GOP lawmakers can’t get through a sentence without mentioning 'Obama' or 'Obamacare.' The GOP's Obama obsession

It’s just two weeks into 2014, but House Republicans are already convinced that the key to winning November’s elections is to talk about President Barack Obama as much as possible.

In public and private discussions, Obama remains the single-minded obsession of all top House Republicans. They can’t get through a sentence without mentioning Obama or Obamacare. When top Republican leaders gathered last weekend at a boutique inn outside Washington for their annual planning retreat, the bulk of the conversation centered on Obamacare and presenting alternatives to what they consider Democrats’ failed economic policies.


Republicans believe there is plenty of evidence that the midterm campaign will pivot on the president. Obama’s approval ratings are sagging, his health care law is widely unpopular and, for the first time in years, GOP polls show that voters blame Obama — not them — for the country’s economic woes. In the Capitol, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has finally figured out a way to squelch internal GOP warfare to remove the threat of a government shutdown — for now.

( Also on POLITICO: Holder: Obama NSA plans 'smart')

And the tradition of a “six-year itch” for sitting presidents — with the president’s party losing dozens of House and Senate seats — is one that both parties are closely watching.

So, as House Republican leaders begin to eye the contours of their 2014 agenda, they are increasingly convinced that Obama and his policies will be productive ground for them to target when voters head to the ballot box in November.

Yet the GOP’s single-minded focus on Obama could backfire if voters blame them for bashing the president instead of producing their own legislative agenda. And when asked, none of the Republican leaders bring up the budget deficit or $17 trillion-plus national debt, although fears over out-of-control government spending helped ignite the tea party movement in 2010.

On Tuesday, POLITICO asked several of the Republican Party’s top leaders how they see 2014 shaping up — and the answer was remarkably consistent.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama's pen-and-phone strategy)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that Republicans’ main reason for coming to work each day on Capitol Hill is to “try to respond to the hurt being caused by Obama’s policies.”

Boehner agrees.

“I think this election … it’s about two issues,” Boehner said. “It’s going to be about the issue of jobs. And when you look at it, the American people have a right to continue to ask the question, ‘Where are the jobs?’ The president’s been in office now for over five years. It’s time for the president to admit that his policies are not working. In addition to that, and also part of that, is the issue of Obamacare. Obamacare is part of the ‘no jobs’ problem.”

“It’s not just Obamacare,” Cantor said. “It is so many of the policies they’re putting in place. On energy, on regulation, on education, you just run the gamut. We feel that the policies coming out [of the White House] are very harmful to the country.”

“The shelf life of Obamacare being a continuing disappointment is going to be significant,” added Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), the party’s chief deputy whip. “I think Democrats, from a political point of view, are going to be running away from it.”

( Also on POLITICO: State fights creating two Obamacares)

There are increasing signs that House Democrats are thinking along the same lines, too. Democrats are seeking political cover from Obamacare’s woes, questioning whether the White House can ever successfully implement the landmark health care overhaul. Some moderate House Democrats are also retiring, giving Republicans an opportunity to widen their majority.

Republicans won’t officially unveil their 2014 agenda until after meeting with all 233 House GOP lawmakers at the Republican Conference retreat, which will take place Jan. 29-31 at the Hyatt Regency resort in Cambridge, Md.

The focus on Obama and the momentum the GOP hopes that it will generate is a major reversal from the party’s political fortunes late last year. Internal GOP polling from October — amid the government shutdown — showed Republicans underwater with voters. Almost 60 percent of voters then said what they were hearing about Republicans made them less favorable toward the party. Now, voters have roughly an even view of Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans are now so comfortable with their political position, they’re publicly proclaiming that the sting of the government shutdown is gone.

“I think the shutdown is now ancient history,” Roskam said. “It’s been eclipsed by Obamacare overwhelmingly. But the name of the game is not to do it again.”

But Republican lawmakers have numerous challenges over the next few months. The U.S. debt ceiling needs to be lifted during the next few months, and that won’t be an easy process for Boehner and the Republican leadership. At the upcoming GOP retreat, the party needs to hash out a plan to lift the borrowing limit without defaulting on the nation’s debt.

Boehner is also sending vague signals that he’s interested in moving immigration bills — but there’s no clear path to do that. Senior Republican aides concede that Boehner and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) will push an immigration bill beyond a “bare bones” border security measure, but it will not include a path to citizenship similar to what the Senate approved last year. And there will be no House-Senate conference on immigration either; the Senate will have to adopt whatever the House passes or no legislation will move.

Across the Capitol, some legislation is still gummed up. The House-Senate talks to produce a farm bill are stalled. Boehner will have to push through a highway bill later this year — he has been unsuccessful so far in rewriting the nation’s infrastructure laws. Tax reform — a major GOP talking point — doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere in the House, thanks mainly to internal GOP opposition. Republicans, though, may be able to claim some credit from pushing through a bipartisan budget agreement and saving the country from another fiscal showdown.

Perhaps most importantly, Republicans have come to the realization that being against the president at every turn isn’t sustainable. They have to bash Obama’s policies — but also say what they would do differently. Cantor, who has held private sessions on the party’s agenda, said Republicans “need to demonstrate that we’ve got solutions that deal with the struggle that people, hardworking taxpayers, are going through.”

“It’s incumbent upon us now, I think there’s a window opening, where we become not the opposition party, but the alternative party,” said Rep. Greg Walden, the Oregon Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Which means we have an obligation to come forward with agendas and plans for how we would govern if we were in the majority in Washington. It’s starting to open.”

This article tagged under: Barack Obama

GOP

Republicans