Tag Archives: Tea party

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Boehner showing other side

I’m beginning to think more kindly of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner.

The Ohio Republican has taken to criticizing members of his own party, particularly the more stubborn among them who refuse to move legislation forward for a number of reasons that might have little to do with the merits of whatever they’re considering.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/raul-labrador-john-boehner-immigration-106033.html?ml=po_r

Boehner recently mocked House Republicans for refusing to vote on immigration reform. He did so in a kind of a playful way, which reportedly did sit well with many GOP lawmakers.

Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, was one of them not amused by the speaker’s tone. “I was disappointed with Speaker Boehner’s comments, and I think they will make it harder – not easier – to pass immigration reform,” Labrador said. “The vast majority of House Republicans are pro-immigration reform, and we have been working hard to achieve it.”

Boehner’s remarks were couched in a kind of silly tone in which he said of GOP members of Congress, “Ohhhh, this is too hard.”

Boehner, as near as I can tell, is one of those dreaded “establishment Republicans” who thinks government actually can do some good for Americans. He wants to move immigration reform forward but he’s been fighting tooth and nail with the tea party wing of his House caucus who just won’t budge. Some chatter in Washington is suggesting that Boehner may be growing so weary of the constant intra-party battle that he might surrender the speakership at the end of the year. Others say he’s committed to leading the House if members will allow it.

Whatever happens, the speaker is showing another — and I believe more likable — side of himself in this ongoing fight with the tea party wing of Congress.

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Is race a factor?

Leonard Pitts Jr. poses an interesting question to President Obama’s critics who contend their criticism ha nothing to do with his race.

What would the criticism look like if race was a factor?

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/apr/21/leonard-pitts-jr-what-would-it-look-like/

Pitts, of course, is African-American, just like the president. So, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist is likely to be more sensitive to specific elements of the criticism that has been leveled at Obama since he took office in January 2009.

I have many friends and acquaintances who tell me time and again that race has nothing to do with their dislike of the 44th president of the United States. However, here is what Pitts wrote in a recent column:

“I mean, we’re talking about a president who was called ‘uppity’ by one GOP lawmaker, ‘boy’ by another and ‘subhuman’ by a GOP activist, who was depicted as a bone-through-the-nose witch doctor by opponents of his health care reform bill, as a pair of cartoon spook eyes against a black backdrop by an aide to a GOP lawmaker and as an ape by various opponents, who has been dogged by a ‘tea party’ movement whose earliest and most enthusiastic supporters included the Council of Conservative Citizens, infamous for declaring the children of interracial unions ‘a slimy brown glop’; who was called a liar by an obscure GOP lawmaker during a speech before a joint session of Congress; and who has had to contend with a yearslong campaign of people pretending there is some mystery about where he was born.”

Interesting, don’t you think?

No other prominent politician in my memory ever has been called such things by his or her foes. It’s the tone, the intensity of which defies reason.

Those who dislike the president can hide behind their policy differences, they can say all they want that race doesn’t matter to them one little bit.

I try like the dickens to accept what they say and accept that they simply disagree with his policies. To be clear, none of my friends ever has used the language that Pitts cites in his column. However, he is spot on to call attention to these statements that have been whispered and shouted at the same time.

Is race a factor in this intense loathing of the president? I have to say “yes.”

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Rick Perry needs a makeover

Politico.com reports that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has embarked on an extreme makeover to make erase memories of a disastrous — and short-lived — run for the presidency last time around.

He’ll need it, badly.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/rick-perry-extreme-makeover-105843.html?hp=t1

Perry reportedly is more relaxed and confident sounding these days, Politico reports. That’s as it should be, given that he’s a lame-duck governor. He’s held the office seemingly since The Flood and is now heading for some other mission in life.

He wants to be president, or vice president perhaps.

My own feeling is that he’s got a long way to go before he achieves either office.

A friend of mine — a former Republican state legislator who is no friend or fan of Perry — thinks the governor actually wants a No. 2 spot on the next GOP presidential ticket. He believes Perry knows his brand as a Republican presidential nominee has been damaged beyond repair, so he’s willing to settle for running as the GOP veep nominee in 2016.

“Where I have noticed it profoundly is in the last few weeks, the national TV appearances, whether he’s been on a number of Fox shows or Jimmy Kimmel and some of the others, he just seems like a very confident, upbeat and articulate spokesman for conservative policy and values,” former Perry aide Ray Sullivan told Politico.

Perry’s brand is well-established in his home state of Texas, where his unique brand of good-ol’-boy conservatism plays well. It hasn’t yet taken hold in the rest of the country, let alone in the rest of the Republican Party, which is full of tea-party conservatives who so far have done a better job of selling themselves to a willing party base.

Let us not forget that those infamous pre-2012 GOP primary gaffes — namely the “oops” blunder in which he couldn’t name the third agency he would dismantle were he elected president — will be on the record … forever.

Good luck with your makeover, governor. You’ll need to be unrecognizable from what you’ve shown us so far.

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Boehner: glutton for punishment

Word now is that U.S. House Speaker John Boehner is going to seek the speakership once again … if the Republicans gain control of the Senate and strengthen their control of the House.

Is this guy a glutton for punishment or what?

Members: Boehner will stay on

I had heard from someone close to the speaker some months ago that he’d had it up to here with the tea party wing of his party. Boehner, who hails from the so-called “establishment wing” of the GOP, has been fighting with the insurgents within his GOP caucus. He’s expressed growing frustration with their intransigence that, according to those who know him, goes against the speaker’s instincts to compromise when the opportunity presents itself.

Now comes word that he’s all in for the next Congress particularly if Republicans win control of the Senate and perhaps strengthen their grip on the reins of power in the House.

But will any of that make life easier for Boehner, who’ll have to carry the water for the tea party that could be emboldened even more in their efforts to stymie legislation?

I’m thinking not.

Which is why I’m also thinking that he just might call it a career after he’s re-elected from his Ohio congressional district.

This little back story just turn into a major act.

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Jeb Bush lays down marker

Conventional Republican orthodoxy bears little resemblance to how it used to look.

It now includes a fairly strong anti-immigrant stance, particularly against those who are here illegally.

Enter a former Florida governor with a famous political name to challenge that common view.

Jeb Bush is considering a run for the presidency in 2016 and he’s laying bare a potential weakness among hard-core GOP voters who’ll nominate their next candidate.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/jeb-bush-takes-potential-weaknesses-n73561

Bush wants his party to reform the immigration system that enables those who were brought here illegally by their parents to stay here and to live and work free from the fear of deportation.

“Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony; it’s an act of love,” Bush said over the weekend while declaring that he’ll make up his mind about running for president sometime this year.

Immigration might doom Bush’s candidacy. It plagued Sen.John McCain in 2008 and it helped torpedo Texas Gov. Rick Perry in late 2011 as he was running for the GOP nomination. What do these two men have in common? They both come from border states with large immigrant populations — and they also have realistic views on the best way to treat those who were brought here as children by parents who entered the United States illegally.

The Bush brand, such as it is, carries some heavy baggage. Jeb’s brother, George W., remains a too-hot-to-handle commodity among Republicans. The two men’s father, George H.W. Bush, broke that “no new taxes” pledge in 1990 while crafting a federal budget.

Now comes immigration. Jeb Bush is making the kind of sense on this issue that is flying over the heads of the tea party fanatics who control the party — at the moment.

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Rand Paul makes sense on outreach

Listen up, tea party wing of the Republican Party.

One of your own is making sense on ways your party can reach out more effectively to a growing minority of voters in the United States.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/rand-paul-gop-must-get-beyond-deportation-105241.html

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a possible candidate for president in 2016, says the GOP must get “beyond deportation” if it hopes to attract Latino voters.

Think about that. So many leading Republicans were saying during the 2012 presidential campaign that deportation — or “self-deportation,” as Mitt Romney called it — was one way to rid the country of illegal immigrants.

“The bottom line is, the Hispanic community, the Latino community is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue,” Paul said this week.

Who wants to wager whether the Republican Party is going to heed this sound advice? I’m not yet willing to believe the tea party wing of the GOP — the minority within the party with the loudest voice — is going to take the bait.

I do admire Paul, though, for telling the harsh truth to his GOP tea party brethren. Indeed, another key member of that wing of the party — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — is an immigrant himself. The Texas Cruz Missile, though, keeps talking tough on immigration, brushing off efforts to reform the system in a comprehensive, constructive way.

Keep driving home the message, Sen. Paul. Maybe one day they’ll get it. Then again, maybe they won’t.

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'Secede' from our beloved country?

I keep seeing this bumper sticker on the back end of a pickup.

It’s next to another one. Their juxtaposition means that neither of them makes sense.

One is an American flag, Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes. The fellow who owns the truck is a “proud American,” I’m reckoning.

The other one says a single word: “SECEDE.”

OK, so which is it? Is the guy a patriot who loves this country? Does he want to break up his beloved United States of America?

You see these “SECEDE” bumper stickers and other signage around the Texas Panhandle every so often. I’m unsure — as I haven’t mustered the guts to actually question someone displaying the signs — whether the secede messages are to be taken literally.

I’d ask, except that in Texas we allow people to carry concealed handguns, so I’m afraid of getting shot … OK?

The secession talk ebbs and flows. I think it’s beginning to flow once again with election season coming on and tea party folks in Texas and elsewhere touting their candidates for public office.

The “SECEDE” sign next to Old Glory on the back bumper of the pickup sends a mixed message. I trust the owner of the truck is as proud of his country as I am, but I don’t know it, given the sign calling for Texas to pull out of the country.

I believe that’s called “sedition.”

In this country, though, it’s OK to say you want to secede; it’s quite another to actually do it. Eleven states did that once. It didn’t work out for them.

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Speaker Boehner's future starting to get cloudy

This isn’t exactly a scoop, but I’m hearing some rumblings from folks in the know on Capitol Hill that the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has had it up to here with the tea party wing of his Republican Party caucus.

Indeed, John Boehner, R-Ohio, has called them out already over their insistence that the government default on its debt obligations if they don’t get spending cuts to offset increases in the national debt.

I’ve long thought of Boehner as a good-government Republican who’s been whipsawed by the tea party cabal within his GOP caucus. He’s been hamstrung by threats of open rebellion among some of those clowns. Back home in his Ohio congressional district, he hears murmurs of candidates challenging him from the right as he runs for re-election.

How much fun can this be? Not much if you’ve worked hard to be second in line — behind the vice president — in the presidential succession queue.

Boehner has been in the House a long time. He’s been a loyal Republican linked more to the “establishment wing” than to the tea party insurgent wing.

What might the future hold for Boehner?

A source close to the speaker has intimated that Boehner is fed up. He well might pack it in after the next Congress convenes in January 2015. It’s looking as though the GOP will strengthen its majority in the House and might even take over the Senate from the Democrats. The question well might be: What will the new House majority look like? Some of the tea leaves are suggesting that Republican ranks will swell with more tea party types, giving Boehner even more grief than he’s experienced already.

Thus, this source indicates, he well might just resign and let the House choose the next pigeon, er, speaker to run the place. Boehner then might go back home, or he might stay in D.C. and become, oh, a lobbyist.

I’ve also learned that this scenario has been discussed openly within the halls of Congress.

Yes, the atmosphere in Washington is toxic. Speaker Boehner’s immediate future plans just might tell us all something quite telling about how poisonous it’s become in the nation’s capital.

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Primary deals tea party a setback in Texas

What’s the big takeaway from the Texas primary election?

It well might be that the tea party, which claims all kinds of strength in Texas, had its head handed to it by voters all across the state.

Good deal.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn brushed aside what had been thought to be a stern test in his Republican primary victory. U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, the Gulf Coast goofball who challenged Cornyn, was trampled by the incumbent.

Other veteran members of Congress survived challenges, including Rep. Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, who was renominated in a three-person race in the GOP primary here at home.

The Texas Legislature primary also saw some setbacks dealt the tea party wing of the GOP. The District 31 primary out here in West Texas produced a win by the incumbent, Republican Kel Seliger of Amarillo — although his margin was far closer than I ever imagined it would be.

A win is a win, however.

Some races still need to be decided. The lieutenant governor’s race is heading to a runoff with state Sen. Dan Patrick in the catbird seat against the incumbent, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Dewhurst has been stung once already, the Senate primary in 2012 that saw him upset by tea party upstart Ted Cruz. He’s been leaning farther and farther to the right ever since. To be honest, he doesn’t seem comfortable in this new role as a newfound ultraconservative and he’s now in danger of losing his party’s nomination to what once was considered the most powerful office in Texas.

The attorney general’s GOP primary featured three guys cut from the same far-right-wing cloth.

The tea party wing of the GOP had hoped for a much bigger night than it got. Instead, it has seen its influence diluted.

All this Republican in-fighting is going to lead the party somewhere, but the destination remains unknown.

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Election provides a couple of stunners

Two big surprises highlighted my watching of the Republican primary elections Tuesday night.

One of them is quite good; the other is potentially troubling.

First, the good.

Nancy Tanner’s victory in the GOP primary for Potter County judge caught me off-guard, but it does demonstrate that competence and experience can win an argument over name identification and relative sizzle.

Tanner is going to take over the county judge’s duties at the first of the year. The GOP voters of the county showed that they appreciate her two decades serving as administrative assistant to Arthur Ware, the current judge who’s stepping down.

Ware had fired Tanner from her job in 2013 for reasons that haven’t been explained fully. Tanner had just made known her intention to run for Ware’s seat after he had announced his impending retirement from public life. Ware had been slowed considerably by a devastating stroke he suffered in 2010, leaving Tanner and other county officials to perform many of the duties attached to the county judge’s office.

It was her experience and intimate knowledge of the nuts and bolts of county government that made Tanner the most qualified of the five candidates running for the office.

Which brings me to the surprise. I was quite sure no one was going to win this primary outright. I figured it would be two of three top-tier candidates — Tanner, former Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt and Bill Bandy — competing in a runoff.

Silly me. I underestimated the wisdom of the voters.

***

State Sen. Kel Seliger’s hair-raising win over former Midland Mayor Mike Canon provided the other surprise.

Seliger, R-Amarillo, by all rights should have won that race in a walk. He’s smart, articulate, knowledgeable, calm, reasonable, effective, collegial, detail-oriented, friendly … what am I missing? Whatever. He deserved to be re-elected to the Senate District 31 seat he’s filled since 2004.

Then came Canon, who began accusing Seliger of being a closet liberal, which is fightin’ words in this part of the political world. The word among some observers is that Canon was recruited by Michael Quinn Sullivan, a tea party political operative who over the years has developed a nasty relationship with Seliger.

Even given the Texas political climate, I didn’t believe Canon would come as close as he did to defeating Seliger.

There is a potential for concern here. Seliger’s re-election — with no Democrat on the ballot — should not signal a sharp turn to the right for the already-conservative lawmaker. Other elected public officials have reacted badly at times to these challenges from their left or the right by tacking too far in either direction.

My hope is that Seliger is comfortable enough in his own skin to stay the course and keep up the good work he’s already done — such as water planning and funding for public education — on behalf of his constituents.

All in all, where these two races are concerned, the election turned out just fine.