This is the new strategy for 2013, and frankly it is better than whatever they did the past two years. The House stuck their neck out with good legislation and good budgets...none of which sees the light of day in the Senate. The result...the House got blamed. Now, the House leadership basically is saying ‘the Senate can act, and we’ll talk about it when they produce legislation’. The onus is getting the Senate to take the bullets...and particularly the Democrats from red states to have either buck their party of buck their voters in a vote like this.
I am comfortable with this, because I doubt anything substantial will get through the Senate legislatively on gun control, and if it does, our side can still vote it down. We’ll see.
I agree. Boehner is not only doing the right thing, he’s doing the smart thing.
All he said was that the House would “consider”. In doing so he’s redirecting all the pressure on the Dem controlled Senate ... and going into the 2014 cycle doing anything on gun control would put those five or six red state Dem senators at risk ... Possibly even fracturing the Dem Caucus and causing all sorts of problems with a gun grabbing Dem base that has it’s blood up on the issue.
It’s pretty much brilliant ... create a situation where the Dems may tear themselves apart ... which raises the question of where the idea came from (not from Boehner, obviously)