GOP Message of the Day: Retreat!

The McConnell plan offered Republicans an ingenious exit from the debt-ceiling confrontation: the debt ceiling would be raised in exchange for a series of theatrical votes over the next 18 months designed to showcase the Obama administration's extravagance.

Conservatives in the media are reviling the plan, and early supporters (like Americans for Tax Reform) have quickly retracted their support.

John Boehner's attempts to negotiate a grand bargain have likewise run aground on the Obama administration's insistence that any "grand bargain" include some revenue measures.

Yet I think I can also perceive a dawning awareness among House Republicans of the financial and political dangers of the crisis they have created. This awareness has created a potential demand for a more chest-thumping exit from the crisis than McConnell offered. Call it McConnell-plus.

Bill Kristol outlines just such a plan in today's Weekly Standard.

1) House Republicans vote for their ideal solution (eg the House Study Committee's cap-cut-and-balance plan) as a House-only measure. That vote (it's hoped) will mollify angry party activists that the House GOP has not sold out.

2) House Republicans vote for a law that prioritizes Social Security pay and defense over other federal obligations in the event of a cash crunch.

Then

3) Plan C:

Plan C would be pursued when and if House Republicans judge that the debt ceiling does, at the end of the day, have to be raised—if they do come to that determination. In that case, House Republicans would of course continue to make clear they will not entertain any debt ceiling increase that includes tax hikes or irresponsible defense cuts. But House Republicans could permit a debt ceiling hike without tax hikes and irresponsible defense cuts if such legislation were to pass. No Republican would need to vote yes. Republicans would take the position that the president says the debt ceiling must be raised. Fine. Let him raise it—with only Democratic votes.

That's easy in the Senate, where the GOP is in the minority. The 47 Senate Republicans would just vote no, and a few of them would agree not to filibuster the Democrats’ debt hike, so as not to obstruct the president and the Democrats. Nor need the Republican-controlled House stand in the way of the desire of the president and Democrats to incur more debt. House Republicans could allow Democrats to pass a no-tax-hike, no-gutting-of-defense version of a debt ceiling hike in the House. Speaker Boehner would have to round up (if I've done the math correctly) 48 Republican members who would agree to vote present on such a debt limit increase. The other 192 GOP members would vote no. The 193 Democrats would be welcome to vote yes and to pass the bill.

Such a measure wouldn’t do any policy damage, and it might even have some modest spending cuts. Obama and the Democrats would be unambiguously responsible for heaping two trillion dollars more debt on the American public—following on their unambiguous responsibility for the failed stimulus and for Obamacare. Republicans would be ready to make the case for the next year and a half for why Obama, and the Democrats, have to go.

The Kristol Plan "C" represents an even more abject retreat than the McConnell plan. This is retreat without even the McConnell kabuki theater as consolation prize. This is retreat that throws Republicans on the mercy of the Democrats to rescue the GOP from a predicament the GOP created for itself.

Bottom line: The House Republicans will offer up 48 of their members to vote for a "clean" increase in the debt ceiling if only Nancy Pelosi will whip her members into doing the heavy lifting of raising the debt ceiling.

Question: Can 48 such martyrs be found? After all, the Republicans with the safest seats also come from the most conservative districts. What if they refuse to put their careers on the line? What if they say "not me?"

Question 2: Why should the Democrats rescue the Republicans? Because their president asked them to? That logic did not move House Republicans when President George W. Bush asked them to vote for TARP in 2008. They said, "The Democrats have the majority, they can pass your emergency measure."

Question 3: If it is House Democrats plus 48 sacrificial Republicans who raise the ceiling, what stops the Democrats from attaching their conditions? Such as, non-deductibility of corporate jets, or more funding for PBS? Humiliating conditions just to underscore who won this crisis and who lost?

Question 4: We've now had two eminent Republicans - McConnell and Kristol - offer Republicans escape routes from the crisis. Are these plans harbingers of the bigger stampede to come, as the deadline gets closer and the consequences of financial collapse become clearer?