There were too many people who used the term to attribute it to just one, and I'm sure you heard it said at least once. The 2010 red wave election was a "restraining order" on Obama and the Democrats. After they used their massive majorities in 2009 and 2010 to run wild with federal spending and the passage of ObamaCare, the American people went to the polls to give Republicans power on Capitol Hill to stop them in their tracks.
I was thinking about that as "realistic" Beltway Republicans implored us to understand that the efforts of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and others to defund ObamaCare are doomed to fail. When you only control one house of Congress, they explain, you just don't have enough power to govern.
So let me see if I have this straight: The voters intended the 2010 election as a restraining order on the Democrats, and victorious Republicans embraced it as such. But in reality, they can't restrain anything. They can't stop funding for ObamaCare. They can't force the passage of real budgets. They can't stop the Democrats from continuing to treat the "one-time emergency" stimulus of 2009 as part of the budget baseline. They can't do any of that until they get control of the Senate too.
See, that's funny, because I could have sworn the government can't spend any money on anything unless both houses of Congress pass it, which it seems to me would give tremendous restraining power to the Republican-controlled House.
But OK. We are told to embrace restraint and caution, because Ted Cruz's strategy of defunding ObamaCare cannot work. Fine. I, then, have a question:
What, exactly, has the cautious, realistic strategy of McConnell, Boehner and Cantor accomplished? Are we getting real budgets? Is spending being restrained? Has ObamaCare been slowed in the slightest? Has the Keystone XL pipeline been approved? Have the attacks on the coal industry lessened?
I can think of one thing, and one thing only, this crew has achieved, and that is that most of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent. But the attacks on wealth and job creators will continue unabated, so it's a pretty limited victory. And a tax rate is "permanent" only until Congress changes it, so don't believe for a second those lower tax rates will be treated as "permanent" if Democrats regain the House majority in 2014.
Overall, the Republican leadership in the House has made a choice to pursue a milquetoast strategy against Obama and his policies. They could have done much more. They could have started on Day 1 of 2011 by declaring that the endless parade of continuing resolutions was over, that spending would be returned to pre-"emergency" levels, and that the Democrats would have to make major concessions on ObamaCare and a whole host of other things if they wanted their major priorities funded. Had they made that declaration and stuck to it, instead of being constantly terrified over what the media would say about them, we would not be in a position today where Ted Cruz and his small group of allies have to fight in the manner in which they are.
You can never get anything done if you make up your mind that you're scared to try, and that's how most of the Republican leadership in Washington has operated for the past three years. Not only are they scared to try, they're scared of anyone else trying because it will get them criticized and "damage the Republican brand" or whatever.
Their frightened approach to governing hasn't accomplished much of anything, so they have a hell of a lot of nerve criticizing Ted Cruz for actually wanting to fight.
