Obama's Arrogant Overreach-And The Republican Opportunity

Obamas Arrogant Overreachand the Republican Opportunity
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/03/Obama-Overreac...
OBAMAS ARROGANT OVERREACHAND THE REPUBLICAN OPPORTUNITY
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by PATRICK CADDELL (/COLUMNISTS/PAT-CADDELL)
3 Dec 2012, 11:08 AM PDT
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In the fiscal cliff negotiations, the Republicans are in desperate need of a game-changer. That is, the current dynamics in Washington DC are so bad right now for Republicans that they are likely to go off a political cliff. President Obama and the Democrats have always been looking to push the GOP into the abyss, of course, but lately, Republicans have volunteered to stand at the edge of the precipice and lean far over.
And yet amazingly, in the meantime, just last week, Republicans were handed a possible game-changerand they did nothing with it. They just ignored it, so the Democrats will keep pushing. If the GOP doesnt get a clue as to the real nature of the fiscal cliff negotiations, they will lose. In a nutshell, Republicans need to understand that the real struggle is not with the Obama administration; instead, the real struggle is for American political opinion, including the broad middle that preferred Obama to Romney, but nevertheless feels no great trust or affection for the re-elected 44th President. If Obama is seen as a fellow who wants to move the economy to a better place by raising taxes on the Koch Brothers, he will win. But if Obama is seen as an arrogant and unconstitutional power-grabber, he will lose. By that logic, then, Republicans should shift their perceived focus, from defending the low tax rates of billionaires to defending the US Constitution against executive Caesarism. On Thursday, November 28, amidst delicate negotiations over the fiscal cliff on Capitol Hill, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner presented Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
Geithner: Obama Willing To Go Over The Cliff If GOP Wont Agree To Tax Hikes (http://www.breitbart.com /Breitbart-TV/2012/12/02/GeithnerObama-Willing-To-Go-Over-CliffIf-Republicans-Dont-AgreeTo-Clinton-Tax-Rates)
(http://www.breitbart.com /Big-Journalism/2012/12/02/IraqiRefugee-Bombs-AZ-Social-SecurityOffice-MSM-Remains-Silent)
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and House Speaker John Boehner with a radical proposal (http://www.reuters.com /article/2012/11/30/us-usa-fiscal-offer-idUSBRE8AT02C20121130): the Legislative Branch should cede over to the Executive Branch the power to raise the debt ceiling by executive fiat. If this cession of fiscal authority were ever to happenif Congress were to lose its right to vote yea or nay on debt-limit increasesthat would be an epochal political power shift. It would mean that for the first time in US history, the President would have complete dominance on spending issues. And thats a kind of dominance that no president should be trusted with, let alone Obama. Yet one cant blame Geithner for asking on behalf of his boss. Obama has hardly been the first big spender in US history, but he has certifiably been the biggest spender ever, so he needs that debt-ceiling increase. Yet interestingly, in his first term, Obama showed that he understood the political risk of big spending; in the run-up to the 2012 election, we might recall, the President was afraid to ask for an increase in the debt ceiling, for fear that the resulting political backlash could hurt his re-election chances. But now, of course, Obama is liberatedliberated to be as hubristic as he wants to be. And if that means spending more money to build his legacy, then so be it. As we have seen over the last month, he certainly isnt interested in spending reductions. Today, the national debt is $16.330 trillion, and its rising fast; the debt appears destined to hit the current debt-ceiling limit of $16.394 trillion in January (http://livepage.apple.com/). Of course, for the nation as a whole, the deficit and the debt ceiling are major political and economic issues. If the Republicans in Congress wish to have any impact on federal spending levels, the requirement for a specific vote on a higher debt ceiling is perhaps the best lever that they possess. Thus there was little chance that Congress would go along with Geithners suggestion that it emasculate itself. Even Democrats on the Hill would be leery of that sort of surrender of their power. So when Geithner made the suggestion to McConnell in that Thursday meeting, McConnell didnt just say no; according to The Weekly Standards Fred Barnes (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/mcconnell-burst-laughter-geithner-outlinedobamas-plan_664210.html), he burst into laughter. For his part, Boehner said on Sunday (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/02/boehner-flabbergastedat-fiscal-cliff-proposal/comment-page-1/) that he was flabbergasted. And that was mostly the end of the story, as far as McConnell and Boehner were concerned. In the Republican leaderships view, its reasonable to surmise that Geithner and the Obama administration were simply beginning their negations with an aggressive opening gambit. After McConnell and Boehner said no, they probably figured that the negotiations would then commence on a more serious plane. Thus the Republican duo simply laughed off Geithners suggestion, and McConnells press aides evidently shared the laughter anecdote with friendly reporters, such as Barnes. Meanwhile, most of the media simply ignored the story; neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times took note of McConnells mirthful moment. Within hours of Geithners exchange, the media caravan had moved on. And that was a big mistake. A huge missed opportunity. Once again, the issue is not wheeling and dealing with Geithner and the Democrats, which is obviously the sort of inside game that McConnell and Boehner feel most comfortable playing. Instead, the real issuethe real opportunityis playing the outside game. That is, the game that includes the American people. As an aside, Grover Norquist was right when he said on Sundays Meet the Press that all fiscal cliff negotiations should be on C-SPAN. Norquist knows that Republicans cant win if they go behind closed doors; they will only have a chance of winning if the American people can see, for themselves, what the Democrats are trying to do. And my suggestion here is in the same spirit; the Republicans must make their case to the people, not to the Beltway.
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The Republican leadership thought that Geithners suggestion was ridiculous, and so they just laughed it off. But they should have done far more than that. After all, spending and over-spending are important issues to most Americans. Even many Democrats, including this Democrat, are worried about too much federal spending. Thus, for the Obamans to try to pull a fast one so that they can spend morewell, that is a serious matter. Indeed, according to Article One of the Constitution (http://www.law.cornell.edu /constitution/articlei), the Congress has the power of the purse, including the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. And for Obama to propose that the Congress simply turn over that precious power to his Executive Branch is not just an insult to the 112th Congress. It is also an insult to all other Congresses, past and future, and to the sacred document of the Constitution itself. McConnell and Boehner should have recognized that Geithners suggestion was really an unconstitutional power play, and they should have called him out. More precisely, heres what Republicans should have done: on Thursday, as soon as Geithner made his silly suggestion, the GOPers should have asked Geithner to repeat himself, so that there could be no doubt as to what exactly the Treasury man had said. And if Geithner had committed that suggestion to paper, they should have scooped that up, too, for future use. Then McConnell and Boehner should have politely ended the meeting and walked out into the Capitol hallway, where reporters were milling around, waiting for some news, and he should then have given then some newsspectacular news. Leaving Geithner behind, McConnell and Boehner, between them, should have laid out their case before the American people, invoking a famous past example of presidential overreach, FDRs courtpacking plan, which we will examine in a moment: Ladies and gentlemen of the media, we are speaking now, not only to you, but to the people of the United States. Folks, we have just heard a serious proposal from Treasury Secretary Geithner that is so outrageous, so ludicrous, so insulting, so unconstitutional that we have to report it to all of you. After the Obama administration has run up an additional five trillion dollars in national debt, the President now wants a radical new budget packing planthat is, a plan to unilaterally arrogate spending power, just as Franklin Roosevelt wanted to arrogate judicial power with his court-packing plan back in 1937. Court-packing then, budget-packing now; its the same story of the arrogance of power. We might note that just six years ago, when Barack Obama was himself a US Senator in 2006, he declared (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256288/senatorbarack-obama-explaining-his-2006-vote-against-raising-debt-limit-andrewc-mcca%23) that raising the debt ceiling above $9 trillion was a leadership failure. Well, now that national debt has nearly doubled, to more than $16 trillion. And now Secretary Geithner has the unconstitutional gall and gumption to suggest that the Congress, the first branch of government whose powers are enumerated in the constitution, give up a vital check against reckless overspending of the type we have seen over the last four years. Ladies and gentlemen, we are truly astonished. But we are more than astonished, we are alarmed. Therefore, we are issuing this warning to the administration and this pledge to the America people and their sacred Constitution: in the House, Speaker Boehner will immediately put Secretary Geithners radical suggestion to a vote, where we have no doubt that every Republicanand more than a few debt- and deficit-averse Democratswill vote no on this big-spending, budget-packing power grab. And in the Senate, Leader McConnell will seek to attach an amendment so that Republicans and likeminded Democrats can also vote no on this big-spending, budget-packing, power-grabbing proposal from the Obama administration. In addition, Leader McConnell pledges to use the filibuster and all his other parliamentary powers to stop the business of the US Senate until Secretary Geithner
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retracts and renounces his unconstitutional suggestion. And we call upon the American peoplewho care about the Constitution as much as we doto join us in demanding that this presidential budget-packing power grab be thwarted immediately, and forever. Such words from McConnell and Boehner would have caused a sensation. They would have led the political news that night on all the networkseven MSNBC. After all, most Americans have an instinctive fear of power-grabbing and poweraggrandizement. And that was the Republican opportunity: to get the current debate off of the relatively narrow issue of fiscal cliffs and on to the broader issue of Obamas presidential powerhis use of it and abuse of it. All re-elected presidents face the danger of hubris in their second term. The classic cautionary tale is Franklin D. Roosevelts infamous 1937 proposal to expand the nine-member Supreme Court with six of his own new appointeesthe notorious courtpacking plan (http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/history/CourtPacking.cfm). FDRs proposal came on the heels of his 1936 landslide re-election, in which he not only won 46 of 48 states but also reduced Republican numbers in the House to just 76 and in the Senate to just 16. The Republican Party was thus on the edge of extinction when it found its salvation in opposing to the court-packing plan. In 1937-38, the hardy few Republicans joined with Jeffersonian Southern Democrats to oppose the increasingly imperial FDRand they won. In 1938, the GOP won a huge comeback victory in the midterm elections; among the Republicans elected to the Senate that year was a future GOP superstar, Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio. And, for all practical purposes, the forward motion of the peacetime New Deal came to a halt in FDRs second term. Indeed, its fair to say that the 1938 midterms preserved the viability of the two-party system in the US. Eight decades later, contemporary Republicans could have done the same thing. Just as anti-FDR Republicans found that they had new allies among restive Southern Democrats, so McConnell and the Republicans would have found that they had allies in a budgetpacking fight among Democrats. Theres no way, for example, that Democratic Senators such as Mary Landrieu and Mark Prior, to name just two, wouldnt have felt obligated to side with McConnell against imperious Washington. Their respective re-election imperatives, in the Jeffersonian states of Louisiana and Arkansas, would have demanded their opposition. So yes, Obama seems to be in more danger than previous presidents of second-term hubris and overreach, and that overreach could yet save the Republicans, in spite of themselves. History tells us that even in the midst of seeming defeat, its possible to reclaim victory. The key to such a turnaround is to see the strategic situation clearly, even amidst all the confusion, and then to reach for the winning counter-stroke. In the Battle of the Marne in 1914, the French were reeling under the German onslaught, and so they did the one thing the Germans werent expecting; they counterattacked. The Kaisers overconfident army was shocked and fell back in confusion. This was the Miracle of the Marne; Paris was saved, and with the help of the British and the Americans, the French ultimately won World War One. The key, now, for the Republicans is to have their own Marne Moment of clarity. They need to see that the time has come to stop negotiating with Obama. Its his economy now, he wants to do everything his way, so he now owns it. Instead, Republicans must realize that the larger battlethe greater waris Obamas attempt not only to win a big political victory and break the Republicans, but also to transform the American constitutional system permanently. Thats a fight worth fighting. Indeed, if Republicans take up that fight, they will gain allies in perhaps unexpected places. But first they must change the focus of definition of the fightfrom mere tax rates to the the grander question of the future of American constitutional liberty. If the current
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crop of Republican leaders has a hard time seeing the immediate struggle in those terms, well, thats a loss for them, to be sure, but its a bigger loss for the rest of us and for our country. So once again, the key for Republicans is putting the Geithner Grab in context, so as to start building a new narrative for Obamas second term. A new narrative, that is, that shows that Obama is wildly exaggerating his mandate and dangerously seeking to concentrate power in the Presidency. Here are two more examples of Obama overreach that feed into the same negative narrative: First, Obama is evidently serious about trying to jam through Susan Rice as his Secretary of State. She is, of course, discredited on the basis of her Benghazi deception, as well as for other blemishes on her record (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11 /15/From-Rwanda-to-Benghazi-Susan-Rice-s-Shameful-Record-of-Political-Cronyism). In addition, she also obviously lacks the measured personality needed for effective diplomacy. As Rice said recently (http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/30/in-interview-susanrice-explains-role-in-wh-decision-making-people-know-not-to-mess-with-me/), People know not to mess with me. And if they havent learned, and they try, then they will learn. Such is not the preferred tone and meter of, say, Talleyrand or Metternich. Second, Politico reports that Obama is already planning for his Versailles-like presidential library (http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/obama-presidential-library-campaignbegins-84471.html?hp=t1). Its projected costwait for itis $500 million. Thats right: The economy is still in doldrums, and we could be going into a double dip, and yet Obama will be taking time away from his duties to schmooze fatcats, here and around the world. Is this what the hard-pressed middle class voted for last month? A president who will be cultivating the same moneyed class that he was supposedly railing against during the campaign? Yet of course, Obama can get away with those mistakesand get away with many more mistakesif the Republicans cant figure out how to oppose him. Obama may not be a very good president, but if his opposition is worse, he will do okay, even as the nation suffers. So is too late to revive the issue of Obamas debt-ceiling power grab? We shall see; we will have to find if Geithner continues to make it a key part of his bargaining agenda. Yet its definitely never too late to make an issue of Obamas second-term hubris; thats a guaranteed constant over the next four years. Unfortunately, in the meantime, even as Obama overreaches, Republicans are looking for new ways to loseand finding them. In the next installment, we will see just how McConnell and Boehner are finding those new ways of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
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MARYASANDIEGO
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That's what I've been saying for awhile: The Repubs need to get out and explain to the American people what Obama is doing. Oblamer is back on the campaign trail talking about Repubs being the Scrooges for Christmas but failing to explain why they refused the offer. Someone needs to step up and get the information out; the media certainly isn't going to assist. I agree that having all negotiations on TV is most appropriate. Let us see
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what our elected offiicials are doing for and to us and what their plans are for our money. No more Christmas Eve deals behind closed doors, ripe with bribes, to pass another nightmare onto us. Fool us once .......
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LOVETEA
The republicans lost the debate on taxes when they allowed the deal they are looking at right now. By kicking the can down the road and allowing for the "fiscal cliff" they played right into the democrats hands. Does anyone really think Obama and the democrats are worried about taxes going up? This gives them exactly what they want all while acting like they are fighting against it. Republicans deserve the a$$ whooping they are getting due to their own stupidity. Just calling it as I see it.
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Obama's Arrogant Overreach-And The Republican Opportunity

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Obama's Arrogant Overreach-And The Republican Opportunity

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Obamas Arrogant Overreachand the Republican Opportunity