Saturday, December 24, 2011

McConnell's Threefold Miscalculation — Update

On the surface, two months of payroll holiday extension for a decision on Keystone XL is not a victory for the Dems — this was Mitch McConnell's calculus. He had no reason to believe Speaker Boehner would turn down such an offer; the problem is that he did. Had he not, the eventual (and inevitable) outcome would almost certainly be seen as a GOP victory. The victory for the Dems is not a legislative one, though it will almost certainly parlay into one two months from now. Rather, Obama and the Democrats have won the message war (or more accurately, Boehner has lost it). Until now, the GOP strategy was to play to the general public's relative disengagement from the details of politics… when there is gridlock, 'Washington' in the abstract gets the blame which hopefully trickles up to Obama. This time, however, the public was tuned in and the performance was overacted and lacking in nuance, and due to unprecedented viewership there's no reason why the sequel two months from now can't be a shameless lift of the original (just with a bigger budget).

To answer the question of why Boehner blinked, it may not be so much a matter of his having been strong-armed by Cantor's goons. The initial miscalculation was, once again, McConnell's. It became apparent once the senate passed their bill with 89 yeas that forcing a Keystone XL decision may actually be doing Obama a favor (as outlined in the original post). Way to go, guys!