Debt Ceiling

Now What? House GOP Passes Unviable Debt Limit Bill

Brian Beutler | July 29, 2011, 6:35PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

It was supposed to happen Wednesday, then again on Thursday. It was supposed to be a squeaker, and potentially a viable measure to avoid default. But in the end there was no suspense, and the vote was mostly ceremonial. Early Friday evening, House Republicans passed legislation to raise the national debt limit -- their final symbolic gesture in a partisan debate that has raged for months and seen the GOP bring the country to the brink of economic collapse.

The final vote was 218 in favor to 210 against. Zero Democrats joined the majority, and only 22 Republicans voted with the Democrats.

When discussions between Boehner and President Obama over pairing a the debt limit extension and deficit reduction measures fell apart, the task of avoiding default fell to Congress -- and presented Boehner with a major challenge: How could he be both a responsible steward of the country and usher through bipartisan legislation to avoid a catastrophic default, and not break faith with his members.

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Democracy Corps

Democracy Corps: GOP Voters Think Obama Is Destroying America, Thus GOP Leaders Can't Compromise

Eric Kleefeld | October 16, 2009, 1:04PM

On a conference call with reporters just now, Democracy Corps' James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Karl Agne went over their focus group study of Republican base voters and their worldview that President Obama is out to destroy the country -- and the pressure this puts on Republican voters to make no compromises with the Obama administration.

"I don't know if we'll say we were startled," said Carville, "but if you take the position that these Republican voters take, it's easy to see why it leads to this, but they really believe that Obama has a secret agenda here. And our view is this is a dominant view in the Republican Party."

Karl Agne also noted that GOP voters see the the party's leadership as too timid and not strong enough on the issues: "Their negative view of the Republican party is really startling."

Carville explained: "What they want is, if people in Washington look at the Republican Party, they say, gee, they really oppose everything the President does. What these folks say is what they're doing is not enough, they want more opposition. If you're a Republican and you watch this, and you don't want to get primaries, there's nothing here that tells you to go compromise on anything -- quite the contrary."

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Democracy Corps

Democracy Corps: Republican Base Voters Living In Another World

Eric Kleefeld | October 16, 2009, 12:02PM

A crowd gathers at a tea party

A new focus-group of Republican base voters by the Democracy Corps (D), the consulting and polling outfit headed up by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, presents a picture of the GOP base as being motivated by a fundamentally different worldview than folks in the middle or on the Dem side -- and they see the country as being under a dire threat.

"They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism," the analysis said." While these voters are disdainful of a Republican Party they view to have failed in its mission, they overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country's founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail."

The analysis argues that Obama's unpopularity among conservative Republicans is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from liberal Democratic ire against George W. Bush -- that the GOP is more heavily conservative than the Democrats are heavily liberal, and that the hatred of Obama is more intense than Dem hatred of Bush was. All of this adds up to a powerful set of emotions that the Republican Party as a whole cannot ignore.

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