Maddow Weblog | On Biden’s very first full day, Republicans embrace Party of No posture

As President Joe Biden got to perform on his very first total working day in the White House, there was a frequent thread tying with each other just about every of the day’s big political headlines. It was far from refined.

Are Republicans geared up to contemplate the White House’s new financial aid bundle? No.

Senate Republicans vowed Thursday that President Joe Biden’s coronavirus aid invoice will not get 60 votes, daring the White Home to either compromise with the GOP or use partisan procedural practices to evade their filibuster.

Are Republicans ready to contemplate the White House’s new immigration reform proposal? No.

President Joe Biden’s sweeping immigration prepare ran into swift resistance from vital Senate Republicans, such as some who championed a very similar exertion 8 decades in the past.

Are Republicans organized to consider accountability for Donald Trump pursuing his position in inciting a fatal insurrectionist assault on the Capitol? No.

Senate Republicans are coalescing around a prolonged-shot bid to dismiss the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump right before it even begins, relying on a disputed lawful argument that suggests placing an ex-president on trial is unconstitutional.

Are Republicans ready to settle for the new president’s authority to go after priorities by means of govt steps? No.

Joe Biden has been president for a small more than 24 hours, and Republicans are alleging that he has already poisoned the nicely when it arrives to receiving Congress to act on his agenda. Biden signed 17 executive actions immediately after becoming sworn in Wednesday, and conservatives say this quantities to an finish-run on Congress really legislating.

Are Republicans organized to allow for the Senate to arrange less than the new Democratic vast majority? No.

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, now in the minority, is insisting language assuring the protection of minority rights — as a result of the prerequisite that 60 votes are essential to triumph over filibusters of expenses — be added to a need to-pass organizing resolution.

The conditions are discouraging for these keen to see helpful governing, but they shouldn’t shock any person. GOP leaders wrote a playbook the past time Democrats managed the White House and both equally homes of Congress, and they’re naturally working the very same plays yet again.

Load Mistake

As we not too long ago talked over, observers will need only appear at Mitch McConnell’s steps in early 2009 presidency to get a feeling of how the Kentucky Republican ways his governing responsibilities when Democrats control the levers of federal power.

As I mentioned in my book, just after President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Republicans have been beneath some force to be accountable and constructive, with many pleading with GOP officials to resist the urge to slap absent the Democratic president’s outstretched hand. McConnell executed a different form of approach, refusing to even think about bipartisan governing, even when Obama agreed with his opponents.

As the Kentuckian observed it, the public thinks bipartisan payments are common, so he rejected every single element of the Democratic White House’s agenda so voters would not see Obama succeeding. “We worked pretty really hard to continue to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell told The Atlantic in 2011, referring to laws backed by the White Home.

McConnell was incredibly candid on this level. “General public viewpoint can modify, but it is impacted by what elected officials do,” the GOP leader advised Nationwide Journal in March 2010. “Our response to what [Democrats] have been doing experienced a good deal to do with how the community felt about it. Republican unity in the Residence and Senate has been the key contributing factor to shifting American general public belief.”

In other words and phrases, McConnell felt like he’d cracked a code: Republicans would make well known actions considerably less well-known by killing them. McConnell’s strategy was predicated on the plan that if he could just convert each individual discussion into a partisan foodstuff fight, voters would be repulsed Obama’s outreach to Republicans would be perceived as a failure progressive tips would fail and GOP candidates would be rewarded for their obstinance.

McConnell added before long following, in reference to his party’s solution to policymaking, “The one most significant factor we want to reach is for President Obama to be a just one-expression president…. Our solitary largest political objective is to give our nominee for president the greatest option to be profitable.”

This is the senator’s vision. It is not a solution. With Biden in the Oval Business, McConnell has a guiding basic principle: Failure is the goal. His precedence is to posture his bash to retake the Senate majority immediately after the 2022 midterms, and then elect a Republican president in 2024. Operating constructively with a Democratic White Residence would do little to advance these objectives, which is exactly why he will select a maximalist partisan program: simply because gridlock and dysfunction will give McConnell more of what he wants.

Yesterday was the initially working day in which the GOP reembraced its Celebration of No label. It is not going to be the past.