Reverse auction in Congress

This is an explanation I developed in my comments on political threads, but I'm finally writing it here. On many issues, the GOP leadership has the choice of two negotiation partners. It can negotiate with the House Freedom Caucus (a more conservative group) or it can negotiate with Dems.

Both the Freedom Caucus and the Dems will try to barter votes for concessions. The GOP will be able to play them off against each other and lower the degree of concessions.

This dynamic was first apparent when the GOP were late again getting to the appropriations bills last September. Dems helped them out by providing votes to pass a clean continuing resolution to keep funding as is. In December, it was the Freedom Caucus' turn to provide the votes, with a clean bill again being passed.

Neither the Dems nor the Freedom Caucus gain much in these clean bills. Many of them want to use their leverage (their votes) to gain concessions. Dems want protection for DACA young people (children brought to the US as illegal aliens). The Freedom Caucus has a big roster of wants, including no concessions on DACA, tougher immigration measures, and more military readiness.

With the 1/19/18 appropriation deadline coming up, both the Dems and the Freedom Caucus were vying to be the partner. The Dems thought they had a deal, but it fell apart. The Freedom Caucus swooped in and made a deal for almost a clean bill--few demands at all. That bill passed the House just one day before the deadline.

The Freedom Caucus agenda is a better fit in general for the GOP. But this is complicated by the slim GOP margin in the Senate, and some very independently-minded GOP senators. Several senators, such as Lindsay Graham and Jeff Flake, want to do an immigration reform deal that is more liberal than what the rest of the GOP senators want. (This is how the Dem deal fell apart. The Dems negotiated only with Lindsay Graham, and the deal was spiked by Trump.) Do Graham and Flake have to willpower to stand strong and send the Freedom Caucus deal to defeat? I rather doubt it.

I think Graham and Flake will have to settle on a lesser immigration deal in the near future, or maybe no deal at all. Democrats have been threatening a filibuster and hinting at a government shutdown if they don't get a deal on DACA. I predict any shutdown will fail. The Dem leadership probably realizes this, so I don't think they would attempt anything more than a token shutdown at most.

Shutdown threats are a blunt instrument, and not useful for getting major changes in potential legislation. Making an advantageous deal is going to be hard for the Freedom Caucus or the Dems. The best deal may be for them have secret talks with as many allies in the GOP establishment as possible, be prepared to make concessions, and then take what they can get. However, this strategy is certain to piss off true believers among the supporters, and get the politicians labeled as sell-outs. But that's the breaks when you negotiate from a position of weakness and you aren't the only potential partner. If someone is ready to trip you and underbid you, you need to be ready to do the same.

Image: nbcnews.com

Peeling through the many reasons for Boehner's resignation

Boehner's resignation is not a surprise to me. I don't know how he could stand the job. That said, I didn't know he would resign imminently, or that it would be on Friday, Sept. 25. So why now?

Reading the news reports, at first it sounded like Boehner was somehow inspired by the Pope's visit. Boehner stated that he woke up and knew that "this is the day."

The same story says that Boehner had determined to resign on his 66th birthday on Nov. 17, but brought it forward by a few weeks. Foolish me, I thought he finally got fed up.

Luckily I can read, and found much more revealing reports elsewhere. This article lays out the actual reasons pretty clearly:

• The Freedom Caucus (a very conservative group in the House) were planning to challenge Boehner's speakership if he didn't let them shut down the government by sending appropriations with poison pill/veto bait provisions defunding Planned Parenthood.
• Boehner found out that the Dems weren't going to help him stay as speaker, so the threat of being unseated was credible. 
• Boehner will resign, avoid the challenge, and gets to avoid the shutdown with a clean appropriation bill that lasts until mid-December.
• The GOP will have between now and mid-December to elect their new speaker, if they can settle on someone.

So the arch-conservatives are forcing Boehner out. This will almost certainly be destabilizing. The Freedom Caucus will either force a shutdown, or will face the humiliation of not being able to force one. Can that really be a good idea? It doesn't sound like a good idea now, but forcing a shutdown in mid-December, just in time for Christmas, sounds even worse.

Maybe they'll wait until February, except that it's primary season, so that's not a good time either. The further they push the shutdown, the closer to Election Day it gets. So a failed shutdown (the outcome I predict) will be fresher in the minds of voters.

THIS IS THEIR STRATEGY?

Unbelievable. I have got to watch this melodrama unfold. It may even be better than The Walking Dead. We may have flesh-eating conservatives attacking fellow GOPers on the House floor. Maybe Dems will come in toting assault rifles. What a spectacle! I can't wait! (Or maybe I'm losing my mind. Time to stop blogging for tonight.)

Image:backfromthedepths.co.uk

Extras. The conservative press didn't seem to know the resignation/ouster was about to happen. No articles in HotAir, Daily Caller, etc. announcing a planned move. The Hill warned about the coup two days before Boehner's resignation. A member of the Freedom Caucus told a local Arizona paper about growing discontent. But when hasn't there been growing discontent?

A listing from 538 of the ultra-conservatives who ousted Boehner. Maybe some Democrats were going to prop up Boehner. A reasonably good summary of Boehner's history from a MSM perspective. Most interesting point: Boehner got to the top of the leadership pyramid because he wasn't highly implicated in the lobbying (Abramoff) scandals that wiped out most of the House GOP leadership.

The old appropriation two-step

The choreography we get from Congress at the yearly appropriation deadline is getting as familiar as the Christmas Rockettes show. Plenty of R's claim that only the Dems are talking about shutdowns, and a few mentally feeble ones (R's) might actually believe the Dems would be the cause of a shutdown.

The R leaders are giving their caucus lots of chances to vote for their issue du jour. (Not that the issue matters. Two years ago it was defunding Obamacare, and it didn't happen. This year it's defunding Planned Parenthood, and we can watch while it doesn't happen either.)

After the ritual yet useless votes, the R leaders will trot out a clean, status quo bill, and we'll all yawn and go to bed. Well, a few people will scream about betrayal and cowardice and turn strange shades of red (such as Erick Erickson), but the rest of us will be watching reruns and drifting off to dreamland.

The only question is how many times the Republicans will repeat this ineffective strategy. At least once after 2016, that's my prediction.

 Image: dailymail.co,uk

GOP stands up to the Tea Party Part 2

So many thoughts. Not so many complete sentences.

GOP standing up to Tea Party. Orrin Hatch blasts Heritage. Corporate backers stick with Boehner, toy with the idea of backing establishment Republicans against Tea Partyers.

Tea Party not backing down. RedState doesn't want a house divided; it wants a house purged.

Tea Party is still behind its belief that Obamacare can be stopped/defunded/gutted. They pretend that this was the plan all along, to fight tooth and nail, close down government, do everything they can. But that's a story that only started over the summer.

In this article, RedState blames the GOP for not following through on defund promises, but all the early articles it refers to talk about broad fiscal goals, not Obamacare. I checked the RedState archives: Ben Carson, black neurologist hero of the Tea Party, had lots of complaints about Obama, not just Obamacare. In a February article, the focus was on governors refusing to set up exchanges. Search for "defund," "repeal," and "delay" in articles from that time and you'll see that it wasn't part of the vocabulary then.

Rush Limbaugh, another big voice (and big ego) for the Tea Party, isn't backing down either. He wants Ted Cruz and Mike Lee times 5 or 10 or 45 in the Senate. Per the Washington Times, the Tea Party is "poised for a major victory in the larger Obamacare War." Details absent, though.

Image: usnews.com

Extras. History of the shutdown per Politico. How the House voted on the measure to end the shutdown and raise the debt limit. How the Senate voted. Currently the Senate has about 10 senators with similar strategies to Ted Cruz/Mike Lee. After the 2014 election, who knows.

So many great images to choose from. Google image search: GOP stands up to tea party cartoon.

Another RedState article where they look at evidence but still somehow manage to draw the wrong conclusion--that is, the conclusion they want to draw.

Short: GOP update

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Image: xaxor.com

Ted Cruz and friends take the car keys. Hey, is that Sarah Palin?