A minority posture for House GOP

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – House Republicans appeared to be coming to grips with a stark realization as they returned to Washington from a three-day retreat here — they have a majority in name only.

The party begins the 113th Congress with reduced numbers and confronting a popular president and an increased Democratic majority in the Senate.

Preparing for a cascade of fiscal battles and a presidential push on guns and immigration, the House GOP is adopting a minority posture, hoping to achieve modest goals incrementally while serving as a check on Obama’s ambitious second-term agenda.

Republicans “have to recognize the realities of the divided government that we have,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the party’s budget chief and 2012 vice presidential nominee.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his aides have taken to referring to the “Democrat majority in Washington” in statements in recent weeks.

The stance is a significant shift from the party’s mantra in the immediate aftermath of the November election, when Boehner and other leaders claimed one half of a dual mandate from voters who had reelected both Obama and the House Republican majority.

It also represents a resetting of expectations for Republican lawmakers and voters alike.

Coming off what many viewed as a defeat in the fiscal cliff deal, and with Obama adopting a hardline position on fiscal matters, Republicans have diminished hopes of what they can force Democrats to accept.

Managing expectations in the years ahead was a major focus of the retreat, reiterated during listening sessions with leadership, members and aides said.

Instead of passing dozens of GOP-favored measures anathema to Democrats, House Republicans lawmakers intend to make a greater effort of sending bills to the Senate that Democrats would have a difficult time opposing.

“There was an element of saying, 'Let's be realistic about what we can accomplish, if we pass something that there's no way in hell they'll even talk about, what value is that?,” Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said of the conversation that took place most of the day Thursday between lawmakers and leadership.

“The value is — what we come up with is something that can actually be accomplished and so that's part of the goal — (given the president and the Democratic Senate),” Bishop added.

Bishop explained that given the Democratic-controlled Senate and Democratic White House, leaders made a point of emphasizing that “sometimes we get ourselves in trouble where we have an expectation level that is just unrealistic.”

That strategy was on display with Friday’s announcement of a path forward on the debt ceiling.

Instead of attaching deep spending cuts or contentious entitlement reforms to an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit, Republicans chose to use member pay as the string to attach. The issue is seen as a political winner, and both Democrats and Republicans have proposed withholding the salaries of lawmakers if the House and Senate fail to pass a budget.

A senior House GOP leadership source expanded on the Speaker’s intention of managing expectations during the three-day retreat.

“It's important that we set expectations to a reasonable level so that we're not over-promising, that we are actually under-promising and over-delivering,” the source said.

Since retaking control of the House in 2010, a number of conservative lawmakers have been frustrated with their leadership’s inability to deliver on repealing healthcare or enacting all of the Bush-era tax rates.

Many GOP lawmakers believed that they would win control of the Senate and White House in 2012 but that scenario didn’t happen. So, instead of reading the internal party gripes in the media, Boehner and his inner circle wanted to present the facts of the current situation.

And the leadership enlisted Ryan’s help to emphasize the political reality in D.C.

“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.

“Boehner's never promised something he can't deliver on — but that doesn't mean some members expectations are way out of whack. We probably have a handful of members who think it's doable to enact all the policies in the Ryan Budget over the next two years, and that's La La land."

Following the extensive Thursday morning and afternoon sessions with leadership, one GOP lawmaker said that the House lawmakers were prepared to move smaller bills that may force action in the Senate.

“We're looking at doing smaller, more incremental legislation that is directly tied to must-pass issues such as the sequestration ... If you think about it — sequestration for the president is the same as the Bush tax cut expiration for us ... it's going to happen. It's in law and I don't think he's going to like those cuts,” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told The Hill.

More liberal attempts at guilt trips. How can I make you understand? Aside from the fact you don’t want to and insist in dragging out a losing battle, lets try this.

Many people who considered themselves conservatives threw out their credibility when they went out and actively campaigned for a liberal and trashed their ‘fellow’ conservatives. Now, faced with the reality that those of us who tried bringing them to their senses were right afterall, they just want to pretend it never happened and go right back to the way things were. all nice and without having to take responsibility.

Unfortunately, reality does not work like that. The reality we live in is that when faced with the option of conservative or liberal, these people chose to trash conservatives and go on a net-wide tear campaigning for their liberal. Thousands of posts attest to that.

Some of us ave no problem with our political decisions as we do not have the burden of tying ourselves into knots of self-justification. That makes some of you angry. Well, dunno what to tell you. Decades of people doing that very thing got us to where we are today. Own it. Had enough of you stuck with us and to your claimed beliefs, we might not be in this mess. But they knew better. Principle did not matter, so they said.

I really have no pity for any of them. Actions have consequences. Had they actually believed in the conservatism they playacted at on the net to fit in, they would have campaigned for a conservative and got him elected. But they did not.

Oh well. Live and learn.

"I hope you were being sarcastic...."

Sarcastic??

Yes, that, and also with a degree of hope that some bold freedom lover out there might read my post and say, "I will be that 'one man' who, like the 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson in 1776, will declare the 'truth' to current generations in such a powerful way that the threatening lies of "progressive" controllers and redistributors will be apparent."

For that to happen, bold leaders must become engaged and articulate the difference between two significant and conflicting ideas--individual liberty versus coercive 'government" control.

America's Founders identified the conflicting ideas as "liberty versus tyranny."

By Lincoln's time, he had a clear understanding of it and said this:

'The world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.' And the American people just now are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not mean the same thing . . . . The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act . . . . Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.'

But Lincoln could distinguish between real liberty and a "counterfeit" idea. Of the authentic American idea, Lincoln declared:

'Most governments have been based practically, on the denial of the rights of men. Ours began by affirming those rights . . . . [These opposing ideas] are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle . . . . It [denial of individual Creator-endowed rights] is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. . . it is the same tyrannical principle.'

Of the Founding principle, Lincoln said: '. . . it is no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . .The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society . . . And yet, they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. . . All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce in a . . . revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers [initiators of threatening change] of reappearing tyranny and oppression.'

The battle of ideas is re-engaged in America today, in a manner not seen for decades, but it needs articulate leaders.

American citizens can utilize new technologies that make possible close examination of the Founders' ideas in many collections online such as those at Liberty USA Foundation, WallBuilders, and in recent books, such as Mark Levin's 'Liberty and Tyranny.' They are returning to the Founders' own explanation of their Constitution in THE FEDERALIST and to 1987's Bicentennial Year volumes such as 'Our Ageless Constitution.'

Just as in Lincoln's day, those who try to fool the people into believing their definition of America's Constitution is authentic are being exposed for the charlatans they are--mere men who wish to gain power over the lives of millions.

They can be exposed by the 'self-evident truths' 'embalmed' in that revolutionary document described by Jefferson and Lincoln.

They can read the Founders' intent that ours is not a government's Constitution to limit people. Rather, it is 'We, the People's' Constitution to be used, according to Jefferson, to 'bind them (government) down by the chains of the Constitution.'

What we are seeing now is a battle between so-called "progressive" forces who have one charismatic, but mere mortal (Krauthammer), man out there carrying the water for changing that concept in the minds of citizens who, they thought, had been dumbed down by decades of neglect and censorship of the ideas of liberty.

Providence may have outwitted them by allowing the development of technologies that make the Founders' ideas a powerful tool in the new battle for today's patriots."

Thank you for your response to my initial post. Perhaps the 'sarcasm' may have been triggered by the rather milk toast remarks coming from Williamsburg--a place significant in the life of America's great articulator and defender of Creator-endowed life, liberty and rights, Thomas Jefferson. Were he, Adams, Washington, Madison and others here today, what would they have said in the face of such threats to their Constitution's principles?

Secession is non-violent and forces the other side to shoot first.

I think you may be splitting hairs a little too finely. If we look to the CW, it really doesn't matter who fired first, the fact is that it still led to violence that still resonates across the country today.

An open revolt may be similar in nature. Suppose a group of armed people snuck their way into Capitol Hill and managed to take the Congress hostage as the first move in an open revolt. They didn't fire a shot, they just let the political elites and their security look down the wrong end of a handgun, rifle or shotgun and never fired a shot. When the cops and/or the military show up to force the issue to a peaceful conclusion, shots may or may not be exchanged.

But, that's just an isolated event that could (emphasis on "could") occur in one relatively tiny city in the vast United States. The revolt, itself, would have to encompass a larger area. So, suppose a coordinated effort took place in which similar episodes occurred in state legislatures across the country? Each of these events would be viewed as an isolated episode until sufficient communications occurred to make someone understands that these are coordinated attacks. Now, up to this point, no shots have been fired. When the shooting does start, whether it is the revolutionaries, themselves, or the state, federal or local LEOs, at the end of the day, does it really matter who fired first?

Today, America is more politically divided than at any time since the CW. Every topic of discussion ultimately falls along political lines, whether the people understand that or not. Polls strongly indicate that more Americans do not believe that America is headed in the right direction and, the more money the government confiscates, the greater the dissatisfaction.

Do I believe that the sentiments have reached a fever pitch and that SOME action is likely to occur is the foreseeable future? No. But, the foundations are being laid. More people are openly discussing rebellion or secession; something that was unheard of 6 years ago. More Republican governors are standing up to the federal government and pushing back against the garbage that zero and the Congress are pushing downhill. As the rhetoric rachets up and the actions taken by the individual states to oppose federal programs increase, the odds that SOMETHING will happen also increase.

Not today, and not tomorrow. But, it's out there. All it needs is a final straw; a last kick in the pants to make someone say, "enough is enough!". I believe that zero and the left are pushing America to that point. Given that this is technically zero's lame duck term, there's no telling what outrageous acts he has yet to perform. But, it's coming.

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