Posted on 12/12/2014 7:25:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
An interesting observation tweeted by Townhall and The Federalist columnist Amy Otto caught my eye last night:
We just won a historic election. Let's tell those people that Elizabeth Warren has their back. #genius
— Amy Otto (@AmyOtto8) December 12, 2014
Otto had put her finger on a fascinating condition: The hideously named “Cromnibus” bill, which narrowly passed the House on Thursday with 219 votes, had united the conservative wing of the GOP and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in opposition. For many conservatives, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) far better represented their position on the bill than did House Republican leadership.
Politico expanded on this:
The tea party’s opposition to the rider puts it in rare agreement with progressives, who also are criticizing the provision but for different reasons. Democratic Party committees would also benefit from the measure, but they do not have the same level of intra-party strife as the Republicans.
In a statement calling on Democrats to oppose the spending bill, Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said the rider would gut “campaign finance laws” and “would represent Democrats marching in the exact wrong direction.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has also cited the campaign finance provision as one of the two reasons for Democrats to sink the bill.
Politico’s effort to downplay “intra-party strife” that Democrats are presently struggling with is comical. Yesterday alone, Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee mounted a campaign of open opposition the White House’s preferred outcome on this funding bill. Speaking on behalf of the president earlier that day, the CIA director delivered a lengthy and rare rebuttal to a scathing report issued by the Democrat-led Senate Intelligence Committee. That statement was countered point-by-point and in real time by SSCI Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). If that’s not “intra-party strife,” I don’t know what is.
Politico’s observation that conservatives and progressives had found common ground over their opposition to “Cromnibus” was, however, valid.
“So help me God, I have no way to refute the basic point that the Democrats are making about the CRomnibus fight right now,” RedState’s Leon Wolf wrote. “In fact, I might even go so far as to say they are right.”
“Here we have a bill that will kick the funding question almost a full year down the road, increases government spending, funds a wildly unpopular and probably unconstitutional executive amnesty, and continues the very practices voters sent Republicans to Washington to oppose,” he added. “In this context, what possible good faith reason can the Republicans have for threatening to gum up the whole works over doing a favor to Wall Street?”
That compelling argument caught the eye of no less a figure than Warren herself who approvingly cited this passage on the floor of the Senate on Thursday.
“These conservative activists are right,” the Bay State Senator said after quoting Wolf at length. “If you believe in smaller government, how can you support a provision that would expand a government insurance program and put taxpayers on the hook for the riskiest private activities?”
On Friday, Warren will join with conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in an effort to get another 39 of their fellow senators to kill the “Cromnibus.” The fact that the two populist wings of both parties are beginning to look more and more alike is not lost on their opponents. “Elizabeth Warren clearly now a Democratic Ted Cruz,” an unnamed GOP House member said according to CNBC’s John Harwood. “She has set off a stampede among Dems.”
I don’t think that was meant as a compliment.
Otto is right. The fact that conservative Republicans are finding more common cause with the face of the progressive moment more than their party’s leadership should trouble GOP brass. Even those conservatives who are not predisposed to mistrust Wall Street’s priorities took this vote as an indication that the GOP was never serious about opposing of Obama’s executive order on immigration, though neither this hybrid Omnibus nor a short-term CR would have forestalled the implementation of anything at the Department of Homeland Security.
Republican leaders might be tempted to dismiss this ire from conservatives as a mere fit of pique among conservatives, but insouciance would be a foolish approach to this development. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s a dire portent about the future instability of the Republican coalition. GOP leadership shouldn’t risk the latter.
I was supposed to the bailout for the banks included in last night’s cromnibus. It was corporate welfare taking money from Main Street and giving it to Wall Street.
It was a wealth transfer from the middle class to the rich. I’m a conservative and I am against this because it contradicts the free market and also the American principle of equal treatment.
There’s a case to be made for populism and neither the liberal nor the country club establishment that colluded to pass the crap sandwich represents the American people.
The public is general is experiencing gut-wrenching revulsion towards the Cromnibus bill. And Warren is the only one who was willing to raise her voice in opposition. Surely she is going to reap the benefits.
It was a Christmas wish list for every special interest group and fully funded all of Obama’s priorities.
This is no way to run the federal government.
He lost big in 2006 to a cardboard cut-out who had nothing going for him other than his Daddy's famous name once he got too cozy with the GOPe and Wall Street.
When he returned to his roots in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, he was the clear runner up to Romney and might have even pulled off an upset if Newt had gotten out of the way.
Indeed, there’s a case to be made for populism and neither the liberal nor the country club establishment that colluded to pass the crap sandwich represents the American people.
Where do people think the millions of Reagan Democrats came from?
crickets ...
CDS and the Bankster Gangster Crony ‘Rat Krapitalists need to be put out of their misery rather than backed up by the gov’t.
Yep, she got a step on Hillary. She’s gonna run for president and this crappy omnibus bill has given her plenty of populist material to feed to the rabid left. Stupid Bonehead. He’s always trying to please his corporate masters and a media that will never like him or us. The loser stepped into it big time. Now the Dems will be running commercials ad nauseam of how the GOP is in the back pocket of corporate America and the big banks. When Cruz or Walker becomes president their first task should be to go to Capital Hill and force the GOP in the house and senate to find new leaders. Boehner and McConnell are taking a conservative mandate in November and are blowing it already, and the new term hasn’t even started yet.
Elizabeth Warren gets a couple of things right, albeit for the wrong reasons. Boehner and Reid caved on everything except the banking rule and DC pot. What does that tell you. If he caved on those 2 and fought against executive amnesty, I think conservatives would have been happy and Cruz and Warren wouldn’t be voting the same on this.
LOL, it’s just Obama and some Democrats presenting the Presidential Elizabeth Warren ,ROFL
What an idiot this guy is!
What an INCREDIBLE idiot!
The ‘progressives’ in the House just wanted to force more Republicans to vote for the crammed omnibus, Republicans whose voters didn’t want them to. Their ‘opposition’ didn’t start until it was obvious conservatives were revolting from Boehner.
‘Progressives’ get a much better deal out of the crammed omnibus than they would from a short CR.
The conservatives fight the battle and the ‘progressives’ win the PR show.
No one on the Republican side has come forward to own the issue of out-of-control banking interests and the damage the Federal Reserve has done to the US. It could be that Elizabeth Warren now owns that issue. With that, she will get a lot of conservative votes. Some constitutional conservative in the HOR or US Senate better step to the plate, very soon (like today) on this issue. They can’t all be owned by big bank, Chamber of Commerce, and Wall Street interests, can they?
Dems have done it for years ... Funded the Fedgov by CR taking all they wanted without any messy legislative process to shine light on the theft. Once adopted, it proved to tempting for the new boss to not just go ahead and do whatever the hell he pleased. Wait til he needs the nuclear option...
I’ll tell you why I am against government bailouts of financial institutions. Every bailout comes with strings attached. Taxpayer money spent on private financial enterprise eventually leads to government nationalizing the financial institutions, and in effect, the wealth of the American people. The final nail in the coffin of freedom.
The Cromnibus freebie for Wall Street banksters to run hog wild in derivatives on the taxpayers dime is insanely irresponsible. It’s like 2008 never happened.
Those who voted for it will come to regret it the way ‘Rats are learning to regret Obamacare. Or worse, when it blows up. There won’t be enough streetlamps in the country.
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