bring ‘more violence’ to America:
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) launched a vicious tirade against individuals from Latin America, claiming that the population gets more violent as one moves further south in Latin America
•Huge crowd turns out to pressure House GOP leader to back pathway to earned citizenship: A crowd of at least 1,000 people turned out today at a town hall meeting in the district of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the third-ranking GOP leader in the House of Representatives.
•Almost nobody shows up at Steve King’s anti-immigration reform “rally”: Rep. Steve King (R-IA) held a rally on Monday to oppose the immigration reform effort taking place on Capitol Hill, but no one, it seems, felt like going.
Screen shot 2013-08-12 at 8.37.14 PM
CREDIT: Politico’s @seungminkim

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Sabotage !

07/29/2013 Nativegrl77

CAP Action War Room

How Low Can the GOP Go?

Here’s one thing President Obama had to say during Wednesday’s big speech on the economy:

I care about one thing and one thing only, and that’s how to use every minute — the only thing I care about is how to use every minute of the remaining 1,276 days of my term to make this country work for working Americans again. That’s all I care about. I don’t have another election.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans and their allies have a different goal in mind. Their strategy: sabotage. They’ve done it before and now they’re trying to do it again. They’re trying to sabotage the economy and undermine Obamacare — even if millions of Americans suffer as a result.

Sabotaging the Economy

Deficits are falling at the fastest rate in decades and we’ve already achieved more deficit reduction than we set out to at height of deficit hysteria. Nevertheless, Republicans refuse to get rid of the sequester and are now demanding even more painful spending cuts. If they don’t get their way they are again threatening to shut down the government and, even worse, default on the nation’s obligations.

We watched this same movie back in 2011. It hurt the economy then and it threatens to hold it back now just as the recovery appears to be gaining steam.

We know the sequester is causing real pain to people across the country, but yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office told us how many jobs it will be killed if it’s left in place next year: up to 1.6 MILLION.

Yep, you read that right. If the Republicans force us to keep the sequester cuts for another year, as many as 1.6 MILLION fewer Americans will be working. That’s 1.6 MILLION Americans who won’t be buying the goods of businesses large and small. As we discussed yesterday, middle class consumers are the real job creators and the economy simply can’t work without them.

Sabotaging the Government

House Republicans are trying to enact their long-held goal of simply “starving the beast” so much that government simply can’t function. In order to keep the government from shutting down, they are now demanding cuts even deeper and more painful than the sequester. Here’s but a few examples of the crippling cuts they are now calling for:

Education grants for the poor: cut by 16 percent.

The Department of Labor: cut by 13 percent.

Community Development Block Grants: cut by nearly 50 percent.

Amtrak: cut by nearly one-third.

EPA clean water grants: cut by 83 percent.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities: cut by 50 percent.

Just like blocking nominees to government agencies they don’t like, the GOP is trying to starve programs they don’t care about or whose mission they disagree with. This is simply nullification by another name.

Sabotaging Obamacare

Conservatives know they are at the last chance saloon when it comes to their quest to destroy Obamacare. They lost the fight in Congress, they lost at the Supreme Court, and President Obama won and Democrats added seats in the Senate last November.

They know that millions of Americans will soon get access to quality, affordable health care for the first time. Tens of millions more already have new benefits and better coverage. And come January 1, 2014, the worst abuses of the health insurance industry, including denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions, will be history.

The only thing conservatives can do now is try to throw sand in the gears. They have spent or will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a misinformation campaign. They’re hurting some of the poorest Americans by refusing to expand Medicaid. They are threatening to shut down the government in order to defund the law. They’re intimidating private sector groups that might want to help inform the public of the law’s benefits. And, most cynically of all, they are trying to convince the uninsured to stay uninsured. All of this simply out of spite and the hopes it might benefit them in the 2014 election.

Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote a must-read column this week calling out Republicans for their appalling behavior:

What is going on now to sabotage Obamacare is not treasonous—just sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing.[…]

But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation—which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil—is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate—even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists—takes one’s breath away.

BOTTOM LINE: Republicans are trying to sabotage the economy and undermine Obamacare merely out of political spite and the hopes it might help them in 2014. Instead of sabotaging the economy and trying to deny quality, affordable health care to millions of Americans, it’s time for Republicans to focus on actually governing this country and helping grow the middle class and the economy along with it.

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A Whiter Shade of Fail

07/11/2013 Nativegrl77

By CAP Action War Room

The House GOP’s Epic Miscalculation

“A whiter shade of fail,” is how Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described the latest efforts to deny the numerical and political reality that the GOP is in “a demographic death spiral,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) put it, unless the party gets behind comprehensive immigration reform in order to help get right by Asian and Latino voters.

It’s clear that some House Republicans are looking for an excuse, any excuse really, to get out of passing immigration reform with a pathway to earned citizenship. Some say they don’t have many Latinos in their gerrymandered conservative districts, so there’s no personal political benefit to them but there is potential political risk in the form of a primary from the right. Others, however, have seized on a recent analysis that purported to show that the GOP doesn’t actually need to improve its standing among minority voters if it simply manages to magically find and turn out “missing white voters.” And voila, there’s an excuse for the GOP to continue the status quo of alienating nearly every demographic segment outside of its increasingly old, increasingly white base.

Unfortunately for the GOP, this analysis was all wrong. In a post entitled, “No, Republicans, ‘Missing’ White Voters Won’t Save You,” Alan Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira run through the numbers explaining just how wrong this “missing white voter” theory is. You should read the whole thing, but here’s their conclusion:

So: GOP phone home! Your missing white voters have been found, and it turns out they weren’t really missing. They were simply sitting out a relatively low turnout election along with a large number of their minority counterparts. They may be back next time if it’s a higher turnout election — but then again so will a lot of minority voters. Bottom line: your demographic dilemma remains the same. The mix of voters is changing fast to your disadvantage and there is no cavalry of white voters waiting in the wings to rescue you.

The New Republic’s Nate Cohn offers additional analysis underscoring that there is no easy way out of the GOP’s demographic dilemma. Indeed, he writes that since the GOP’s gains among white voters have been concentrated in the South and Appalachia, not battleground states, current trends among white voters actually “would cement the Democratic edge in the Electoral College.” Cohn concludes, “the GOP has a tough road ahead.”

Finally, a new round of polls out today shows that voters want immigration to be addressed this year and that several House Republicans in swing districts could face a serious voter backlash if immigration reform fails.

BOTTOM LINE: There’s no easy way out for the GOP. If House Republicans decide to kill immigration reform with a pathway to earned citizenship, their chances of staying a national party with the possibility of winning the White House are likely to die along with it.