Norway Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, center, poses with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, left, and President Barack Obama on his arrival at the NATO summit in Chicago, Sunday, May 20. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Postcard from NATO summit: What are all these people doing in Chicago?
The young woman at the H&M counter held back the bag of merchandise. “Can I ask you a question?” she said. “What is NATO?”
I had stopped in at the H&M on State Street after earlier discovering that my hotel had a swimming pool. I figured the Swedish budget emporium would have a swimsuit that wouldn’t break the bank (mission accomplished: basic trunks, $12.95). The sales clerk had her eye on my press credential, and the lanyard emblazoned with “NATO 2012 CHICAGO” that held it around my neck.
“It’s the military alliance that unites the US and European countries. They agree to defend each other from outside threats, and once in awhile the leaders meet,” was my paltry and unsatisfactory answer to her question.
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She wanted to know more. “You said military?” she continued, still clutching my bag. “So why are they in Chicago?”
It's a fair question. This is only the third time since NATO was formed in 1949 that the US has hosted a summit, and it is the first time ever for one to be held in an American city other than Washington.
Outside on State Street, the Chicago police were three or four to a corner, just in case a rogue anti-NATO protest flared up. Large swaths of the young clerk’s city were cordoned off, urban ghost towns set aside for President Obama and his guests. I could see what it was that had filled her with questions, why perhaps she had seized on the word “military.”
Besides that, the local press and TV seemed to be focused on the dangers and inconveniences the summit poses for the city – the anticipated, possibly violent demonstrations, the closed major thoroughfares – and less on the whats and whys of the big gathering.
So why Chicago? I told her I could imagine that the mayor, the president’s good friend, might have suggested it, and that Mr. Obama probably wanted to show off his hometown to this big group of foreigners. In fact he’d said as much as he greeted the NATO leaders.
To my surprise, there was one more question. Still smiling, still curious, she wanted to know what was so important that all these leaders would come to Chicago to discuss it. “Will they actually decide something?” she wondered.
Another good question. “Well, they’re going to talk a lot about Afghanistan, because the other NATO countries have soldiers fighting the war there, like we do,” I said.
I was conscious of the line of customers ready to cash out. I sensed I was holding things up, but I also felt as if my answer was not yet good enough. “All the NATO countries have decided to have their soldiers out of Afghanistan within a couple of years, including us,” I said. “But Obama doesn’t want us to be left over there on our own, so he’s going to try to convince the others to stick around with us. So we’ll see.”
At that she handed over my bag. “OK, thanks for explaining that,” she said. “I didn’t know what all this was about,” she said, indicating “out there” with her eyes.
Then her next customer was at the counter, and I stepped outside.
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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, seen here at a news conference at New York's City Hall, is a centrist candidate that could have generated buzz for Americans Elect. But he opted out. (Richard Drew/AP)
Why Americans Elect failed to find a presidential candidate
What if you hold an election and nobody shows up?
That’s sort of what happened to the group Americans Elect, a nonprofit launched to place a centrist, nonpartisan presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states. On Thursday, the group announced it was giving up. Nobody had come close to meeting the minimal threshold of 10,000 votes to win the Americans Elect primary, held online.
Clearly the United States just isn’t ready for a third party, some analysts opined.
“The failure of the effort is notable because of its place in history,” wrote Aaron Blake in The Washington Post’s Fix blog. “This is, after all, a time of historic unhappiness with Congress, and if there was ever an opening for such an effort, 2012 might have been the year to get it done.”
“Instead, it appears the third-party renaissance in American politics will continue to be put off,” he concluded.
But maybe it’s not that America isn’t ready for a third-party presidential candidate. After all, when the right person has come along – someone like Ross Perot in 1992 – he has been able to win a significant chunk of votes and arguably swing the outcome of an election. If Mr. Perot hadn’t flaked off in the middle of the campaign, dropping out temporarily, it’s possible he could have even won.
The difference with Perot (and Ralph Nader, John Anderson, Theodore Roosevelt, and all the others in the “third party” club) is that the candidate came first, and the money and organization followed. What Americans Elect was trying to do was the reverse – build an organization and handle the tedious task of getting the party on the ballot in all 50 states. It was like the “Field of Dreams” of American politics: Build it and they will come.
Except they didn’t. All of the big-name prospects that might have run for president opted out, people like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former US Comptroller General David Walker. When Americans Elect’s self-imposed deadline came, the top vote-getter was Buddy Roemer, former Republican governor of Louisiana. He had received only about 6,000 votes, well short of the 10,000 needed for the AE nomination. Game over.
There’s also no denying that the United States political system – with a Congress and not a parliament, a president and not a prime minister – is rigidly two party. Elections are winner take all in single-member districts, without all the coalition-building that comes with a parliamentary setup. So voters are, for the most part, forced into two camps.
Sure, there are lots of small “third parties” out there, but they rarely win major elections. The few political “independents” in Congress – like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont – are people who get elected not because of some structure someone else set up, but through their own political skill. And they end up caucusing with one party or the other anyway (in Senator Sanders’s case, the Democrats).
Another factor that might have dampened enthusiasm among major players for running via Americans Elect is the all-out nastiness involved in a presidential campaign. No one should underestimate how hard it is to run for president – not just for the candidate but also for his or her family.
So it may be that an effort like Americans Elect could work sometime in the future. There just needs to be someone reasonably high profile, with obvious political chops, willing to take that leap as a candidate.
Freshman Rep. Raul Labrador (R) of Idaho, seen here in Boise, Idaho, has accumulated a perfect 100 percent on the conservative Club for Growth's voting scorecard. (Chris Butler/Idaho Statesman/AP)
Has the tea party sold out? House freshmen aren't who they seem.
The Republican freshmen are often lumped together as a uniform horde of Capitol Hill raiders, fiscal barbarians hammering on Washington’s gates. They sent the country to the brink of default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling; they throw sand in the gears of any legislative proposal that isn’t taking an ax to government spending.
At least that’s the conventional wisdom. But the arch-free marketeers at the Club for Growth think it just isn’t backed up by the freshman’s voting records, according to a study released earlier this week.
“The liberal media likes to pretend that these Republicans have fought for fiscally conservative policies, but the facts don’t support their thesis,” said Chris Chocola, the president of the Club for Growth.
The survey shows a few interesting things about the House freshmen.
First, the freshmen class is not a rubber stamp for the most conservative proposals.
Only 14 of the 87 freshmen signed a pledge to never raise the debt ceiling unless Congress enacted a conservative-favorite budget plan known as Cut, Cap and Balance. A majority, too, voted against the most conservative House budget proposal, forwarded by Republican Study Committee.
Second, they look a lot like their more tenured peers.
The freshman horde averaged a 71 percent rating on the Club for Growth’s voting scorecard; the average Republican in Congress pulled in a 69 percent.
Put another way, only 18 of the 46 sitting members of Congress with lifetime scores of higher than 90 percent on the Club for Growth’s scorecard are freshmen (40 percent). That’s only a smidgen higher than the freshmen class’s overall representation in the Republican caucus (36 percent).
Third, despite this political breadth, the freshman class has offered up an outsized number of the caucus’s most conservative members.
Six of the eleven members with scores of 99 percent or higher are freshmen: Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan (100), Tim Huelskamp of Kansas (100), Raul Labrador of Idaho (100), Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina (99), Joe Walsh of Illinois (99), Marlin Stutzman of Indiana (99).
To understand what this means for Election 2012 and beyond, you need to understand who the Club for Growth is.
At the top of their freshman report, they’ve got a speedometer-shaped dial with four different icons.
At 20 miles per hour, you’ve got Democrats. At about 45 m.p.h., you’ve got RINOs – Republicans In Name Only. At 65 m.p.h., regular ol’ Republicans. At 85 m.p.h., the the Gadsen flag (“Don’t tread on me”) that is the hallmark of the tea party. And somewhere around “Can my Subaru really go that fast?” on the bottom right is the Club for Growth.
Raise the debt ceiling? Forget it. Roll back discretionary spending to 2006 levels? Yup, they’re for it.
Financially, the club is as hardcore as they come.
And it doesn't see its work as anywhere near done.
By putting out a report highlighting that Congress has been far from overrun by proponents of the Club’s free market policies, the group puts an emphasis on what has to happen next: Winning more races.
In this cycle, for example, the club poured money into taking out moderate Sen. Dick Lugar (R) of Indiana and then helped damage the candidate blessed by the Republican establishment in the GOP’s Nebraska Senate primary. (An upstart with tea party credentials emerged victorious, although not the candidate preferred by the club.)
The job of remaking Congress, according to one of the most influential activist groups in Washington, has a long way to go.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York (l.), along with Sen. Bob Casey (D) of Pennsylvania, gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday to unveil a plan to respond to Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin's bid drop his US citizenship, which would allow him to avoid taxes on profits he is expected to collect when the social-networking company goes public. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Facebook IPO: Is co-founder Saverin cheating US out of $100 million in taxes?
Chuck Schumer wants the US to "de-friend" Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.
As Facebook barrels toward one of the largest initial public offerings in US history on Friday, Mr. Schumer, New York's senior US senator, and Sen. Bob Casey (D) of Pennsylvania unveiled legislation Thursday that could pose a whole host of tough consequences for people like Mr. Saverin. He renounced his US citizenship last year and could save as much as $100 million in taxes on the proceeds of the Facebook IPO for doing so.
"This tax avoidance scheme is outrageous. Saverin has turned his back on the country that kept him safe, educated him, and helped him become a billionaire," Schumer told reporters Thursday. "This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong."
The Brazilian-born Saverin came to the United States at age 13, fleeing kidnapping threats against his wealthy father. He attended Harvard University, where he helped Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg found the global social-networking site but was pushed out in a dispute with Mr. Zuckerberg while the firm was still in its infancy. Saverin owns about 4 percent of Facebook's stock, good for about $3 billion when Facebook stock hits the public markets.
Saverin vows that he has renounced his citizenship because he is a "global citizen" and did not do so for tax purposes. He has relocated to Singapore, which has no capital-gains taxes.
Schumer's "status update," as he put it, for Saverin and some 3,000 other Americans who have made similar moves in the last five years is the "ex-PATRIOT Act." The bill stipulates that Americans wishing to renounce their US citizenship must prove to the IRS that they are doing so for non-tax reasons. Should they fail this test, they would be hit with a lifetime ban from entering the United States and a 30 percent tax on investment gains in the US.
Americans are already hit with an "exit tax" if they have an average income tax liability of $148,000 over the prior five years or net worth north of $2 million. The Schumer-Casey bill would keep those standards to determine whether individuals would qualify for their provision.The proposed measure could apply retroactively to anyone who gave up their American citizenship over the last decade.
Under current law, those who give up their passports are restricted from returning to the US. However, Schumer says there is no enforcement mechanism to prevent them from doing so – something the ex-PATRIOT Act would correct.
Although Saverin's decision was an "insult to the American people" and "spits in the eye" of American troops, Senator Casey says, the law wouldn't cast him out forever.
Saverin would be welcome back should he decide to pay his estimated tax bill in full.
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In this April 5 photo, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas speaks Berkeley, Calif. (Ben Margot/AP)
Are some Ron Paul supporters going rogue?
Are some Ron Paul supporters going rogue and confronting the Republican Party in a manner of which Mr. Paul himself would not approve?
That question arises due to what went down on the evening of May 15 at a meeting of the Clark County GOP in Nevada. At the confab, Paul supporters pushed through a resolution rebuking Republican National Committee chief Reince Priebus and calling on him to resign his post due to his decision to merge some RNC fundraising with that of presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
The Paul crowd accused Mr. Priebus of violating an RNC rule against aiding one party presidential hopeful while another remains in the race.
“We hope that our Republican colleagues in local and state parties across the nation will join with us in expressing our outrage at having our role in the nomination process usurped by a select few individuals,” read the Clark County Republican statement, according to a copy posted on the blog of Nevada political analyst Elizabeth Crum.
Did the Paul supporters in Clark County – which contains Las Vegas and three-quarters of the state’s population – not hear that Paul has announced he will no longer campaign in states that have yet to hold primaries?
OK, that’s not the same thing as formally ending his campaign, as we ourselves have said. But you can see the campaign’s end from there. More to the point, Paul and his campaign staff have been urging his supporters to remain civil as they plan for the GOP national convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.
“By sending a large, respectful, and professional delegation to Tampa, we will show the party and the country that .,. our movement is growing and here to stay,” wrote Paul strategist Jesse Benton in a convention strategy memo.
Or, as Mr. Benton put it later in a conference call with reporters, “we’re emphasizing decorum.”
Call us sensitive, but insisting that that head of your party resign for helping the person who is the virtually certain nominee does not seem very decorous to us. And that’s what some analysts have pointed out: Paul’s supporters may not yet have given up on the campaign, despite the fact that the man they support has indicated that Mr. Romney is going to win the nomination.
“Interesting to see how this sort of thing develops in coming months ... Paul and Paul supporter divergence,” tweeted Josh Putnam, delegate-counting expert and Davidson College political scientist, on Wednesday.
Of course, to some extent the roguehood of Paul supporters is inherent in Paul’s delegate accumulation strategy. He has been urging his backers to organize and win as many delegates as possible at state conventions and caucuses. This inevitably has led to some angry clashes with more traditional Republicans, many of whom have been surprised to suddenly find themselves outvoted in organizations they’ve controlled in the past.
Nevada is perhaps ground zero for this conflict. Paulites have taken control, not just of the Clark County GOP, but of the state Republican Party organization. As a result, some Nevada Republican donors and volunteers are coalescing behind nonparty organizations such as the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity, according to a report in the Las Vegas Sun.
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House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio speaks at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's 2012 Fiscal Summit, on May 15, in Washington. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Is Washington careening toward another debt limit crisis?
Is Washington getting ready for a replay of the 2011 debt limit crisis? It sure seems like it at the moment.
House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday drew a line in the sand with his wingtip, saying that House Republicans will not approve another increase in the nation’s debt ceiling unless there are offsetting cuts in the federal budget. On Wednesday, the White House responded in kind, saying President Obama won’t let the GOP hold the US and global economies “hostage” to its “ideology.” Republicans must accept a “balanced approach” to reducing the federal deficit that includes both budget cuts and tax increases, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
“We’re not going to re-create the debt ceiling debacle of last August,” said Mr. Carney, after a luncheon meeting between Mr. Obama and congressional leaders.
Might we do so anyway, no matter what the White House insists? After all, things got pretty tense last time. Before it ended, Standard & Poor’s had downgraded America’s debt for the first time in its history.
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The United States government has more than $16 trillion in debt at the moment. When it bumps up against the debt limit – the statutory limit of money the US can borrow – Congress either votes to raise it or risks that the US will be unable to pay its bills.
The White House wants the next debt-limit vote to be on what it calls a “clean bill” – simple legislation that deals with the limit only. That’s the way the issue had been handled in decades past, for the most part. Republicans would prefer to use the threat of a possible default as leverage to induce bigger budget reductions than the White House might otherwise accept. After all, that worked OK for them last time around. The budget compromise that Obama finally signed included $917 billion in cuts, spread over 10 years, in exchange for a $900 billion debt-limit increase.
Well, never underestimate Washington’s ability to create a dangerous stalemate. But we think fears of a 2011-style debt-limit crisis are overblown, at least given current conditions.
Why? Mostly because the debt limit probably won’t have to raised again until early next year, according to Treasury Secretar Timothy Geithner. And something politically big will happen before then: the 2012 presidential election.
If Obama wins, he’ll be able to claim a mandate for his approach to fiscal issues, with some justification. That’s likely to increase his leverage. If Mitt Romney wins, it probably won’t be a problem, as he’s likely to agree to the sort of approach Speaker Boehner would like.
There could be more complicated political outcomes, of course. Obama could win, but the Democrats could lose the Senate, making it easier for Republicans to get their favored bills through Congress to the president’s desk.
But we still think our general idea holds: This is an argument that will be clarified in some manner by the nation’s quadrennial electoral contest. After all, the arguments over the debt limit mirror the arguments over fiscal policy in general: Obama wants the GOP to accept at least some tax increases, and Republicans say they won’t. Voters will get their say on the matter in November.
President Barack Obama appears on the ABC's television show 'The View' in New York, on May 14. From left are, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, the president, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Obama on 'The View': Were hosts too easy on him? (+video)
President Obama was on “The View” Tuesday, in case you haven’t heard. It was his fourth time on the couch of ABC’s multihost daytime chat show, and he looked comfortable, as you might expect. He joshed with Barbara Walters about her habit of keeping presidential napkins from White House visits (“You’re stealing our stuff!”). And he guessed, correctly, that Sherri Shepherd was the “View” panelist who recently appeared on “Dancing With the Stars.”
But did “The View” go too easy on him? Let’s be clear: We’re not implying that the hosts can’t be tough questioners. We would not want Ms. Walters to interrogate us about snack-food habits, much less our approach to Medicare policy. However, it may be that the format of the show allows a skilled politician a lot of control over the message.
The show jumps from host to host, each with a different topic to discuss. Follow-ups are limited, before the show moves on to the next point. That made it difficult for even resident conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck to pin Mr. Obama down.
(OK, the show is just like a White House press conference in this regard, only on a different scale. But that’s another conversation.)
Take Obama’s recent statement in favor of gay marriage as an example. Walters asked him some good questions: Would he push a federal bill legalizing same-sex marriage? Would he work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as something that occurs between one man and one woman?
Obama answered by talking at first about the reasons he’d come out in support of gay marriage. In part, this was due to personal experience with gay couples.
“They said to me, 'You know what, the words matter.... Civil unions aren’t sufficient,' ” said Obama.
Fine. But what about working to change the law?
“Congress is clearly on notice that I think it’s a bad idea,” he said, which is actually a non-answer. And then, before Walters could trap him like a stray White House napkin, “The View” veered into another topic.
Similarly, Whoopi Goldberg let Obama get away without answering her question on financial-markets reform. Citing the recent $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan, Ms. Goldberg asked if the president will hold anyone responsible. “This has to be the last straw,” she said.
Obama responded by saying that the loss showed why he had pushed for passage of the Dodd-Frank financial-markets reform act. This raised capital requirements to enable banks to withstand such floods of red ink, and it made it against the law for banks to take big bets in derivative markets with their own funds.
“You can’t make bets on your own trades with your own money,” Obama said of the banks.
Well, the trade that cost JPMorgan all that cash looked a lot like just such a bet, but it fell within a Dodd-Frank exception allowing banks to hedge against losses. Why was it still legal? There’s a follow-up that didn’t get asked, because the next host to seize control of the show went in a different direction.
We know we’re being a little pedantic here: “The View” isn’t “Meet the Press.” It isn’t even “Charlie Rose.” We have nothing against learning that Obama likes guacamole and corn chips, or will watch any kind of sport on TV, even luge. It isn’t bad to humanize America’s leaders.
But Obama recently has been accusing the US media of a “lack of gravitas,” according to a story in Politico on Wednesday. The president complained of a “steady stream of sensationalism and scandal” in his address Monday at Barnard College in New York, for instance.
The Politico piece quotes a former White House press adviser to the effect that Obama likes The New York Times because he thinks they’re serious.
“He thinks the rest of you guys aren’t,” the adviser tells Politico.
Point taken. But from our years in Washington, we’ll note that in general, the biggest problem that presidential administrations end up having with the press is not that it isn’t serious enough, but that it is an unruly, unpredictable hound they find difficult to control.
Speaker John Boehner speaks at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's 2012 Fiscal Summit on May 15 in Washington. (MANUEL BALCE CENETA/AP PHOTO)
Democrats return fire after John Boehner's opening debt-ceiling salvo (+video)
Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday vowed that the House will not wait until after November elections to find a way to avoid a year-end "fiscal cliff" – and that House Republicans will, again, refuse to raise the national debt limit, unless Congress offsets the hike with spending cuts.
"Previous Congresses have encountered lesser precipices with lower stakes and made a beeline for the closest lame-duck escape hatch," Mr. Boehner said, at a speech at a fiscal summit sponsored by the Peterson Foundation in Washington. "Let me put your mind at ease. This Congress will not follow that path, not if I have anything to do with it."
But Democrats bristled at the way Boehner would keep the United States from financial Armageddon – an approach that the House Budget Committee's ranking Democrat likened to "playing chicken with our economy."
With Congress putting off an 18-wheeler's worth of challenges until the lame-duck session between the November elections and the new year, it could be said that all of Capitol Hill is staring down a massive financial collision. Whether to extend the Bush tax cuts and the budget-slashing "sequester," raise the debt ceiling, extend unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday, and fix payments to physicians from Medicare may all have to be resolved in only six short weeks.
By contrast, Boehner aims to get to work before November elections, offering by far the most concrete plans to get to work ahead of the lame-duck session of any congressional leader. The House will hold votes on the expiring Bush tax cuts before the elections, he said. It will also put together a process for an "expedited" path to tax reform in the new year.
"If we do this right, we will never again have to deal with the uncertainty of expiring tax rates," Boehner said.
It is on the question of the debt ceiling, however, that Boehner drew the most Democratic ire for his insistence on what might be called the "Boehner principle," that is: Every dollar of additional debt increase for the federal government must be matched by an equal or greater reduction in government spending.
"This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance," he said.
But Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the House Budget Committee, pointed out that the House's own Republican budget would violate Boehner's principle, as it requires $5.2 trillion in additional deficit spending. "This isn't just hypocritical," Mr. Van Hollen said in a statement, "it's dangerous."
"The GOP’s refusal to consider both spending and revenues – despite the recommendation of every bipartisan group that has looked at this issue – does nothing to bring us any closer to getting our fiscal house in order," he added.
Boehner's stance – the same one that eventual won Republicans a hard-fought deal with President Obama to raise the debt limit last summer – conjures a time when Republican demands on the debt ceiling sent Congress's approval rating plummeting into the single digits, crushed consumer economic confidence, and helped spur an unprecedented downgrade in America's credit rating.
In the speaker's mind, however, setting conditions to increase the debt limit forces a lethargic Congress to make tough choices.
"We shouldn’t dread the debt limit. We should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction," he said.
Speaking at the same event, however, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner took issue with viewing the debt ceiling as a vehicle for anything other than upholding America's financial obligations.
"This commitment to meet the obligations of the nation, this commitment to protect the creditworthiness of the country is a fundamental commitment you can never call into question or violate because it's the foundation for any market economy, the foundation of our financing," Mr. Geithner said. "This allows us to govern, to fight wars, to deal with crises, recessions, to adjust to a changing world. You can't put that into question; you can't put it into doubt."
Boehner's Senate bête noire, majority leader Harry Reid, said the Speaker's plans showed that he is moving at the behest of his caucus's most conservative members.
"American people have had enough of this brinkmanship," Mr. Reid told reporters Tuesday afternoon. "It's pretty clear to me that the tea party direction to the Republican Party is driving them over the cliff."
No matter who is driving, though, Boehner is done with waiting.
"[W]e’ve talked this problem to death," he said. "It’s about time we roll up our sleeves and get to work."
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul speaks at the University of California at Berkeley in April. (Ben Margot/AP/File)
Could Ron Paul really have an impact on the GOP convention?
The Ron Paul campaign wants its supporters to remain fired up and ready to go.
One day after announcing that the Texas libertarian will stop campaigning in states that have yet to hold primaries, Paul officials on Tuesday issued a memo outlining their strategy for the GOP convention in Tampa.
What’s the point of this? “Maximizing our resources to ensure the greatest possible impact,” writes Jesse Benton, Paul’s chief strategist.
The Paul people will continue to try and pick up additional delegates at state conventions between now and the national confab in August, notes Benton. He claims that in the end the campaign will have several hundred Paul delegates, combined with several hundred delegates who personally are Paul supporters but are bound to Mitt Romney or one of the withdrawn GOP candidates.
The strategy document admits the obvious fact that Romney, not Paul, is going to be the nominee. But it holds out hope that Paul will be strong enough to influence the party platform.
“Our campaign is presently working to get several items up for consideration, including monetary policy reform, prohibitions on indefinite detention, and Internet freedom,” writes Benton.
What’s going to come of this? Is Paul really going to be a power at the convention?
Well, it’s certainly possible that he’ll get a platform plank calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, or some other restriction on the Fed’s power. In recent years the GOP as a whole has been moving towards his Fed-critical position. It’s also possible that the convention will approve some sort of vague call for Web freedom. But a prohibition on indefinite detention? That is unlikely to pass muster, given that GOP voters generally are more hawkish on security issues than Paul.
“My best guess? Ron Paul pushes for votes on a few platform issues, and settles for platform committee losses on most of them but gets one or two minor victories, with something about the Fed probably the most likely,” wrote political blogger Jonathan Bernstein Monday in a Washington Post opinion piece.
The other thing Paul appears to be after is comity. In recent weeks his supporters have caused trouble at some state conventions as they push for advantage – in Arizona, for instance, they booed Mitt Romney’s son Josh.
“By sending a large, respectful, and professional delegation to Tampa, we will show the party and the country that not only is our movement growing and here to stay, but that the future belongs to us,” writes strategist Benton.
However, as far as the GOP is concerned, the immediate future belongs to Romney. And the presumptive nominee will be exercising tight control over convention proceedings, as most presumptive nominees do. Will he allow Paul a little room to maneuver? That’s not clear.
It’s true that Romney and Paul have long seemed to get along, personally. But Paul is not offering Romney an endorsement, and he’s not urging his followers to toe the Romney line.
“If Romney wants to win the Paul vote, it seems, it won’t be good enough to put an audit-the-Fed plank in the Republican Party platform. He’d have to actually embrace and campaign on Paul’s issues, which could, in case it needs to be said, be a tricky proposition where the mass of the electorate is concerned,” writes political correspondent Molly Ball of The Atlantic Tuesday.
In this May 10 file photo, House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio takes questions during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
John Boehner fires opening shot in potential debt-ceiling showdown
To avoid a "fiscal cliff" at year's end, House Speaker John Boehner is going to rely on an old road map.
If President Obama and congressional Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling, Mr. Boehner will say in a speech later on Tuesday, they're going to have to hew to what might be called the Boehner principle: Every dollar of new debt must be paid for by at least a dollar of reduced government spending.
“This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance," Boehner will say, according to excerpts of his remarks at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in Washington.
That's the position to which Boehner and House Republicans eventually held Democrats to raise the debt ceiling last August.
Of course, that trip to the fiscal precipice sent Congress's approval rating plummeting into the single digits, crushed consumer economic confidence, and helped spur an unprecedented downgrade in America's credit rating.
Democrats have called for an approach that uses both increased taxes and lower government spending to cut the government's debt.
Boehner's principle "is a simplistic characterization of the issue that confronts us," said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D) of Maryland, the House minority whip, in a talk with reporters Tuesday. "The Democrats are clearly going to look at and press for a balanced response. The debt limit should not be a political issue. Mr. Boehner knows it shouldn't be political."
Congress is putting off nearly every substantive policy issue until after the November elections. In addition to the debt ceiling, the heavy issues awaiting Congress between Election Day and the end of year include the Bush tax cuts, unemployment benefits, the budget-slashing "sequester," and Medicare payment rates for doctors.
On taxes, however, the House will move to lay the groundwork for a deal well before the lame-duck session, Boehner says. The House will vote on taxes before the election to "give Congress time to work on broad-based tax reform that lowers rates for individuals and businesses while closing deductions, credits, and special carveouts," according to excerpts of Boehner's speech.
The House legislation would also enable an "expedited process" for tax reform in 2013. This could mean, Boehner says, that "if we do this right, this will be the last time we ever have to confront the uncertainty of expiring tax rates." He continues in the prepared remarks, "We’ll have replaced the broken status quo with a tax code that maintains progressivity, taxes income once, and creates a fairer, simpler code."
But Boehner doesn't rule out nudging the government along with incremental debt-ceiling deals.
"If [adhering to the Boehner principle] means we have to do a series of stopgap measures, so be it – but that’s not the ideal," Boehner will say Tuesday. "Let’s start solving the problem. We can make the bold cuts and reforms necessary to meet this principle, and we must."
The Boehner principle does not, on its face, rule out tax hikes or other increased revenues to help address the fiscal issues. A mix of tax increases and spending cuts have been offered by a variety of fiscal-reform commissions, including the widely hailed Simpson-Bowles group.
But a Boehner aide says in an e-mail, "Tax hikes are not – and never have been – on the table."
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