Justin's Political Corner

An outspoken Republican congressman castigated House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s looks during a radio interview Friday.

Speaking with guest host Larry O’Connor on The Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) argued that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was functionally equivalent to Pelosi because both held one-on-one backroom negotiations with the president. Gohmert then went on to deride Pelosi’s appearance: “Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner.”

O’CONNOR: So basically John Boehner became Nancy Pelosi without the charm?

GOHMERT: For the last two years. Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner. He is who he is.

O’CONNOR: Oh!

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress

As of this writing, every single state except Hawai’i has finalized its vote totals for the 2012 House elections, and Democrats currently lead Republicans by 1,362,351 votes in the overall popular vote total. Democratic House candidates earned 49.15 percent of the popular vote, while Republicans earned only 48.03 percent — meaning that the American people preferred a unified Democratic Congress over the divided Congress it actually got by more than a full percentage point. Nevertheless, thanks largely to partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have a solid House majority in the incoming 113th Congress.

A deeper dive into the vote totals reveals just how firmly gerrymandering entrenched Republican control of the House. If all House members are ranked in order from the Republican members who won by the widest margin down to the Democratic members who won by the widest margins, the 218th member on this list is Congressman-elect Robert Pittenger (R-NC). Thus, Pittenger was the “turning point” member of the incoming House. If every Republican who performed as well or worse than Pittenger had lost their race, Democrats would hold a one vote majority in the incoming House.

Pittenger won his race by more than six percentage points — 51.78 percent to 45.65 percent.

The upshot of this is that if Democrats across the country had performed six percentage points better than they actually did last November, they still would have barely missed capturing a majority in the House of Representatives. In order to take control of the House, Democrats would have needed to win the 2012 election by 7.25 percentage points. That’s significantly more than the Republican margin of victory in the 2010 GOP wave election (6.6 percent), and only slightly less than the margin of victory in the 2006 Democratic wave election (7.9 percent). If Democrats had won in 2012 by the same commanding 7.9 percent margin they achieved in 2006, they would still only have a bare 220-215 seat majority in the incoming House, assuming that these additional votes were distributed evenly throughout the country. That’s how powerful the GOP’s gerrymandered maps are; Democrats can win a Congressional election by nearly 8 points and still barely capture the House.

Partisan gerrymanders, like the one that now all but locks the GOP majority in place, have been the subject of repeated court challenges. America can thank the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court for allowing these gerrymanders to continue.

h/t: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

New York Republicans and Democrats are publicly furious with Speaker John Boehner for abruptly cancelling an expected vote late Tuesday night on a relief package for victims of superstorm Sandy.

The Senate recently passed an aid package for Sandy victims worth $60 billion, a price tag that made many House Republicans nervous. So they decided to divide it up into two parts: $27 billion and $33 billion. The first part was vetted by appropriators for wasteful spending but the second wasn’t. And most of the latter chunk would not have been spent in the first year, anyway. So one school of thought was to vote separately on both and let the chips fall where they may.

The likely upshot was that the House would immediately authorize $27 billion for victims and give themselves time to determine, in the next Congress, how much of the rest was necessary. A two-track vote was expected after the bill to avert the fiscal cliff. But it never happened. Why was it pulled?

Wednesday morning on the House floor, New York Republican Reps. Peter King and Michael Grimm blamed Boehner for what they described as a betrayal.

“It was entirely the speaker’s decision,” said a GOP leadership aide, who doesn’t work in Boehner’s office. “As to why we’re not voting on it now? That’s a question I can’t answer.”

At a press conference in New York, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters Wednesday that he’s “distraught” and “angry” over the House’s failure to hold a vote, blaming it on a House GOP “leadership squabble.” He said Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been “truly helpful” in piecing together the package and blamed Boehner.

“Cantor has been very much for us, but Speaker Boehner … pulled the rug out from under us,” Schumer said. “It’s a Boehner betrayal.”

A Cantor aide affirmed that the majority leader has been pushing for the package.

h/t: TPM

House Republicans have decided to vote Tuesday night on Senate-passed legislation to avert the fiscal cliff — without any amendments.

The news that the Rules Committee will move the bill to the House floor in the evening comes after drama-filled day that nearly scuttled the bipartisan deal that passed the Senate by a 89-9 vote in the first few hours of 2013.

Rep. Rich Nugent (R-FL) predicted that the fewer than half of all House Republicans would vote for the bill without an amendment to add spending cuts. He said Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has indicated he would vote for it but said the speaker isn’t pushing GOP members to do so, saying they should vote their consciences.

Boehner probably won’t need half of his members because House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the legislation would garner strong Democratic support. The move still represents a landmark for the speaker, who has habitually refused to bring up legislation that lacks the support of at least half of his members. But by breaking his rule this time, Boehner insulates himself from the blame for the fiscal cliff.

The bill, if it becomes law, would avert most tax hikes on middle class earners and postpone automatic cuts to defense and domestic programs by two months.

h/t:  Sahil Kapur at TPM

Washington (CNN) – House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Tuesday he opposes the Senate version of the fiscal cliff bill, as the hours wind down for the House to vote on a deal that would avert a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts.

“I do not support the bill,” Cantor told reporters while leaving a House GOP meeting.

After the Senate passed the legislation in the early hours of the morning with 89 senators in favor of the deal, the ball is now in the House’s court to act.

Cantor said no decisions have been made on the bill and leaders are looking for the best path forward.

Meanwhile, several members said they were unsure whether the House would vote Tuesday.

h/t: CNN.com

It took until after 2 a.m. on the morning of January 1, 2013 — a few hours after the Bush tax cuts had technically expired — but the Senate passed legislation that will reinstate tax cuts for middle-class taxpayers, and lock in a variety of higher rates on income above $450,000.

The final vote was 89-8.

Opposing the legislation were Democratic Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE), Tom Harkin (D-IA), and Michael Bennet (D-CO) along with Republican Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Richard Shelby (D-AL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

By passing the legislation with overwhelming support from members of both parties, the Senate has handed House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) responsibility for following suit, and averting the vast majority of the austerity measures in the so-called fiscal cliff.

For that reason, and because House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has held her cards close to her vest, House passage remains unclear. It may require Boehner to break the so-called Hastert Rule, that legislation does not come to the floor without the support of more than half of the majority party.

But it’s not all upside for Democrats, substantively or strategically. The bill approved by the Senate does not resolve the so-called sequester: deep spending cuts to everything from defense to the social safety net. Instead, it delays the sequester for two months.

Many in the party are particularly concerned that the fiscal cliff bill deals Democrats a losing hand, setting up an enormous March fight over federal spending, when government funding bills will have to pass, the sequester kicks in, and the debt limit has to be increased.

After the failure of his fiscal cliff negotiations with the White House, followed by his humiliating inability to get even his ridiculous “Plan B” proposal approved by House Republicans, John Boehner gave up and punted the whole thing over to the president and the Senate. Why? Matt Yglesias says Boehner likes the idea because the only way to get anything through the Senate is to compromise with Republicans, which will produce a deal to the right of Obama’s current proposal. “Then once something like that difference-splitting bill passes the Senate, Boehner gets to take it up as the new baseline for negotiations and pull the ultimate resolution even further to the right.”

True enough. But I doubt this was Boehner’s intent from the beginning. Remember that during the debt limit talks last year, Boehner initially handed off negotiating duties to Eric Cantor, hoping that if Cantor signed off on a deal it would get the rest of the tea party caucus to throw in their votes as well. But Cantor double-crossed him after a few weeks, pulling out of the talks and pushing them back in Boehner’s lap so that Boehner would have to take the heat for agreeing to any tax increases. But even at that, Boehner didn’t give up: he tried to keep negotiating until it became clear that the Cantorites just flatly wouldn’t approve any feasible deal. Eventually a deal got done after Mitch McConnell got involved.

Yep. However, for PR reasons, Obama has to remain the adult in the room at all times, continuing to negotiate honestly even in the face of seemingly relentless intransigence. No ultimatums, no walking out of talks. But on January 1, taxes on the middle class go up and the economy slowly begins to slide into the great Republican Recession of 2013. That’s the leverage that will finally force GOP leaders to get serious. Obama will never say so publicly, but I imagine he knows this perfectly well.

h/t: Kevin Drum at Mother Jones