Exhibition Match Over; Real Budget Battle Begins
By Shaun Kenney | Monday, April 11th, 2011 |Hats off to Speaker John Boehner. No seriously… hats off, folks. Given a shaky House GOP coalition, we forced two votes in the Senate on the Pence Amendment and the repeal of Obamacare, and for the first time since the Second World War the federal government shrank. Shrank!
Round 2 is where the real heavy pounding begins. Obama and the Senate Democrats have tested the House Republicans. They are praying to God like Bernie Baumbaum in the woods just begging for the Tea Party and pro-lifers to eviscerate Speaker Boehner for a job not done.
Now small minds and the bought-and-paid-for are buying it, but if you look across the spectrum you’ll see that the Tea Party has been by and large quiet. Not because they aren’t disappointed (by and large, everyone is disappointed in the end product), but most folks are astute enough to know that Boehner just pulled one hell of a snooker deal on the Obama administration and the Senate Democrats.
On the pro-life side of the fence, the Pence Amendment was the sticking point with the Democratic leadership. Boehner stressed it as a non-negotiable, Obama said he would shut it down. Keep this in mind folks: there is *nothing* Obama would love more than to see a civil war between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Boehner managed to get two votes, one on Pence, the other on the Obamacare repeal. That’s election year gold.
“Here we go again with elections!” the cynic says. Not so fast… understand this first. The House Republicans are first and foremost a coalition, with different constituencies, different reasons for being there in Washington, and not all of them on the same page. We all know that Republicans in Washington need to be worked on in order to carry the right message. Should this coalition splinter during a government shutdown, we may never get the same chance again. It took 16 years to recover from the 1995 government shutdown debacle, and while today’s environment may be squarely in our camp this time (and the MSM will not hold the same power over hearts and minds in a blog-savvy 2011), there is a manner and way in which the debate must be framed.
Boehner won real concessions from the Democrats. They came out the losers in this, and desperately are trying to recast the narrative so that the Republican coalition of fiscal conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives, independents, moderates, and Tea Party activists splinters into a million pieces.
Be smarter than they are. Keep up the pressure on the Congress. The real fight is coming in about two weeks on $5 trillion in cuts and a balanced budget. It’s not a fix, but it’s a starting point for conversation that will require a united front and an overwhelming majority to keep intact.
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About the author
Shaun Kenney is the Chairman of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors, former Communications Director for the Republican Party of Virginia, and an active blogger since 2002. Shaun lives in Thomas Jefferson's backyard with his wife, six children, and a modest attempt at a farm in Kents Store, Virginia.
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3 Responses to "Exhibition Match Over; Real Budget Battle Begins"
You know, back when the tea party was gaining momentum, I distinctly remember seeing signs at their gatherings that stated, “Government keep your hands off our Medicare.” Yet here you are, touting a supposed GOP coalition that would kill just about everything the Tea Party say they stand for. I think you are as much in the dark as the Dems. You are busy flicking an empty Bic, hoping that the sparks might be just enough to fool people into thinking that a new day is dawning.
Read the comments across the blogosphere about this weekend’s leadership failure. You will find that people have separated party and politics from process as they unite to advocate a new kind of change in 2012.
It’s called debt default and it is a growing majority of citizens reaction to the total mismanagement of this nation’s leadership for the past 6 years. As drastic as such a solution sounds, if these two parties have one more weekend like this past one, look for daring candidates to call for pressing the reset button.
Agreed Shaun. It has been really sad to see some supposedly on our side ready to throw Boehner under the bus for something that wasn’t a hill to die on. I’ll judge him on his actions with the 2012 budget, and the debt ceiling.
For all those that support a “truce” on social issues, you have just witnessed that the Liberals will never participate in that truce, but will continue to march ahead with their destruction of any and all traditional social values. Unfortunately the Libertarians are with the Liberals on that one.
As a businessman, I welcome the President’s proposal to be released today. My priority is to do no harm to the economy, and to continue the momentum toward full recovery which will do more to reduce the percentage of cost to GNP. But I am no tax cuts at any cost proponent; that is, I want quality growth and development in our nation, yet I believe the best way to achieve that is to invest in infrastructure and the quality of our workforce and then watch private enterprise create the jobs. To do that, we need a balance between revenue and expenses, and the wealthy, who have seen their tax rates erode dramatically, will simply have to pay a bit more so our nation can invest to prosper. Any plan that tilts more toward protection of the rich and powerful is simply wrong for America.
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