Fear not, land of the left. Just when you thought the chips were down, the Republicans got Congress off to a rockin' good start for progressives this week. “How?” you ask. Oh, let me count the ways.
The GOP kicked off the 114th with efforts to alienate every single constituency they have been hoping to make amends with since they realized their party was driving off a demographic cliff: women, Latinos, environmentalists, seniors, people with disabilities, just to name a few.
But here’s the best part: Democrats are showing real backbone. So much so that the New York Times blamed them for stonewalling the GOP agenda (which seems like a bit of selective amnesia regarding the GOP, but we’ll take it).
In so quickly assuming the role of the aggressors on only the second day of the session, Democrats struck a discordant tone when compared with Republican pleas for greater bipartisan cooperation.
Wow, really? How about this: Democrats stood up for average Americans, the disenfranchised, and what have proven to be very popular policies like Social Security, immigration reform, and efforts to rein in big banks.
Minority Leader Harry Reid set the tenor for Senate Democrats, saying he had no intention of “just rolling over.”
They see little benefit in making the first few weeks of the session easy on the new majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, senior Democrats said. And they believe the quicker they can puncture what they say is the illusion of Republican good intentions, the better footing they will be on politically.
But it was the House action that should truly hearten progressives that Republicans have embarked on a road to nowhere. Head below the fold to find out what they've been up to.
It all started with a fateful vote for leadership, in which Rep. John Boehner ultimately hung on to the Speakership but not before GOP crazies like Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) threw their weight around. A total of 25 Republicans eventually defected.
That’s more important than you might think at first glance. The right wingers are now poised to cause one headache after the next for a GOP leadership that hoped to prove they could govern responsibly.
After the leadership vote, House Republicans went on to: introduce legislation that bans abortions after 20 weeks, change a rule that will help them slash Social Security and disability benefits, and pass legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. (They also tried to delay Wall Street reforms that will protect consumers but failed thanks for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.)
But the effort that really shows how much the center of gravity is shifting to the loony side of the GOP came toward the end of the week on immigration. The establishment wing of the GOP is totally embracing the Steve King approach to immigration, which means not only trying to gut the president’s most recent executive actions but also his 2012 DACA program for DREAMers and the foundational Morton memos from 2011. The GOP leadership had been weighing a more modest approach to offending Latinos but now they've gone all in.
On a phone call with reporters Friday, Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, called it “nothing short of breathtaking” that this was the Republicans' first action right out of the gate. And that isn’t just hyperbole from an immigration advocate. It’s a sign of times to come.
As disheartening as this all sounds, it basically adds up to a love letter to progressives for 2016, quite literally authored by the GOP itself. Welcome to the 114th. Muah!