TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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September 29: Government Shutdown 100% a Product of House Republican Dysfunction
The federal government is going to shut down this weekend, barring some miracle. And Democrats really need to make sure Americans know exactly who insisted on this avoidable crisis. It’s the House GOP, as I explained at New York.
If you are bewildered by the inability of Congress to head off a government shutdown beginning this weekend, don’t feel poorly informed: Some of the Capitol’s top wizards are throwing up their hands as well, as the Washington Post reports:
“’We are truly heading for the first-ever shutdown about nothing,’ said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Strain has started referring to the current GOP House-led impasse as “the ‘Seinfeld’ shutdown,” a reference to the popular sitcom widely known as ‘a show about nothing.’ ‘The weirdest thing about it is that the Republicans don’t have any demands. What do they want? What is it that they’re going to shut the government down for? We simply don’t know.’”
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Many House Republicans, led by a band of right-wing hard-liners, want to impose their fiscal and policy views on the nation despite the GOP’s narrow majority in the House. Their chief asset, beyond fanaticism, is that the federal government can’t remain open past the end of the fiscal year without the concurrence of the House, and they don’t really mind an extended government shutdown, if only to preen and posture. They are being encouraged in this wildly irresponsible position by their leader and likely 2024 presidential nominee Donald Trump.
But the hard-liners’ real motive, it seems, is to use the dysfunction they’ve caused in the House to get rid of Speaker Kevin McCarthy for being dysfunctional. The not-so-hidden plan hatched by Florida congressman Matt Gaetz is to thwart every effort by McCarthy to move forward with spending plans for the next fiscal year and then defenestrate him via a motion to vacate the chair, which just five Republicans can pass any time they wish (with the complicity of Democrats). Indeed, the Post reports the rebels are casting about for a replacement Speaker right now:
“A contingent of far-right House Republicans is plotting an attempt to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker as early as next week, a move that would throw the chamber into further disarray in the middle of a potential government shutdown, according to four people familiar with the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.”
McCarthy’s tormenters would like to have a successor lined up who will presumably be even less inclined to compromise with Democrats than the current Speaker. And that’s saying a lot, since McCarthy has already bowed to the Gaetz demand that House Republicans reject even the idea of a continuing resolution — the stopgap spending measures used to forestall or end government shutdowns in the past — and instead plod through individual appropriations bills loaded with provisions no Democrat would ever accept (e.g., deep domestic spending cuts, draconian border policies, anti-Ukraine measures, and abortion restrictions). It’s a recipe for a long shutdown, but it’s clear if McCarthy moves a muscle toward negotiating with Democrats (who have already passed a CR in the Senate), then kaboom! Here comes the motion to vacate.
Some observers think getting rid of McCarthy is an end in itself for the hard-liners — particularly Gaetz, who has a long-standing grudge against the Californian and opposed his original selection as Speaker to the bitter end — no matter what he does or doesn’t do. In theory, House Democrats could save McCarthy by lending a few “no” votes to him if the motion to vacate hits the floor, but they’ve made it clear the price for saving him would be high, including abandonment of the GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry.
So strictly speaking, the impending shutdown isn’t “about nothing”; it’s about internal far-right factional politics that very few of the people about to be affected by the shutdown care about at all. Understandably, most Democrats from President Biden on down are focusing their efforts on making sure the public knows this isn’t about “big government” or “politicians” or “partisan polarization,” but about one party’s extremism and cannibalistic infighting. For now, there’s little anyone outside the GOP fever swamps can do about it other than watch the carnage.
Good riddance to the distraction of the race based affirmative action debate.
Class and geography based admissions could achieve much better results.
Affirmative action based on race is an inter elites controversy, part of the (mostly useless) cultural wars.
Blacks, Hispanics and Asians don’t support race based affirmative action and those that do don’t obsess about it.
The left still has a general mess with many of the not so progressive views of working class “people of color”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/us/supreme-court-affirmative-action.html?fbclid=IwAR3X67kFr2D2a49YlvaD9tiRHhzlHVFwtc6tQklRZn_l6sXRmpW2CJXQkSY
If Democrats wanted to get rid of legacy admissions they could have done so one of the many times they have controlled Congress or Department of Education regulations.
Trying to ban legacy admissions via the courts is dangerous.
Legacy admissions are about class. If they result in fewer minority admissions it is only due to an indirect effect.
But it would be rich for Democrats to achieve the precedent of banning class based affirmative action via jurisprudence that would set the stage for also banning class based affirmative action in favour of poorer students.
Ban legacy admissions and next the right will ban privileges for Pell Grant and scholarship admissions.
Color blindness is required by the Constitution and entirely consistent with traditional left wing values, as explained by MLK and other civil rights era leaders.
Legacy admissions should be banned, but they are not the correct tit for tat neither in political discourse nor in judicial caselaw.
Class blindness has not traditionally been seen as required by the Constitution and civil rights law.
It is moronic that Democrats would make the analogy. The fact that they do just shows just how overtaken by elites the party is.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/high-court-ruling-dems-take-aim-legacy-admissions-rcna91983
“White Democrats (75%) are also significantly more likely than nonwhite Democrats (40%) to support broadening how gender is taught.
Clear majorities of both whites (68%) and people of color (57%) say transgender and sexual identity issues should be given less attention.
Similarly, both groups support limiting how gender identity is taught in schools (59% white and 52% people of color).
As may be expected, white Republicans (93%) are much more likely than white Democrats (20%) to want to limit how gender identity is taught in schools.”
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_062823/?fbclid=IwAR0rBgVPOI7ntaIh_C3SSfoFQS3rqvaLchPYdRwQdqeuqHDD2MnGoMmaGl0
“A majority of Hispanic voters (58%), young voters ages 18 to 34 (57%), Democrats who backed progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary (55%) and Black voters (52%) say they’re open to considering a third-party or independent presidential candidate in a Biden-Trump rematch.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dems-republicans-are-open-third-party-presidential-candidate-rcna91368?fbclid=IwAR2m8IoPEE8F7kcvlsZG0BL2wm6rl9flCkI9e0x598jwRrP-PqM4n2fMUjE
“Our findings suggest that work stress generally increased from 1995 to 2015, and that the increase was mostly driven by psychological demands.
People working in lower-skilled occupations had generally higher levels of job strain and effort-reward imbalance, as well as they tend to have a steeper increase in job strain than people working in higher-skilled occupations.
Most of the change occurred from 1995 to 2005.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8032584/