Republican Strategy Going Forward: Wishful Thinking

     It seems that more are starting to get it: the GOP has no leverage in the debt ceiling and any talk of leverage is just wishful thinking. They try to talk a big game:

   "Republican political operatives want to remind everyone who’s paying attention that conservative House members are itching for a fight, and impossible to control."

   "More than half of the GOP conference, they warn, is prepared to breach the debt limit — despite catastrophic economic risks — and many more still would be willing to let appropriations lapse at the end of March, to trigger the same kind of government shutdown Newt Gingrich lead in 1995."

   "They also want you to remind you that President Obama was just as adamant in 2011 that he would not allow Republicans to threaten a debt limit breach as a way to leverage policy."

  “Just so everyone’s clear, the position the President took today was the same one he started with in 2011,” John Boehner’s spokesman Brendan Buck tweeted after President Obama’s Monday press conference.

     http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/01/debt-limit-bluff-republican-exposed.php?ref=fpb

    However:

   "These claims are beginning to look like wishful thinking."

    Indeed they are. One big difference is that in 2011 the GOP had more of public opinion on their side as they had huge gains in the 2010 election and Obama was at his lowest point in popularity during that Summer. Now, the GOP has no political capital and the President has a strong job approval. The latest from Gallup has him up 52% approving with only 4o% disapproving.

    http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx

    Meanwhile, more and more Republicans are coming out against using the debt ceiling for leverage. Frank Luntz himself has warned the GOP that Americans don't want the debt ceiling not to be raised for any reason.

    "Over the past several days, House and Senate Republicans, as well as influential conservative advocates and media figures, have joined Newt Gingrich, Wall Street Journal editors and others pressing Republicans to give up the ghost."

    "In an editorial board meeting with the Fairbanks News-Miner, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said her colleagues are keeping quiet, but most agree that threatening not to raise the debt limit is not tenable.

    “If you incur an obligation, you have a responsibility to pay for that,” Murkowski said.
Her colleague, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) echoed this sentiment to the Washington Post through her spokesman. “Senator Collins recognizes that the debt ceiling is going to have to be raised because the U.S. cannot default on its obligations to pay for spending that has already occurred.”

    "In the House, Republicans are beginning to accept what Boehner and others have argued — that the debt limit only provides illusory leverage, and that the party should dig its heels in over the sequester and expiring appropriations."

     Yet while Boehner is right to argue against playing chicken with the debt ceiling, the fact is that this is becoming a reccuring theme you might  have noticed. He's urging them to forget using the debt ceiling as leverage, instead the sequester is going to be the real leverage. During the tax fight he said the same thing about the debt ceiling.

     There's a recognizable pattern as the GOP is not going to figure this out all at once but little by little but at some point they'll figure out the truth: they have no leverage. The only leverage that matters is the support of the American people. Right now, they don't have that, not even close.

    "On MSNBC Tuesday, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) would not rule out the possibility that Republican leaders will ultimately allow a clean or non-controversial debt limit bill to come to the floor, even if it can only pass with overwhelming support from Democrats."

    "Outside the Capitol, influential conservatives are counseling caution. Americans for Prosperity — a messaging and advocacy shop backed by the Koch brothers — says Republicans must show restraint in the debt limit fight. That’s not just because failing to increase the debt limit would create economic mayhem, but because focusing on debt — as opposed to spending per se — allows Democrats to argue, accurately, that revenue is an important debt reduction tool. The position that not increasing the debt limit might be better than persisting with the status quo is untenable enough. Arguing further that raising more revenue would be worse than both outcomes would get Republicans laughed out of town."

     Greg Sargent wrote about the GOP being run by the fringe tea party group. Yet the trouble is the GOP itself is becoming the fring of American politics. If you're an extremist you want the GOP. If you want sensible centrism, you go Democrat.

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/16/the-morning-plum-the-increasingly-isolated-gop/

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/01/want-sensible-centrist-party-see.html

     Yes, it's fair to say that yesterday was not a good day for GOPers who want to use the debt ceiling to get the cuts the failed to get through the legislative process.

     "For his part, President Obama has said he will not negotiate with congressional Republicans on the debt ceiling because Congress is obligated to pay the nation's bills."

     "And the White House is certainly enjoying signs of Republican infighting."

     "Tweeted communications director Dan Pfeiffer on Tuesday: "Between Sen Murkowski, Koch-Group and others, today was not a good day for GOPers who want to use threat of default to extract Medicare cuts."

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/01/16/obama-boehner-debt-ceiling-lisa-murkowski/1838807/