So there’s an end run around the Senate by Obama for the “recess” appointments of Cordray and three NLRB members.  According to a piece in the LA Times, Reid gave Obama his blessing, so don’t expect any, or if there’s hope, some Democratic Senators to join Republicans in voicing disapproval.  The Cordray appointment was made in the Summer of 2011, when Elizabeth Warren went down in flames, leaving the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CPFB) leaderless since its creation last July, and unable to make/enforce any rules/regs on behalf of consumers.  Do you sense the carefully crafted, Trumanesque-themed campaign strategy of slowly building, stirring “populist” outrage?

The recess appointments are only the first salvo in the fight for White House.  Axelrod is a master craftsman, and we’ve already been treated to the “25% man”.  And now we have the President’s personna returning to his former community activist of “fighting for you”.

The payroll tax debacle, the recess appointments are the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  The Republicans are being out-gunned, strategically and tactically.   In my not so humble opinion, the Republicans, as a whole, have lacked a solid, cohesive, on the offensive communications strategy that’s grounded in 2012 and reaches out to the average American.  They’re still communicating and running campaigns like it was 2000.   The response by McConnell and Boehner to the Cordray end-run was same-ol’, same-ol’.  McConnell is poster child for the Democrats to use for their obstructionist Republican theme.

Whose the Republican equivalent of Axelrod?  Do we have one?

There is an important rule – one that runs counter to DC conventional wisdom – that conservatives should heed when considering support for a piece of legislation.  No legislation is better than bad legislation.  To put that in today’s relevant terms, passing no spending bill or a CR is better than passing a $1.050 trillion, 1217-page Omnibus just 36 hours after its inception.

Early this morning, minutes after midnight, the House Appropriations Committee released their omnibus as a package of three bills.  They will need to violate even their interpretation of the three-day posting rule if they intend to pass it as a vehicle to avert a government shutdown Friday night.   The first bill is the main omnibus appropriations package that bundles nine approps bills at a cost of $915 billion.  This, coupled with the three approps bills already passed (via that ridiculous minibus bill) comes out to exactly $1.043 trillion in discretionary spending – the spending cap set under the Budget Control Act.  Additionally, the omnibus appropriates another $115 billion for the annual OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) war spending and $11 billion in war funding for the State Department.  The second bill funds emergency disaster spending to a tune of $8.6 billion, while the third bill offsets that spending with further recessions from the discretionary spending totals in the main bill.

Overall, this bill totally vitiates the House budget passed by the entire conference, by appropriating an extra $24 billion in discretionary spending.  Also, the fact that they are proposing three bills gives House Democrats the ability to vote for the first two bills, but quash the third bill with the offsets, thereby consummating spending levels higher than those of 2011 ($1.052 trillion).

This entire package, which includes funding for 10 executive departments, will be voted on within the next 36 hours, in violation of two provisions of the Pledge to America; passing Omnibus bills and the 72-hour posting rule.  Jeff Flake expressed his exasperation like this:

“We’ve barely seen the bill; it’s an awful big bill to get a vote on that fast.”

“Some riders got in, some got knocked out, and I don’t even know – and I’m on the appropriations committee,” he adds. “Whenever we come to an impasse, our leadership says, we can’t shut the government down. We haven’t had the leverage in any negotiation we’ve gone into. That’s what’s frustrating to me.”

Why are Republicans unilaterally violating their own pledge?

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There is an important rule – one that runs counter to DC conventional wisdom – that conservatives should heed when considering support for a piece of legislation.  No legislation is better than bad legislation.  To put that in today’s relevant terms, passing no spending bill or a CR is better than passing a $1.050 trillion, 1217-page Omnibus just 36 hours after its inception.

Early this morning, minutes after midnight, the House Appropriations Committee released their omnibus as a package of three bills.  They will need to violate even their interpretation of the three-day posting rule if they intend to pass it as a vehicle to avert a government shutdown Friday night.   The first bill is the main omnibus appropriations package that bundles nine approps bills at a cost of $915 billion.  This, coupled with the three approps bills already passed (via that ridiculous minibus bill) comes out to exactly $1.043 trillion in discretionary spending – the spending cap set under the Budget Control Act.  Additionally, the omnibus appropriates another $115 billion for the annual OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) war spending and $11 billion in war funding for the State Department.  The second bill funds emergency disaster spending to a tune of $8.6 billion, while the third bill offsets that spending with further recessions from the discretionary spending totals in the main bill.

Overall, this bill totally vitiates the House budget passed by the entire conference, by appropriating an extra $24 billion in discretionary spending.  Also, the fact that they are proposing three bills gives House Democrats the ability to vote for the first two bills, but quash the third bill with the offsets, thereby consummating spending levels higher than those of 2011 ($1.052 trillion).

This entire package, which includes funding for 10 executive departments, will be voted on within the next 36 hours, in violation of two provisions of the Pledge to America; passing Omnibus bills and the 72-hour posting rule.  Jeff Flake expressed his exasperation like this:

“We’ve barely seen the bill; it’s an awful big bill to get a vote on that fast.”

“Some riders got in, some got knocked out, and I don’t even know – and I’m on the appropriations committee,” he adds. “Whenever we come to an impasse, our leadership says, we can’t shut the government down. We haven’t had the leverage in any negotiation we’ve gone into. That’s what’s frustrating to me.”

Why are Republicans unilaterally violating their own pledge?

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Leading up to the 2010 election, John Boehner projected an aura of strength and a determined resolve to slash Government spending. He came across as a tough guy on a mission, and was convincing enough to persuade voters to put Republicans back in control of the House.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

The “largest spending cuts in U.S. history” gave us spending levels in 2011 that are $350B above 2010 and widened the deficit by another $300B. The $100B in promised cuts quickly turned into $63B before settling at an insignificant $38B without even a fight from the GOP.

Now Boehner is at it again – acting tough and determined ahead of the debt limit battle.

But his anemic performance in the 2011 budget debate doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that he will stand his ground and achieve meaningful results.  In that fight, his most powerful weapon was the prospect of a Government shutdown if Dems refused to play ball. But he quickly wimped out when Reid and the Dems convinced him the GOP would get the blame if Government was shuttered.

Following that surrender, Boehner painted a sign on his back saying “I’m a pushover” and Democrats can clearly see it.

The GOP has another huge hammer going into the debt limit fight: the threat of a U.S. default on its debt obligations. While that threat is more demagoguery and scare tactics than reality, Boehner is already suggesting that default cannot be allowed to occur. So even before the first shot is fired, Boehner is forfeiting the only real leverage he has.

Moreover, it appears the GOP is backing off entitlement reform proposed in Paul Ryan’s budget after a barrage of demagoguery from the Left. And talk of a balanced budget Amendment is fading into the sunset. If that’s not enough, the GOP is already lowering the bar saying that raising the debt ceiling must be accompanied by at least $2 trillion in cuts over ten years. That’s roughly one-third of the spending reductions proposed by Ryan.

The Democrats are winning the argument by doing nothing. They refuse to offer up a plan that is expressed in hard numbers. They didn’t release a 2011 budget proposal that should have been done over a year ago, and the only plan with numbers released since the 2010 budget (two years ago)  is Obama’s 2012 budget proposal which – according to CBO projections – would give us a mind-numbing national debt of $27.6 trillion by the end of 2021.

The House passed Ryan’s budget plan last month and GOP leadership should stand firm on it until Reid passes it or releases his own detailed spending plan. Stop making concessions just because the Dems are growling. Boehner is being led into the same trap he got snookered into during the 2011budget  debate. It’s time for Republican leadership to stop being the only responsible players in town to release a serious plan and then spend the rest of the debate dodging daggers from the Left. When Reid and Pelosi turn the volume up on their demagoguery and accuse Ryan’s plan of “cutting too deep” – Boehner can simply respond by saying, “ok – you don’t like our plan, so show us yours.”

If Reid refuses to offer his own plan, then a Government default will fall squarely on his shoulders.

The Republicans have a plan – the Democrats don’t. Boehner needs to keep hammering that point home until Reid starts squealing.

Yesterday the GOP under the leadership of house speaker John Boehner agreed to a tentative deal with Democrats regarding the remaining budget for this year.The more I reviewed the details of the deal, the moreI have come to believe that we actually won a huge victory. By “we”, I mean the American people and the conservative movement.On the other hand, I am somewhat saddened and disappointed that many conservatives who I have an enormous amount of respect and admiration for somehow think the deal was a horrible betrayal on the part of the GOP leadership. Washington still has a culture of deal making that will not change overnight or because of one election, and last night we made a deal that no realist would have thought possible a week ago.  The facts is that in this war over our country’s future we need real victories and not just moral ones. 2010 was a real victory, but unless we win in 2012, bills to change this presidents policies permanently that are just passed by the house will simply be limited to moral victories.  We already know that the democrats have a strategy of painting us as extreme, a strategy that we see as ridiculous, but one that unfortunately has an effect on the uninformed voter.I have always said that the left cannot compete with us in a fight over ideas, and yet they beat us by winning the messaging in the debate and I think this deal is a good example of how we need to change that.

Do we have a national movement that is demanding cuts and voted in 2010 for just that? Yes

Does that change the facts that until 2012 Republicans only have control of one branch of congress and effectively cannot fix anything unilaterally? NOT AT ALL.

If we are going to win then we need to win more than just the informed conservatives who know our country is on the brink of financial disaster, but also those millions who do not.The fact is that we did not want a shut down, Obama and the democrats did, but that is not how the public saw it. Anyone who spoke to those lay people who get tidbits of news from the lame stream media knew that Republicans really were losing the battle on Friday.  The shutdown was being portrayed and believed as an argument over Planned Parenthood, a debate that Republicans were not even openly having at the time.The Democrats were using over the top language about Republicans wanting to “kill women” and while we saw that as crazy, the fact is that it was shifting the window of the debate to successfully paint us as extreme.Furthermore, we painted ourselves in a corner by setting a bar where somehow our supporters thought we were going to reach a deal without compromising.Were the Democrats playing political games with troop pay, government shutdown stories etc.? Absolutely, but that does not change that those games were working.If a shutdown had happened there would be fighting back and forth over who was to blame, but based on the messaging eventually many of those affected would have blamed us.As time went on we would have to cave and likely concede a lot more than what we did last night.So let’s go over what we got:

1)We are now discussing how much to cut instead of how much to spend in Washington, that is an enormous accomplishment

2)38.5 Billion in cuts in addition to the billions we cut in past weeks while passing continuing resolutions (people seem to have forgotten about this money).Is this a miniscule amount compared to what we need? Yes.However for those pointing to how small it is they are forgetting that is way better than zero, especially because of point 1.

3)These cuts are permanent and will actually save hundreds of billions more for years to come.

4)Senate votes on the repeal of Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.People have no idea what a huge concession this is.The fact is Democrats control the Senate and do not want to have these votes because then they have to go on the record as supporting these policies.That means these will be issues that we can use against the Democrats in 2012.Obama and the Democrats have shown they care more about funding Planned Parenthood than preventing a shutdown, funding the troops, and making serious budget cuts.This revelation will be a huge campaign tool for 2012.Furthermore, the truth is and realistic Republicans know that they would never have agreed to pass a bill that defunds PP or Obamacare.Those actions are virtually impossible in our system of government unless we win in 2012. This deal helps us do just that.

5)Restores the D.C. school voucher program.Another concession that Dems must have gritted their teeth through.

6)Tools to fight Obamacare through studies of both waivers and impact of the bill.These are important because once again they can be used as tools in the 2012 election to bash a horrible policy that now Democrats will have to defend.

7)Denies additional funding for the IRS to enforce Obamacare.Since repealing Obamacare is impossible until we win in 2012, slowing it down with measures like this that really prevent its effective implementation will be the key.

Mandatory audits of new regulatory system set up under the Dodd-Frank bill.These regulations are job killers and these audits will expose them as such, giving us yet another tool for 2012.

The truth is Republicans gave up things they were likely to never get (PP funding etc.) in exchange for a change that we needed, the direction of Washington.We not only hit the brakes last night on spending, but we started going in reverse.This is not sugar coating or saying that we fixed everything, but we have to start somewhere and this was it.We are fighting to save the country here and that will not be possible unless we stick together and realize that the statists will not just forfeit.We have to fight them at every step and we have to recognize that our allies are not our enemies just because they do not accomplish everything we want them to.Boehner and other Republicans not only got us on the right path with this deal, but they also set us up for a victory in 2012, which is the one we really need to change course.We have often criticized the Democrats for yelling about our plan of spending cuts without actually presenting their own.Please do not make the same mistake here by complaining this deal does not accomplish enough, without recognizing that realistically we could not have possibly accomplished more (at least not until 2012).With all these concessions we also have to keep in mind that we still have several even bigger battles yet to come, such as raising the debt ceiling and next year’s budget. Those battles will be talking about much bigger numbers and reality is there will have to be some compromise on those as well since once again we will only have control of the House.However, if we win those battles in even close to the same fashion we won this one, I will be very impressed with the new Republican party. John Boehner is not the problem; he is part of the solution.The big government liberals will never want to give up their power or spending, but that is exactly why we are fighting to take our country back and need the public to know about it.So let’s take credit and enjoy this small win while we can, because tomorrow we have another battle and it will only get harder.  All hands on deck.

Sometimes the people over at National Review just seem to completely miss the point. And then today they publish a commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy which takes aim at Speaker-elect John Boehner’s support for banning earmarks. Can you be any more tone deaf?

The debt is what the election was about: the growth-killing tab that runs up another $4 billion every day . . . Yet, Mr. Boehner is focused like a laser on . . . earmarks. They are, he says, “a symbol of a broken Washington.” Okay, but they are also less than one 1 percent of our unfathomable $3.8 trillion budget. The problem is not the symbols, it is the broken Washington.

McCarthy’s overall point is that we are headed for fiscal ruin on the gravy train of relentless spending by the federal government. Thank you, Captain Obvious. It wasn’t necessary to make that point by denigrating a major grassroots victory in the process. Opposition to earmarking was almost universally a deal-breaker issue for tea party activists and candidates across the country.

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