Republicans take a stab at pragmatism...fail

News coming out of the House Republican retreat sounds like they might have learned a thing or two about pragmatism.

“As Ryan very clearly articulated, we're the minority in Washington, [so] how do you impact real change when you only have the House and you don't have the Senate or presidency? It's pretty hard,” the source conceded.

With Ryan’s conservative cache, leaders laid out a somber situation to manage expectations. That entailed telling rank-and-file Republicans no to “promise something you can't deliver on,” the source said.

They pretty much blew all that to shreds with their latest nonsense about withholding Congress' pay if they don't pass a budget - raising questions about whether or not that is Constitutional.

But here's the really amusing part. In their statements about all this, Republicans have focused on the need for the Senate to pass a budget. But under their proposal, the House will have to pass one too. Trouble is...they can't agree on one.

But what has emerged from the House GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia is that Republicans did not have an entitlement-cutting proposal to present to Obama in debt-ceiling talks, had the president ever agreed to negotiate with them. The talk about big entitlement cuts, at least in connection with a debt-ceiling agreement, was mostly talk...

As for the actions on entitlements that might have been part of GOP demands for a debt-ceiling deal, says one participant in the Williamsburg meeting: “Long term, those have to be figured out. But my sense of that is that it is not going to happen in ten days. This is complex, important.”

So the Republicans are demanding government spending cuts that can only be accomplished by trashing entitlements. But they don't have a f*cking clue about how to do that, wouldn't be able to agree on a plan if they tried, and would get killed in public opinion for the effort.  How do you even think about pulling "something you can deliver on" out of that mess?

Let me give you a clue Mr. Speaker...you can't. Pragmatic fail.

The air is thick with history

150 years ago

50 years ago

1 year ago

While so much has changed, some things are still the same - bigots will be bigots (yeah, I'm looking at you Rush).

But today I'm thinking of a small way that history is repeating itself - this time with a powerful dose of courage. Let me back up for a minute and tell the story.

From all the news coverage of Newtown, there is one moment that devastated me more than any other. It was reading about the news conference of the coroner. I hesitate to write about it even now because it was so painful. We are all programmed to avoid that kind of thing. But the crux of it was that there were little babies with dozens (dozens????) of bullet holes. I imagine that is still what keeps those first responders who saw it awake at night.

Should we shield ourselves from that nightmare? I'll tell you one person who would likely say "no." That would be a woman named Mamie Till. She had the courage to not only face what a murderous gang had done to her son 58 years ago. She also demanded that the world see it as well.

Following in Mamie's footsteps today is Veronique Pozner - mother of Noah Pozner, who was one of the victims at Newtown.  

Veronique told me that Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy visited her in the funeral home, and she brought him to see Noah’s open casket. I asked her why it was important for her and for the governor to see Noah’s body. “I needed it to have a face for him,” she said. “If there is ever a piece of legislation that comes across his desk, I needed it to be real for him.”

Veronique continued on in this vein for a few minutes. But I still felt that I didn’t understand why she, as a mother, chose to see Noah’s body, so I asked her again: Why, for her? “I owed it to him as his mother, the good, the bad, the ugly,” she said. “It is not up to me to say I am only going to look at you and deal with you when you are alive, that I am going to block out the reality of what you look like when you are dead. And as a little boy, you have to go in the ground. If I am going to shut my eyes to that I am not his mother. I had to bear it. I had to do it.” Several family members also chose to view Noah’s body.

Then, unprompted by me, Veronique described what she saw: “We all saw how beautiful he was. He had thick, shiny hair, beautiful long eyelashes that rested on his cheeks. He looked like he was sleeping. But the reality of it was under the cloth he had covering his mouth there was no mouth left. His jaw was blown away. I just want people to know the ugliness of it so we don’t talk about it abstractly, like these little angels just went to heaven. No. They were butchered. They were brutalized. And that is what haunts me at night.”

Many have suggested that it was Mamie's courage to look her son's brutalization in the eye - and ask others to see it as well - that led to the Civil Rights Movement. That is surely a request that requires us to tread lightly. Its no moment for exploitation.

But what happened to these children SHOULD haunt us at night...until we get something done to prevent it from happening again. Now is the time.

Something inside so strong

This week I started reading Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's book My Beloved World. She summarizes a big part of her motivation to write the book this way.

There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unsuspected strengths. It doesn't always, of course: I've seen life beat people down until they can't get up. But I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.

It reminded me of a magnificent article by Eric Wattree titled Why I Love Being Black (h/t to Extreme Liberal for tweeting a link). I'm only going to quote a bit of it here. But I hope that everyone will take a few minutes and go read the whole thing.

I absolutely LOVE being Black - and I'm not just saying that because it's expected of me. While I have the ultimate respect for the unique character of every race and ethnicity, if I'm reincarnated a thousand times, I want to come back Black each and every one of them.

Being Black in America gives one an education and perspective on life that you can't get anywhere else. That's not widely recognized, because public attention is often focused on the most dysfunctional in the Black community. But contrary to popular belief, that might not be an altogether bad thing, because it allows the excellence within the Black community time to incubate, untainted by the public eye. That's what allowed Barack Obama to explode upon the world stage as a fully developed powerhouse, and there are hordes of others just like him who are currently incubating in Black cocoons in suburbs and inner cities all over America...

So this is an exciting time for Black people, because we recognize that the world is about to discover what we already know - that there is nothing in the human experience more impressive than watching the development of a Black child, who's been dragged through the pits of Hell and the brutal experience of “American Exceptionalism,” then emerge on the other side as a well adjusted, uniquely eclectic, resolute, and learned product of his or her environment.

These are society's unsung heroes, and there are many more to come. They've been tested by fire, and they've prevailed. By the time they've reached thirty, they've faced down more adversity than the average American at eighty. So simply having survived America unscathed, by definition, makes them special.

So when I come into contact with the "strivers" in the Black community, I may not say it, but my heart whispers, "Thank you for your service." Because, in my heart, I know that these are the people who have been selected by nature, and circumstance, to blaze the trail of a new reality and move America forward - and considering America's history, these young people represent the very height of irony. But as the old folks used to say, "God works in mysterious ways."

When I first read Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, he had just been elected as the U.S. Senator from Illinois. I remember thinking that the value in the book was that it was one young man's unique story of what it means to grow up in America as a black man. It's not every young black man's story, but it pointed out the struggle. And as Wattree suggests, its about how he emerged on the other side as the amazing leader we all see today.

Wattree's article also hits on something I've seen in my own personal life. At the non-profit where I work we tend to hire young people like he's describing. And I see in them every day those who, in smaller ways, are blazing the trail of a new reality and moving America forward.

So I'll simply suggest that I agree with Justice Sotomayor and Mr. Wattree...there are hordes or others just like them currently incubating in the Black/Brown cocoons in suburbs and inner cities all over America. That's exactly what scares the nativists racists we're hearing from so much these days. And its also exactly what gives me hope for our future...there's something inside so strong.

Obama's True Legacy

Other than the fact that the Republicans totally caved on the debt ceiling fight, the really big news of the day is the launch of Organizing for Action. I find it fascinating that it is Michelle Obama that made the announcement.



But the fact that this is happening should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually been listening to the President. Last fall I suggested that we should all be prepared to keep working after the election was over. President Obama said it loud and clear...

To Michael Scherer:

But for me to get those accomplished, I do think I’m going to need to bring in the voices of the American people much more systematically, much more regularly.

Finding the right mechanisms to do that is something that we’re going to spend a lot of time thinking about. Obviously, the Internet and the digital age helps. We’ve been able to do that on our campaign. We now need to translate that more to how our government works. But I think the American people are ready for it.

In his speech at the Democratic Convention with its focus on citizenship:

But we also believe in something called citizenship — citizenship, a word at the very heart of our founding, a word at the very essence of our democracy, the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations...

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That's what we believe.

To Michael Lewis:

It’s not a fear-versus-a-nice-guy approach that is the choice. The question is: How do you shape public opinion and frame an issue so that it’s hard for the opposition to say no.

At a Univision forum:

I think that I’ve learned some lessons over the last four years, and the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut taxes for middle-class families.

So something that I’d really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people so that they can put pressure on Congress to help move some of these issues forward.

Now is the time.

None of us want to think about the day 4 years from now when President Obama's second term is over. But as our Community Organizer-in-Chief, this is likely to be his true legacy.

Now its David Brooks' turn to feel the ruthlessness

Over the last couple of weeks, we've watched the "ruthless" part of conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy dawn on people like Charles Krauthammer and Michael Gerson. Now its David Brooks' turn. He has a new name for it..."Kill the Wounded."

It’s more likely that today’s majority party is going to adopt a different strategy, which you might call Kill the Wounded. It’s more likely that today’s Democrats are going to tell themselves something like this:

“We live at a unique moment. Our opponents, the Republicans, are divided, confused and bleeding. This is not the time to allow them to rebuild their reputation with a series of modest accomplishments. This is the time to kick them when they are down, to win back the House and end the current version of the Republican Party.

“First, we change the narrative. The president ran in 2008 against Washington dysfunction, casting blame on both parties. Over the years, he has migrated to a different narrative: The Republicans are crazy. Washington could be working fine, but the Republicans are crazy...

“Then, wedge issues. The president should propose no new measures that might unite Republicans, the way health care did in the first term. Instead, he should raise a series of wedge issues meant to divide Southerners from Midwesterners, the Tea Party/Talk Radio base from the less ideological corporate and managerial class...

“Then he could invite a series of confrontations with Republicans over things like the debt ceiling — make them look like wackos willing to endanger the entire global economy. Along the way, he could highlight women’s issues, social mobility issues (student loans, community college funding) and pick fights on compassion issues, (hurricane relief) — promoting any small, popular spending programs that Republicans will oppose.

If you're not laughing your ass off by now, you clearly haven't been paying attention (or more likely - you're a Republican that bought into teh crazy).

First of all, its high time someone like Brooks admitted that the faction of the Republican Party that is getting "killed" these days IS CRAZY. For the good of the country, someone needs to kill it. And if the Republicans aren't willing to do that - Democrats have an obligation to help that along.

Secondly..."wedge issues." Oh my. Is Brooks really implying that it would be a good idea for the President to introduce something that "might unite the Republicans, the way health care did?" This is truly Orwellian logic, isn't it? The idea is that the President should be more partisan because it would unite his opposition. Those damn wedge issues are just WAY too post-partisan and pragmatic. Gosh darn-it - they split the sane Republicans from teh crazy. How ruthless is that?!

Finally, one might ask Brooks a simple question: Who is it that invited the crazy idea of a confrontation over the debt ceiling? It certainly wasn't President Obama.

But gosh darn him again...the President is really rubbing it in when he goes to bat for women and the low/middle class and hurricane relief. How dare he?

For four years now, President Obama has stood up for sanity as teh crazy went nuts. The right thought they were winning and many on the left called him naive for not getting crazy back. No matter how hard either side egged him on - the man maintained his pragmatism.

Now the ruthless side of that strategy is leaving folks like Brooks dissembling before our very eyes.

Please excuse me while I enjoy the moment.

Bending the arc towards sanity

Every now and then someone puts words to not only our own heart's ambitions but to the wisdom our souls have gathered over time. See if you don't agree that Adam Gopnik has done just that in talking about President Obama's remarks this week on gun violence.

In the end, the President didn’t speak from the bully pulpit. He didn’t even speak from an elevated post. He just spoke from the mind, and from the heart, and he raised spirits still haunted by the image of twenty small, terrified children, heaped up in a pile of death, whose last breaths were spent in a state of terror because a madman got his hands on a military weapon that no one in a free country should ever be allowed to hold. Good and great causes don’t advance without resistance. First the thing is impossible, then improbable, then unsatisfactorily achieved, then quietly improved, until one day it is actual and uncontroversial. So it was with putting military weapons into the hands of openly homosexual soldiers, and so it shall be with taking military weapons out of the hands of crazy people. It starts off impossible and it ends up done. The arc of the universe may be long, but the advance of common sense actually can take place very quickly. And if it bends toward justice, or simple sanity, it is because people bend it. What we are seeing may be the first signs of a nation deciding, at last, to bend back.

All I can say in response is: Now is the time.

Hoist on their own petard

I must say that I'm having a bit of fun watching the Republicans get hoist on their own petard. For example, there's this story from Ashley Parker about the "vote no/hope yes caucus."

These are the small but significant number of Republican representatives who, on the recent legislation to head off the broad tax increases and spending cuts mandated by the so-called fiscal cliff, voted no while privately hoping — and at times even lobbying — in favor of the bill’s passage, given the potential harmful economic consequences otherwise.

It would be reasonable to wonder why these representatives would vote no on a bill they secretly hoped would pass. Here's your answer:

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and once the top spokesman for the former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a Republican, described the phenomenon thusly: “These are people who are political realists, they’re political pragmatists who want to see progress made in Washington, but are politically constrained from making compromises because they will be challenged in the primary.”

That's what happens when you turn your party over to extremist lunatics, folks. Back in 2009 Republicans were grinning like cheshire cats when the loonies showed up at town hall meetings to decry the fact that the Kenyan Muslim was giving us socialized health care. They fanned the flames and rode that horse all the way to sweeping victories in the 2010 midterms.

Now that crazy chicken is coming home to roost. And they're not going to let them get away with being reasonable.

I have zero advice for ya fellas. You brought this one on yourselves and you're going to have to figure a way out on your own too.

Meanwhile, its quite a hoot thinking about Paul Ryan (yes, THAT Paul Ryan) having to talk the lunatics down.

After meeting with members of the GOP conference at the party’s retreat in Williamsburg on Thursday, VA, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the GOP’s top budget guy, told reporters, in so many words, that they’re trying to talk their members off a ledge... 

“[W]e aspire to give the country a very specific and clear vision about what we think is the right way to go on the major, big issue of the time,” Ryan said. “We have to at the same time recognize the divided government moment we have and the fiscal deadlines that are approaching — what those involve and then how we’re going to proceed forward.”

We pragmatic progressives have been patiently waiting for this moment because we're the ones that saw it coming as the end product of the Obama method. I hate to say I told you so - but I told you so :-)

Kumbaya

Via Politico:

House Republicans heard it loud and clear Wednesday: They are unpopular and need to change their ways.

Speaker John Boehner’s House Republican Conference is more disliked now than when it took the majority two years ago, lawmakers and aides here found out. After taking a bruising in the 2012 elections, the Republican Party needs an image makeover and the GOP must learn to relate better to voters.

That was the message delivered by the party’s most trusted pollsters during the first day of the House GOP’s retreat at the posh Kingsmill Resort on the edge of this colonial town, where the lobbyist-funded Congressional Institute is putting on the annual confab....

Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will host two sessions: one that will serve as a strategy session for the first legislative quarter, which will be dominated by the debates over the debt ceiling, government funding and automatic cuts to federal spending. The other will be a broader discussion about the “113th Congress and beyond.”

So how's that total obstruction thing you guys came up with last time working out for ya? When even your favorite polling outfit says that 63% of GOP voters think Congressional Republicans are out of touch, not too well I'd say.

Here's the DCCC having a little fun with that.

Keeping it real

President Obama has often lamented the bubble that tends to surround him in the White House. He does lots of things - both rewarding and painful - to keep in touch with the lives of people he went there to fight for...like reading letters from ordinary Americans every night and visiting privately with the families of the children lost in Newtown.

But when getting something done is especially important to him - he takes all that one more step. Remember Natoma Canfield?

That's her on the right meeting with the President this past December. In 2010 she wrote him a letter about losing her health insurance during her battle with cancer. After the Supreme Court ruled on Obamacare, President Obama said he had carried her letter with him every day during the fight over health care reform. Now it hangs on a wall in the West Wing.

Yesterday at the end of his remarks about gun violence, President Obama said this:

When I visited Newtown last month, I spent some private time with many of the families who lost their children that day. And one was the family of Grace McDonald. Grace’s parents are here. Grace was seven years old when she was struck down -- just a gorgeous, caring, joyful little girl. I’m told she loved pink. She loved the beach. She dreamed of becoming a painter.

And so just before I left, Chris, her father, gave me one of her paintings, and I hung it in my private study just off the Oval Office. And every time I look at that painting, I think about Grace. And I think about the life that she lived and the life that lay ahead of her, and most of all, I think about how, when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now -- for Grace. For the 25 other innocent children and devoted educators who had so much left to give. For the men and women in big cities and small towns who fall victim to senseless violence each and every day. For all the Americans who are counting on us to keep them safe from harm. Let’s do the right thing. Let’s do the right thing for them, and for this country that we love so much.

In this battle, it will be Grace who will be helping him keep it real.

I'd suggest we all join him in remembering Grace - and all the others who've been lost. Now is the time.

And now we're down to the racism

I've been thinking about what Peggy Noonan said on This Week ever since I saw the clip a few days ago.


You have to ask yourself what is the root of this anxiety/fear Noonan is talking about in all her unctuousness. Paul Krugman nailed it when he said that the reality of life in America is that its safer than its been in decades. So where is the fear coming from?

About the same time this discussion was happening, Colin Powell was answering that question.


America is changing. The "majority" will soon be a "minority." And not only that...the leader of the free world is an African American.

I have long thought that we are passing through a milestone in this country's long march towards "perfecting our union." History might not judge it as significant as the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movement, but it represents a critical stage in our development. A black man is no longer simply leading African Americans, he's leading the country. Moving from a stage where white people "granted" African Americans their freedom from slavery or their civil rights, we now in an era where white people are required to look black people in the eye with respect and equality - even be led by one. That's not going down real well for some folks.

Yesterday I ran across one of the most vile things I've ever seen on the internet. Its a Facebook page titled Christians Against Obama's Re-election (click through at your own risk). Sure its filled with all kinds of racist pot-shots at the President of the United States. But the main content appears to be anti-immigrant and pro-gun. This is from people who want to call themselves "Christian."

That's what the beast looks like in its death throes, folks. 

I don't for a minute think that people like that represent the majority of this country. As a matter of fact, I think they're even a smaller group than the one faced by Martin Luther King, Jr. As Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested, MLK stood his ground at the time - just as President Obama is doing today - with a kind of "good crazy."

Here is where Barack Obama and the civil rights leaders of old are joined -- in a shocking, almost certifiable faith in humanity, something that subsequent generations lost. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may have led African Americans out of segregation, and he may have cured incalculable numbers of white racists, but more than all that, he believed that the lion's share of the population of this country would not support the rights of thugs to pummel people who just wanted to cross a bridge. King believed in white people, and when I was a younger, more callow man, that belief made me suck my teeth. I saw it as weakness and cowardice, a lack of faith in his own. But it was the opposite. King's belief in white people was the ultimate show of strength: He was willing to give his life on a bet that they were no different from the people who lived next door.

As our history shows us, this small group of fearful racists can do a lot of damage. We're seeing some of that unfold as the President begins to discuss a very courageous agenda on gun control today. So what should our response be to all of that? To have his back like we've never done before and to continue to believe in "good crazy."

Michael Gerson is the latest one to feel the ruthlessness of Obama's "conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy"

A few weeks ago we saw how Charles Krauthammer was noticing the ruthless side of conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy. And now its Michael Gerson's turn.

Congressional Republicans are left with less influence than some apparently think. The debt ceiling is a form of leverage they can’t responsibly use. A partial government shutdown or full implementation of the sequester are less toxic alternatives but of questionable utility. (Threatening liberals with the prospect of huge defense cuts — a part of the sequester — is an attempt to menace them with their deepest desire.)

Given this weak Republican position, Obama must be tempted by a shiny political object: the destruction of the congressional GOP. He knows that Republicans are forced by the momentum of their ideology to take positions on spending that he can easily demagogue. He is in a good position to humiliate them again — to expose their internal divisions and unpopular policy views. It may even be a chance to discredit and then overturn the House Republican majority, finally reversing his own humiliation in the 2010 midterms...

Obama probably still views himself as a pragmatist...But at this moment three factors overlap: his liberal policy instincts, a political opportunity to break his opponents, and the massively inflated self-confidence produced by reelection. So, force the GOP to surrender on the debt limit, with nothing in return. Require Republicans to accept new taxes in exchange for any real spending reductions. If they agree, their caucus is fractured (again). And if they refuse (which they are likely to do), paint them as obstructionists and extremists who are willing to destroy the economy/the nation’s credit rating/the military for their own ideological purposes.

My gawd...there's so much in those 3 paragraphs to love, isn't there?

First of all, he totally gets that President Obama got the upper hand in the last debt ceiling deal (something conservatives and many liberals seem loathe to admit) when - in referring to the sequester - he puts his tongue in his cheek and talks about how threatening liberals with huge defense cuts is akin to menacing "them with their deepest desire." Gotta love that one.

Both Jonathan Chait and Steve Benen had good laughs about the idea that "Republicans are forced by the momentum of their ideology to take positions on spending that he [Obama] can easily demagogue." Its almost like they had no choice but to descend into lunacy, isn't it?

But  they did have a choice. Since day one President Obama has offered them his outstretched hand to work with them towards bipartisan solutions. That's the conciliatory part. The Republican response was to say "NO" and engage in total obstruction - which is where all that momentum towards their decent into lunacy comes from.

In that last paragraph, Gerson does a great job of summarizing the choices that confront the Republicans on these issues of fiscal policy. Either they take President Obama's outstretched hand to work with him (and create a fracture in their party between the sane and the lunatics) or continue to be viewed as obstructionist extremists. That's where the ruthlessness comes in.

This moment is the result of four years dedicated to the long-game strategy of solidifying in the public mind that President Obama is open to reasonable compromise while allowing the Republicans to paint themselves into a more and more extremist corner. Don't let anyone tell you that its about President Obama finally waking up to his "tough guy" mode or merely the result of being elected to a second term. He put in years of effort to get to this point.

Today Michael Gerson (and many other Republicans) are feeling it.

UPDATE: For more hilarity, Kevin Drum weighs in on Gerson too.

UPDATE II: BooMan piles on. This is getting fun!

The fever is breaking

Today BooMan wrote an excellent piece about the importance of a "divide and conquer" strategy with Republicans. To make the point, he quotes Senator McConnell's remarks about the importance of unity to his "total obstruction" strategy.

“It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”

Mr. McConnell said the unity was essential in dealing with Democrats on “things like the budget, national security and then ultimately, obviously, health care.”

You have to keep in mind that, as Mike Lofgren pointed out, the goal of unity in obstruction was to convince the public to react with "a plague on both your houses."

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn.

We saw that unity in the House collapse into chaos over the so-called "fiscal cliff." But now, Sen. McConnell is beginning to have some trouble amongst his own ranks when it comes to the debt ceiling fight.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) became the first Republican senator to come out against using the debt ceiling as leverage for spending cuts, contradicting Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans who favor such a tactic.

In an interview with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner published Tuesday, Murkowski said, "If you incur an obligation, you have a responsibility to pay for that." According to the paper, "Murkowski said spending cuts are crucial but shouldn't be tied to the debt ceiling debate."

"Murkowski, at a News-Miner editorial board meeting on Jan. 9, said she doesn't think the debt limit should be used for political leverage," wrote reporter Jeff Richardson. "Murkowski said not all of her colleagues in the Senate will say it out loud, but she believes most agree that failing to raise the debt limit would harm perception of the country."

Sen. Murkowski breaking ranks would be a big deal. But she's also blowing the whistle on the fact that most of her other colleagues in the Senate aren't ready to toe the obstruction line on this one either. That's HUGE!

Yeah, I'd say that what we're witnessing in small incremental doses is that "the fever is breaking." That doesn't mean that the the beast has finally died. Its just a few steps closer to that inevitable end.

President Obama is NOT bluffing (updated)

A lot of political pundits are hedging about believing whether or not President Obama means it when he says he won't negotiate over raising the debt ceiling. They tend to point to all the times the President has negotiated in the past. The problem with that is that in all of those instances he has always said he was open to negotiation. He has never - not once - been this clear that he would not do so.

On this one, as Ezra Klein documented yesterday, he is taking a different position.

In recent weeks, Obama has been taking almost every opportunity to step in front of cameras and say, as clearly as possible, that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. On Dec. 5, he went to the Business Roundtable and said: “We are not going to play that game again next year. We’ve got to break that habit before it starts.”

On the 19th, he held a news conference where he was no less emphatic. “I’ve put forward a very clear principle: I will not negotiate around the debt ceiling.”

On Jan.1, he gave a statement on the fiscal cliff deal. “While I will negotiate over many things,” he said, “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills.”

On the 4th, he gave a radio address in which he repeated the message. “One thing I will not compromise over is whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they’ve already racked up,” he said. 

Then there was today’s news conference, which was almost solely devoted to the debt ceiling. “To even entertain the idea of this happening, of the United States of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible,” Obama said in his prepared remarks. “It’s absurd. As the speaker said two years ago, it would be, and I’m quoting Speaker Boehner now, ‘a financial disaster, not only for us, but for the worldwide economy.’ “

As I've said several times before, President Obama has typically been open to compromise, but he doesn't bluff - that holds true in both foreign and domestic affairs. Its the foundation of his integrity.

Further evidence that he means what he says about not negotiating when it comes to raising the debt ceiling was provided over a month ago by David Corn. Describing President Obama's reaction to a possible short-term debt ceiling increase that was proposed by the Republicans in the summer of 2011, he says:

"He really means it," a senior administration official insists. And Obama's top aides have seen him in private display fervor regarding this issue. During a meeting with his senior aides in the middle of the prolonged and heated negotiations in the summer of 2011, Obama let them know that he believed the debt ceiling face-off was in part a fight to save his presidency and those of future chief executives...

Obama's aides empathized with him but explained that the president might have to yield on this to secure a deal that dodged a default. "I'm not doing it again," Obama said. "This is wrong."

Obama believed a constitutional principle was at stake: If the Republicans could threaten default to get their way on budget issues, it would distort the separation of powers. This was not what the framers of the Constitution intended, he believed. Moreover, it was embarrassing for the United States. He was determined to prevent this scenario from occurring again.

His aides could see that Obama would not bend. He was willing to go to the brink. Toward the end of that day's meeting with Hill leaders, when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor raised the idea of a short-term extension, Obama angrily said, "I'm not going to do it. We're not putting the country through this again. Don't call my bluff."

(Emphasis mine)

Nope, the President is not going to blink in this crazy game of chicken the Republicans have concocted over raising the debt ceiling. I'd guess his opponents who've been in the room with him during past negotiations know that. Its time the rest of us caught on.

UPDATE: I just thought I should add that - being the conciliatory kind of guy he is - just a few weeks ago President Obama agreed to a two-month extension of the sequestered spending cuts, aligning them almost perfectly with the deadline for raising the debt ceiling.

The President has always suggested that he is open to negotiating a more reasonable alternative to deficit reduction when it comes to those cuts. So his hand is outstretched to Republicans to find a compromise that - along with the $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction that has been achieved - would pretty much get him to the $4 trillion that has always been his goal.

Even Speaker Boehner knows that's where the real action is.

Please proceed, Mr. Speaker

I know that salutation in my title is going to get old. But it so perfectly captures the table that has been set by President Obama on the debt ceiling. Here's what he said at his news conference today:

So we've got to pay our bills. And Republicans in Congress have two choices here: They can act responsibly, and pay America’s bills; or they can act irresponsibly, and put America through another economic crisis. But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial well-being of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.

And they better choose quickly, because time is running short.

And here's Speaker Boehner's response.

The House will do its job and pass responsible legislation that controls spending, meets our nation's obligations and keeps the government running...

The problem the Speaker has is that last time the House passed a budget (Paul Ryan's), it ADDED $6 trillion to the debt over 10 years. And remember Boehner's "Plan B?" How'd that one work out for you Mr. Speaker?

The fact of the matter is that Boehner has two really big problems in trying to pull off what he's suggesting:

1. Any legislation he could put together would have to lay bare what it is the Republicans have been trying to avoid for months now...they want to end the safety net - primarily Medicare and Medicaid. So the specifics would wind up being a political nightmare for Republicans - "kill programs the public supports or we'll blow up the economy."
2. I doubt that anything the Speaker might be able to cobble together would please the tea party lunatics in his caucus. They want blood - and the more the better. That's why his last attempt at Plan B failed so spectacularly.

I don't think we have to worry about how the Senate will react since this legislative pipe dream of Boehner's will never see the light of day.

During the campaign, President Obama talked about "breaking the fever" that has gripped the Republican Party lately. The election didn't accomplish that. But he just invited them to step into the pool that might pull it off.

Sonia from the Bronx

In case you missed it last night - please watch.