Two Debacles in 12 Hours
The National Rifle Association’s president David Keene ended Friday’s news conference—the gun lobby’s first public comments since the massacre in Newtown, Conn.—with these words: "This is the beginning of a serious conversation. We won't be taking questions today.” That was the essential thrust of the organization’s combative political response: Shoot first; ask questions later. The NRA’s top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, who delivered the bulk of the remarks, was characteristically defiant, calling for security officers to be stationed at every school. He spoke with an edge, his voice straining as if he were being shouted down by hippies. (Presumably, that’s what they expected would happen if they let the reporters in the audience ask questions; in the end, Code Pink provided the shouting.)
It was the second defiant act by conservatives in 12 hours. The night before, a committed band of Republicans defeated House Speaker John Boehner. The Republican leader had offered legislation designed to give his party political cover in the fiscal cliff negotiations and increase his leverage in talks with the president. The gambit failed because enough Republicans refused to bend on their anti-tax principles. Boehner wound up looking foolish, and the House Republicans looked unable to perform the most basic functions.
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The message of both of these acts is more than “we’re sticking to our principles.” The message is: We don’t care about the wider audience. That cannot be the message that the Republican Party wants. It particularly can’t be the message after Mitt Romney’s losing presidential campaign, which was defined by his secretly taped conversation with donors in which he said he didn’t care about 47 percent of the population. We know it's not the message that its putative leaders want to send. Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan are all trying to send various messages of inclusion.
In the case of House Republicans, they are clearly defying broad public sentiment, which is that Congress should work out a deal with the president. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows the public in favor of compromise and supporting the president’s view. (Seventy-six percent say the Republicans have not been willing to compromise enough.) The members who blocked Boehner have a different political calculus, however. Their voters reward them for their opposition to policies that don’t cut spending enough. Plus, ideological groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks can penalize them if they vote the wrong way because their districts hold read-to-run conservatives who will stay pure—just add money.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/12/john_boehner_s_failure_and_wayne_lapierre_s_defiance_are_two_signs_of_just.html
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