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With Majority Secure, Republicans Have No Interest In Compromising

With Majority Secure, Republicans Have No Interest In Compromising

In the wake of the Republican Party’s near-sweep of the midterm elections, the Beltway media and politicians from both sides of the aisle profess to agree on one thing: Democrats and Republicans must set aside their partisan squabbles and finally get back to the hard work of governing.

“When the American people choose divided government, I don’t think it means they don’t want us to do anything,” soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) proclaimed after the election. “We ought to start with the view that maybe there are some things we can agree on to make progress for the country.”

Just as long as nobody tells his Republican base.

A new Pew Research Center survey, released Wednesday, finds that Republicans are dead set against seeing their representatives in Congress compromising with President Obama. Overall, Americans agree 57 to 40 percent that Republican leaders “should try as best they can to work with Barack Obama to accomplish things, even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters.” But Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view things very differently; just 32 percent want to see GOP leaders work with the president, while 66 percent would prefer seeing them “‘stand up’ to Obama on issues that are important to Republican supporters, even if it means less gets done in Washington.”

Those numbers are the inverse of Democratic attitudes towards compromise, and represent Republicans’ most obstinate stance in any of Pew’s last three post-election surveys.

Pew Chart

Similarly, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agree by a 57 to 39 percent margin that their party’s leadership should move in a more conservative direction, rather than moderating. By contrast, Democrats would prefer to see their party moderate its policies.

Pew Chart 2

In other words, Republican voters strongly believe that they have provided a mandate for Congress to bring conservative change to Washington. There’s just one problem: The rest of the nation disagrees. Just 44 percent of the public approves of Republican leaders’ policies and plans for the future, while 43 percent disapprove. Similarly, while 41 percent want Republican leaders to take the lead in solving the nation’s problems, 40 percent would prefer that President Obama sets the agenda.

If all of this strikes you as a recipe for more gridlock, then you are in good company. Just 18 percent told Pew that relations between Republicans and Democrats will get better in the coming year, and less than 50 percent believe that either President Obama or Republican leaders will successfully enact their agendas.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com

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Obama And Black America: An Imperfect Marriage

Barack Obama has had close ties to the African American community throughout his political career. Somewhat paradoxically, he’s often faced counterparts in the community skeptical of his unusual background, his relative centrism on the issues, and his willingness to compromise with Republicans. And so we get the latest chapter in the hot and cold romance between black America and this president:

But when President Barack Obama told a gala dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus over the weekend that it was time to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying” and get to work, he instead gave new ammunition to some prominent African American critics who say the nation’s first black president gets tough only when he’s talking to other black people.

Three of the most prominent of them – Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Princeton professor Cornel West and talk show host Tavis Smiley – all criticized the speech, with Smiley setting the tone with his question: “How does he get away with saying this to black folk?”

But Obama pushed back hard. In a rare, one-on-one interview with a Black Entertainment Television reporter, he disputed the idea that such criticism was widespread, insisting there have been “only a handful of African-Americans who have been critical. They were critical when I was running for president. There’s always going to be somebody who is critical of the president of the United States.”

By the middle of this week, Obama’s sharp comments, the response from critics, and the debate and discussion they provoked in the black media seemed to mark yet another chapter in a relationship with African-Americans complicated from the beginning by questions about whether a mixed-race senator born in Hawaii was “authentically black” enough to win their support.

Lest we forget, a big part of why Barack Obama won the White House and John Kerry did not had nothing to do with white swing voters. Kerry won 88 percent of black voters, but Obama did even better, surpassing 95 percent. The African American community at large remains quite loyal, but elite discontent could hurt him at the margins if it means black voters are less enthusiastic than they might have been next fall.

Congressional GOP Less Willing To Compromise Than Rick Perry

Republicans in Congress made plain during the debt ceiling fight that they will never accept tax increases or new revenue of any kind, even if it is outweighed hugely by reduced spending. This apparently puts them to the right of even Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Tea Party champion and Republican presidential flavor of the month:

To hear him tell it on the presidential campaign trail, Gov. Rick Perry has never met a tax increase he liked.

But at home, over a political career that reaches back to the oil price shocks of the 1980s, Mr. Perry has embraced billions of dollars worth of them — including a $528 million tax increase approved in 1990, after he defected to the Republican Party.

The biggest tax increases came early in his career, before anyone used the phrase “Tea Party” to describe a potent political movement. But a few weeks ago, Mr. Perry also signed into law an online sales tax measure that the state says will raise $60 million over the next five years.

Grover Norquist’s influential organization, Americans for Tax Reform, calls the measure a dreaded “new tax.” Mr. Perry opposed it as a stand-alone measure, but this summer it was tucked into a must-pass bill during a legislative session that otherwise saw deep budget cuts.

The past votes and more recent tax legislation are sure to get a new look from opponents as Mr. Perry, now a Republican front-runner, promotes his tax-cuttin’, budget-slashin’ ways as an antidote to the ailing economy and a president he attacks as recklessly profligate.

“To the extent that he tries to oversell this in a campaign, people are going to pick at it,” said Jim Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas. “The question is, will his opponents be able to outmaneuver him to create a high level of dissonance between his record and what he says.”

So even Perry has vulnerabilities in his record. But the real takeaway here is the incredible stubbornness of the House GOP and its leaders.

In Zeal For Compromise, Obama Supporters Crash House Communications

Late on Monday evening, when Barack Obama urged citizens who agree with his “balanced approach” on deficits and debt to “let your Member of Congress know” and “send that message,” most observers surely expected a mild reaction with some of the president’s staunch supporters calling in to support their man.

What Washington got instead was electronic mayhem, as phone lines jammed, House websites crashed, and the vaunted Obama grassroots network that made so much noise in 2008 — and so little since – suddenly roared to life:

The Chief Administrative Officer of the Capitol alerted the House in an email Tuesday morning that House telephone circuits were near capacity due to a high volume of external calls. Congressional offices were advised to give their staff outside of the capitol and other key contacts an alternate number to call.

Multiple congressional websites crashed or slowed down last night after they were inundated with visitors.

Meanwhile, Obama’s pleas for compromise – and his endorsement of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s $2.7 trillion, no-revenue, debt-increase bill – were bolstered by a report that the nation’s AAA credit rating cannot be preserved with any other legislation at this point. Making her CNN debut, business correspondent Erin Burnett told viewers that Reid’s plan probably would prevent an immediate downgrade of US Treasury bonds (and an explosion of higher interest rates), while the proposal floated by House Speaker John Boehner “probably wouldn’t hit the hurdle to prevent a downgrade.” Burnett — a former star at CNBC, the business network where the Tea Party movement was born in 2009 with an outburst from Rick Santelli — quoted a source who recently met with officials at Standard & Poor’s, the nation’s largest rating agency.

As citizen pressure mounted for a debt limit increase today, activists sought to prevent a technological logjam from stopping voters from reaching their representatives. Americans United For Change, a group focused on defending Social Security and Medicare, introduced an online tool that allows constituents to enter notes and have them faxed directly to a congressman’s office. Lauren Weiner, its communications director, said on Tuesday afternoon that her group had sent over 10,000 faxes.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), an Internet-based grassroots group, urged its members to physically appear at their lawmakers’ offices, Twitter be damned.

“Given the fact that the switchboards are melting down, [we’re encouraging members to] stop by their local congressional office. [Rep.] Paul Ryan’s office in Kenosha had 40 or 50 people show up to protest proposed cuts in Medicare and Social Security benefits,” Neil Sroka, press secretary for PCCC, said Tuesday afternoon.

Of course, with scores of conservative Republicans indicating they won’t support their own Speaker’s proposal, the path forward to a debt-limit increase remains unclear. The Democrats — and Republicans who fear default’s economic and political consequences – will somehow need to muster 218 votes, the margin needed to pass a bill through a House of Representatives that still seems dominated by the ideology of the Tea Party.