New Republic

he first time the Supreme Court took a case on Obamacare, most supporters of the law responded with derision. Who could take seriously the argument that the “individual mandate” was unconstitutional? In fact, the conservative Supreme Court majority could—though Chief Justice John Roberts ultimately spared the law by reconstruing the penalty for failing to comply with the mandate as a tax within the power of the Congress to impose.

This time, however—now that the Court has decided to hear a challenge to the subsidies available for insurance purchased on the federal exchanges—the reaction among supporters has been different. “Panic” might go a little too far—until you reckon in the equally urgent calls among supporters for everyone not to panic. Continue reading →

New Republic

The political media’s handicapping of the November 4 midterm election has contributed to the impression, fostered by many partisans and commentators, that the stakes have never been higher. Jonathan Capehart, the liberal Washington Post columnist, says he wants to “warn” Democrats that “President Obama will be impeached if the Democrats lose control of the U.S. Senate.” Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma believes a GOP Senate will finally blow the lid off “the greatest coverup in American history”—that is, Benghazi.

In fact, the stakes rarely have been as low as they are this year—even if Republicans do win back the Senate.

The 1994 midterm election produced dramatic political change: a Republican House majority for the first time in 40 years and a GOP Senate majority for the first time since 1986. GOP losses in the 1998 midterm, despite retaining the House majority, cost Newt Gingrich the speakership and delivered a rebuke to the party’s effort to oust President Bill Clinton for his sexual adventurism. Continue reading →

New Republic

A little platoon of high-profile Republican members of Congress, most of whom harbor national ambitions, has stepped forward in recent weeks to make the case for a more activist GOP policy toward the problem of poverty. A number of conservative intellectuals have also been weighing in. It’s doubtful that a wide-ranging conservative anti-poverty agenda is about to become the first plank in the GOP platform any time soon. But the felt need among Republicans to speak to the issue is an indication of how the domestic policy debate has been shifting.

There are several causes underlying this shift, some on the right and some on the left, some substantive and some political. I would usually give the political motivations consideration first, on the perhaps cynical grounds that where a politician’s interest goes, his or her heart will follow. But with one exception—Obama and the Democrats’ pushback against social inequality—calculations of political interest haven’t changed that much, and the pressure from Democrats on the subject has not been enough by itself to force a new line out of the GOP. Continue reading →

New Republic

As Washington was comprehensively transfixed over the past couple weeks with the epic failure of the Obamacare launch, something very interesting was happening in the Senate. With little fuss or fanfare, social conservatives lost their once-iron grip on the modern Republican Party.

Up for consideration was legislation called ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A high priority of the LGBT community for years, ENDA has the support of President Obama and the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats. Continue reading →

New Republic

The story most Democrats and progressives have long told about the GOP is that it’s a party that has been captured by its right wing. It’s a fairly simple story to tell. You find a firebrand character who is not especially popular, such as Newt Gingrich, and present him as the face of the party. Or you take a kooky GOP Senate candidate with views on abortion that even many pro-lifers find appalling, point to him and say, “Represent.” The idea is to persuade the persuadable that the “real” GOP is so far out of the mainstream that it cannot be trusted.

This would be a good political tactic even if it were made of whole cloth. But, of course, it isn’t. The GOP is indeed a more uniformly conservative party now than it has ever been, just as the Democratic Party is more uniformly liberal. Continue reading →

New Republic

Insiders in the Obama administration have long described the political environment they face as one in which the GOP opposition, especially in the House, will pretty much automatically come out against anything the president proposes. To hear them tell it, it doesn’t even matter if Republicans used to favor the same position. As Exhibit A, there’s the  erstwhile conservative support for an individual mandate to buy health insurance. That was the Heritage Foundation’s preferred approach to health care reform in the early 1990s. Yet the conservative behemoth thoroughly repudiated its position when it emerged as the centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform. Continue reading →

New Republic

The story about extensive National Security Agency monitoring of electronic communications blew through Washington with hurricane force. And, like a hurricane, it fully consumed the attention of just about everybody who fell within its path. Oh, sure, there was a little gang huddling over here working on immigration issues and another one over there fretting about the Syrian rebels, but mostly people were coping with the storm.

Admittedly, attention spans in Washington, as anywhere else, are limited, and there’s only so much room in the in-box. But usually the capital’s politico-journalistic complex is able to walk and chew gum and do three or four other things at the same time. With the NSA story, not so much. There was too much there there. First came the questions about what the NSA was really up to. Next were the questions about who knew what and on whose authority the snooping was taking place. Then came the person of leaker Edward Snowden and broader questions about the motives of whistleblowers and the morality of leaks. Finally, there was the whole question of the legality and wisdom of the program. Continue reading →

New Republic

In the annals of presidential appointment-making, Barack Obama displayed unusual coherence with his simultaneous announcement of Thomas Donilon’s departure as national security advisor, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s elevation to Donilon’s position, and Samantha Power’s nomination to return to the administration as Rice’s successor. No lengthy search process, protracted infighting, or Oval Office agonizing—just one fell swoop. Obama looked like a president who was getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it.

Rice and Power are both confidants of the president; that they should be moving up in his second term comes as no surprise. After Hillary Clinton formally announced her departure as secretary of state, the White House hinted that Rice was Obama’s first choice for the job. But Republicans pitched a preemptive fit over Rice: They denounced her for her Sunday-show description of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts in Benghazi, Libya, as a protest over an anti-Islam movie trailer that got out of hand. Rice’s confirmability in doubt, Obama passed over her in favor of the current incumbent, then-Senator John Kerry. Or so the story goes. Continue reading →

New Republic

You can tell a Washington scandal is nearing ripeness when people start calling for the appointment of a special counsel to conduct the investigation. So it is today with the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

The calls to date come from two distinct groups: One consists of Republicans/conservatives who either sincerely believe only a special counsel can get to the bottom of things or who think siccing a special counsel on the Obama administration is the best way to inflict maximum political damage. The other, more liberal-leaning, is made up of people who think Obama can get his second term back on track by a conspicuous gesture to restore public trust and who incidentally also believe a special counsel won’t turn up much that is damaging. Continue reading →

New Republic

According to pretty much everybody, last week was a rough one for White House spokesman Jay Carney. Dana Milbank ripped him in The Washington Post, Eleanor Clift felt his pain so acutely she helped him relive it in The Daily Beast. Alex Koppelman accused him of playing “semantic games” in The New Yorker. And then there were the conservative commentators. So all in all, I’d have to say he had a pretty good week—and I mean that sincerely.

My moment of epiphany on presidential scandals came during the first term of the Clinton administration, when Mike McCurry was press secretary. I was editorial page editor of The Washington Times at the time, a job I held from 1992 through 1998. The bookends of my tenure were the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court and the House vote to impeach Bill Clinton; then as now, never a shortage of material. And if it’s true that what goes around comes around, I think it would be fair to say that in that period in Washington, everything that went around did indeed come around. Continue reading →