Some Thoughts Post CRomnibus

A few observations about the events of the last few days:  

Democrats May Have More Power in the Next Congress than Many Believed – That Speaker Boehner lost 67 of his own conference and needed Democrats to bail him out on a bet-the-Speakership vote suggests that the most important political dynamic in the next Congress will be the management of the GOP’s establishment/Tea Party fissure.   

The math for Republicans to see any of their ideas become law is daunting.   While depleted, the Democrats have enough power to prevent GOP overrides of Presidential vetoes, and of course Democratic votes are needed to even pass anything through the Senate.   To pass a bill, including a budget, Republicans will need Democrats, which will require pursuing an approach likely to alienate anti-establishment Republicans.  If President Obama, and leaders Reid and Pelosi can come up with a common strategic approach and keep their troops in line they could end up not just getting more of their agenda through than many expect, but also creating an even greater rift in the GOP ranks. 

We found these columns by the Washington Post’s E.J Dionne and Greg Sargent helpful in making sense of this CRomnibus fight.  The Huffington Post's Sam Stein quotes me in his early post-CRomnibus take, which is also worth a read through.  And for more on the divisions in the GOP and how it will effect 2016 see my recent post-election analysis.  

Raising Party Limits May Be Good for Democracy – While the process for raising the giving limits to political parties was indefensible, it might end up making a bad political system better.   The post Citizen United political system is moving hundreds of millions of dollars to dark, unaccountable organizations which have no check on the integrity of their speech and do not have to disclose their donations. The practical effect of raising party limits will be to move a great deal of this money back into organizations which are far more transparent and accountable.  It will improve the quality of political speech in campaigns; increase the percentage of money spent by accountable, transparent organizations; will weaken Super PACS by denying them an enormous number of their 2nd and 3rd tier donors; and it may even allow more low dollar contributors and average people to participate in the system as large, well funded Party organizations will have more resources to engage every day people in their activities.   It is a bit an inconvenient truth for the reform community that only well funded campaigns have the capacity to build systems that engage large numbers of people in a meaningful way.  

While the threat of corruption in this new system will increase and be of significant concern, these changes will on balance make the post Citizen United system better and strengthen our democracy in the process.   

Cruz and Immigration – The threat to the Republican Party of their new found radicalization on immigration was on full display these last few days.   Ted Cruz’s effort to shut down the government may have been reduced to a point of order but he managed to drag three other Senators with national aspirations into his crazy camp: Rand Paul, Rob Portman and Marco Rubio all voted for Senator Cruz on Saturday night.   With anti-immigrant warrior Rep. Steve King acting as kingmaker in Iowa, there is incredible pressure for even the more moderate 2016 Republicans to embrace the ugly politics of a revitalized anti-immigrant movement. 

If Cruz ends up dragging the entire GOP 2016 Presidential field to the right on immigration, he has new found pressure back in Texas fighting to keep him there or even move further to the right – newly elected Governor Greg Abbot and Lt. Gov  Dan Patrick.  After a generation of Republican governors who were reasonable on immigration matters, Texas elected a team who are among the most committed anti-immigrant politicians ever produced by the modern GOP.   Their stated agenda will continue to pressure Cruz, Perry, Paul and Texas Congressional Members, dragging the national GOP even further away from reasonableness on an issue that is threatening to put the Presidency out of reach for the GOP for years.   

The danger for the Republicans can be found in a new Gallup poll, which found Obama’s job approval among Hispanics surging in the past month from 52% to 64%.  This is a higher approval rating than Obama had in the fall of 2012 when he won the Hispanic vote 71-27 against Mitt Romney.   To be competitive at the Presidential level, it is conventional wisdom the GOP nominee needs to keep the margin with Hispanics to 20 or so points, and certainly not 44 as it was in 2012.  While more data is needed, it certainly seems that the ground the President has made up with Hispanics as returned the GOP to an uncompetitive place with this critical group heading in 2016.   And of course this is before a year of Abbott/Patrick/Cruz inspired anti-immigrant politics further distances Hispanics from a Party that is making it clear it wants all 11m undocumented immigrants in the US to leave.

Nate Cohn of the New York Times has a new, good take on Obama’s surge with Hispanic voters.