Reviews | Enraged by GOP debt limit extortion? Blame MAGAs moderate enablers.

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When it comes to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s use of the debt ceiling as a weapon of extortion, the media focuses relentlessly on his dealings with extreme conservatives. They are the ones, it is said, who are pressuring the California Republican to refuse to raise the US borrowing limit, threatening default and economic disaster, to press Democrats to significantly reduce expenses.

But this scenario lets another key GOP group off the hook: the so-called reasonable Republicans, the moderates, the centrists, the pragmatists, whatever you call them, who could end this madness now. they wanted to, but who instead allow the crisis.

The White House wants a clean increase in the debt ceiling, allowing the government to pay what Congress has already appropriated without conditions. But GOP leaders are threatening not to pay our bills unless the entire federal budget is redone according to their sweeping vision, even though Republicans raised the debt ceiling without incident three times under the last GOP chairman.

It’s absurd. But that wouldn’t be possible without the complicity of all parts of the House GOP, the leadership, the far right, and the center allegedly responsible. If the supposed moderates wanted to, they could join the Democrats in supporting a net increase.

Yet in much of the media coverage, their role is relegated to the background. It’s puzzling because this bloc of Republicans is at the center of an ongoing understated shadow war between the White House and McCarthy.

Take the budget plan recently released by McCarthys: It would temporarily raise the debt ceiling in exchange for drastic measures, including cutting spending to 2022 levels for most programs, imposing work requirements on aid to the poor, the clawback of Internal Revenue Service funding, and capping the future. expenses.

The White House lambastes McCarthy’s plan by emphasizing this point: GOP budgets closely mirror the priorities set forth by the far-right House Freedom Caucus. As White House spokesman Andrew Bates has argued, the plan shows that McCarthy has caved in to the most extreme supporters of MAGA.

At bottom, it appears to be about lobbying less extreme Republicans, which include 18 Republicans from the districts Joe Biden won in 2020, self-proclaimed ruling Republicans and members of the Problem Solvers Caucus. If they fear being associated with MAGA and the Freedom Caucus, they may end up supporting a sharp increase in the debt ceiling rather than tying themselves to wildly unpopular budget cuts used as a tool of extortion.

There are ways to go on that front. The pragmatic conservatives in the Republican Main Street Caucus stick with McCarthy, saying the fundamentals of his budget unify the conference rather than divide us. Translation: moderates aren’t scared enough to admit daylight between them and MAGA.

McCarthy must keep it that way in this shadow war against the moderates. He keeps saying he just wants negotiations with Biden on the terms of a debt limit increase repackaging a nonsensical extortion demand as a quest for compromise to persuade the public that Republicans are flexible. and that Biden is adamant.

The key question is whether McCarthy can keep moderate Republicans convinced that this is a winning message with swing voters. That’s why McCarthy continues to demand private negotiations with Biden: so he could say, you see, we meet with Biden reasonably and offer reasonable concessions, but the White House won’t budge! And voters would have no way of determining exactly what the Republicans are proposing.

For veterans of the 2011 and 2013 debt containment fights who now work for Biden, this is a key lesson from those battles. A senior Democratic official familiar with White House thinking says Biden must avoid entering a room with McCarthy, to deny him that overture. As this Democrat tells us, this would help him to stoke this illusion that they are politically well placed, to reassure the moderates.

Denying McCarthy that overture worked in some ways. It might have helped McCarthy release his own plan, showing his hand and opening it to attack.

It’s possible, as GOP strategist Liam Donovan suggests, that one way to get the moderates moving is for the White House to offer concessions on spending cuts that are mostly meaningless, but give them cover. to affirm that it was not a cave.

But at some point, reasonable Republicans will have to step in. As Rep. Robert C. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) told Us, Democrats have 213 votes ready, and a clean debt ceiling increase would certainly pass if it comes to a vote.

The lack of media focus on moderates has consequences. By allowing them to avoid commenting on the extreme nature of this GOP extortion, it whitewashes this effort into something more like ordinary politics. It relieves the pressure on them to join Democrats in doing what is necessary to pay the country’s bills, whether outright or with fig leaf concessions.

As long as all the attention is on the extremists, it’s that much easier for non-MAGA Republicans to hold their ground on the country. There will be no retreating to the brink of disaster without them.

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