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GOP discovers the virtue of unilateral presidential action
With less than a week before Congress leaves town for a month-long break, legislative prospects appear bleak. President Obama called weeks ago for action on the border crisis, but there's now very little hope that lawmakers will get anything done.
Yesterday, as msnbc's Jane Timm reported, House Speaker John Boehner gave the White House an ultimatum: accept changes to the Bush/Cheney-era human-trafficking law that allows immigrants from non-contiguous countries to seek asylum in the U.S., or House Republicans will refuse to pass a bill.
It's reached the point at which the same GOP lawmakers who've condemned the president for trying to work around Congress are now urging the president to circumvent Congress.
Even as Congress jousts over a legislative response to the influx of child migrants from Central America, [a group of Texas Republican lawmakers] contend the president can take unilateral steps to end the crisis immediately. "You have the authority to stop the surge of illegal entries by immigrant minors today," the Republicans wrote Thursday in a letter to Obama. [...]The recommendations include empowering local law enforcement agencies to prosecute federal immigration laws; cracking down on immigration fraud; speeding up deportations of the new arrivals; and ending the administration's deferred action program, which allows some illegal immigrants brought to the country as children to remain and work without fear of deportation.
Apparently, some GOP lawmakers believe unilateral White House actions are evidence of a tyrannical dictatorship, unless Obama is acting unilaterally on an issue they care about, in which case they're all for executive authority.
It's funny how that happens.
There is, however, a related question that's gone largely overlooked lately: if House Republicans support a far-right proposal that deploys the National Guard and changes the 2008 human-trafficking law, why don't they just pass one? After all, the GOP is in the majority in the House and if they want to approve a conservative plan, they can, right?
The de facto House leader who isn't in the House
As a rule, members of Congress stick to their own chamber. As we discussed several weeks ago, Republican leaders from the House and Senate will occasionally meet to work out bicameral strategies, but in general, rank-and-file members tend to stick with colleagues from their side of Capitol Hill.
But there's one big exception: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who doesn't seem to get along with other senators, but who spends an inordinate amount of time huddling with House Republicans.
Last September, for example, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) presented a plan to avoid a government shutdown. Cruz met directly with House Republicans, urged them to ignore their own leader's plan, and GOP House members followed his advice. A month later, Cruz held another meeting with House Republicans, this time in a private room at a Capitol Hill restaurant.
This year, in April, the Texas senator again gathered House Republicans, this time for a private meeting in his office. In June, less than an hour after House Republicans elected a new leadership team, Cruz invited House Republicans to join him for "an evening of discussion and fellowship."
This week, it happened once again.
Sen. Ted Cruz once again met with a group of the House's most conservative lawmakers Wednesday morning to discuss potential legislative responses to the flood of children crossing the border.Cruz met with "more than 20″ House Republicans Wednesday morning, according to Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, to discuss a supplemental package meant to address the influx of unaccompanied minors at the border. "I didn't have a hard count, but I know that it was more than 20," King said.According to the Iowa Republican, lawmakers had breakfast and listened to Cruz's take on the crisis.
We're approaching the point at which Cruz is quietly becoming a de facto member of the House Republican leadership, despite not actually being in the House.
Adventures in Fox News polling, Part VII
As regular readers know, I hold a special place in my heart for Fox News polling, because unlike independent polls commissioned by major journalistic institutions, Fox News' surveys tend to be ... special.
The network's latest is a true gem, even by Fox News standards (via Steve M.). The poll asked respondents:
"Do you approve or disapprove of President Obama bypassing Congress and acting on his own to make policies by issuing executive orders, choosing not to enforce laws he disagrees with, and delaying some controversial provisions of other laws?"
Fox got the result it wanted by presenting Republican talking points as fact -- a 58% majority of respondents said they disapprove of the president's actions -- but in reality, Obama is not ignoring laws he disagrees with. It led to this question:
"Do you think President Obama exceeded his authority under the Constitution when he changed the health care law on his own by executive order?"
Again, that's the GOP argument, to the point that it seems Republican operatives literally wrote the poll for Fox, but all Obama did was delay the implementation of an ACA provision that wasn't ready -- a provision Republicans didn't want to see implemented anyway. George W. Bush did the same thing with Medicare Part D and no one gave a darn.
All of this, naturally, concluded with this question: "Do you favor or oppose impeaching President Obama for exceeding his authority under the Constitution by failing to enforce some laws and changing other laws on his own -- or for any other reason?" (Only about a third said they favor the idea.)
The only reason -- the only reason -- for a purported news organization to word polling questions this way is to generate a result that reinforces a preconceived narrative, which is pretty much the opposite of what legitimate polling is supposed to do.
But it's the larger pattern that really drives the point home.
'Rape is a four-letter word'
Shortly after the 2012 elections, after a significant gender gap contributed to a series of Republican defeats, Republican strategists, consultants, and pollsters started hosting tutorials for GOP officials. The topic: how to speak to and about women.
As best as I can tell, the first formal lessons were offered in January 2013, but we've seen reports of similar rhetorical training sessions on several occasions since.
It appears the coaching needs constant reinforcing. Jeremy Peters reported yesterday:
It was not on the public schedule for the Republican National Committee's spring meeting at the stately Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis. But inside a conference room, a group of conservative women held a boot camp to strengthen an unlikely set of skills: how to talk about abortion.They have conducted a half-dozen of these sessions around the country this year, from Richmond, Va., to Madison, Wis. Coaches point video cameras at the participants and ask them to talk about why they believe abortion is wrong.They review the video, and critiques are rendered. "Rape is a four-letter word," one of the consultants often advises. "Purge it from your lexicon."
This is, by the way, almost word for word the same advice GOP consultants started offering immediately after the party's 2012 failures.
Whether Republican strategists realize this or not, the advice is fundamentally flawed.
House GOP poised to kill veterans-aid bill
These days, it's awfully difficult for major legislation on high-profile issues to generate broad, bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. The parties are usually too far apart to build consensus and strike deals.
But in mid-June, the Senate nevertheless came together to support a bipartisan veterans-aid package, written by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). There was some token opposition from the far-right, but they were easily outnumbered -- the bill passed with a whopping 93 votes.
At the time, success seemed like a foregone conclusion. The VA scandal was literally front-page news and the demands for action were ubiquitous. When the Senate bill advanced on a 93-3 vote, many assumed the legislation would be on President Obama's desk within a week.
Democrats and Republicans are struggling to agree on how to pay for legislation that could cost between $25 billion and $30 billion. That logjam is transforming the VA debate from one that united both parties to yet another fiscal fight, prompting the same type of partisan finger pointing that has become familiar after years of budget showdowns."They have walked away from it," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of House Republicans. "It's unfortunate, because we had a strong bipartisan vote, and that doesn't mean much to the House."
The bill is currently in a conference committee -- the process intended to reconcile competing bills from the House and Senate on the same subject. But in this case, the GOP-led House won't compromise.
Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, said yesterday House Republicans presented him with a "take-it-or-leave-it gambit," effectively telling the upper chamber to accept the GOP plan or the entire effort would die.
Sanders has offered a series of concessions, all of which have been deemed inadequate by House Republicans.
Any chance House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) might step in and show some leadership on this?
Refugee status? and other headlines
Pres. Obama meets the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras today as his administration weighs giving Honduran children refugee status. (AP)
Israel braces for 'Day of Rage' after deadly protests overnight (NBC News) while Sec. of State Kerry proposes a week-long truce starting Sunday. (NY Times)
Army War College to investigate plagiarism claims against Sen. John Walsh. (NBC Montana)
Sen. John McCain calls Arizona's nearly 2-hour execution 'torture.' (Politico)
FL judge doubts state's flawed Congressional map can be fixed quickly. (AP)
Ahead on the 7/24/14 Maddow show
Tonight's guests:
- Robin Konrad, attorney for Joseph Wood
- David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones
No preview video tonight.
Thursday's Mini-Report, 7.24.14
Today's edition of quick hits:
* Air Algerie Flight AH5017: "A commercial jetliner carrying 116 people disappeared over west Africa after losing contact with air traffic controllers early Thursday, a Spanish charter company said. Air Algerie Flight AH5017 vanished about 50 minutes after it left Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, according to the Algerian Press Service. The jet took off at 1:17 a.m. local time (9:17 p.m. ET on Wednesday) bound for Algiers, Algeria."
* Gaza: "A series of explosions at a school run by the United Nations sheltering hundreds of Palestinians who had fled their homes for safety from Israeli military assaults killed at least 16 people on Thursday afternoon and wounded many more. The cause was not immediately clear."
* Ukraine: "Arseniy Yatsenyuk resigned as Ukraine's prime minister Thursday after the ruling coalition in parliament collapsed, accusing lawmakers of imperiling the nation by putting politics above urgent needs during wartime."
* Iran: "Three American citizens, including The Washington Post's correspondent in Iran, appear to have been detained this week in Tehran, U.S. officials and the newspaper said Thursday."
* Gun violence in Pennsylvania: "A gunman opened fire inside a hospital psychiatric unit on Thursday, leaving one hospital employee dead and a second injured before being critically wounded himself, a prosecutor said."
* Border crisis: "As House Republicans struggle to figure out whether their proposed response to the border crisis can pass the House, given opposition to action among conservatives, it's increasingly likely they'll need House Dems to get anything through the lower chamber." Democrats are leaving Republicans with two choices, neither of which the GOP will like.
* This seemed unimaginable six weeks ago: "Negotiations between the House and Senate over legislation reforming the Veterans Affairs Department melted down on Thursday, raising the probability that Congress will leave for the August recess without approving a bill."
* He's right: "Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), the chairman of the health committee and a chief author of Obamacare, tore into an appeals court ruling this week that forbid the federal exchange to provide subsidies to millions of Americans in 36 states. 'It's nuts,' he told TPM in an interview in the Capitol on Thursday."
* The jokes write themselves: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took the 'upper level' -- helicoptering over the George Washington Bridge -- to beat rush hour traffic from his home state to a recent GOP fundraiser with Connecticut gubernatorial contender Tom Foley."
* Keep an eye on this one: "Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) has accused House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) of inappropriately intervening in an ongoing Federal Trade Commission case against a company being represented by a legal group run by a former Issa staffer."