So it’s been an interesting day. Obama flies back to Washington to work on a fiscal cliff solution. Boehner meanwhile calls the House back into session this coming Sunday night. The Senate is already in session. No one wants to look like they are slacking. Obama calls in Boehner, McConnell, Pelosi and Reid for a meeting at the Whitehouse.
And then the President comes out to make his statement at 5:45 this evening. And he throws what in baseball terms is called a high heater, a bit of chin music, a dust off pitch. It's what pitchers do when they think a batter is a little too confident, too willing to lean out over the plate.
I’ve been thinking that nothing will happen until after Jan. 3 when Boehner runs for re-election as speaker. And that may well yet be true. But another critical issue reaches the surface that same day, filibuster reform. If filibuster reform is going to happen it can only happen on January 3 and the GOP is planning to put up a big squawk.
So think about it. Obama announced he was asking Harry Reid to bring a bill to the floor for an “up or down” vote in the absence of any agreement. By doing so he dares McConnell to filibuster that bill in front of the eyes of the nation. If McConnell filibusters, he makes a very public case for filibuster reform and by next Thursday he’s screwed.
If he blinks and a bill passes, we move on to the House and there Boehner has a Hobson’s choice. He allows a vote on a bill that many of his own members don’t like thereby breaking the Hastert rule and risking his own speakership. Or he refuses a vote and places the onus for failure squarely on the GOP for all the world to see. Boehner can hold out, insure his own re-election but in doing so he damages the GOP brand more with every hour that goes by. Breaking the Hastert rule by the way means he brings a bill to the floor for a vote without the PREDETERMINED support of a majority of his own members. It requires him to show a little guts.
The next few days will be very interesting and the GOP is in a terrible quandary.
UPDATE: Thanks everyone for the recs.
The media is reporting that people are "hard at work" on a compromise. Personally I think only two kinds of work are going on. One is a waiting game, waiting to see whose nerve breaks first. The other is the folks who are busy crafting the cover story (on both sides) that can be used to explain why their nerve broke. I trust the President's nerve will hold as will that of Harry Reid. Pelosi is more a spectator in all of this, though Dem House votes would be crucial if Boehner is the one who breaks.