The House Cliff Vote: A preview of coming attractions

Back when I thought Rom­ney was going to win I wrote this about one of my fears if he did in fact win:

The thing I fear the most about Mitt is that he will form a team with Estab­lish­ment GOP and lib­er­als in the House. The Estab­lish­ment gets it’s spend­ing, lib­er­als get a piece of the action and Rom­ney is hailed as “Bipartisan”.

Look­ing at the final fis­cal cliff vote in the House where pas­sage was secured by an over­whelm­ing num­ber of democ­rats team­ing up with estab­lish­ment repub­li­cans to get the 257 votes the Bill ended up with.

Dems split 172 – 16, Repub­li­cans split 85 – 151. Boehner didn’t come close to sat­is­fy­ing the “major­ity of the major­ity” rule, which leaves him on thin ice for Thursday’s Speaker vote. At least he didn’t hide, though: He voted yes tonight, as did Paul Ryan, much to Team Rubio’s delight. Mean­while, the rest of the lead­er­ship team — i.e. Eric Can­tor and Kevin McCarthy — voted no, although Can­tor waited until the bill had 218 votes to reg­is­ter his mean­ing­less disapproval.

With that heaven sent 41 – 1 ratio of tax increases to spend­ing cuts no won­der over 90% of democ­rats would go for it, but I“m slightly dis­ap­pointed that they man­aged almost 40 per­cent of the GOP going along.

I expect a lot more of the same, estab­lish­ment GOP mem­bers mak­ing deals and the speak­ing mar­gin­al­iz­ing his own party for the next two years. I go back to what Mike Rogers said after elec­tion day:

The time to take over the GOP (state by state) or set up a real third party (let’s call it the con­ser­v­a­tive party, like NY state), is NOW, after a his­toric elec­tion that demon­strated the inept­ness of the “Wiz­ards of Smart”…

„,If we suc­cess­fully set up a con­ser­v­a­tive party, and win some seats, we can choose to align with Repub­li­cans or even endorse their can­di­date as a tac­ti­cal mat­ter on a vote by vote basis.

What say you?

I say any­one who is even think­ing about giv­ing to the NRCC after this fiasco needs to if not turn them down flat, last least hold off till the debt ceil­ing busi­ness comes up, “bet­ter than noth­ing” argu­ment not withstanding.

In fact I’d put them on notice, if we see a repeat of this in March then that dough will go to sup­port either pri­mary oppo­nents for GOP house mem­bers or a new con­ser­v­a­tive party that can choose to stand with the GOP or no.

If we con­tinue to let our­selves be played we deserve all we get.

Update. Start­ing the year with a deficit myself, still $370 in the hole. If you’re look­ing to invest in con­ser­vatism this deba­cle proves I’ve got to be a bet­ter invest­ment than these house guys

Update: Stacy McCain has the best line:

Just don’t say they were “spend­ing like drunken sailors.” At least sailors spend their own money.

Update 2:

Via Insty, Conn Car­roll asks the ques­tion:

Remem­ber, Obama’s first offer was for a $1.6 tril­lion tax hike and an infi­nite debt limit hike. Boehner coun­tered with $800 bil­lion. The final deal was for only $600 billion.

How is that not a “win” for Republicans?

Easy, let me quote a cer­tain Ex-​Leper:

All right cut the hag­gling, say you open at once shekel I start at 2000 we end up about 1800

Brion in the end gives as the Ex-​Leper puts it: “Half a dinari for me bloody life story?” when he had noth­ing com­ing. Obama won as soon as Boehner coun­tered with the tax hike that became bipartisan.

Even worse The “Bush Tax Cuts” are gone replaced by the “Obama Tax Cuts” that actu­ally raise taxes, yet the media will be call­ing them tax cuts for­ever while giv­ing Democ­rats credit.

Fools.

Here is the whole Brian bit

Update 2: Bob Krumm gets it.

Update 3: Joe Weisen­thal gets it

Thanks to last night’s Fis­cal Cliff deal, we an now put to bed the term “The Bush Tax Cuts.”

As of now, they’re the Obama Tax Cuts.

Told ya.