Senate Republicans need to decide who their real leader is

Washington Examiner ^ | 12/15/2014

[SeekAndFind]

For all of their foresight on other matters, America's founders were somewhat taken aback by the natural development of political parties. It happened anyway, even during George Washington's presidency. And although party ideology has fallen along different lines at various points in American history, it has long governed the allegiance of a majority of American voters in elections.

In legislative matters, party ideology takes the form of the modern party caucus system. In order to achieve their goals, partisan lawmakers collaborate, choose leaders, and agree on strategies in advance.

On Saturday, lawmakers demonstrated why this system evolved and is necessary. Two conservative senators, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, discarded the caucus system and put their own tactical plan into action without warning. It did not prove helpful to their cause.

Cruz and Lee derailed a bipartisan agreement on procedure Friday night. Their actions removed the only major obstacle to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., confirming several minor Obama nominations that Republicans strongly opposed. Because Republicans lacked the votes to block the nominations in question, their best and only leverage was to insist on the use of all debate time, running out the clock on the lame duck Congress. It seemed likely that Democratic senators would not tolerate losing their Christmas just so that Obama could get his surgeon general confirmed.

Cruz's and Lee's parliamentary freelancing gave Reid all he needed to advance the schedule by two full days and guarantee the confirmation of these nominations. In exchange for making Reid's job easy on ramming the nominations through, all Cruz and Lee got was a symbolic floor vote against Obama's executive action on immigration. It drew the support of only 22 senators.

[hotsteppa]

They are all frauds. I am becoming more and more acute to who and who not to listen/read in pundit land.

They believe that the next news cycle will kick this out of our memory and we fall in line again. And some us of do move on to the next battle, but if you notice we are always losing the last one.

[Bratch]

Cruz's and Lee's parliamentary freelancing gave Reid all he needed to advance the schedule by two full days and guarantee the confirmation of these nominations.

That's the narrative the GOPe is advancing.

However, the devil's in the details.

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Senate GOP Leaders and Their Pro-Amnesty Pundit
Friends Find Harry Reid’s S**t Sandwich Quite Tasty

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  December 13th, 2014 at 07:53 PM

The level of butt hurt among pro-amnesty Republicans is staggering. They are savaging Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in ways the left refrained from savaging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for her own opposition to the CROmnibus.

Of note, Warren was fighting against corporate cronyism and Cruz and Lee are fighting to stop the President’s Amnesty.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) will be one of the unnamed Senators calling Cruz and Lee’s efforts “unproductive.” Several sources overheard him spinning reporters against Cruz and Lee. Other Republicans, including McConnell, joined in on the act.

And pro-amnesty Republican pundits and press have bought it hook, line, and sinker. Matt Lewis is a good example of what most are saying:

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What Lee-Cruz did was a huge strategic blunder--possibly the result of base-pandering, not knowing senate procedure -- or both.

— Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) December 13, 2014

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What did Cruz and Lee do? They made objections and dragged out the clock. In the interim, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) filed for cloture on nomination votes. Republican critics of Cruz and Lee claim that if they had not fought on amnesty, cloture would not have been filed on the nominations.

This is staggering bullcrap. In other words, Jeff Flake, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Matt Lewis, etc. believe Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV).

Follow along for a basic explanation of what has transpired.

Cloture votes occur in the order they are filed, but after disposition of each bill or nomination that is the subject of the cloture petition.

For example, if Reid files cloture on bill A and bill B, one after the other, cloture on B only occurs after both cloture and passage of A.

Cloture, remember, is the procedure to cut off debate — not a vote on actual passage.

Last night Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) filed cloture on the CROmnibus.

-Today he is going through procedural votes to file cloture on a number of nominations.

Under Senate rules though, both cloture and final passage of the CROmnibus must occur before the cloture votes on nominations can happen.

Therefore, we will be in the same place by Monday as we would be if Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) hadn’t objected to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV).

A Senate source outside the Cruz and Lee offices with direct knowledge of the behind the scenes conversations tells me, “GOP leadership knew Reid was going to file cloture on up to 20 controversial nominations yesterday afternoon before they tried to move CROmnibus votes to Monday. They told us the process to clear non-controversial nominations had broken down because Reid was going to file cloture on these nominations. So they knew this was going to happen regardless.”

Another Senate source outside the Cruz and Lee offices tells me, “These guys are using Manu (a Politico reporter) as their stenographer. They’re really just pissed they have to work this weekend and that’s it. You can certainly tell who their friends are out in pundit land.”

The Republican leadership is arguing that they might have been able to convince Reid to hold off on these controversial nominations if we played ball on the CROmnibus, but that’s just speculation. The tradeoff last night was for Lee et al to give up their right to offer amendments on the CROmnibus in exchange for the possibility that Reid wouldn’t go through with his nominations, if he was feeling generous.

In Washington, more and more Republicans and their pundit allies have decided poop sandwiches sure are tasty!

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[IamConservative]

Boehner and McConnell, always prepared to fight the next battle. The best day to do anything, tomorrow.

Aside, anyone who thinks Reid wasn’t going to push these nominations through is also dumb enough to think he wouldn’t do it in the spirit of bipartisanship.

[Joe Boucher]

Boehner couldn’t lead a mule to water.
How’d this P.O.S. ever make it in to a leadership position?

[bgill]

hussein, Val, or Soros.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks Ray76. We can hope...