The Tea Party made a critical miscalculation when it forced Boehner to pull his original package last week and now is when Boehner's tenuous grip on his caucus translates into lost leverage in negotiations. The wingnuts were convinced that they needed to send a message going into final negotiations: We will not yield. They believed that by demonstrating their strength they would steer the resulting deal closer to their line in the sand. Stake out the most extreme position, they thought, and they would get more of what they want when the negotiators split the difference between the opposing visions.
In fact, their actions all but ensured that a deal will be cut without their votes, and thus without their input. Their show of resolve sent a message all right, but how this message was received by players more astute than the average Tea Partier is quite a different matter. Consider:
Confronted with the possibility of owning a default, the speaker has no choice but to compromise, so he needed to demonstrate to his Democratic counterparts that he could unify his members behind a deal of his design. When the hardliners sunk Boehner's bill, they didn't signal their primacy within the process; they exposed the softness of Boehner's right flank. As congressional leaders hash out a deal, they now know that the speaker's far right members will abandon him at the slightest whiff of compromise. Yet other than the Tea Party, all the players will and must make sacrifices. So if Boehner can't rely on Republican votes, where will they come from when the inevitable compromise emerges? House Democrats. And these guys won't be inclined to cast their lot with the negotiators unless something is done to sweeten the deal for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment