Smack tack,
Chamber of Commerce style:
“Well I don’t know Sen. Cruz,” [U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO] Donohue told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
“I think of him as a tennis player. You know, if you’re going to rush the net all the time you better have a lot of motion to the left and the right. And he hasn’t proven that to me yet,” Donahue added.
When a reporter noted that many believe the business community want Cruz to “sit down and shut up,” Donohue quipped, “Well that might be one thing we could work on.”
Yes, Ted Cruz is totally ineffective, unlike the Chamber of Commerce, which successfully lobbied the Republican Party to prevent Cruz from forcing the nation into default simply because he was pissed off about Obamacare. Oh wait, sorry, let me correct that. The Chamber doesn't get credit for stopping Cruz. That would go to House Democrats, every single one of whom
voted to prevent default, while two-thirds of the Chamber's House GOP "buddies" voted the wrong way.
Actually, come to think of it, the Chamber of Commerce wasn't able to convince Cruz and crew to abandon their plans to shut down the government over Obamacare. Cruz's plan may have been dumb, but at least he was able to execute it. So maybe the Chamber of Commerce is even less effective than Cruz, if you think about it.
And if you're wondering why that's the case, check out this reasoning from Bruce Josten, the Chamber's top lobbyist, on why immigration reform is still alive:
“I would suggest the Speaker is stronger than he was four weeks ago … I think he’s in a better position by letting out the air of the proverbial balloon,” Josten said of Boehner’s decision to let his conservative swing push the country to the brink of default. “He got a standing ovation” from his conference during the last meeting, he noted.
Donohue said he is hopeful the House and Senate will “go to conference, [and] have the president sign” immigration reform quickly.
This is the right-wing version of eleventy billion dimensional chess, and it's complete lunacy. If Republicans wanted to avoid a government shutdown, they would have voted against a government shutdown. If Republicans didn't want to threaten to force default, they wouldn't have threatened to force default. (The reason we didn't actually default has nothing to do with Boehner strengthening himself, or letting the wingnuts work it out of their system: It's that Republicans were never, at any point, actually going to let the government default. They were bluffing all along.)
The point is that if Republicans want to see immigration reform, they will let immigration reform come up for a vote. It's as simple as that. Eleventy billion dimensional chess has nothing to do with it. Shutting down the government didn't suddenly put reform back on the table—if it's on the table now, it's because it's been on the table all along. To the extent that's there's any eleventy billion dimensional chess going on, it's entirely about Boehner positioning himself to save his job. That's interesting and potentially even entertaining, but it has nothing to do with immigration reform. If Republicans want immigration reform to happen, then it will happen. There's nothing more to it.