Dem
51
GOP
49
Another day, another round of GOP infighting. As reader B.G. in Palo Alto, CA, observes, it appears they are trying to rewrite Will Rogers' old mantra: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Republican."
The biggest struggles, at the moment, are on Capitol Hill. To start, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has a $78 billion tax bill that he wants to pass. It's got something for Republicans, in the form of corporate tax cuts, and it's got something for Democrats, in the form of an extended child tax credit. That means that there's some "strange bedfellow" lobbying going on right now, as advocates for big corporations like Amazon and for working families are both twisting arms to try to get the bill over the finish line.
The problem is... Johnson's own conference. The members from New York, in particular, want changes to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, and are disinclined to vote for a bill that doesn't offer that. The fiscal conservatives don't like giving any money to working families. The Freedom Caucusers don't like the fact that some money could end up in the pockets of undocumented immigrants. There are also some Republican members who simply don't want to do anything that could end up being perceived as a "win" for Joe Biden.
The Speaker is trying to herd the cats, but he might not be able to do it, and the opposition might use parliamentary tricks to keep the bill from getting to the floor. In that case, Johnson would have to suspend normal order, which in turn would require a two-thirds vote to pass the bill. Can he get 80 or so Republican votes in that scenario? We may be about to find out.
Meanwhile, Senate and House GOP opposition to any sort of border bill has Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) waving the white flag. A week is a long time in politics, as we so often note, and so maybe things will turn around. But at the moment, that does not seem likely. In hopes of salvaging something out of all of this, McConnell is now talking about separating Ukraine funding from the border bill, and just voting on the Ukraine money. The Democrats, who never wanted the two things connected in the first place, would be fine and dandy with that. The question is whether such a bill could get through the House.
And on the subject of the border bill, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) is about to see all his efforts go up in smoke, it would seem. And if that is not enough, a group of Republicans claiming to speak for the Oklahoma GOP approved a resolution censuring Lankford for having the temerity to even negotiate with the Democrats over the border. Then, a second group of Republicans, also claiming to speak for the Oklahoma GOP, put out a statement slamming the first group of Republicans, and calling their censure of Lankford "illegitimate." So, you have some members of the Oklahoma GOP's state committee excoriating the Senator, and other members of the Oklahoma GOP's state committee excoriating their colleagues for excoriating the Senator, and nobody seems to be sure who's actually entitled to speak on behalf of the Oklahoma GOP state committee. See again the note above about Will Rogers.
And finally, there is trouble in Paradise. By that, we mean Paradise, Nevada, the city where (oddly) the Las Vegas Strip is located. Yesterday, the members of the (notoriously dysfunctional) Nevada GOP held a meeting in advance of the Nevada caucus/primary. The main activity during the meeting was screaming at other members. The only real points of agreement were that the GOP needs to get nastier in its campaigning, and that Mike Lindell's conspiracy theories sound pretty good.
We stick by our remark from last week that if the Republicans can't get the internecine struggles under control, they are going to lose a bunch of winnable races, and have yet another bad cycle in 2024. (Z)