Harry Reid, Master of the Senate? (photo: Peter Stevenson/NYT)
Republicans are not the only ones who spin events to their benefit. While I obviously think the right-wing bubble is larger and more difficult to puncture than the liberal one (see: death panels, birthers, the “creeping threat” of Sharia law), conservatives do not have a monopoly on eschewing what Karl Rove derisively referred to as “the reality-based community.” The latest example: an effort to paint Democrats as strategic geniuses. Considering that the fatal flaw of Democratic legislation has often been the party’s lack of cohesion and inability to hew to a rigid ideology, the suggestion that Harry Reid has suddenly learned to heard cats should be taken with a grain of salt.
The Washington Post’s left-leaning blogger, Greg Sargent, is generally lighter on the spin than his right-wing counterpart, who seems to take her talking points straight from the Romney campaign. Sargent at least understands the difference between making an argument from a liberal perspective and making a claim unsupported by reality (c.f. “Romney is trouncing Obama in the polls!”) just because it fits the conservative worldview. Occasionally, however, Sargent falls short, as is apparent even from the title of this post: “In power play, Senate Dems sneak middle class tax cuts past GOP.” Ah, for a world in which Harry Reid were wily enough to sneak anything, much less something as substantial as middle-class tax cuts, past the GOP. Sargent, describing the Republican-opposed bill that passed 51-48 to extend the Bush tax rates for income under $250,000 (while allowing them to return to Clinton-era rates for higher income), writes:
This came after Mitch McConnell agreed this morning to majority votes on both plans, apparently because he didn’t think Harry Reid had enough votes to pass his. It’s a rare day that McConnell is outmaneuvered in the Senate. But this time, he was: Reid held on to even those vulnerable Dems in very tough races who held the line despite weeks of taunting from Republicans that supporting the Dem tax cut plan would allow GOPers to portray Dems as “tax hikers.”
Except that’s not why McConnell agreed to allow votes on both plans, per the Washington Post’s own Ezra Klein and the New York Times. McConnell was strategizing just as much as Reid. Not only did he get a vote on the Republican plan to extend all the Bush tax cuts, a move which allowed Republicans to go on record as opposing tax increases on “anyone” during a “recession,” but he knew the Democrats’ proposal wasn’t going anywhere. Klein reports:
“The only reason we won’t block [the bill] today is that we know it doesn’t pass constitutional muster and won’t become law,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. “What today’s votes are all about,” he continued, is “showing the people who sent us here where we stand.”
McConnell is correct on this point. The Constitution requires all revenue-generating measures to originate in the House, which will undoubtedly produce a bill tracking closely with the House GOP proposal. You could even argue that Reid was out-maneuvered, as his attempt to make a deal under which any bill passed by the House — even one extending all the tax cuts — would be automatically gutted and replaced in the Senate with the Democratic version, failed miserably. Mitch McConnell may be a lot of things, but one thing he’s not is mind-blowingly stupid. (And while Harry Reid may be a lot of things as well, one thing he’s not is Lyndon Johnson.)
The Times editorial board supplies a simpler explanation:
Republicans, knowing the measure would be killed in the House because it raises taxes on the rich, chose not to filibuster it in hopes of “exposing” a few vulnerable Democrats to a tough vote.
By agreeing to majority votes on both the GOP and Democratic proposals, McConnell also provided cover to his own vulnerable caucus members. A news article in the Times explains that “The floor fight was initially to be simply a procedural vote on whether to move ahead to a debate on the Democratic tax plan, and it was expected to fall to a Republican filibuster.” However, preventing majority votes on either tax plan would have meant the Senate “would have had only one chance to vote on those tax cuts, and ultimately, Democrats said, Republicans could not risk voting against a tax cut for a vast majority of Americans. Democrats who oppose Mr. Obama’s tax plan could have also voted yes on a procedural vote while still saying they were not falling in line with the plan itself.” Instead, “Republican leaders took away that cloak from vulnerable Democrats, forcing them to take a stand on the president’s plan, and they secured a chance to vote yes on what they called the Tax Hike Prevention Act.”
Sargent is not wrong in suggesting that the Democrats won a victory here. The trouble is, Republicans did too. And no matter which party achieved rhetorical success, the fact remains that the Senate did not produce a single piece of workable legislation. As long as gridlock persists in Washington, D.C., neither party deserves to claim anything more than abject failure.
. . . So Well Read. . . 