That’s precisely what he’s saying, and it’s nothing new for any party anywhere in the world. Politicians don’t reason themselves into positions; they’re assigned their beliefs when they take office.
Actually, this really is probably the best McConnell and the GOP can hope for. From the very beginning they (the GOP leadership, not the Tea Party) made it clear they wanted the debt ceiling raised. Yet at the same time they claimed that the deadline gave them leverage to get big spending cuts with no revenue increases. They apparently missed the part where you don’t really have any leverage if you already admitted you don’t have the balls to pull the trigger.
So now all they can do is legislative maneuvering to make sure the limit is raised without raising it themselves. I’m not sure Obama cares what legislative tricks are used as long as the final outcome is “Debt Ceiling Raised - Crises Averted”. I’m not sure how well “I didn’t vote to increase the limit but I did vote to let Obama increase the limit” plays in Peoria.
They did it for war powers.
McConnell gave an interview this morning on Laura Ingraham show in which he defended his suggestion, by saying the following:
cite: McConnell Debt Ceiling Strategy: 'I Refuse To Help Obama Reelection' | HuffPost Latest News
Honestly, I don’t see how giving more power to the President doesn’t also put the GOP in a bad position but at least McConnell would not need to go in fear of being attacked by Social Security recipients.
McConnell is a pretty lousy human being - but the people who voted for him are worse.
Tiger by the tail. The GOP spent decades raising up the rabid neanderthal sector to vote for them, and now they’re stuck with them. If they let go, hell, even if they just govern responsibly, they’re going to fall off the beast and get eaten and/or trampled. And they know it.
At the same time, they have this other constituency that’s made up of people whose major investments are going to go poof if the US defaults, and they have to listen to them, too.
It sure was a whole lot easier when they could just rah-rah the neanderthals every two years and spend the rest of the time serv[del]ic[/del]ing their billionaire constituency.
ETA: As opposed to the Democrats back when they knowingly waved bye-bye to their neanderthal constituency, re civil rights. One move took courage. The other didn’t. I’ll leave which is which as a mental exercise for the reader.
It’s all in the spin. Republican-minded voters will swallow the line that the evil Kenyan raised the debt limit which those prudent Republicans voted against. If you’re inclined to vote against Obama, this whole affair didn’t change your mind anyway. If you were inclined to vote for him, likely you still would. It’s those on the fence that make the difference. If they think it through and see that the GOP bungled this and refused to take yes for an answer, then Obama gains. Only if they get swayed by the inevitable right wing media full court press does it pan out for the Republicans. The trouble is, the Republicans never seem to lose when betting against the intelligence of the voter.
I’m not so sure about this. Many Tea Party types are strongly opposed to this maneuver. In fact, most seem to want full-scale default. Tea Partiers are not particularly kind to legislative maneuvering, you may recall - they consider compromise part of the problem.
If the GOP goes this route it will be without a lot of their own House members. Which is why it may be a dead letter - I’m not sure why the Democrats in the House would go along with it (although I’d be tempted to at least game-theory it out and see if it can be spun as “empowering Obama”), and I highly doubt the GOP has the required 218 for the McConnell plan.
The key poll is that 66% of independents want the GOP to compromise. Whatever this option is, it’s clearly not compromise.
[QUOTE=Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, R-KY ]
“[W]e knew shutting down the government in 1995 was not going to work for us. It helped Bill Clinton get reelected. I refuse to help Barack Obama get reelected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy,” McConnell said. “It didn’t work in 1995. What will happen is the administration will send out to 80 million Social Security recipients and to military families and they will all start attacking members of Congress. That is not a useful place to take us. And the president will have the bully pulpit to blame Republicans for all this disruption.”
“If we go into default he will say Republicans are making the economy worse,” he concluded. “And all of a sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy. That is a very bad position going into an election. My first choice was to do something important for the country. But my second obligation is to my party and my conference to prevent them from being sucked into a horrible position politically that would allow the president, probably, to get reelected because we didn’t handle this difficult situation correctly.”
[/QUOTE]
Read that again and look at the way he phrases it; a choice between defaulting on the debt or walking away. There’s no mention of even the possibility of reaching an agreement on the budget; not a hint that they have been negotiating in good faith.
Gutless weasel.
I think the Repubs did a head count and discovered raising the debt ceiling would fail a vote. McConnell got a letter from Wall Street bankers and CEOs telling him to get it done. When he figured out he could not get it done, he came up with the idea of dropping it in Obama’s lap. It is desperation to please his bosses without alienating the tea baggers and Social Security recipients. They are 2 blocs that vote.
Annnnnnd… you consider that a good thing?
I think that’s the point you’ve missed. The Democrats entire plan boils down to raising the debt ceiling and pretty much leaving the things which constitute the majority of the U.S.’ bills alone. That’s not going to work. If the debt ceiling is going to be raised, it needs to be joined by massive cuts in social security, entitlements, welfare, defense spending and health care, among other things. But Democrats are vehemently opposed to making meaningful cuts. In fact, most* of their base seems to be focused on things which would have minimal, if any, effect on the budget (i.e., tax breaks for the wealthy and corporate loopholes).
Come on. That’s nowhere even close to what I said.
If the Republicans vote against raising the debt ceiling without Democrats agreeing to some deep cuts, then Democrats will just point to Republicans and say, “We wanted to raise the debt ceiling but they didn’t! Now look what happened because it wasn’t raised! It’s all their fault!”. Thus, they’d shift the blame onto the Republicans and come out looking rosey. What the Republicans are doing here is putting the Democrats between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If-- and that’s a big if-- this passes, then Democrats accept sole responsibility for the consequences related to raising the debt ceiling without any subsequent cuts and continuing business as usual (which is what their plan amounts to). Therefore, if the Democrats fail, which they would, then the Republicans can say, “We didn’t vote for it, so you can’t blame us!”, at which point the GOP can absolve themselves of any culpability stemming from not raising the debt ceiling. Or Obama and the Democrats can refuse the proposed legislation, but that makes them look weak and ineffectual. I mean, for what purpose would you refuse it? You’d said you want to raise the debt ceiling, have constantly preached gloom and doom if it’s not raise and have been given an opportunity to raise it. Why not take it?
Also:
Edit: And people, seriously stop looking at the Tea Party as being indicative of the Republican party. They have no real power.
Completely wrong. The White House has a $4 trillion debt reduction package, and the Republican’s current position is that there should only be $2 trillion in cuts.
Read that again: Republicans want to reduce the deficit by a lesser amount than the White House.
Wrong again. If Republicans vote to allow the White House to raise the debt limit, Republicans are voting to raise the debt limit in the absence of a deficit reduction deal. Republicans don’t want to vote on reducing the deficit.
Face it, Republicans would rather play the blame game than actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion.
That’s what I said, “gutless weasels”.
False. The White House package purportedly reduces the debt by $4T over 10 - 12 years, and it does so by increasing taxes (on everyone, btw).
Let me correct you on something; the Republicans want to reduce spending over the long-run. The Democrats want to increase taxes over the long-run. Guess which one of those is feasible and which one isn’t?
With all due respect, you know little about politics. In the Senate, no Republican has to vote for it. In the House, the Republicans will congregate and get the most liberal members to vote ‘yes’ to get it to pass while the rest will vote ‘no’. Then they can turn around and point out that, while a few of their members did vote for the bill in the House allowing the President to raise the debt ceiling, the majority of Republicans were dead set against it.
Saying this a million times won’t suddenly make it true. How much of a tax increase are you willing to shoulder? This is what is boils down to-- the Republicans want massive spending cuts and the Democrats don’t want to concede massive spending cuts.
I’m willing to let taxes return to Clinton-era levels. Hell, I’m willing to let taxes return to Reagan-era levels.
Since you know so much about politics, can you please answer these question for me?
If this “backup plan” is a net winner for the GOP, and obviously such, why would the Democrats in the House vote for it? Why would the Democrats in the Senate (a majority, I remind you) vote for it?
It’s pretty embarrassing when the party of lib’rul big spenders does more to tackle the debt than the party whose two budget platforms are: (1) that millionaires shouldn’t pay one penny more in taxes even if our grandmothers were being held at gunpoint, and (2) vote lock-step in support of ending Medicare.
Quite a platform you got there.
Of course. He obviously needs to make it clear that this is not, in fact, a retreat. It is a courageous advance toward the White House. It just looks like a retreat because nobody will remember he said it when a GOPer isn’t nominated January 20, 2012.
-Joe
I just absolutely cannot see how “We handed the President the power to do whatever he wants with the debt ceiling” could conceivably play any better with any voter whatsoever than “we did what the President wanted with the debt ceiling”. Yeah, yeah, the Republicans are going to use their Men in Black flashy-thingy to make the Tea Party forget that they gave Obama the power, and just blame it all on him. But if they can do that, why not just vote directly to raise the ceiling, and use the flashy-thingy to make the voters forget that?
I suspect that the goal here is actually longer-term. They’re not voting to give Obama unilateral power over the debt ceiling; they’re voting to give the President that power. This power doesn’t really help a sane President much, since it just lets him keep the government running. But once an insane President gets back into the Oval Office, it’ll enable him to single-handedly destroy the US government. Such a President might consider that the goal in itself, or might use it as a hostage to blackmail other concessions.
Has there ever been, in history, another bill even proposed that so perfectly represents the utter quintessence of passive-aggressiveness as this one?