Bipartisan Push Alive, GOP Bill DOA

20 July 2011 |permalink | email article

President Obama Tuesday called for a final push on an ambitious deficit-reduction deal, lauding a bipartisan package put forward hours earlier by six senators, and viewed as a sign of progress and summons for a fresh round of negotiations.

After the president spoke, Tea Party-driven freshmen House members last night passed a Republican plan by 234 to 190 that would cut spending next year, cap it for years and call for a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. It’s dead in the Senate and a certain Obama veto.

Enter David Brooks, the rational conservative NYT columnist who suggested Republicans missed a glorious moment in history and will come to regret a missed opportunity. “Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the GOP, who still believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control.”

California Notebook

Will the approaching California remap give Gov. Jerry Brown and Democrats two-thirds majorities in both legislative houses? Sacramento Bee reporter Dan Walters raised the question Tuesday as it becomes more apparent after that Democrats may be closer to pick up enough seats in the 2012 elections to secure the margins needed to cut the GOP out of future tax issues. All 80 Assembly seats are up in 2012, plus half of the 40 Senate seats, with the remainder on the ballot in 2014. A Democratic consultant believes the Democrats’ 27/54 goal is in fairly easy reach, with some additional seats on both sides considered “swing” or “winnable” by either party. A Republican consultant, criticizing the remap commission, said the state GOP may challenge the maps by way of referendum. Either way, Republicans have become an endangered species.

Quotable

“Even as the flames of the scandal begin to edge closer to Mr. Murdock’s door, anybody betting against his business survival will most likely come away disappointed….Still, money will fix a lot of things, but not everything. When you throw money onto a burning fire, it becomes fuel and nothing more.” – New York Times business columnist David Carr. 

“For the record, I do not believe any story we published in either title was ever gained in any unlawful manner. Nor have I ever seen anything to regret that CNN hasn’t said. – Piers Morgan, a CNN host, whom Rupert Murdoch hired when he was just 28 in 1994 as a rough and tumble editor of News of the World – but tardy and protective of Murdoch when addressing the tabloid scandal while the rest of the network went into overdrive. As editor Morgan did recall talking with Murdoch at least weekly for 18 months. 

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