NEW JERSEY–GOVERNOR–Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind: Only 35 percent of registered voters in the Garden State say they approve of the Republican governor’s job performance, compared to 51 percent who disapprove. Moreover, 35% of voters responded that they dislike everything about the governor, while just 8 percent said they dislike him but favor his policies. At the same time, 29% responded that they like everything about the governor and 21 percent said they like the man but not his policies.
“On paper, the GOP currently has 245 members, but when 50 feel they can walk away from their leadership on any given day, it’s really a plurality, not a majority,” Politico notes.
“The House, then, is not controlled by one party but better understood as a playing field for at least three: the party on the right, the dominant Republican core in the center, and the left represented by the Democrats. The challenge is to build alliances among these three to get to the 218 votes needed to move legislation. This coalition approach may seem a blow to Republican pride but it could also be liberating for John Boehner since it brings him back to the role he often forgets: Speaker of the House.”
Matt Yglesias thinks the American political system is headed for collapse. I tend to agree.
Looking back at Bush’s election in 2000, one of the most remarkable things is how little social disorder there was. The American public wanted Al Gore to be president, but a combination of the Electoral College rules, poor ballot design in Palm Beach County, and an adverse Supreme Court ruling, put Bush in office. The general presumption among elites at the time was that Democrats should accept this with good manners, and Bush would respond to the weak mandate with moderate, consensus-oriented governance. This was not in the cards. Not because of Bush’s personal qualities (if anything, the Bush family and its circle are standard-bearers for the cause of relative moderation in the GOP), but because the era of the “partisan presidency” demands that the president try to implement the party’s agenda, regardless of circumstances. That’s how we got drastic tax cuts in 2001.
If the Bush years shattered the illusion that there’s no difference between the parties, the Obama years underscore how much control of the White House matters in an era of gridlock. The broadly worded Clean Air Act, whose relevant provisions passed in 1970, has allowed Obama to be one of the most consequential environmental regulators of all time — even though he hasn’t been able to pass a major new environmental bill. He’s deployed executive discretion over immigration enforcement on an unprecedented scale. And he’s left a legacy that could be rapidly reversed. A future Republican administration could not only turn back these executive actions, but substantially erode the Affordable Care Act.
The lessons of the 2000 and 2008 elections make it unnerving to imagine a Bush-Gore style recount occurring in 2014’s political atmosphere. The stakes of presidential elections are sky-high. And the constitutional system provides no means for a compromise solution. There can be only one president. And once he’s in office he has little reason to show restraint in the ambitions of the legislative — or non-legislative — agenda he pursues. In the event of another disputed election, it would be natural for both sides to push for victory with every legal or extra-legal means at their disposal.
In the election of 2000 happens in 2016, there will be violent riots. We are already on the doorstep of deploying the National Guard to Alabama to force the enforcement of the Supreme Court’s rulings on marriage equality. If you think that is hyperbolic, think about the recent news, where the Alabama Supreme Court has ordered a complete defiance of the Supreme Court’s order that it issue marriage licenses to gay couples. If the defiance continues, the Obama Administration, like the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations before it, will be forced to enforce the law through deployment of the National Guard.
The Hill reports that several Republican presidential hopefuls are going to great lengths to recast their immigration pasts.
“Many, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), are fully repenting on their past support for plans to grant legal status to illegal immigrants. Congressional Republicans’ failed battle to overturn President Obama’s executive orders sparing millions from deportation has only heightened urgency among the likely GOP field.”
By doing this, they are dooming their general election prospects. By not doing this, they are dooming their primary election prospects. The Republican Party’s catch-22.
Hillary Clinton last night said she wants all her email released. Said Clinton: “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
Have you noticed how silent the Republicans have been on this issue, all except for new subpoenas for her email from the BENGHAZI!!! committee interminably investigating it, even though of course this committee and its GOP members knew about the private email address from the beginning and even though they already have her emails. Why are Republican candidates for President silent? Well, they are being smart, since they know that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
“If it seems like the GOP presidential field has been unusually silent this week as scrutiny mounts over Hillary Clinton’s email practices, there’s a logical explanation: Many of them are tormented by their own email demons. At least a half-dozen 2016 Republican prospects have felt the sting of sustained negative press coverage over their email practices, with the common denominator being an attempt to sidestep public scrutiny attached to official government accounts. While the scope and scale of the controversies range widely — and they’re not comparable to the Clinton circumstances — their histories with electronic communications have left them with their own unique vulnerabilities on the issue.”
The actual public response to the controversy is likely to be a combination of apathy and partisanship. Few Americans are paying attention to any aspect of the campaign at this point. Those who do notice will most likely divide largely along partisan lines, with Democrats interpreting her actions more charitably, especially once they see Republicans attacking Mrs. Clinton on the issue.
Politicos missed the Clintons it seems. For me, so long as the emails are preserved, disclosed and not destroyed, I really don’t care if Hillary or any politician uses a private email address or a public one. I have read several articles this week that say that using a private server is actually better if you actually physically own the server (as in the Clinton and Bush case), as it protects from hacking. So the issue here is transparency, and if the emails are disclosed (as it seems they are going to be through the State Department), then there is no issue.