The Mayans & John Boehner

It was with more than a little irony that Speaker John Boehner was forced to pull his “Plan B” bill to cope with the fast-approaching “fiscal cliff” on the eve of the Mayan doomsday. Indeed, in predicting apocalypse, perhaps the Mayan fine print was actually predicting catastrophe for the Republicans instead of the world as a whole.

That certainly seems to be where the GOP is today.

For more than a week, the Big Feet in DC and the pundit class were optimistic that President Obama and Speaker Boehner would cut a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. Given the stock market’s performance, it seems the financial centers were on the same page.

But real movement and a tangible deal were always hostages to a cold political truth;  that the President actually achieves all his goals if the US goes over the cliff, without any additional action.

Taxes rise on incomes over $250,000. Dividend and capital gains taxes go back to pre-Bush era levels. Defense spending is gutted.  And entitlements are more or less protected.

Yes, taxes go up on everyone, including working class Americans. The payroll tax holiday expires, as do unemployment benefits.  The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will sucker punch millions of new families. Doctors caring for Medicare patients would see their reimbursements cut by more than 30 percent.

But POTUS and the Democrats know that after January 1st, these policy inconveniences will be worked out quickly as spontaneous and enormous political pressure is brought to bear on Congress by a furious public that will focus its ire on an “obstructionist” Republican House.

With that as the departure point for negotiations, two things become obvious.  First, that there could be no deal for the GOP that did not meet the President’s requirement for increased income tax rates, and second, that any concessions the President offered were effectively “gifts” to the GOP since he gets everything he wants without lifting a finger as the clock strikes 12 on New Year’s Eve.

Frustratingly, it makes no difference to the politics of the moment, that Boehner and the GOP are correct on all accounts regarding the required tax incentives to grow the economy as well as the central role of entitlements as the structural driver in the nation’s exploding debt.

President Obama and the Democrats simply don’t agree, and they have both time and public opinion on their side to prevail.

Which takes us back to the harsh political reality and Boehner’s “Plan B.”

Given the cliff and the President’s non-negotiable position that rates go up on the wealthy, the first question that Republicans needed to address internally – before they ever engaged the President – was whether they would really be willing to raise tax rates proactively, and if so, under what circumstances.  It is nothing short of a threshold issue for the GOP on intellectual, ideological and political grounds.  And that answer, whatever it be, should have informed the strategy going forward.

Much is unknown right now, but it appears that the House leadership team operated under the assumption that if they could extract enough entitlement concessions and spending cuts from the President, then the GOP would swallow the tax increase.

That is an incredibly suspect premise. And it only compounded the political damage for the GOP internally as word leaked that the Speaker had agreed in principle to significant tax increases without comparable, entitlement reform.

Unable to move the President, facing a restive caucus and with time ticking down, Boehner abruptly decided to pull out of negotiations and roll the dice on his personal Plan B – to approve a bill that would maintain current income taxes on all those making less than a million dollars.

It was a perplexing move by the Speaker.

Boehner was asking conservative House Republicans to vote for a tax increase – violating GOP orthodoxy – without any corresponding cuts to spending, or entitlement reform.

 Worse, the bill had little hope of life in the Senate, so any GOP member who voted with his leadership team would have cast a empty vote that would become political dynamite for orthodox fiscal conservatives in their home districts, placing a scarlet letter on each incumbent who cast a yes vote, and almost certainly inviting primary challenges in the next election.

The truth is, beyond loyalty to Boehner, there was nothing in this bill for House Republicans, and clearly, on Thursday, that reality became starkly clear as the House leadership team failed to muster the votes from the GOP to pass Boehner’s bill.

But Boehner’s hasty effort to get points on the board to attempt to leverage President Obama in their version of “fiscal cliff chicken” was far more damaging to the GOP than this one non-vote might indicate.

While the rank and file GOP were looking out for their self-interest, and the political reality that Boehner’s proposal wasn’t going anyway even if it passed the House, the broader narrative today is that the Speaker lacks core support on the  question of taxation, which is central to the cliff – effectively torpedoed Boehner’s credibility as a negotiating partner with the President as someone who can ultimately deliver the votes on a final deal.  If Boehner can’t get his caucus to vote for his bill, how will he corral the votes necessary to deliver on a tougher bi-partisan deal that will include tax increases at much lower levels?

The repercussions don’t stop there.

Boehner’s leadership may be in jeopardy. If this were a parliamentary system, the lack of support for the leader on such a central question of governance would be an effective “no confidence” vote. Does this reticence by the GOP represent simple operational self-interest, or is it the beginning of an active opposition?

Leadership elections are only days away for the new Congress.

And though it deserves no plaudits, at the end of the day, Grover Norquist appears to be more in tune with the GOP majority than the House leadership is. That is a huge problem.

And most damaging, as the GOP slips into disarray, none of the actions in the last 24 hours has done anything to avoid the cliff. Internal GOP bickering will only burnish the perception that it was the Republican Party, not the President and Democrats, who brought the nation to the precipice – again – over tax orthodoxy.

What is heart-breaking is that it didn’t need to be this way.

Since the election, the GOP has been cornered in a box with two unpalatable choices – raise tax rates or suffer the political repercussions.  Those are the terms of the debate that the President and his allies have laid out and those represent the limit of the current discussion.

But why?

The first rule of crisis communications is that when presented with two unappealing alternatives, change the topic. We just finished a presidential campaign where the GOP laid out an aggressive and credible governing plan that addressed economic growth, taxes and entitlements.  That Romney didn’t win does not mean the plan is toxic.  Indeed, it is an alternative governing vision that can be defended.

Instead of asking House Republicans to vote against their principles (and self interest) to raise taxes, why not put a comprehensive plan to reform the tax code and put long term entitlements on a sustainable basis?  Why not let the American people know that the GOP supports tax relief, deficit reduction and economic growth?  While the measure would fail in the Senate, it would almost certainly make some conservative Democrats up for re-election in 2014 feel uncomfortable.

Instead, the GOP is adrift, with its tribal and philosophical divisions left bare for the public to view, all to the snickering delight of the White House.

Without a Romney victory, the fiscal cliff was always going to be a losing argument for the GOP. The key was to cope with the structural advantages that the cliff provided the President and Democrats, and maneuver Republicans to offer a constructive governing substitute,  even as the reality of the President’s advantages would eventually win out.

But by negotiating off the President’s song sheet, the Republicans appear to have lost their creativity, conviction and spine – except, of course, to ensure that the rich don’t pay more in taxes.

That is an impossible narrative to defend. And after December 31, it only gets worse.

John Boehner doesn’t deserve this.  He is a capable, intelligent and savvy leader who wants to solve the crisis that is staring us squarely in the face. But the President’s faux budget, rooted in social justice instead of economics, coupled with Republican orthodoxy,  make for a combustible, and largely unreconcilable, brew.

The Mayans may have been wrong about earth, but they seem to have nailed the tribulations of the GOP.

Dark clouds ahead.