Posted on 01/24/2014 9:46:04 AM PST by cotton1706
Election Day is almost nine months off. But right now Republicans seem almost certain to hold the House of Representatives and are likely to take the Senate. Which raises the inevitable question: How might the GOP seize defeat from the jaws of victory?
Two occasions stand out, two obvious obstacles ahead that could lead to disastrous Republican stumbles, two pitfalls on the path to a happy GOP Election Day. Republicans are pretty good at falling into such pits. One is the increase in the debt limit, which Congress will have to deal with in the next month or two. The other is immigration reform, which the Senate has passed and which awaits a decision from the House leadership on how to proceed.
Conservative activists tend to get excited at the prospect of a debt ceiling increase, since it allegedly gives them a rare moment of leverage over the president. There is already a conservative wish list of items that could be attached to the coming debt limit legislation. But as we saw in the somewhat analogous situation of the government shutdown in October, such leverage is often more theoretical than real, especially when you only control one house of Congress and are divided among yourselves in that chamber. With the country and the markets, egged on by the media, spooked by the threat of default, it’s not clear how much “leverage” House Republicans will really have.
Read the rest of the story at The Weekly Standard.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Opposition to illegals was a winning issue in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. That is why the GOPe ignored it.
Shocking!
I think every time one of these debt limit increases comes along, R’s should extract some policy price in exchange for raising it. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Dems would be great, and of course the media would try to paint R’s as grandma-killers, but I think it would get done in the end. Just get something you want every time they come back to the well.
No. Billy definitely considers himself part and parcel of “Main Street” eGOP. All this shows is not everyone in that cartel is ready to commit political suicide.
No, they get excited because they know its another "bohica" moment where the GOP establishment folds like a cheap suit.
They know the embarrassing fiction of a "debt limit" is about to be exposed yet again.
When even Kristol admits that a Boehner push for amnesty will be catastrophic, sirens should be going off for these guys.
Unless they have their ears stuffed shut with money from the Chamber of Commerce.
NO, Billy....you’ve outed yourself as a one-worlder now....GO AWAY and let the ones with (American loving) brains run the party.
Blind squirrel....nut.
Good article. let the debt limit argument die. Don’t touch it. Same with immigration. Don’t mention the issue. Let it die Harry Reid would let something die in the Senate. Boehnar acts as it he has some type of obligation to screw the Republican Party.
Kristol is a RINO, but he is smart enough to know that all of us at home sitting on our hands on Election Day is not a winning strategy.
This is slam door proof the socialist Establishment has thrown in with the Marxists, and must end the Tea Party.
What next? No more primaries. Redistribution of delegates.
The Republic hangs by a thread, and the thread is us.
Kevin McCarthy —
Are you reading this??
I don’t care if your district IS full of illegals, you need to give up on amnesty or any legalization.
PS I voted for you LAST time. You need to get this right!
Do you suppose that Kristol finally saw the Real Conservative light?
Will he become a TEA Partier?
News at eleven?
Bill Kristol is a super-RINO Inside-the-Beltway GOP-e guy.
If they lost HIM, then RINO and GOP-e no longer describes the Republican Party.
"Communists" describe the Republican Party.
“Do you suppose that Kristol finally saw the Real Conservative light?”
No, I think he’s a realist and he’s seen the poll that Americans don’t want immigration reform, not when there’s rampant unemployment.
He’s thinking of November.
Their sham arguments (the republicans need Hispanics, jobs Americans won’t do, etc) just aren’t working or pulling people to their side. And if an issue doesn’t gain you votes, but instead, costs you votes, in typical political fashion, that issue will soon be dropped.
The republican leadership however, has heard the whispers in their ears long enough that they’re convinced. I think Kristol just confused the hell out of them.
One way of the other, I don’t care, as long as Immigration reform doesn’t happen THIS YEAR, for time is not it’s friend, and it’s support is waning, which is why the left is desperate to get it through.
Oui
And, just think of all the primary challenges to (and election money withheld from) amnesty cowards.
.
Either that or Kristol is just building up his tough street cred so he can argue for another war.
bump
“The elites have lost Bill Kristol!”
Bill Kristol might get it, (which is rare). But, the House GOP will do their masters bidding. Hint: The voters are not the House GOP’s masters.
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