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POLITICO: GOP divisions run deep over Medicare, budget plan Mon May 23 By Joan McCarter for Daily Kos
There's a lot to unpack in this POLITICO story about the infighting within House Republicans over the radical "Path to Prosperity" plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, and leadership's embrace of it. While the focus of the story is on the Medicare debacle, the story really reflects the struggle the party is having over whether to follow the Tea Party down the political rabbit hole.
No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch—casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors—the Ryan budget's approval rating barely budged above the high 30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation.The poll numbers on the plan were so toxic—nearly as bad as those of President Barack Obama's health reform bill at the nadir of its unpopularity—that staffers with the National Republican Congressional Committee warned leadership, "You might not want to go there" in a series of tense pre-vote meetings....
The outward unity projected by House Republicans masked weeks of fierce debate, even infighting, and doubt over a measure that stands virtually no chance of becoming law. In a series of heated closed-door exchanges, dissenters, led by Ryan's main internal rival—House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.)—argued for a less radical, more bipartisan approach, GOP staffers say.
At a fundraiser shortly after the vote, a frustrated Camp groused, "We shouldn't have done it" and that he was "overridden," according to a person in attendance.
A few days earlier, as most Republicans remained mute during a GOP conference meeting on the Ryan plan, Camp rose and drily asserted, "People in my district like Medicare," one lawmaker, who is now having his own doubts about voting yes, told POLITICO....
"The tea party itch has definitely not been scratched, so the voices who were saying, ‘Let's do this in a way that's politically survivable,' got drowned out by a kind of panic," a top GOP consultant involved in the debate said, on condition of anonymity....
On several occasions, Boehner has seemed squishy on the Ryan budget. In talking to ABC News, Boehner said he was "not wedded" to the plan and that it was "worthy of consideration."
Still, even if Boehner had opposed the plan—and his top aide, Barry Jackson, expressed concerns about the political fallout to other staffers—he probably couldn't have stopped the Ryan Express anyway, so great was the push from freshmen and conservatives.
That's not to say some of the speaker's allies from the Midwest didn't try. Camp and Ryan hashed out their differences in a series of private meetings that, on occasion, turned testy, according to several GOP aides. Camp argued that the Ryan plan, which he backed in principle—and eventually voted for—was a nonstarter that would only make it harder to reach a bipartisan framework on real entitlement reform.
Apparently still believing that their problem isn't a draconian and hugely unpopular plan to end Medicare, but all in how they are presenting the plan, the GOP is gamely sticking to it: "The GOP message team is already scrambling to redefine the issue as a Republican attempt to 'save' Medicare, not kill it."
"We have a message challenge, a big one, and that's what the polling is showing," conceded Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a former Karl Rove protégé who enthusiastically backed the Ryan plan. "There's no way you attack the deficit in my lifetime without dealing with the growth of Medicare. Do we get a political benefit from proposing a legitimate solution to a major policy problem? That's an open question."
That's where the messaging is going to attempt to focus, and where Dems have to fight back. The GOP will try to frame the entire debacle as a reflection of their seriousness about the deficit. Never mind that, as Digby points out, "they sure put out a crappy plan. That's one of the problems that Politico fails to address—the plan itself was debunked over the course of the first week and Ryan's reputation for seriousness and 'brio' took a major hit."
Steve Benen echoes that:
It's worth noting that the Politico article reports, simply as a matter of fact, that that the House Republican leaders intended to "boldly position their party as a beacon of fiscal responsibility." What the article doesn't note is that this is absurd—there's nothing fiscally responsible about the House GOP plan. The numbers don't add up; the finances are fraudulent; and even the Medicare "savings" would be applied to tax cuts, not deficit reduction. The media really needs to start understanding this.
The media needs to start understanding that, but Dems also need to hammer that point, over and over. We already know that there are going to be plenty of squeamish Dems who will feel the only response to the GOP's cries of "fiscally responsibility" will be to demand more and dumber cuts (case in point, Sens. Claire McCaskill and Joe Manchin). Following the GOP into political oblivion on slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security wouldn't prove "fiscal responsibility," just political weakness.
This is a huge political problem for the Republicans. It's time for Dems to throw them another anchor or two.
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