Brooks: House ‘Wingers Are Destroying the GOP
David Brooks is not a happy camper:
House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.
Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it.
This is noteworthy, though I think a little naive of Brooks. The House conservatives who sank the bailout didn’t do so because they were listening to loud and angry voices. They sank the plan by accident. They were trying to double-cross the Democrats. First, they wrung lots of concessions out of Democrats at the negotiating table as the price for delivering 80 votes. Then, by not delivering 80 votes and forcing Pelosi to pass the bill as a partisan Democratic bill, they were going to wage a demagogic anti-bailout campaign. But Pelosi refused to be played for a sucker and so the conservative inadvertently sank a bill that, all evidence suggests, they actually wanted to pass. They just wanted to vote “no” on it for short-term political gain.
56 Responses to “Brooks: House ‘Wingers Are Destroying the GOP”
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September 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Yeah, you’re welcome.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Strong words, Mr Brooks! Surely there can be no greater ignominy than to be tagged as the Smoot-Hawleys of one’s century!
September 30th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Were they really confidant that Pelosi could get the additional votes? What is this evidence you speak of on that issue?
September 30th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Posted on Pollster.com,09/30/2008
Andrea Mitchell said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich,, worked very hard behind the scenes to kill the bailout plan, despite issuing a statement that he would have supported the legislation if where still in Congress.
Mitchell Said: “I am told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him. He was whipping against this up until the last minute…. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal., that it was a disaster it was the end of democracy as we know it that it was socialism, and then at the last minute comes out with a statement when the vote was already in play” (More GOP, spin, lies and hypocrisy!)
My take on this crisis, is that Lenders suckered average folks into mortgages which they could afford at first. Because there were no Regulations or Oversight, these Lenders would raise the monthly mortgages on the Buyers to an amount they could no longer afford! The houses were then foreclosed on and then re-sold again to some other unsuspecting victim, until the whole deck of cards has collapsed. What is compelling, is that before the total collapse, CEO’s pay themselves millions, sometimes billions as compensation pay for the said collapse! For instance, “In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms– Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley – paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.” From ABC’s Political Punch
Could these enormous salaries the CEO’s unjustly earn be one of the Main reasons why these companies fail and go under, and which actually, and in the end, bankrupt these companies to fail!
September 30th, 2008 at 11:04 am
That’s a lot of wheels within wheels to get to a simple “no”.
Brooks’ naivety is fake. The modern GOP is built on core conservatism but relies on multiple constituencies of resentment to wield political power. The ace in their hole is anti-government resentment. The operative phrase is chickens coming home to roost.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:05 am
DTM, Pelosi got the votes of a majority of Democrats, so by definition if the Republican House leadership had delivered a majority of their members, the bailout would have passed.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:06 am
You and McArdle need to talk.
She has this weird fury at Pelosi for supposedly not really wanting a deal. You think Pelosi is a hero for standing up to a GOP who you think conspired to game the system at the country’s peril.
I think I’m just going to average your views and come to the only obvious conclusion: Pelosi has very little to do with this train wreck. She’s the conductor: sounds ominous until you realize she never had much control over which way the train went.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:11 am
This is what happens when you build a party on a base that is a fetid swamp. It collapses.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:13 am
David Brooks is not ‘naive’, he is disingenuous. He knows or could know what is happening. He always plays the ‘oh gosh if only the republicans would listen to my reasonable branch of the GOP’ card. It’s absurd. He was one of the right-wing cheerleaders to get us into Iraq.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I think you are giving the Republicans way too much credit here. Many (as well as some reliably liberal Democrats) were getting a sense of anger from their people that wallstreet was getting a bailout. Brooks is right that the split among the republicans is largely along the same faultlines as the immigration issue. It represents the fundamental tension that has been in the republican party since the ahistoric alliance of middle to lower class socially conservative individuals (esp in he south), with bankers and other big business that solidified around the time of the Nixon administration.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Of course he thinks that. The bailout is the Bridge to Nowhere for the 212 area code. Just like no Alaskans opposed the Bridge to Nowhere….
September 30th, 2008 at 11:18 am
We need to start referring to the House Minority Leader as John “Smoot” Boehner.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:18 am
David W.,
To make my prior comment a little more explicit, Matt wrote:
The plan Matt is attributing to the House GOP depends on the House GOP believing that Pelosi had not just the will to increase the Democratic count to compensate, but also the ability to increase the Democratic count. So that is why I asked for Matt’s evidence that the House GOP believed Pelosi could get the extra Democratic votes she would need to make this supposed plan work.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
California GOP post-94 writ large.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
re the idea the GOP planned a double-cross, this from Politico saying the anti bailout commercials were cut last night and distributed and assumed the bill had passed. And this is a bill McCain said he would have to support.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:30 am
But Pelosi refused to be played for a sucker and so the conservative inadvertently sank a bill that, all evidence suggests, they actually wanted to pass. They just wanted to vote “no” on it for short-term political gain.
I’m not so sure about that. I think there are bunch of Republicans who voted against this for ideological reasons. Some of the “no’s” were tactical, but I think some were really heartfelt. I think they’re wrong, and that they’re opening the door to wiping out their caucus (a la Brooks), but at the end of the day they viewed this as “socialism” and couldn’t go for it, even if it means the risk of a bad recession.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Wow, McArdle is even dumber than I previously thought. And that is saying a lot.
But leaving that aside, the disappointment of Brooks is perfectly understandable: he is a Thurston Howell the third Republican. There is nothing more disconcerting to them than populist outrage. Just like I’m sure he doesn’t believe that Jesus rode around on a dinosaur. He loves those “Applebee’s salad bar” lovin’ regular Americans only insofar as they are useful idiots for giant tax cuts and preemptive wars.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Matt’s got a catchy conspiracy theory, but I don’t buy it. There really isn’t any evidence to support it. The House GOP is evil enough to play that game, but they are not well-organized enough these days to play that game.
What happened here is really simple. Boehner and Pelosi each wanted to pass the bill with the bare minimum of votes from their own parties, because they are both too chicken-hearted to take a bold stand one month before an election. And Pelosi delivered the number of votes she agreed to deliver.
But movement conservatives, who are the stupidest fucking people on the face of the earth, went into a full-blown Red Scare. The bailout bill was presented on talk radio as a socialist takeover of the economy, and so they responded accordingly. They lit up the switchboards harrassing their Congressmen, who chickened out and refused to play ball with Boehner. I only had the stomach to spend 10 minutes listening to talk radio yesterday, but it became really obvious in a hurry that this debacle was an own goal by the Republican base.
Brooks is essentially right. What we’ve seen in the last couple of years is that the Republican Party has created a monster they can no longer control. The conservative movement has gone completely around the bend. Their indoctrination is so thorough that they are fully incapable of participating in a democratic politics that responds to evidence and seeks to govern constructively. They will destroy the village in order to “save” it, and they will eat their own leaders who try to restrain them. On the bright side, David Brooks seems to be developing a healthy, rational fear of his former friend Patio Man. Good for him.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Think back to the debate, and McCain’s garbling of tactics and strategy.
The Republican Party today is incapable of thinking or acting strategically. Its success from 1994 to 2006 was based entirely on short-term, hot-button tactical ploys. Its de-facto leaders — Limbaugh, Hannity, Kristol and the rest of the right-wing commentariat — are all about tactics to score points and shift the conversation against Democrats. No one in the GOP shows any evidence of thinking more than one election ahead about the consequences of their actions.
Brooks’ “complicated anxieties” are entirely beyond this crowd; the only route to power they know is to exploit simple, bumper stick-length fears and resentments.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Matt, Your analysis of the House Republican’s game plan is exactly correct.
They tried to “play” the Dems but the Dems were on to their little game.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:52 am
This phrasing gives me pause. Doesn’t this arguably shift the blame for the bailout bill’s failure to pass on Pelosi? It makes it sound like she decided that she would rather let the economy take the hit rather than the Dems.
Well, I guess the response to that is that she lived up to her end of the deal and the Republicans didn’t live up to theirs.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:52 am
So that is why I asked for Matt’s evidence that the House GOP believed Pelosi could get the extra Democratic votes she would need to make this supposed plan work.
She let committee chairs vote no on the bailout, and some Democrats in extremely safe seats vote no as well. She could have leaned on them to vote yes and they would have. However, she did not want to pass an unpopular bill without the support of Republicans.
I happen to agree that there needed to be majorities from both sides, so neither could blame each other. The bill is a lose-lose, if it passes and nothing happens then we “didn’t need a bailout” If it passes and the economy continues to melt down then “the bailout didn’t do any good” Considering how unpopular it was with the constituents, neither side wanted to be on the hook for it.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:58 am
The ground rules were very clear before the vote – a minimum of 90 – 100 Republican votes were required for the rescue bill to pass. Bipartisan support was a requirement and the Republicans broke their promise to deliver the votes.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
The GOP droogs could not believe the vote was gaveled after being extended 20 minutes. They thought they had plenty of time to extort more tax cuts.
Barton’s face was priceless. The biggest “WTF have we done?” look of incredulity I’ve seen in a long time.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Wait a minute! This is a proposal put forward by a Republican administration &, given that thruout the decade, the House Republicans have operated with the discipline ordinarily associated with European parliamentary parties, the bailout should have arrived in Congress with the presumption of a substanial Republican majority from the outset. Instead, it’s the House Democrats who are getting blamed for failing to carry the Bush administration’s water for it, thereby setting a new standard for chutzpah!
September 30th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
The “deal” wasn’t for 12 more Repub votes. The 12 simply comes from what was needed to pass. Clearly Democratic Leadership believed that half of the Republican Caucus would vote for it to give the Dems enough “cover” in passing it. Frankly we all knew and know that the Repubs would still have attached the bill to Bush, Nancy and the Dems. It would have been the “safe” Republicans like Boehner voting for it.
Nancy was hardly brillant here. She was getting conned from two directions: the Bush Admin (Treasury, the Fed and others) on one side and House Republican Leadership on the other. To a degree, she got “lucky” that Boehner couldn’t deliver the needed votes. Her one moment of wisdom is in *not* cracking the whip on the Dem Cacus to pass the bill on its own with that small number of Republican support.
The Dems don’t look as bad as McCain, House Republicans or Paulson. But they don’t look good.
While I don’t think Nancy’s speach is the reason the Republican’s failed to vote, _and_ I agree with some of the content of the speach that no doubt pissed off Republicans, I do believe it was an error. She gave the Republicans and elements of the Media something to hang their hat on. Sure, a bullshit something… but still something to initially distract people from the Republicans killing the bill. I think we’ve seen for the last two years than Nancy and Harry, along with their inner circle of people like Hoyer, are not quality leadership. They simply do no have a clue on how to frame discussions and issues. It’s almost as if they didn’t spend any time since 1994 watching and learning how the Republicans take control of the discussion of issues.
It’s a bit like teams still running the wishbone in college, not paying attention to this little thing called the forward pass. If when the Dems have had “winner” issues like the Iraq War, they’ve been clueless on how to frame the Legistlative vs. Administration Fight to an American Public that was wildly against the Admin and the War.
They had best learn fast, as should an Obama Administration. We *know* that the Republicans will be an effective Opposition Party in Congress, especially with all the Bush Dogs that we’ve been electing over the past 4+ years.
John
September 30th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Matt is right that this was a clumsy attempt to doublecross the dems. It’s no surprise that Newtie was involved, since it is his signature tactic. Maybe it’s Newt’s Last Hurrah (I hope!). The politics of insurgency, 1993-2008. RIP.
Those who blame Pelosi for not being ‘in control’ of her caucus are smoking crack. What about the GOP caucus?? This was sabotoge, and these fucking idiots finally – FINALLY – patently overreached.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
The Dems don’t look as bad as McCain, House Republicans or Paulson. But they don’t look good.
Politics is, alas, a zero sum game. So she does look good indeed.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
It sounds like none of us commenters know what actually happened. All we know is what got reported. And now we’re making up stories that make sense to us.
And we just don’t know.
The congressmen who campaigned and voted for the bill really believed it was the right thing to do even if it hurt them politically. Because it will hurt all of them that run for office in November. Senators might get hurt in 2010 for supporting it now, although maybe everybody will have forgotten by then. Probably they really believe.
Or maybe they just have to do what their Wall Street owners say.
The Republican leadership that promised they could deliver enough votes were making an intentional double-cross. They wanted the Democrats to look stupid, as actually happened. Even with the failed bill, still it was Democrats pushing Bush’s travesty and Republicans who heroicly stopped it.
Or maybe they just didn’t have the votes they thought they did.
Nancy Pelosi was ready for a GOP double-cross and got Democratic congressmen who would otherwise have voted for it, to vote against when they saw the problem.
Or maybe there just weren’t that many Democratic votes.
We don’t know what happened in detail. We’ll probably never know. But being the kind of people we are, we make up stories that make sense to us.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Disagree slightly Matt. Of course the wingers are listening to talk radio. Talk radio is their base and their movement. I have more here.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“The Dems don’t look as bad as McCain, House Republicans or Paulson. But they don’t look good.”
Politics is, alas, a zero sum game. So she does look good indeed.
If we had IRV or some related voting system, it wouldn’t be as much a zero-sum game. Whenever there’s an almost-viable third candidate, the top two lose by making each other look bad.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
If this is right, then, by Atrios’ favorite metaphor, Lucy pulled the football away, and Charlie Brown kicked her in the head.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
’Wingers, not ‘Wingers. Stupid smart quotes, ruining the language.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Matt, I’m glad you saw that. Very few people appear to have detected the attempted double-cross.
Fortunately, Pelosi and the House Dems were apparently not going to fall for it.
I just pray that the fallout on the GOP will allow the Dems to put some provisions in the bill that a) address fundamental failures of the credit market, and b) provide even some token financial aid for distressed homeowners who otherwise should not be facing foreclosure.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Your analysis is right on target.
The House Republicans were playing games again.
They knew that the bail out had to pass, but they didn’t have the guts to face their own constituents.
Once again, the Republicans put their own rear ends ahead of country and commonsense.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
The corporate masters of the republican party have finally lost control of the “Frankenstein” monster that they have created. By using appeals to religion, abortion, culture wars and anti taxation, they built a crazed majority that would demand these things every 4 years , then accept tax cuts for the wealthy as the only accomplishments. Now, the generation of politicians raised on these ridiculous notions of “government is the problem” actually believe it, and are no longer willing to serve the financiers who have played them all these years. Thus it is left to the democrats, progressives, and rationalists to try to save the ecconomy from the lunatic ravings of the ideologues that the republicans and talk radio have created. I fear it is too late.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
The bailout bill sucks. It’s bad policy and bad politics. If there was an unlimited pool of money available then it might make some sense. However there are hundreds of billions stretching the trillions that will have to be spent as well. Money that will be needed to keep the banking and credit system going for new borrowing, directly, now.
The bailout plan is a trickle down plan. It’s trying to fix parts of what are broken in the hope that it will be enough to unstick the system, sometime. Screw that. Money will be needed now
Right now the FDIC is almost out of cash. There are at least two trillion in bank accounts that are not covered by FDIC. Money over the $100K limit. Much of that money is bussinesses money. They need it to pay bills. It’s where their cash flow moves through. FDIC insurance must include that money in its backing so that business can continue on an orderly basis. Many more banks are going to fail or come close.
All the Feds and the Treasuries efforts, and the governments, must now be focused on Main Street, directly. This indirect appeal for the bailout is too little and will help too late on Main Street. We cannot afford to help the FOH try to save themselves and make some big coin on the side.
It’s important to know how dishonest Paulson’s Treasury has been. Yesterday morning they held a conference calll for financial players. Citizens, congress and the press were not invited. Although the bill said the money would come in stages, tranches, 250 to start, then 100, then the rest the Treasury people said dircetly, without qualm that the tranches would not be observed. They entire 700 would be deployed right away. Thus they were saying they were going to disobey the law. They said the prices they paid for the bad loans would vary. Depending upon, in effect, who was a FOH, Friend of Hank. A total outrage. Hank would decide who got high prices, who would get low. There were more outrages as well.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Dunno if any of you little guys noticed but the Dow was UP 485 points today and other indices surged too, on the realization that Bush and his gang (including Democratic enablers) aren’t gonna get to loot the treasury on their way out of office after all. That’s a GOOD thing. Thanks to the all the principled Democrats and conservative Republicans in the House who voted their consciences rather lay down for the K-street greaseballs one more time. And thanks to the millions of outraged Americans who phoned, faxed, and emailed, and made it happen. All power to the people!
September 30th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I think instead of giving that money to wallstreet.To simulate the economy that they need to divide that money among all us american citizens so we can pay out bills, pay off our house, buy another house or whatever. And we need to get rid of Nafta and keep American companies here so our citizens can have jobs.
September 30th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
We care about nothing, LeBrookski!
September 30th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
#15 I read today that some of the tv stations had recieved the commercial blaming the bail out passing on the Democrats the evening BEFORE the vote. I do believe they thought the Democrats would put it through without their votes and then they could pound their fists and say it is all their fault!
I hope the Democrats go back in there and write up a bail out plan that is exactly what they want and then pass it with or without the Republicans. I think they should also make a little ad of their own saying instead of working out a plan that would help in a bad situation.. all the Republicans wanted to do was play more politics as usual.
October 1st, 2008 at 12:32 am
James (post #2): You apparently don’t remember how Al Gore messed with Ross Perot’s mind in a televised debate by awarding him a framed photograph of Smoot and Hawley.
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