GOP Candidates-N-Tha-Hood

Sending this one out to my man Mitt “8-Ball” Romney and his vulture-capitalist gangstas from Bain:

Why Obama’s Recess Appointment of Cordray Was Smart Politics

Anyone who reads this blog knows how important I’ve long thought the CFPB is, and how hard I pushed for President Obama not to let the GOP roll him when it came to appointing a director to the board, which would unleash its full powers (and without which, it was only half-enabled). I howled when Obama let the opportunity to recess appoint Elizabeth Warren pass him by, and I urged Obama to recess-appoint his eventual nominee, Richard Cordray. I threatened that the entire “Democratic wing of the Democratic party” was watching to see whether he’d cave on Cordray, as well. And I shouted it from the rooftops when the President did not cave, but instead did the obvious and and correct thing, and stood up for American consumers and citizens by recess appointing Cordray.

But this isn’t about me, and it’s not even really about Warren or Cordray either. It’s about something which struck me as I read this article today, from the AP in the Miami Herald, about the “furious” GOP Senators, and what their “next move” may be on the topic of Obama’s end-run around their obstructionism, now that the Senate is coming back into session. This is the passage that struck me particularly:

Republicans have pledged retaliation for Obama’s recess appointments, but haven’t indicated what it might be.

“The Senate will need to take action to check and balance President Obama’s blatant attempt to circumvent the Senate and the Constitution, a claim of presidential power that the Bush Administration refused to make,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is his party’s top member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

(emphasis added)

Of course they’ve pledged retaliation. It’s what today’s GOP does, especially in an election year: throw red meat to their base. Stomp and fulminate. Whine and stick their fingers in their ears and say “la-la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t-heeeeeaaar-you.” Threaten to take their ball and go home.

What the constipated-sounding Grassley and other GOP Senators won’t do, however, is lay their cards on the table. Why? Well, as the AP piece goes on to note shortly after the above quote, “Republicans have to consider whether their actions, especially any decision to block all nominees, might play into Obama’s hands.” That may indeed be part of it. Mitch McConnell, for one, is certainly canny enough to think of such considerations. It may turn out in the end that McConnell and the rest of the Senate GOP manage to dig up  some heretofore unknown parliamentary trick from the furthest reaches of the bowels of the Big Senate Rule Book of Collegiality and Obstructionism, but I wouldn’t count on it: they’ve mined that vein pretty thoroughly already.

But the real reason Senate Republicans aren’t eager (or willing) to say exactly how they’ll “retaliate” against Obama for his having the temerity to ignore their obstructionism may be simpler than that. It may be that they just plain don’t HAVE any good options – at least, not ones which would be in any way defensible on the public stage in an election year. Think about it: the reality of McConnell’s situation is that at for at least the next year (until January, 2013), despite how the lack of progress on Democratic initiatives in the Senate makes it often appear, the Senate is actually still under Democratic control. The only way the minority GOP have been able to exercise the degree of control over the process they have up until now is by bending the Senate rules out of all proportion to their original intent (not to mention precedent) in order to essentially function as nothing more than a giant collective “no” to everything the President or the Democratic leadership of the Senate propose. McConnell isn’t actually in control of anything (except his own caucus). He can use the filibuster to stymie the will of the majority by preventing majority votes from ever taking place…but it’s important to remember that the reason the GOP DO so is because if those majority votes were held, the GOP would simply LOSE, most of the time. That’s what it means to be in the minority: you get outvoted.

So, I’ll go even further than just the truth of the suggestion that McConnell & Co. understand that trying to up the ante and continue this war might “play into Obama’s hands.” The Obama White House had to be expecting that the Senate GOP would be nearly inarticulate with spluttering rage if Obama trumped their obstructionism and recess-appointed Cordray (and the NLRB board members as well, let’s not forget). McConnell’s real-world choices for ways to respond are very, very limited indeed. What are they going to do? Pass new Senate rules which prevent such things in the future? Sorry, but to do that – to proactively get something accomplished in the Senate (as opposed to just trying to rule by negation, as McConnell & Co have been trying, with some success, it must be admitted, to do) – you have to actually be in the majority. At the very least, you have to have a good enough relationship with enough of the opposition’s members that you stand a chance of convincing enough of them on a per-issue basis to vote with you in order to pass something by majority vote. McConnell, no matter how “canny” he is, or how much he wishes it were so, can’t simply obstruct the Senate into voting FOR anything.

And over the past five years, he’s burned most of his bridges with even the moderate members of the Democratic party. One of the drawbacks of the GOP’s rule-by-negation strategy of the last five years in the Senate (since Democrats re-took control, and especially since Obama’s election) is that they’ve made themselves genuinely unlikable, both within their chamber and in general. Nobody polls congress on how they feel about other members of congress, but look no further than the abysmal-but-steady approval rating of the Senate GOP, holding fast at around 20% or even less. That’s not, by the way, to say that the Democrats in the Senate fare tremendously better – they come in at an equally-steady 32-ish percent. But it does suggest that even the traditionally-disengaged public knows where the lion’s (or perhaps the rat’s) share of the blame for congressional inaction correctly belongs, namely: squarely with the GOP. The point is: the GOP’s conscious win-at-all-costs, obstruct everything strategy hasn’t made them any friends, and has actually cost them many of the ones they thought they might have been able to count on.

So, unless they can pull some kind of additional parlor-trickery out of their…back pockets (**ahem**) this upcoming legislative session, something to make our government even more dysfunctional and rotten, McConnell and his merry band of GOP obstructionists may simply not be ABLE to do anything about President Obama’s flouting of their obstructionism, because they aren’t in the majority. This may very well show anyone who’s watching just how impotent the GOP truly are, and just how broadly disliked their policies are. It’s smart politics: let McConnell & Co. whine and stamp their feet and threaten to bring down hellfire. I think Obama knows they’re betting on a busted flush, and it may turn out that the President has finally realized there’s little downside – and in fact, considerable potential gain to be had – in calling their bluff.

Obama Recess-Appoints Richard Cordray to Head CFPB, GOP (P)outraged

I’ve said it on Twitter already, I’ll repeat it here: THANK YOU, PRESIDENT OBAMA, FOR RECESS-APPOINTING RICHARD CORDRAY TO HEAD THE CFPB:

President Obama will appoint former Ohio Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray on Wednesday to be the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, making a controversial decision to install Cordray while the Senate is in brief recess to avoid Republican opposition, according to a White House official.

And although that paragraph is “just the facts,” kudos as well to the LAT for getting the backstory right and not trying to soft-pedal it or shoot for false equivalence in an attempt to provide “balance”:

By refusing to allow Congress to adjourn, Republicans have been able to prevent recess — and recess appointments. The Senate and House have met every few days in pro forma sessions that last a matter of minutes.

Democrats, under Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, used the same strategy on occasion when President George W. Bush was in power.

But the Republicans have used the strategy throughout 2011 as the procedural arms race has escalated in the face of GOP opposition.

(emphasis added)

That’s exactly right: the GOP has escalated the procedural war(s) in both houses of congress – but particularly the Senate, which is more susceptible to such procedural abuses of power by the minority. This will be – in fact, already IS being – portrayed by the GOP as an unprecedented abuse of power, yada yada yada…you can almost write the half-whiny, half-fulminating script yourself. The important things here are two: 1) it is the GOP which has broken every vow, gone back on every “gentleman’s agreement,” stretched every rule to (and sometimes past) the breaking point in an effort to deny this President any victories (and ultimately to deny him a second term), and 2) on this issue, Obama did not bend. He did not cave. He did not give in to either GOP pressure, fear of not being “bipartisan” enough, or centrist-leaning, pro-banker aides’ advice to “let the (Wall St.) wookie win.”

I could probably waste a lot of time trying to guess what combination of circumstances motivated Obama to do exactly the right thing in this case: it could be because it was the right thing to do. It could be because he felt heat from progressive groups. It could be because it’s now campaign season and he’s switched back to “stump Obama” and away from “bipartisanship-seeking, conciliator-in-chief Obama.” I have no doubt that in some corners of the Internet, Obama’s decision today is already being portrayed as yet another glorious, planned-in-advance, perfectly-executed example of eleventy-dimensional chess. Any combination of those things might be the real story. But none of it matters much at this point, primarily because we’ll likely never really know what the reasons were (at least not until memoirs-time, years in the future, and possibly not even then).

But even though the political junkie in me would LOVE to know what the real combination of reasons or forces which compelled this particular decision were, and even though I think knowing would help many political observers get a better handle on how this White House operates, even THAT doesn’t change my opinion that it wouldn’t matter all that much if we knew. At least, not in comparison to the simple fact that the (obviously in-the-works for a while) decision to recess appoint Richard Cordray stands as a shining example of this administration choosing to utilize the full tools available to it in the service of the American people against powerful special interests (and the opposition party), instead of inexplicably leaving some tools available to the executive unused or cutting a premature deal that relied even in part upon the good faith of an opposition party clearly unmoored from not just restraint and ethics, but seemingly reality at times, as well.

Because although nothing is certain and no one can see the future clearly, this is the most hopeful signal we’ve had in a long time from this President that he understands the nature and MO of the forces arrayed against him as well as the realistic options he has available to him to make as much genuine progress for Americans as possible. And it is also a very hopeful signal from the President that he both wants and intends to do many of them. I seem to remember this guy from 2007-8. Only back then, he was just talking a good game about a lot of this stuff. The intervening three years have been a mixed bag in terms of both Obama’s willingness and his ability to deliver on them. Today, he’s talking about them again, but this time after having taken a giant, concrete step forward in DOING them.

Congratulations again, Mr. President, and thank you for doing the right thing when you had the ability to do so.

Cliqueishness and Tribalism on Twitter

John Cole at Balloon Juice says everything there is to say about it (though, if you’re not a Twitter denizen, his post requires some backstory).

If you’re not on Twitter…count yourself lucky. OK, not really. What I was going to say is: if you’re not on Twitter, what’s been happening for a while now is that a group of Twitter users who are interconnected both on and off Twitter have had the long knives out for Salon blogger/attorney Glenn Greenwald, as Cole describes in his post. The reasons for such a concerted backlash against Greenwald in particular are several, but I’m not going to get into them all here. The reason for that is (as Cole also hints at): it’s incredibly inside-baseball and almost unimaginably lengthy to recount the whole mess in detail; to do it justice. If you’re interested, you won’t have any trouble finding posts in various outlets about why Greenwald (and a few other bloggers/pundits) are considered by some to be just awful. For my purposes here (and without weighing in on the merits of either the various previous complaints or Greenwald’s actual words and responses), let me just leave it by noting that a coordinated campaign of disagreement against Greenwald does indeed exist, and has existed for some time among a remarkably uniform group of people on Twitter.

What happened recently (and what precipitated Cole’s post) was that someone was (as usual) taking Greenwald to task, this time over his critique of the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA which was signed into law by President Obama on December 31st (I’m not linking to Glenn because I didn’t link to the critiques, either). During a discussion involving Greenwald and some people who opposed him as well as some who agreed with him, one of the people who clearly agreed with Glenn’s view and thought those who were attacking him were justifying something under Obama that they’d have opposed under Bush said, hyperbolically, that Greenwald’s attackers (specifically a Twitter user named AngryBlackLady) would try to justify or support it if Obama “raped a nun live on TV.” Greenwald, a while later, said he agreed with that idea of some people’s reflexive defensiveness about Obama’s positions and actions. Aprés THAT, le deluge.

More than seventy-two hours straight of outrage and amplified Greenwald-attacking among this group resulted, with many of the attacks wrongly accusing Greenwald himself of having coined the nun-rape analogy. Although I think that, much like Nazi analogies, anything as extreme as nun-rape is often a questionable analogy to make regardless of the circumstances, I think John Cole is right when he says that Greenwald

…wasn’t minimizing rape, he was using rape as the ugliest example he could think of (and he later added child-killing and assassination), far from minimizing rape and far from making rape ‘jokes.’

That’s the backstory.

What makes Cole’s post much more relevant than (ahem) the fact that I agree with his general take on what will probably gruesomely be forever-after called “nun-rape gate” (or “NUN RAPE RAWR,” as Cole puts it), is Cole’s zeroing-in on a problem I’ve noticed for quite some time on Twitter (and in the larger blogosphere, but Twitter is in some ways sort of the crack to the blogosphere’s cocaine: concentrated and much quicker-acting): the tribalism and cliqueishness, which is concentrated in one particular area.

Payroll Tax Holiday Aftermath

I just received, as I’m sure many of you did, an email from the White House crowing about the recent total victory over John “Dr. No” Boehner and the GOTea party house.

I don’t blame the President and his team at all for sending out these glad tidings. It WAS a shockingly complete rout of Boehner and his pro-1% flying monkeys. Congratulations all ’round. For real. Only…the email focused upon the involvement of individual citizens who took to their computers and their webcams to record stories of what an extra $40 per paycheck means to them. While I’m sure that helped reassure the Democrats (and warn the Republicans) that the 99% really did stand with the President and the Democrats on this issue.

That made me write the following response:

Although I’d like to believe the heartwarming fiction that it was only the response of tens of thousands of people who took to the web to tell their stories of privation via a tax increase which made the difference between the payroll tax holiday passing and it NOT passing, I’ve watched Washington work for too long to be fooled by that story. And so have all of you.

After all, it wasn’t as if John Boehner and the rest of the obstructionists in the house GOP really didn’t understand the concept of a tax cut and what it could mean for people. That’s Republicans’ wheelhouse issue. Or at least it used to be. Perhaps that may be changing…that would be the true miracle of Christmas as it applies to gridlocked Washington this year.

No, what made the difference (as we both know) was the both the President and the Democrats in the House AND Senate simply stood firm. You knew you had the people at your backs and the facts on your side, and this time, you simply. didn’t. cave.

And look what it got you.

Everyone from Paul Krugman to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal took to their respective podiums and called this one an unmitigated disaster for Boehner and his Tea Party minions. And rightly so. It WAS an unmitigated disaster for them. But let’s be clear about the reasons, here: YOU did it, not us. The public has a responsibility every couple of years to change the makeup of Washington, if enough of us don’t like what’s been going on.

The problem is – or has been, up until now – that no matter how we seem to shuffle the deck each biennial election, Washington doesn’t seem to change into what we need, want or – in most cases – into what the people running for the seats we elect them to promised they’d push for.

This time was different. You stayed the course, to quote a certain ex-President. We’ve never doubted that you knew what was right, or what would work…we’ve just been disappointed because time and again, you seemed to lack either the political will or the negotiating skill to make it actually happen. There’s a limit to what the public can do, once the election is over. Every election, we’re painfully aware that we’re not electing policies, we’re electing individuals, and that means a crap-shoot. It means we’re getting a pig in a poke. We TRY to get what we want by electing people who SAY they’re for this or that…but, too often, it just doesn’t happen, even when it seems like it was quite possible.

This time, YOU held the line, not us. We don’t vote on the floor of congress. We don’t have veto power (or the power of a threatened veto). You do. And look what happens when you stick together and USE IT. You win.

Remember that. It’s an important lesson, one I’m sure I sound patronizing to even remind you about. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but the truth is that, from out here, far too often it seems as if you’ve forgotten that simple fact. Once the election’s over, YOU have the power. And when you step up and use it, you’ll instantly have that astonishingly hopeful coalition of the public behind you that you had in 2008.

I hope that won’t be lost on you as you head into 2012. Good job on this one, truly. See what YOU can accomplish when you don’t let the GOP steamroll you?

Thank You, Mr. President! (seriously!)

President Obama comes in for a fair amount of criticism from me here at PTL, for good reason: there’s a lot to criticize.

But contrary to what I know some people suspect, I am not now, and have never been anti-Obama. Other than the fact that there’s plenty about this administration’s actions that deserves criticism, the other reason there’s perhaps a higher ratio of criticism to kudos around here when it comes to the President is that I’ve always thought it’s the job of citizens (not just journalists) to hold their leaders accountable to what they said they’d do – or hinted they might do. It’s citizens’ jobs to push like heck for the things they want to see from their government, and to make it known when those things aren’t accomplished.

In business, there’s an old bit of wisdom which has it that a happy customer will tell – MAYBE – their spouse or best friend about their good experience, but a customer you upset or give short shrift to will tell EVERYONE. To see the truth of this, one only need visit the consumer reviews section of any commerce web site that allows such things. And the same general human tendency is present in politics too: when an elected official does what they’re supposed to do, it not as big news – or as celebrated – as when they fail to do so.

But, whether in politics or business, when something truly great is done or achieved, people take the time to notice it, and to mention it. And notice is exactly what I did today when I read this (video at link, too!):

With the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta was able to win a raffle that gave her the first off-the-ship kiss, a Navy tradition, with her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell

When the couple began dating, they had to hide their status under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The 17-year-old policy was repealed in September. On Wednesday, in front of Gaeta’s entire ship and a cheering crowd, the two women made history as the first same-sex couple to share the coveted kiss.

Damn. That’s just awesome. Thank you, President Obama.

 

PolitiFuct

I’m about the 39,023,742th person to write about this so far today, but I couldn’t let the abomination of PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” go by without my own comment. If you’ve been somehow living under a rock (or inside a mall, without 3G coverage) for the past day, the fact-chucking checking web site PolitiFact has released its annual, end-of-year “Lie of the Year” award.

This year, the Lie of the Year goes to the claim that Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed medical plan, put forth earlier this year and then quickly abandoned by Republicans when it became clear it could not pass the Senate under any circumstances, would end Medicare.

It’s hard to know where to start with this, since the finding is so obviously, on-its-face untrue that it almost beggars the imagination that it earned coveted “lie of the year” spot at one of the nation’s most prominent (and supposedly eminent) fact-checking websites.

PolitiFact’s claim that this is a “lie” at all – let alone the biggest one of the year – centers on their (specious) reasoning that because Paul Ryan, throughout his plan’s text, still called the new, untested, untried program he intended to substitute for traditional Medicare, “Medicare.”

Really, that’s their reasoning: that Ryan still calls his plan “Medicare.”

House Republicans to Force Senate to Hold ‘Pro Forma’ Sessions to Prevent Recess Appointments

In a move which will surprise approximately no one who’s been paying even the slightest bit of attention since 2006, when the Democrats re-took control of congress, the House GOP signaled yesterday that it would use a parliamentary procedure which prevents either house of congress from going into a recess longer than three days without the consent of the other house.

How can House Republicans force the Senate not to adjourn? Republicans, always on the lookout for ways to deny President Obama and the Democrats their due authority and legislative goals, have discovered and are utilizing a never-before-used-in-this-way provision of the constitution, Article I, section 5, clause 4, which reads:

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

This means even though Democrats are still in the majority in the Senate, Harry Reid cannot simply adjourn the Senate for the holiday break (during which time President Obama could recess-appoint some of the blocked nominees the GOP has been filibustering). Instead, the Senate will hold a pro-forma session every three days which will last no more than a couple of minutes, but which is long enough to prevent the Senate from considering itself in recess for the entire month-plus between yesterday and January 23. In short, what this means in practice is: President Obama will not be able to recess-appoint Richard Cordray to the CFPB.

Unless.

Unless Mr. Obama is willing to take steps of his own, also granted to him explicitly by the constitution. Specifically, Article II, section 3, clause 3, which reads:

[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The constitution is an astonishing document. Although the framers could not foresee everything which might come to pass in the future, they did in an amazing number of instances have an uncanny insight into human nature as applied in the political process, setting up our justly-vaunted system of checks and balances. Most people, when they hear of checks and balances, think of the separation of powers into three branches of government, with good reason. But the framers’ clear desire not to have the government shanghied by any faction using the law as a procedural weapon for subverting the will of the people or the balanced operation of government, can be seen in many smaller and less famous portions of the constitution, as well. This is definitely one of them.

Everyone knows the framers were considerably worried about the re-imposition of a monarchy. That’s why they gave the President considerable power but made him or her subordinate to congress in many key areas. Conversely, however, the framers had already (in the late 1700s!) seen enough of legislative grandstanding, gridlock, treachery and abuse in Europe that they also were able to foresee the kind of shenanigans that might ensue in a body so large and diffuse in responsibility as congress. So they put little mini-checks and balances directly into our constitution so the President, while he could not and cannot simply ride roughshod over congress, can use power specifically granted to him to break up such ideological and legislative logjams.

I’ve written extensively already about the self-professed need of the Obama administration to have a competent, pro-consumer director of the CFPB. The administration themselves has highlighted this need, and I agree 100% with their reasoning. Now, as every alert onlooker has observed already, the time has come for the White House to put up or shut up about this desire. The Republicans have opened the door by using an obscure provision of the constitution to jam up the Senate majority into accepting the will of the OTHER chamber. Now, President Obama can and should allow the houses of congress to function as the framers intended them to. He has the explicit authority to force the Senate (and House) into adjournment, during which time recess appointments can be made. Even the GOP Senators don’t assert that Cordray is unfit to helm the CFPB; they simply don’t want the CFPB itself to exist. Too late. They already lost that battle, and their unprecedented obstructionism must be met with equally unprecedented obstruction-removal.

Break the logjam. Adjourn congress for the holidays. Recess appoint Richard Cordray so he can begin protecting consumers from fiscal predation. Obstructionism delenda est!

PolitiFact Points Out Unprecedented GOP Obstruction of Cordray Nomination

There’s been a fair amount of forensics done lately on some of the “ratings” made by PolitiFact and other fact-checking agencies. Some of the criticism has been very accurate and illuminating, some of it is partisan nonsense designed to reduce the public value of facts to the level of opinions (after all, if opinions are as valid as facts, then the GOP is on much firmer debate ground).

And indeed, there are times when the fact-checking services (not just PolitiFact) get it wrong. Despite the occasional gaffes, mistakes and (inevitable, human) bias that sometimes creeps into their work, however, the fact-checking services DO provide an invaluable service: they do the research and verification that the average news consumer has neither the time nor, often, the skills to perform on a daily basis for themselves in order to make sure that the news they’re getting is factually correct. So, while it’s important to “watch the watchers” and make sure the fact-checkers got it right, when they make a pronouncement, it’s worth paying attention to.

Such is the case with the recent fact-checking by PolitiFact of Senator Sherrod Brown’s claim that the GOP obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of Richard Cordray to helm the CFPB specifically because they objected to the agency itself that Cordray is nominated to direct, was literally without precedent in Senate history.

PolitiFact checked into Brown’s claim and (surprise, surprise!) after their investigation, rated it true:

…based on the record, including its nuance, we take the Senate historian’s word: Brown was correct when he said this was the first time that a political party has blocked a nomination unless changes were made to an agency. To repeat Ritchie’s words: “We searched through past cases and could not find anything that fit the current circumstance.”

We rate Brown’s claim true.

That’s “true.” Not “mostly true” or “partly true,” but TRUE, full stop.

PolitiFact also, as is their wont, goes out of their way to say that their determination “isn’t a question of which side is morally or politically correct,” and I agree: it isn’t (and shouldn’t be) PolitiFact’s job to determine which side of a question of fact is morally or politically correct. But the determination itself of which side was speaking truthfully and which side was not can and should lead voters, readers, media figures and the public at large to draw conclusions about the political or moral worth of each side’s claims and/or action.

I point this out because in this case, there is already both hand-wringing on the Democratic side and saber-rattling on the GOP side that if President Obama should recess-appoint Mr. Cordray to the post Republicans are denying him even a confirmation vote for, it will be seen by voters as a power play or even an abuse of power by the President. Making matters worse, it may even be difficult for Mr. Obama to make a standard-issue recess appointment like the ones George W. Bush used to install John Bolton as head of the United States UN delegation, because even though it is the Senate which provides advise and consent on Presidential nominations, there is an obscure rule in Congress which provides that each house must obtain the permission of the other house if it wishes to adjourn for more than three days.

In the past, recess appointments weren’t made by Presidents during such short Congressional breaks, so it would indeed be unprecedented for President Obama to do so now. Ordinarily the upcoming winter/Christmas break would be much longer than three days, but because the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is working with the GOP-minority Senate to try to stymie as many Obama appointments as they can, they are utilizing this obscure congressional rule to deny the Senate the ability to go into recess for longer than a few days. This sets up the specter of President Obama having to either forcing Congress to adjourn (a power the President has, but which has never been used by a President), or make a recess appointment in a much shorter break than has ever occurred before. Either action by President Obama would indeed be without precedent in American history.

However, this is a conscious strategy by the GOP. They are already utilizing every tool at their disposal to prevent the CFPB from functioning effectively as a consumer bulwark against rapacious lenders, and they are counting on the fact that the President will lose his nerve if his only choices are to take one of a number of unprecedented steps in order to accomplish what should be a relatively routine task. Indeed, Republican Senators and right-wing media figures are already bloviating against “unprecedented abuses of power” and the like by the President.

In truth, I am not usually a fan of creative rule-interpretation in government, even when it benefits “my side,” precisely because of the precedent it can set. There’s always the proverbial possibility of opening up Pandora’s box, and with it, a host of unforeseen consequences which might be potentially very damaging. But in this case, the President himself has already pushed Cordray’s nomination to the forefront of the White House agenda, with the President publicly and repeatedly highlighting the importance of installing a staunch consumer ally into the position as the head of the CFPB. President Obama is quite right to do place such emphasis: the Dodd-Frank law provides for this position to be filled, and if it remains unfilled, the CFPB cannot fulfill all of its mandate to protect consumers from predatory lending.

Throughout this dragged-out mess, as the PolitiFact investigation reminds us, it is Republicans who have been the ones taking unprecedented steps, not Democrats. The GOP leadership want to re-legislate the creation of the bureau itself, and its structure and powers. Too bad. That time has passed. If they truly believe the CFPB to be a threat to the country (instead of just to the bankers who pull the GOP strings), then they should wait until the next time they’re in the majority in the Senate and control the White House, and see how well they do at repealing or gutting the CFPB. See what the public thinks about going back to the days of fifteen-page credit card agreements and predatory payday lending at thirty, forty, fifty percent interest. Indeed, that’s why the GOP is fighting so hard – and so dirty – now: because they know for certain that once this bureau is fully up and functioning, the public is going to LOVE it and wonder how they ever did without it. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner know full well that they’ve got one chance to strangle this pro-consumer agency in its infancy, before the public gets a chance to see how well it will protect them. So they’re pulling out ALL the stops.

From a tactical standpoint, I suppose, you can’t fault them: they are playing (as they always do) as hard as they can, playing to win. President Obama, however, should take a page from the GOP’s playbook and play equally hard; play to win for voters and consumers. The President and Democrats are agreed that the country needs the CFPB to have a pro-consumer director, sooner rather than later. They have both the public and the law on their side. More importantly, they are right in their assessment. Richard Cordray is the director the CFPB and the public deserve, and President Obama should not allow himself to be cowed by threats of taking “unprecedented action” by opposition leaders who utilize parliamentary parlor tricks and equally unprecedented maneuvering to block what the law provides for. As PolitiFact reminds us, it is the Republicans who are taking unprecedented steps to block reform; President Obama should not fail to use the tools which the constitution clearly puts at his disposal to break such a logjam of obstructionism. Although taking such steps would indeed be unprecedented, doing so would also be a nothing more than an appropriate proportional response to the unprecedented obstruction of the GOP. To put it more bluntly – and in keeping with PolitiFact’s meter with which I began this post – here’s a graphical representation of how much weight President Obama should assign to GOP warnings against him taking “unprecedented steps” to appoint Richard Cordray to head the CFPB:

Recess appoint Richard Cordray by whatever means necessary.

Cordray Nomination Frozen But Not Dead – Will Obama Act?

Dave Dayen at FireDogLake says everything that needs to be said about the Cordray nomination as it currently stands:

Describing the blockade of Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a form of nullification sounds accurate to me. Cordray is almost an afterthought to this issue. Republicans disagree with the concept of a federal agency that looks out for consumers. So they plan to stop any effort to staff the agency with a director, which has the added benefit in this case of holding off consumer protection regulation of non-bank financial institutions, unless it is gutted.

[...]

Democrats and the President have an option here. They can simply force a recess appointment. The President has all the tools at his disposal to get a director in place, whether by forcing Congress to adjourn, or using the inter-session period as a recess to use his appointment power.

But the most important bit of Dayen’s post – and indeed, about the Cordray nomination and the entire tawdry fight over the CFPB itself – is this:

These [actions] may seem like power plays, but as power plays go they pale in comparison to Senate Republicans hijacking an entire agency and blocking anyone from serving as its director until their demands are met. In other words, a recess appointment would be a proportional response at this point. And Republicans would grumble about it, but I don’t see why anyone should care about that. Putting a greater spotlight on their intentions here should be the goal.

So yes, Republicans are using a nullification strategy. But it cannot be successful without Democratic toothlessness, a form of complicity. Democrats could have Cordray in place by the end of the year.

Exactly the situation, as it stands today. If either a banker-stooge nominee is substituted for Cordray, or the agency itself is neutered (as Republicans have stated is their real goal), it will have been entirely, ENTIRELY because Democrats chose not to pursue readily available, workable options to get Cordray installed. Yes, any such recess appointment would only last until the expiration of the current congress – far less than the current five year term the Director of the CFPB is supposed to hold. But once consumers and the media get a sense of what a fully-empowered CFPB can do, there won’t be any question they’ll want a strong consumer advocate helming it. The GOP know this. That’s why they’re going all-out to stop it NOW, before the horse is out of the barn. President Obama has the tools to foil them. It’s up to him – entirely – to choose to use them.