Tag Archives: Tea party

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Obama, Perry to meet after all

It appears saner heads are beginning to prevail in the Texas governor’s office and at the White House.

President Obama has asked Congress for $4 billion in emergency aid to help combat the flow of illegal immigrants into Texas and other border states.

And …

Gov. Rick Perry has accepted the president’s invitation to a private meeting between the men to discuss ways to solve the crisis on the border.

Is this a sign of progress? Could be.

Perry had refused to take part in an airport tarmac symbolic handshake when Obama arrives in Austin later this week. He wanted a private meeting and said so publicly. The White House agreed this morning.

A meeting between the president and the governor won’t solve the crisis by itself. It is good political symbolism, and provides good “optics” for both men. One more such positive optic would be for the president to visit the border to see up close what’s causing all the ruckus.

As for the 4 billion bucks the president is asking, the ball is now in Congress’s court.

Congressional Republicans — to no one’s surprise — have been bashing the White House over its response to the border crisis that has produced more than 50,000 illegal immigrants coming to Texas in recent weeks. They’re mostly unaccompanied children and young adults.

The president would use the money to beef up security on the border, which as I understand it, is what the GOP is demanding.

So here you go, GOP leaders of Congress. Will you approve the money or will you drag your feet to preserve the political talking points?

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To what end, Mr. Speaker?

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is “frustrated.” He acknowledges that President Obama is frustrated and so are “the American people” frustrated with the lack of cohesion in our federal government.

The speaker’s remedy? He says he wants to sue the president for exercising his executive authority.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/john-boehner-obama-so-sue-me-reaction-constitution-108601.html?hp=f1

I can barely contain my disdain for this nonsense.

Boehner wrote an op-ed for CNN.com in which he said Obama has failed to “faithfully execute” his office under the Constitution. Why didn’t he gripe when President Bush was issuing executive orders at a greater clip than his successor has done?

I have this sense that the president has hurt the speaker’s feelings with his quips from various podiums in recent weeks. “So sue me,” was his latest barb, in which he said he wouldn’t apologize for doing things using his constitutionally granted authority allows him to do.

Boehner says Obama is circumventing the legislative process and is stripping Congress of its own authority.

In a fascinating twist, though, one of the speaker’s own allies — Erick Erickson, of Redstate.com — writes in another commentary that Boehner is engaging in “political theater.”

He has no end game, Erickson writes, adding that there’s nothing to be gained from this wasteful exercise.

“I realize John Boehner and the House Republicans may lack the testicular fortitude to fight President Obama,” he wrote, “but I would kindly ask that he save the taxpayers further money on a political stunt solely designed to incite Republican voters.”

“John Boehner’s lawsuit is nothing more than political theater and a further Republican waste of taxpayer dollars,” Erickson said.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Thad Cochran: civil rights champion

The renomination in Mississippi of Republican Thad Cochran to another term in the U.S. Senate has brought up an interesting talking point.

Will the conservative Republican senator now become a civil rights champion to pay back the favor African-American voters delivered in helping him beat back a near-certain defeat in a GOP runoff?

Think about this for a moment.

Cochran was considered dead meat when he finished second in the GOP primary in the Magnolia State. The favorite to beat him was tea party golden boy Chris McDaniel. Then a strange thing happened.

Thousands of African-American Democrats who hadn’t voted in their own primary turned out to cast their votes for Cochran in the runoff. It turned out to be the difference for the six-term senator who reportedly will serve his final term in the Senate if he’s re-elected this fall. As for McDaniel, he’s not going away quietly. He’s continuing to raise a ruckus over the way he lost a contest he was thought to be a shoo-in to win.

So, does the senator now become a champion of, say, renewing the Voting Rights Act when it comes up? Might he resist efforts to make voting more difficult for voters — mainly minorities — who have difficulty providing photo identification when they register to vote? Will this lawmaker realize that with no more campaigns to run, no more challenges from his right to fend off and with no more money to raise he will be free to pay back those to whom he likely owes his latest political victory?

I rather like the idea of a conservative Dixie state Republican becoming a friend of African-Americans.

Is it political expediency? No. It’s political gratitude.

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Turnabout not always fair play, says GOP

Thad Cochran’s stunning reversal of fortune in Mississippi makes me laugh.

OK, so I’m just snickering under my breath. But it does create some interesting water-cooler talk among Republican Party political strategists.

Cochran, R-Miss., was supposed to lose the Mississippi GOP runoff to tea party darling Chris McDaniel on Tuesday. Instead, he won. How? Apparently by enlisting the support of African-American Democrats to vote in the Republican primary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-cochrans-strategy-to-draw-black-democrats-to-polls-appears-to-have-worked/2014/06/25/74d72932-fc8a-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html

That strategy didn’t go down well with hard-core Republicans. McDaniel himself said that Cochran owed his victory to “liberal Democrats” who were afraid to face a true conservative — such as McDaniel.

It well might be that the Democrats who crossed over to back Cochran will rue the day they did so, as the incumbent six-term senator will be a heavy favorite to win a seventh term this November.

There’s a certain richness in the irony of the GOP’s complaints about Cochran’s winning formula.

Some Republican leaders — and I’ll include the GOP’s blowhard in chief, Rush Limbaugh, in this category — at one time encouraged Republicans to cross over to vote for Democrats in an effort to serve as spoiler in hotly contested Democratic primaries. That clearly was the case in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign between U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. The 2008 Texas primary, for example, became notable because of the huge interest in the Democratic ballot, particularly in areas such as the Panhandle, where Democrats are nearly extinct.

Limbaugh and others were exhorting Republicans to vote for Clinton, hoping the party would nominate her in the belief she’d be easier to beat in the fall than Obama.

It didn’t work out that way, of course.

Now, though, they’re yammering about a reversal of that strategy — because, apparently, it worked.

Cry me a river.

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Tea party winning as it's losing

It’s time to give credit where it most definitely is due to the tea party wing of the once-Grand Old Republican Party.

Even when it loses it wins.

Take the race for U.S. senator in Mississippi this week. Sen. Thad Cochran beat back a stout challenge from tea party Republican Chris McDaniel. But did Cochran campaign in the GOP runoff on his ability to work with Democrats, or on his ability to funnel lots of money to his home state? Oh no. He campaigned on his conservative record — which he has established — and by telling Mississippians that he’s as conservative as they are.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/weakened-tea-party-takes-more-punches-n140851

I am no longer paying much never-mind to these predictions of the tea party’s death, resurrection and death yet again. The tea party wing of the GOP has won the debate.

It has dragged normally thoughtful conservatives into the rage pit right along with them. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is as “establishment Republican” as they come. Now, though, he’s suing President Obama because the president has taken some executive action that has angered the tea party wing of the GOP. That means Boehner is mad, too.

Here in Texas, tea party Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick yanked Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst so far to the right that Dewhurst never got his legs under him or found his voice. He looked and sounded awkward trying to be as out there as Patrick, who’s smooth, articulate and glib. Patrick beat Dewhurst in the Texas GOP runoff.

Across the state, Republicans are sounding more alike all the time — meaning they’ve adopted the do-nothing mantra so popular among tea party officeholders in Washington.

There once was a Republican Party with pols who could work well with Democrats. Two come to mind immediately: the late U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois and former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. There’ve been others, but those two men stand out in my own mind. Dirksen was pals with President Lyndon Johnson and helped LBJ enact civil rights and voting rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Dole was a dear friend of the late Democratic U.S. Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota. It helped that the two men both were World War II heroes and had a shared bond of military service. They also worked hand-in-hand on anti-hunger legislation.

Dole and Dirksen would be laughed out of the Senate chamber today.

The tea party’s strength can be seen in the debate that’s raging within the Republican Party — if you want to call it that when virtually all Republicans now are singing off the tea party song sheet.

The tea party, therefore, is winning, even when it’s losing.

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Sure-fire winner gets derailed

Hey. What the heck happened in Dixie last night?

U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi was supposed to get his head handed to him by that tea party upstart Chris McDaniel in the Republican runoff. It didn’t happen. Cochran was renominated for his billionth term in the Senate.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/210473-cochran-topples-tea-party-in-mississippi

It turns out the conservative senator who the tea party said wasn’t conservative enough turned to some unlikely allies in pulling out this comeback win: African-American voters, for crying out loud.

He also got some help by a turnout that exceeded the primary turnout in raw numbers, a feat as rare as, say, African-Americans voting for a Southern Republican these days.

McDaniel scared the bejabbers out of a lot of Mississippians, apparently. Cochran’s team targeted some racially charged comments McDaniel made as a radio talk-show host. McDaniel fired back with criticism of Cochran’s penchant for piling on pork-barrel money for projects he funneled back to his home state.

Then there was this, as reported by The Hill: “McDaniel stumbled over a scandal concerning the arrest of four men, some clear supporters of his bid, for allegedly sneaking into a nursing home to take photos of Cochran’s wife for use in an apparent political attack on the senator.”

It was a nasty, bizarre and totally weird runoff campaign.

Out here in Texas, though, we don’t have a particular hound in that fight.

I’ve got mixed feelings about it all, to be blunt. I am not a huge Thad Cochran fan, but the alternative — McDaniel — was much worse, in my humble view. I guess I’m glad Cochran won. The man has shown the ability to work with Democrats in the Senate, a skill McDaniel would have needed to learn from scratch.

All in all, a bizarre ending to a bizarre campaign.

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Immigration takes center stage

Kevin McCarthy’s election as the new majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives puts the Republican majority in the House in a quandary.

It’s because of the congressional district McCarthy represents.

McCarthy comes from the Bakersfield, Calif., area. It’s a bit like the Texas Panhandle in this sense: They pump oil there, cultivate a lot of farmland, the wind blows a lot and its residents are fairly conservative. One more thing: the region has a large and growing Hispanic population.

And that is why Majority Leader McCarthy is facing a bit of a test as he tries to manage one key issue: immigration reform.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/inside-the-house-gop-leadership-shake-up-108103.html?hp=l7

The tea party wing of the lawmakers he leads in the House don’t favor the kind of comprehensive reform that many Democrats and Republicans want. It’s the kind of reform that former leader Eric Cantor has supported — and which might have cost him his House seat in that stunning GOP primary upset in Virginia earlier this month.

McCarthy, though, doesn’t work for the tea party wing of his party in the House. He works for the folks back home. His congressional district is about 36 percent Hispanic. My hunch is that many of them have relatives who are non-citizens living in the United States. They want their immigrant kin to be able to enjoy the fruits of citizenship.

They vote and, thus, could apply pressure to Leader McCarthy as he seeks to manage the unwieldy wing of his fractious Republican congressional caucus.

So, the new leader well might be asking himself: For whom do I work?

He knows the answer, and it isn’t the Republican Party zealots in Washington, D.C.

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Good old days of 'pork' are gone

Remember when members of Congress used to actually boast about all the money they channeled to their states or their congressional districts?

Shoot, you had to be able to talk committee chairmen into approving money for your pet project. There always was something to give back in return, of course. A favor for the chairman’s district, or some help raising money for the other guy’s re-election campaign often was the kind of quid pro quo offered and delivered.

Those days are gone. That’s generally a good thing. I’m not fond of what’s been called “pork-barrel spending.”

A long-time U.S. senator, Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi, is in trouble now partly because he used to funnel a lot of dough back to the Magnolia State.

It used to be a good thing. No more, folks.

Nope. The guy who’s favored to beat him Tuesday in the GOP runoff in Mississippi is Chris McDaniel, a tea party golden boy who stands poised to knock off another one-time “titan of the Senate.”

It’s not that Cochran is my favorite senator. Far from it. He tilts too far to the right for my taste. McDaniel, though, tilts even farther to the right, which makes the probable outcome in Mississippi a downer as far as I’m concerned. I’m figuring McDaniel would be one of those who’ll proclaim “my way or the highway” on anything that comes from the other side of the aisle.

A question looms in this race for Mississippi Republicans: Is it really and truly a bad thing to spend public money when it pays for public projects that are developed in your very own state? According to the New York Times, the answer for many Mississippians is “yes.”

It didn’t used to be this way.

Oh, the times they certainly are a-changin’.

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Brat vs. Trammell

David Brat vs. Jack Trammell will become, I guarantee, the most watched contest for the U.S. House of Representatives in this election cycle.

It’s not because either of them has a sparkling political resume. Or that they’ve made huge names for themselves in their shared occupation. It’s because one of them, Brat, knocked off one of the most powerful members of Congress in the Republican Party primary this past week in the most stunning upset in anyone’s memory. In doing so, Brat has leveled the playing field significantly for Trammell, his Democratic opponent this fall, to possibly win a seat in the Virginia congressional district that has been thought to be strongly Republican.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/2014-virginia-election-jack-trammell-eric-cantor-107855.html?hp=f2

This one’s going to be a mind-blower.

Brat and Trammell are professors at a college I’d never heard of before this past week. Brat teaches economics, Trammell teaches sociology at Randolph-Macon College. You haven’t heard of it, either? I didn’t think so.

I’m sure it’s a fine school.

Back to Brat and Trammell.

Brat’s victory was a stunner. He was outspent by a gazillion to one by lame-duck House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The turnout for the GOP primary was dismal, which suited Brat just fine. His supporters were the more dedicated bunch, which always bodes well for a low-turnout election.

He campaigned essentially on a single issue: immigration reform. He’s against it. Cantor was for some version of reform. Brat accused Cantor of favoring “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants. The label stuck to Cantor like Velcro.

Trammell? I know nothing about the guy, except that he’s as much of a political novice as Brat.

He is a last-minute candidate. Democrats were without a chance if Cantor had won. He didn’t. Now they think they’ve got a puncher’s chance against Brat. But as Politico.com reports, Trammell’s gone into a “lockdown” since the GOP primary. I reckon he’s starting to assemble something resembling a campaign strategy for the 7th Congressional District of Virginia.

He’d better roll something impressive. The eyes of the nation will be upon both of these guys.

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Take care of the home folks

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Memo to congressional incumbents all across this great land: You’d better pay careful attention to the people you represent in Washington, D.C.

That might be the most significant takeaway from U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning, Earth-shaking defeat this week in his race for Congress from Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/cantors-defeat-is-all-about-frustration-with-washingtons-old-ways.html/

I still haven’t grasped fully what happened back in Virginia this week, when political novice David Brat smoked Cantor by 11 percentage points in a low-turnout Republican primary election.

Still, I keep reading from those close to the situation that Cantor had become too much a Man of Washington and less of a Man of the People Back Home. Perhaps they grew tired of him standing in front of those banks of microphones among House GOP leaders. Maybe they didn’t think it mattered to them that their guy was part of the GOP caucus elite in the House and that he was in line to become the next speaker of the House when John Boehner decided he’d had enough fun.

OK, now pay attention here, House Armed Services Committee Chairman-to-be Mac Thornberry.

You’re going to win re-election this November from the 13th Congressional District of Texas. You’re also likely to become chairman of a powerful House committee when the next Congress convenes in January.

This is just me talking, Mac, but you’d better start scheduling a lot of town hall meetings and photo ops back home in your district well in advance of the next congressional election, which occurs in 2016.

If Eric Cantor — one of the House’s more conservative members — can get outflanked on the right by a novice, then it can happen to anyone, it seems to me.

It well might be that in this political climate, no member of Congress — no matter how powerful and media savvy they are — is immune from the kind of political earthquake that swallowed Eric Cantor whole.

Yep, that means you, too, Rep. Thornberry.