Hornswoggled And Flim-Flammed

The expected kabuki theater of the House passing the Ryan Unicorn Plan got very, very far off-script as the Dems struck back today in the House, turning a routine dismissal of the ultra right wing Republican Study Committee's amendment to make the Ryan budget even worse suddenly became the GOP's default voting position for a few minutes.  Brian Beutler documents the carnival:

The vote was on the Republican Study Committee's alternative budget -- a radical plan that annihilates the social contract in America by putting the GOP budget on steroids. Deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, more severe entitlement rollbacks.

Normally something like that would fail by a large bipartisan margin in either the House or the Senate. Conservative Republicans would vote for it, but it would be defeated by a coalition of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. But today that formula didn't hold. In an attempt to highlight deep divides in the Republican caucus. Dems switched their votes -- from "no" to "present."

Panic ensued. In the House, legislation passes by a simple majority of members voting. The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As Dems flipped to present, Republicans realized that a majority of their members had indeed gone on the record in support of the RSC plan -- and if the vote closed, it would pass. That would be a slap in the face to Ryan, and a politically toxic outcome for the Republican party.

So they started flipping their votes from "yes" to "no."

In the end, the plan went down by a small margin, 119-136. A full 172 Democrats voted "present."

Kudos to the Dems to turn this piece of political theater on its ear as now Orange Julius has to explain to his troops why when given free and clear reign to pass the most fiscally conservative budget to date, one that has cuts so deep that it eliminates the deficit for next year and actually balances the budget (unlike the Ryan Unicorn Plan, by the way) the GOP wimped out.

If this doesn't all but eliminate the dwindling control Boehner had over the Tea Party loonies, nothing will.  The Dems saw an opportunity to force Boehner to tell the Tea Party kids to go screw themselves, and now he'll have to live with the consequences.

And let's nor forget all but six House Republicans voted for the Ryan Unicorn Plan to kill Medicare.  Thanks for letting the Dems have the House back, boys. Advantage:  Pelosi.