Looks like Emperor Joe Manchin has been stabbed to death (figuratively) on the Senate floor by his Republican “friends.” Manchin has pulled his energy permit “reform” bill from the short term government funding measure because of Senate Republican opposition. Sometimes, bad news for Joe Manchin is good news for America. Looks like we will avoid a government shutdown.
But who will pick up the bloody corpse of Manchin’s bill and say, “ I come not to praise Joe Manchin but to bury him!”? Maybe it could be Senator Kyrsten Sinema? She’s at least in Moscow Mitch’s good graces.
And this is all about power and retribution.
Senate Republicans on Tuesday gave Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) a taste of political payback by forcing Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to cancel a scheduled vote on Manchin’s permitting reform bill.
The message to Manchin is clear: Republicans are still furious over the surprise deal he cut with Schumer this summer to pass major pieces of the Democratic agenda…
The fate of Manchin’s permitting reform bill was sealed after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stood up on the Senate floor to slam it as a “poison pill” and “permitting reform in name only” and urge Republicans to vote “no.”
“It was written to drain the political will for actual reform without creating any meaningful change that liberal special interests might actually dislike,” McConnell said…
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said Manchin miscalculated by assuming that Republicans would vote for his permitting reform deal without having a chance to negotiate the details of the final draft.
He previously noted that Republicans were not in a mood to hand Manchin a political victory after he surprised them in July by announcing a surprise deal to set a 15 percent corporate minimum tax, spend hundreds of billions of dollars on climate programs and give Medicare new power to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry.
“I think he thought he was going to pass a bill and get it signed into law and he, I think, miscalculated,” Cornyn said. “By springing this on people and by making it purely a partisan [play].”
Manchin did so, Cornyn indicated, by voting for the Inflation Reduction Act in August and then expecting his permitting bill to be approved.
Et tu Cornyn?
Poor old Joe Manchin. He put on a happy face after this defeat because he still feels confident that he can work with his Republican friends. It doesn’t mean that Manchin wasn’t surprised. He did expect his true enemies to fuck him over:
He also admitted that McConnell’s opposition to his permitting reform bill caught him by surprise. He said he expected the intense opposition of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), House progressives and liberal-leaning environmental justice groups.
“I never did think I’d have Bernie and some of the extreme far-left,” he said. “What I didn’t expect is that Mitch McConnell and my Republican friends would be sacking up with Bernie or trying to get the same outcome by not passing permitting reform.”
Wow. Politics does make for strange bedfellows. Who would have thought that those extreme lefties and vindictive Republicans would team up to stop some bad bill from being passed? It’s not like Senate Republicans stopped a bill to help veterans exposed to burn pits because they were pissed off about being outmaneuvered on the Inflation Reduction Act.
Oh wait…
Manchin might have eventually decided to help Biden and other Democrats out, but he put us through a lot of hell. Part of why we are not in a better spot for the midterms is because a lot of good bills died because of Manchin’s obstructionism (voting rights and codifying Roe for two). And what makes this ironic is that Democrats didn’t shit all over Manchin in revenge. It’s his Republican friends who have vowed “REVENGE!” on Manchin.