TW: As I have mentioned I detest the wing of the Republican party playing electoral football with our economic well-being.
From NBC:
"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was working aggressively behind the scenes to defeat the Wall Street rescue plan minutes before he himself released a public statement in support of the package, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Tuesday.
Gingrich was whipping up votes for the opposition, Mitchell said, apparently without the knowledge of the current GOP leader, John Boehner, who was responsible for recruiting enough support from his caucus to help ensure the bill's passage. Ultimately, the GOP was only able to rally roughly a third of its members.
"Newt Gingrich," she said on MSNBC, "I am told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him, he was whipping against this up until the last minute, when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know, it was socialism -- and then at the last minute [he] comes out with a statement when the vote is already in place...
...Joe Scarborough called Gingrich's backstabbing of John Boehner "undercutting his own."
Mike Barnicle offered his own bit of reportorial insight: "Andrea, I could hug you for saying that, because I was told last night by two or three members of Congress that this was the opening salvo of Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign four years hence."
7 comments:
Trey,
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the 95 dems who voted against the bill. I presume they weren't the Reps that Gingrich was speaking with, so why did they vote "no" on Pelosi's bill? And why didn't Pelosi and the majority whip do more to bring their party in line?
It's also not much of surprise that McCain carries little clout in the Repub caucus, but presumably Obama does have some influence in the Dem caucus. Why didn't he offer them some cover by coming out in favor, or at least twisting a few arms behind the scenes. He's likely to be the one to clean up the mess come January, so you'd think he'd show some leadership for an important cause and in an area where his influence could have had a positive effect.
There's plenty of blame to go around at this point, and it is situations like this that our political system is particularly ill-equipped to handle. Our system of gov't generally encourages partisanship over a "country first" mentality. At a time when we need strong leadership in DC we are essentially crippled by a lame-duck executive and a congress that is immobilized by partisan wrangling in an election year. In times of peace and prosperity our system works pretty well. With two political parties, and check's and balances between the three branches, our system doesn't move quickly or smoothly, but it generally works well to curb the worst excesses and keep us on a relatively even keel, but when we need decisiveness and speed, it's all but impossible no matter how pressing the problem. This is a structural deficiency, and while I wouldn't trade our system of government for a decisive and quick moving dictatorship, we need to recognize the limitations we have and punish those on both sides who make the situation worse.
Here's the take from Powerline blog. Probably not one of your favorite sources, but it does raise some pertinent questions about the Pelosi's motives...
suspicion is growing that Pelosi and the Democrats made no serious effort to pass the bill, and that it failed at least in part because Pelosi tried to misuse it for political advantage.
Everyone has heard about the weirdly partisan and inaccurate rant which Pelosi contributed to the debate on the bailout bill. But that speech did not take place in a vacuum. Public opinion is running strongly against the bill, and it required political courage to vote for it. If you look at the list of those who voted "No" in both parties, it is mostly members who are engaged in tough re-election campaigns. This is true on both sides of the aisle.
That being the case, and given the fact that the legislation was in fact a negotiated, bipartisan compromise, the first duty of the majority party is to line up its members to support the majority's bill. But evidence is growing that the Democrats did no such thing.
As of yesterday, the Democrats' House whip, Jim Clyburn said that he hadn't even begun "whipping" Democratic representatives, and wouldn't do so unless and until he got orders from Nancy Pelosi. Today, Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio told NPR that he never was "whipped" on the bill. So Pelosi evidently left Democrats to vote their consciences--which is to say, vote against the bill if they thought it was politically necessary--while counting on Republicans to put the bill over the top.
This is a classic Charlie Brown and the football maneuver. Pelosi gives a speech that frames the issue, falsely, as the result of bad Republican policies, then allows her own threatened representatives to do the popular thing while expecting Republicans to take one for the team by casting an unpopular vote. Which, of course, their Democratic opponents would use against them, thereby increasing the Democratic majority in the House.
If this was Pelosi's plan it failed, in part, perhaps, because her over-the-top partisan diatribe tipped off Republicans as to what was afoot. If, as it now appears, it's true that the Democrats made no serious effort to pass the bailout bill, it is just one more example of the failure of leadership we have seen since they took control of Congress.
Thx Z
Have blogged til blue in the face about the failure of the bill.
While I am always humble enough to know neither I nor most other outsiders truly know what is going on in DC, I find the argument that Pelosi et al are so Machiavellian (not to mention awfully good actors) to kill the bill in order to make the Republicans look back bad very specious.
Powerline and Hugh Hewitt et al have concocted a storyline that does not reconcile to the statements and actions of politicians on both sides going back a full week now.
I'd agree that she probably didn't want, or even expect to have the bill go down in defeat. But she was also unwilling to pull out the stops in getting her caucus on board. From what I understand about "Pelosi's House", very few in her caucus are willing to openly defy her, and those who do risk serious castration.
So she could have had it passed if she wanted to, but she wanted to put the onus on the Republicans and it backfired.
It was actually win-win for her. If it goes down in defeat, blame goes to the repubs, and if it passes, it does so through repub votes, and her members in tight races gain politcal cover by voting against it.
I'm defintely not saying the repubs were right to vote against, I think it was a huge mistake, but Pelosi's just as guilty as they are for the bill's failure.
I had posted since last week that the bill needed to be passed with bi-partisan cooperation. Else the same Republicas who ulimately emerged as the opponents would have essentially become free riders.
Here were political permutations
1) bipartisan (every one in same boat)
2) Dem/Bush only (Repubs claim they could have done better if bill ultimately "works", if it ulimately fails they win)
3) Bill fails (actual result, Republicans blamed)
So yes the Dems chose 3 over 2 but 1 was the result that should have occured and would not have hurt the Republicans. It is game theory in action. The Republicans had a choice go for a neutral political result or seek an advantage, they picked the latter and got in some doo doo.
There's a fourth option, one that Pelosi went for and lost...
- Maximize Repub yes votes so she could maximize Dem no votes.
This would allow the dems in tight races vote no and gain political cover. But she botched it when she telegraphed her plan by repeatedly attacking the repubs prior to the vote. Had she waited she would have had her bill and would have still been able blamed the repubs for the bills necessity. But the repubs saw the politcal trap she was setting up and, being on the fence to begin with, that was all it took to get them to bolt.
But all this political meandering is besides the point. Dem or Repub, the overriding goal needed to be "country first, party second". No one, in either party has acted this way. It's probably naive to expect such attitudes so close to an election, but it does once again show, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, that Congress's 10% approval rating is completely deserved.
I'll bet the ten percent is made up of people who couldn't find the Pacific Ocean on a map and who think we fought Hitler during the Civil War. Oblivious morons.
Meagan McCardle, an economics blogger at The Atlantic and a woman of the left, give her take on the politics of the vote...
The politics of the bill
29 Sep 2008 10:46 pm
There is no glory to go around here. Assume, arguendo, that most people in the House believed both that the bill would be passed, and that anyone who voted for it would suffer politically, except maybe in New York.
Pelosi screwed up royally. She is the Democratic Tom DeLay. Newt Gingrich was an ideologue, but Tom DeLay was simply a partisan, most keenly interested in maximizing his party's political power. Pelosi cut a deal in which, as far as I can tell, every single Republican in a safe seat had to vote yes so that the Democrats could maximize their no votes. Given that the Republican caucus is pretty much in open revolt, this was beyond moronic. She then spent a week openly and repeatedly blaming the Republicans and the Bush administration for the current crisis. The way she set things up, it was "Heads I win, tails you lose": vote for the deal and I'll paint you as heartless reactionaries bailing out your fat cat friends. If you're going to do that, you'd better make sure you have some goddamn margin for error in your own party. She didn't. Then she got up and delivered yet another speech blaming the Republicans for the bailout deal she was about to pass.
Being in power means that you get to give your party special favors on many occasions--but it also means that you, yes you, have the ultimate responsibility for getting things done. She didn't particularly try to bring her party in line, and so of course as soon as a few Republicans defected, hers stampeded. The ultimate blame for this failure has to be laid at her feet.
That doesn't excuse the Republicans; I've already expressed my opinion of their conduct. If they do not understand that there are some things more important than reelection, they do not deserve to be in Congress. I'm not sure they deserve to be let loose in society. But Pelosi is the one who was vested with the ultimate responsibility for shaping the legislative process in the House. She not only dropped the ball; she picked it up and drop kicked it through her own goal.
so Pelosi was devious and smart enough to maneuver the Repubs into the corner but not smart enough to NOT make that last speech...your theory requires threading a needle...
I think it was more a case of her overplaying her hand. But she was in a win-win situation so it didn't much matter. The repubs were in a corner, so for Pelosi the failure of the bill was just as useful politically as the bill's passage.
How else do you explain her inability to bring her party along or her excessively partisan speeches attacking the people who's votes she needed?
Unfortunately, as is typical in DC, at the end of the day the American people come second and the party comes first.
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