Time
By Alex Rogers
February 23, 2015
The path to the White House does not lead through Congressional gridlock.
Sens.
Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are hanging back from the fight,
letting others like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions lead the strategy and
take the megaphone. Top
national Republican strategists say that’s a smart move, given the
difficulty of scoring a clean win in this legislative mess.
“The
main disadvantage of being a sitting senator is that your opponents and
the media force you to own every controversy during every legislative
fight, even though some
outcomes are usually out of your control,” said Kevin Madden, a senior
aide in former Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.
The
Homeland Security funding fight is also a particularly bad one to
champion. The current Republican strategy is to risk a shutdown of the
agency in an attempt to force
President Obama to override his own executive actions to defer
deportations for millions in the U.S. illegally. But many of the related
programs are paid for by fees, which means a shutdown won’t affect
them, while polls show the public will blame Republicans
for a shutdown.
“This
is working out exactly the way the President and Democrats want it to
work out,” says Rob Jesmer, a top member of FWD.us, a pro-immigration
reform group, and former
executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign
Committee.
“We’re
not going to look very good,” he added of Republicans. “No one is going
to look very good. The sooner this gets behind us the better it is.”
The
fight has already caused headaches for one potential White House
suitor. After he simply noted that Republicans don’t have enough votes
in the Senate to pass a bill
override Obama’s executive actions, Rubio faced headlines in
conservative media that said he had “caved,” “folded” and “retreated,”
even though he had stopped short of actually calling for a spending bill
without conditions.
Paul and Cruz, meantime, haven’t paid any price back home for laying low.
Ray
Sullivan, a chief of staff of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, says that
Cruz faces “no negative ramifications” in the state by going bold on the
immigration fight. “From
my standpoint, most Texans didn’t notice the difference and appreciated
the willingness to take principled stands to try to shrink the size and
scope of the federal government,” he says of the 2013 government
shutdown, in which Cruz played an outsized role.
“If
you’re looking at it in the context of who’s going to be blamed, who’s
fault is it and what’s the political ramifications of it, to me it’s
clear: we’re here because
of Obama, we’re here because of Senate Democrats,” says Scott Jennings,
a top GOP consultant based out of Kentucky. “I would stay focused on
Barack Obama. This is his fault, we’re here because of him.”
“I think that’s how people here in Kentucky view it,” he adds.
Paul,
Cruz and Rubio have portrayed themselves as disrupters and outsiders
who came to fix Washington. That message is reinforced by a hard-line
position on Obama’s “executive
overreach.” Even if the particular strategy is ineffective, voters may
be more focused on a broader theme each of the prospective candidates
presents. Madden, the Romney aide, notes that whatever image the
candidate creates may be more important than any particular
D.C. bout.
“Primary
voters in early states that shape the presidential field respond more
to their overall sense of where a candidate is on big issues,” says
Madden. “Are they strong
on national security? Smart and in touch on the economy? They tend to
shape those opinions based on what they see and hear from candidates in
Iowa and New Hampshire instead of what’s taking place on the floor of
the Senate.”
But
the Homeland Security battle is a reminder of Washington’s “gridlock
and breakdown,” according to Sullivan, and could help a governor
candidate who not only takes
principled stands but delivers results in his or her state.
“Members
of Congress who are running or contemplating running for president will
be weighted down by their association with Washington DC,” he says.
“Our party has generally
nominated governors who are far outside of the Beltway.”
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