We want to touch on a few things right at the top here. One, Chris Matthews did not make news by saying that the President is able to negotiate with Tehran but not the Republicans, which Chuck Todd purposely misquoted to illustrate how what Mr. Matthews said will be interpreted by the Republicans. So since Mr. Matthews did not give Republicans the appropriate statement for political fodder, Mr. Todd made sure they got it.
Mr. Matthews explained the intractable position each side has on immigration and the Affordable Care Act. Republicans take the lion's share of the heat when it comes to not being able to negotiate, as they should. The party has demonized the very word compromise, which follows the direction that has been given a small but very vocal base. With that said, that doesn't by any means give a pass to President Obama. This will get to more in a minute.
But first the second thing we wanted to comment on is the newly reported execution of an American aid worker, Peter Kassig, by ISIS. NBC's Richard Engel pointed out that Mr. Kassig in part was executed because he was at one time a U.S. soldier fighting in Iraq. After his service, he returned to the region in Syria to do aid work where ISIS captured him in 2013. What we see is hubris driving an ill-advised farce of a pretext to launch a war that sent thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers to the Middle East, one of them Mr. Kassig, where on the way over 100,000 Iraqis die they saw unspeakable horrors of war up close. Perhaps that's what happened to Mr. Kassig who then felt compelled to go back and help people in the midst of violence; violence in all that had been set off by the invasion of Iraq and resulted in a terrorist state swallowing up what was formerly part of the country. Mr. Kassig was then killed by that terrorist group. The fractures caused by the Iraq war run deep and here's one more way in which they manifest themselves.
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You can tell from last week's column, that we thought compromise between the Republican-controlled Congress and the Obama Administration would be a fallacy and sure enough within one week, the political war of words have been turned up to eleven. Case in point, the interview with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R) on today's program, where he stated that the president is breaking the law by executing an executive order on immigration that would essentially stop deportation of 5 million undocumented immigrants. He also stated that the President would shutdown the government by doing so.
The president would neither be breaking the law nor shutting down the government by signing this executive order - those are simply facts. For one, Congress shuts down the government, not the president who would not act if it were an impeachable (illegal) act. We get what Mr. Jindal was trying to do in his blunt rhetoric. His implication is that if the president goes by executive order, he'll force the Republicans to shut down the government.
It would be foolish for Republicans to do this. The Congressional overreach that The New York Times' Helene Cooper mentioned at the end of the program will come to fruition, and the reason is because as a shutdown continues on, ultimately in the American people's collective the reason for the shutdown fades and sharp attention turns to those responsible for keeping it going and their refusal to end it.
One way in which the Republicans could stop the president from signing the executive order would be for the House to take up the Senate immigration bill. By saying they would do this, they take the political high ground on the president who would surely take a sharp political hit if he still went ahead with the order. The Republicans in the House could mark up the bill to their liking, vote on it and send it to the Republican-controlled Senate for a vote who could then pull out reconciliation to pass it with a simple majority. This way, they wrestled the issue away from the president handing him a defeat, give the perception to the American people that you are there to govern, and provided what is in the bill endear yourself as a party to the Hispanic community.
But the Republicans' position, according to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), is that there will be no immigration reform at all. The reason is that anything in the bill that even smells of amnesty would anger the base of the party. Conversely, the business leaders that support the Republican party want provisions in any reform that call for leniency with regard to guest workers - a non-starter for the base. The result is that Republicans have no alternative to present.
This segues nicely into the fact that Republicans who want to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) have not presented an alternative proposal. Governor Jindal gave reasons why he didn't like the ACA and said he had an alternative plan, but he never said what it is. With no alternative, it will be very difficult for Senator Mitchell McConnell (R-KY) who said that he wants to pull out Obamacare 'root and branch' to explain why he has the healthcare tree in his hand once 250,000 of his constituents have had their KYNECT (Kentucky exchange) health insurance taken away, much less the rest of the country.
Avik Roy, opinion writer for Forbes, said that the increasing number of people on medicaid is driving up premiums for people with private insurance. However, by most accounting, overall premium costs across the country have gone down. Additionally, inflation on healthcare overall is slowing because more people are buying into the system. Mr. Roy's argument didn't even hold up throughout the program hour, but there is legitimate concern for small business owners who may not be able to handle the employer mandate of the law. Unfortunately, Republicans will not fix this because in an all-or-nothing approach all you want is a hammer, there's no need for a wrench. Repair is superfluous.
Very soon, the rhetoric is going to meet the road and repeal-only of one big issue and sitting on your hands for another are not going to maintain the Congressional majorities Republicans surely want to keep. There is no agenda in these tactics, and within the next two years the American people will recognize this solely as such. If Republicans want to stop the president, stay in power and have a shot at the White House; then they need a real agenda and pretty darn quick.
Panel: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Chris Matthews, "Hardball" MSNBC; Reid Wilson, The Washington Post; Carly Fiorina.
One more thing - On Net Neutrality, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has no idea what he's talking about and his comparison of it to Obamacare is both stupid and irresponsible. With net neutrality, the playing field is no longer level for web entrepreneurs vs. big corporations. Instead of all of the internet moving at the same speed, big corporations would be able to unfairly move faster and that would stifle innovation. The internet is not broken, and end neutrality would do just that.
One more one more thing - We want to speak to the people who are asking Carly Fiorina if she is running for president. She was coy in her answer to Chuck Todd and she many people are asking her. Well, to them and to Chuck Todd we say - STOP ASKING. Those people are idiots. Are you kidding? A former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who practically tanked the company while getting a golden parachute who moved on to be a failed Senate candidate does not a president make. Sure, more power to anyone who runs for president, but really?
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