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Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

So its not a surprise that it took less than a week for two Democrats to declare their intent to run for the U.S. House seat held by Ed Perlmutter once the Democratic congressman made official his own bid for governoron April 9.

Now that theyre in the race, however, the question facing state Sen. Andy Kerr, state Rep. Brittany Pettersen and anyone else who wants to capture Colorados 7th Congressional District is how Perlmutter has managed to dominate the seat for so long.

Is it because of Perlmutters well-known brand of retail politics? Or is it because the seat skews Democratic in terms of its electoral history and voter registration?

The answer will say a lot about whether a Republican has a chance to win in November 2018 and how far to the left Kerr and Pettersen will need to go to win the Democratic primary.

A lot of people say it only became safe because of Ed, said Chris Kennedy, a state lawmaker who ran Perlmutters 2014 campaign. I think thats partially true, but I would also say the district has grown more Democratic.

Over the course of his 10-year congressional career, Perlmutter has held dozens of meetings with constituents at grocery stores in his district; one reason he chose a grocery in Golden in which to announce his run for governor.

Geographically, the 7th District is a suburban seat that sits on the north and west borders of Denver and includes towns such as Thornton, Lakewood and Perlmutters home of Arvada. The median household income is just above the statewide average $62,000 versus $61,000 and its major employers include aerospace companies and the federal government.

Lockheed Martin and Ball Aerospace have nearby facilities, and the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood is home to the offices of more than two dozen agencies, from the General Services Administration to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The political math leans left, in part a function of its nearby neighbors: the liberal strongholds of Boulder and Denver. Nearly 35 percent of active voters registered as Democrats last November, compared with about 27 percent for Republicans. In keeping with state trends, however, the biggest bloc of voters in the 7th District is independent at more than 37 percent.

The X factor of independents could give a Republican candidate an opening, though the partys nominee would have to buck recent election results. Perlmutter has won by double digits in each of his last three races since the seats boundaries were redrawn, and Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the 7th District last year by 12 percentage points, more than double her statewide victory of 5 percentage points.

Its now a solid Democratic seat, said David Wasserman, a political analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. He added that Republicans could have more trouble if Trump doesnt improve his approval ratings, which nationally have hovered around 40 percent. Open seats tend to be great pickup opportunities as long as you are not saddled with an unpopular president. But in this case, Republicans are, he said.

In a nod, perhaps, to this dynamic, Kerr and Pettersen have begun their congressional campaigns with a strong message to the Democratic base. Both candidates supported the filibuster for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, despite the fact that Colorados Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet did not.

We need to stand up and fight at every opportunity that we have, Pettersen said in an interview, naming resisting Trump as one of her top priorities. And that means every tactic. I think that Democrats need to see us fight like hell.

Kerr didnt mention Trump by name in his announcement speech, but he framed most of his speech as a rebuttal to the new Republican administration.

I know there are millions of us who are not afraid or confused, who will stand up for our schools and the environment, for our seniors and our jobs millions who believe in the promise of equality and recognize how far we still fall short, he said. We are going to fight.

The two rivals, likewise, are positioning themselves as the heir to Perlmutters legacy.

Pettersen and Kerr support a single-payer health care model and have expressed a willingness to vote for someone other than Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic leader in the U.S. House. Perlmutter likes the idea of a nationalsingle-payer system, and last year backed an upstart challenger to Pelosi.

I think we need to make sure we are listening to new voices, Pettersen said.

I certainly heard from a lot of people this last election that change is needed, Kerr said.

Perlmutter is staying publicly neutral in the race, but Kerr didnt mind touting their close ties, including a nod to Nancy Perlmutter, the congressmans wife, at his rally. Kerr ran Nancy Perlmutters campaign to lead the local teachers union, and both are teachers.

Pettersen is engaged to Ian Silverii, the executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, one of the states most vocal liberal groups:

Other Democrats may still enter the race, including state Sen. Dominick Moreno of Commerce City.

Republicans see hope in this rivalry. Though no major GOP candidate has yet declared for the race, Republican officials in both Colorado and Washington said a bruising Democratic battle could be a boon to the partys chances.

While Democrats are bogged down dragging each other to the left in a wide-open primary, Republicans are energized to flip this vacant seat in a competitive district, said Jack Pandol of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC is focused on recruiting candidates who are a good fit for the district to put it in play in 2018.

One name that has come up frequently is Libby Szabo, a Jefferson County commissioner. She spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last year and previously served as the assistant GOP leader in the Colorado House, before expressing frustration and taking an appointment to the county post. Szabo did not return a message seeking comment.

Other possible candidates include two former Perlmutter rivals: Don Ytterberg, the former Jefferson County GOP chairman, and Ryan Frazier, a former Aurora City Council member who came in fifth last year in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

Two potential contenders not interested: former state Sen. Mike Kopp and state Rep. Lang Sias, who both live in the district.

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As battle to replace Ed Perlmutter takes shape, Republicans eye ... - The Denver Post

Rep. Jody Hice, GOP Congressman for the 10th District, was against the AHCA, the GOP proposal which would have thrown 24 million off insurance and given the wealthy a $600 million tax break. But he did not oppose it because of these draconian features. He thought it was not draconian enough.

His archaic, regressive views on healthcare reform should be no surprise to anyone who has followed his rise. Jody Hice was a talk show host accustomed to exaggeration and hyperbole before he took office.

As such, he fits in well with the so-called Freedom Caucus, the reactionary Tea Party faction in the U.S. House of Representatives. This same group has the House Republicans terrorized. Frightened leadership is unable to compromise with Democrats to come up with a bipartisan reform package, which would easily be signed into law by a president desperate for a win.

Before the election, Hices well-known extremist conservative positions regarding women, abortion, gays and Islam were well known. His views were far to the right of the Republican Party, my party. Based on his previous hyperbolic statements and writings, Hice was already known to be a divider, not a uniter.

He just wants to be Dr. No, said Mike Collins during a 2014 GOP primary debate.

Any objective voter should have known Hice would only grandstand and obstruct, accomplishing nothing, if elected. That is clearly what he and the Freedom Caucus have done.

We are the ones who elected this government, voting for party affiliation rather than the best candidate for the job and accepting gerrymandering, which ensures that a Democrat or Republican will be elected in a non-competitive election.

Georgias 10th Congressional District, which includes part of Athens-Clarke County, is a good example. It has been gerrymandered by our state legislature so that liberal Athens can have little impact on who is elected as congressman in the District.

In the 2010 election, moderate Democrat Russell Edwards, who understood that it would take bipartisan votes to get things accomplished and accepted by the majority of the public, ran against Hice. He supported strong defense, a balanced budget amendment and energy independence. He opposed replacing Medicare with a voucher system, which would shift the increasing financial burden to our seniors.

The choice should have appeared cleareither vote for a common-sense candidate who will get things done or a tea party naysayer railing against the storm.

If you vote for obstructionism and intolerance, then do not complain when that is exactly what we get out of Washington D.C. That is the fate of health care reform.

There are not enough GOP votes to get a bill through Congress. As awful as the AHCA bill was, the Freedom Caucus wanted it to be even more radical.

With the lack of bipartisan cooperation shown by GOP leadership, there was no consideration at all of working with congressmen across the aisle. So here we are with a problematic ACA that needs modification, not repeal, and a Congress refusing to act.

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OPINION: Even Republicans should oppose Rep. Hice's obstructionism - Red and Black

This article first appeared on the Dorf on Law site.

My two most recent columns addressed two very different subjects. The Senate Democrats' filibuster of the Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court is worlds away from the Republicans'continued faith-based belief in supply-side economics, but both columns ultimately came back to the same larger points: Republicans' embrace of shameless dishonesty, and how everyone else should respond.

Yes, I know that no political party can ever be made up of angels, and people who write columns like this one are supposed to say that "both sides do it." A few months ago, for example, after theNew York Times published a guest op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, two letter writers were irate.

Supposedly,the problem was not that the op-ed had argued that Trump is a danger to democracy. Instead, the big sin was that the op-ed's authors had not also chided Democrats.

"Failing to provide a more balanced assessment of our political establishment widens the partisan divide that fuels the current scorched earth political playbook," one wrote. "Where are the Democrats who should be teaching democratic principles to their constituents instead of just moaning about Mr. Trump?" asked the other.

If it feeds the partisan divide to say that one side is more at fault than the other, however, then we will simply have to live with that. The alternative approach, which we have been seeing in action for decades, simply allows one group of people to become more and more extreme while insisting on "balanced treatment" in public discussion. Anyone who honestly has not yet figured out that this is a chump's game needs to do some catching up.

But my point in those columns was not merely that the Republicans are being uniquely dishonest, or that it is good that the Democrats have stopped running scared. It is that the Republicans' particular style of dishonest argumentation is based on a rejection of facts at a fundamental level, and in particular a strategy of turning their own worst moments into mythical talking points that they then repeat until their lies become conventional wisdom.

Take the Gorsuch nomination. The Republicans were shocked shocked, I tell youthat the Democrats would even consider blocking a qualified jurist from being placed on the nation's highest court.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the 2017 "Congress of Tomorrow" Joint Republican Issues Conference in Philadelphia on January 26. Neil Buchanan writes that Republicans invent their own reality, and that it must be exhausting for them to remember so many alternative facts. But for the rest of the world, there is no reason to continue to act as if these Republican stories are not contrary to reality. Mark Makela/reuters

Having spent a year repeating over and over that Merrick Garland should not receive a hearing because he was the nominee of a president who was in his last year in office, the replacement for that big lie was that the Democrats started it when they voted down Robert Bork's nomination in 1987.

Who cares that the 58 Senate votes against Bork included six Republicans? Who cares that Bork was given a full hearing, during which he doubled down on his most controversial viewsand as a result, convinced some senators to vote against him?

The claim now is that he was subject to uniquely intrusive questioning, which ignores the simple fact that he was a uniquely extreme nominee. Of course he would get a different kind of reception than, say, John Paul Stevens or Warren Burger received.

None of that matters in the Republicanuniverse. Their talking point, which they repeat with unshakable faith, is that the Democrats conspired to keep Bork off the bench in a way that all but required Republicans to retaliate. As I noted in my column, it would be understandable for a conservative to lament Bork's defeat, but it is absurd to argue that he did not get a fair shake.

This strategy of rewriting history is hardly limited to the Bork nomination. Combined with the Republicans' relentless demonization of the presswhich long predates Trump's rise the standard move is to claim that any Republican who publicly embarrasses himself was the victim of dirty tricks by Democrats and their supposedly liberal enablers among the media.

One of the most fascinating examples of this strategy has been mostly forgotten, because the person involved was now-Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Because Paul was such a bad presidential candidate in 2016, his story was never interesting enough for people to pay much attention. During the time that he was still considered a rising star, however, he had his own mini-Bork moment.

In May 2010, during the rise of the Tea Party movement that led tobig Republican wins in that year's midterm elections, Paul had been nominated by Republicans to an open seat in his home state. Lacking much public profile, other than being the son of Ron Paul, a quirky protest candidate in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, hedecided to appear on The Rachel Maddow Showon MSNBC.

I wrote about the interview in a column published shortly after it aired, and it is interesting to revisit that particular moment. The controversy arose when Maddow asked Paul whether he believed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had wrongly required providers of "public accommodations" to serve all customers regardless of race and other factors.

What seemed like an easy question became an excruciating ordeal, as Paul continually tried not to say that he thought restaurant and hotel owners should be allowed to discriminate, even while making it obvious that he did in fact take that view.

Instead, he kept saying, "I think racism is bad," and "I am not a racist," but Maddow was patiently insistent, repeatedly reminding him that he was evading the question. It was not whether he personally would discriminate, but whether the law should prohibit discrimination by those who would like to do so.

I watched that interview while it was happening, which meant that I (like Maddow, Paul and everyone else) did not know this was going to be such a fascinating incident. My big takeaway from the experience was that, like the Bork hearings, the person on the hot seat had been given repeated opportunities to clarify himself or to say that, no, he was really not saying something that most Americans would find unacceptable.

Again, I have some measure of respect for both menbecause in the moment they were unwillingto say whatever was expedient. Paul differed from Bork, of course, in trying to tap dance around his real views, but he did not say something that bluntly disavowed his honestly held opinion.

Later, of course, Paul tried to muddy the waters by suggesting that he might have had a different view as a senator presented with the bill in 1964, but he understood that people have different attitudes now. Even supposedly straight-talking politicians know how to obfuscate when they run for office, after all.

The reason to discuss the Maddow-Paul interview here, however, is not the subject matter but the immediate post-interview spin from Republicans. Without breaking a sweat, their story immediately became one of Maddow having played "gotcha" with Paul, unfairly hitting him with a loaded question, twisting his words and putting him in a negative light.

As with Bork, my response was:

Wait a minute, I saw this with my own eyes. I can see why this guy's supporters are disappointed, but they're peddling pure fantasy. This is simply not what happened. Maddow was dogged, but she gave him every chance to answer, explain, and clarify. She stuck with the topic because he made it worth her while to do so, and she could not get a straight answer from him.

It is, of course, a real skill to make lemonade from lemons. Taking a bad moment and turning it into something useful is often a sign of growth. A politician might say: "I learned not to make matters worse by evading questions." Or he might use the incident as a touchstone to differentiate his current behavior from bad acts in the past, such as John McCain's treatment of his role in the Keating Five scandal.

Republicans, however, have instead mastered the dishonest version of lemonade-making. Take bad facts and lie about them, claiming unfair treatment after having lost an honest fight. Repeat as needed.

As I noted above, there is a similar problem with the way that Republicans have talked about tax policy. Although there are no "moments" of the sort that I described above with Bork's hearings or Paul's interview, Republicans have been struggling for decades to figure out how to deal with what lawyers call "bad facts" about tax policy.

My column describes Republicans' commitment to trickle-down (that is, supply-side) economics as the political equivalent of religious devotion. Who cares that the evidence shows again and again that tax cuts for the rich do not have the effects that Republicans claim? Who cares that the evidence regarding Bork or Paul (or many other examples) is 180 degrees opposed to the subsequent Republican spin? We have faith!

What is most interesting about the supply-side liturgy is that it is so focused on theory and not evidence. And where it is focused on evidence, the evidence is treated in exactly the same way that the evidence regarding Bork has been handledthat is, as something to be rewritten or ignored.

If regressive tax cuts are everything that Republicans say they are,it should not be difficult to find a few outstanding examples where we would be able to see something big, even without using fancy statistical techniquesto prove the pointalthough even the studies that do use high-level econometrics can only reach Republican-friendly results with a big dose of results-oriented analysis. (I made a similar point a few years ago about the supposed dangers of the national debt, which are also surprisingly difficult to find in the data.)

While liberals can note that taxes went up early in Bill Clinton's presidency andthe economy boomed, whereas George W. Bush cut taxes and the economy stagnated, where is the big example of supply-side tax cuts having a dramatically positive effect?

In my column, I describe why the Reagan tax cuts do not serve this purpose, and the other supposedly definitive example is an even bigger reach: the Kennedy tax cuts in the early 1960s, which were passed in the midst of a military-spending surge (that is, demand-side policy).

What do Republicans do? Do they follow Bork's example (during his hearings, not his approach during the decades of bitter Monday-morning quarterbacking that followed his defeat), saying they do not in fact care whether tax cuts for the rich do or do not trickle down, and people who do not understand the wisdom and morality of making the rich richer are simply benighted fools?

Of course not. As they did in the decades after Bork's hearings, Republicans invent their own reality.

It must be exhausting for Republicans to have to remember so many alternative facts. But for the rest of the world, there is no reason to continue to act as if these Republican stories are not contrary to reality.

And if Democrats do not engage in such dishonesty (in degree or kind), it should be viewed as good news, not as a reason to pretendthey are just as bad as Republicans.

Neil H. Buchanan is an economist and legal scholar, a professor of law at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Taxation Law and Policy Research Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He teaches tax law, tax policy, contracts, and law and economics. His research addresses the long-term tax and spending patterns of the federal government, focusing on budget deficits, the national debt, health care costs and Social Security.

The rest is here:
Neil Buchanan: Republicans Live in a Dishonest Fantasy Land - Newsweek

Republicans survived an embarrassing scare and narrowly held on to a Kansas congressional seat Tuesday in a special election that served as a surprising red-state referendum on President Trump.

The single-digit victory for state Treasurer Ron Estes marked a far closer race than Democrats have pulled off in recent years, giving the party bragging rights as it looks to a series of special House elections this year.

Estes trailed in early tallies but then began to build a lead over Democratic civil rights attorney James Thompson, who had sought to translate anti-Trump anger on display at rallies and town halls across the country into a victory in one of the nations unlikeliest places. With 100% of precincts reporting, Estes led 53% to 46%.

The 4th District race in the Wichita area was the first of a series of elections spurred by vacancies created when Republican House incumbents moved to the Trump Cabinet. The Kansas seat was held by Mike Pompeo, who resigned in January to take the job of CIA director.

The Kansas seat always ranked as a long shot for the Democrats, since the state has been ruby-red for decades and the seat has been held by a Republican since 1994. Trump carried the district in November in a 60%-33% swamping of Hillary Clinton. Pompeo won with a similar 61% of the vote in November.

Both Democrats and Republicans treated a GOP win as a foregone conclusion until recently, when Republicans were shocked into action. The combat continued until election day, when the president tweeted out a request for his supporters to show up at the polls.

Ron Estes is running TODAY for Congress in the Great State of Kansas. A wonderful guy, I need his help on Healthcare & Tax Cuts (Reform), Trump tweeted.

Nearly three months into his presidency, Trump has played the role he did in the campaign: a polarizing figure who inspires both rabid support and angry disapproval. The Kansas race showed that, for the moment, disapproval has more momentum.

The period between Trumps romping November victory and election day Tuesday has been a rocky one for the president. His immigration executive order, one of his campaigns most vehemently stated promises, was blunted by the courts and prompted protests across the country.

More recently, a recalcitrant and ideologically split Republican Congress could not come to agreement over a path to repeal and replace President Obamas healthcare program, leaving Trump unable to sign any measure to secure another of his highest-profile campaign pledges.

The successful ushering in of new Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a clear administration success, has been partly overshadowed by continuing investigations into whether Trump or his team worked with Russian entities to harm Clintons presidency, another factor that Democrats hoped would depress Republican enthusiasm.

The Kansas race also appeared to be affected by the extreme unpopularity of the states Republican governor, Sam Brownback. His tax cuts, to which Estes, as the state Treasurer, was unofficially attached, have left the state with big budget problems.

More recently, Brownback vetoed an effort by state legislators, including moderate Republicans, to insure tens of thousands of Kansans by expanding Medicaid under the auspices of Obamacare.

A Morning Consult poll released Tuesday listed Brownback as the second-most unpopular governor in the country, with 27% of Kansans approving of him. Only New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was less popular, with 25% support in his state.

Estes appears to be swept up in a last-minute vortex of factors outside his control: Democrats' anger towards Trump, independents' anger towards Gov. Sam Brownback and GOP dissatisfaction with early administration failures, David Wasserman, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, wrote Monday.

The outcome of the race had no appreciable impact on control of the House, where Republicans have a comfortable lead over Democrats, 237 to 193.

But it was a first test of whether Democrats could translate anti-Trump sentiment into a punitive verdict.

Apart from the fact that Republicans outnumber Democrats in the district by nearly 2 to 1, the congressional race represented Kansas best-case scenario for Democrats and worst-case for Republicans.

Democrat Thompson presented himself as someone who, due to his poverty-filled upbringing, had felt the pain of economically threatened Kansans. That made him the antithesis of a party often defined by coastal elites disconnected from the troubles of middle America.

Estes was swept into state office in 2010, along with Brownback, but has not struck an independent posture since and is largely not known for anything in particular, said Edward Flentje, professor emeritus at the Wichita State University School of Public Affairs.

Estes also seemed not to immediately anticipate the relative strength of the Democratic challenge.

Its been a lackluster campaign and hes done a kind of conventional approach to the election, Flentje said of Estes. Thompson, he said, had gotten his story across to anybody who pays attention.

The late-campaign push by Republicans included a Monday visit by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, more than $100,000 in money from national Republicans and their allies, and robo-calls into the district from Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole.

The attention was unlike anything seen in the state, where Republicans are usually expected to win as easily as Democrats do in places like California.

All of this is a bit surprising, Flentje said. I cant ever remember getting a robo-call from the president in Kansas.

Nationally, the political focus now turns to next Tuesdays special election in Georgia, where in a far more centrist district Democrat Jon Ossoff is trying to escape a runoff by gaining a majority against a host of squabbling Republican candidates.

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Republicans win a special House election in Kansas after ...

A couple of weeks after the 2008 election, Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, and Phil Schiliro, the incoming White House director of legislative affairs, huddled with the Democratic congressional leadership to talk strategy.

Everyone knows the big agenda they pursued an $800 billion economic stimulus, a sweeping health-care law and an overhaul of Wall Street regulations but the leaders also agreed on a parallel strategy that was almost as critical. That effort became a steady supply of smaller bills, more niche in focus but also bipartisan in support, ranging from enhancing consumer protections in the credit-card industry to making it easier to stop children from smoking.

The singles, Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago, called those efforts in an interview last week while visiting Washington. These smaller measures filled the House and Senate floor throughout early 2009 as committee chairmen battled behind the scenes on the finer print of the much bigger legislation to come.

Eight years later, President Trump and his Republican-led Congress have swung for the fences early and, so far, have struck out. As Republicans again try to craft a repeal plan for the 2010 Affordable Care Act and continue shooting for a massive tax cut, Emanuel wonders from where the GOP will get its momentum.

The bunt singles, he said, motioning his arms like a ballplayer trying to get the smallest of hits, they dont even have them.

Some GOP lawmakers block-everything mentality could imperil big-picture plans

A quarter of the way through Trumps first year in office, Republicans only legislative successes have come on small bills that wiped out regulations from the last weeks President Barack Obama was in office. Lawmakers are using the obscure Congressional Review Act of 1996 to do so on party-line votes.

Those dozens of nixed regulations do represent a win for Trump, and Republican leaders are aware of the need to demonstrate some wins. In an interview before Congress left for its two-week spring break, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted that undoing regulations unfortunately doesnt make a lot of news and said his office was going to compile a report on the sweep and impact of those moves.

But Congresss authority to undo a previous administrations regulations through the CRA process expires early next month. Confirming Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, only after blowing up Senate rules to do so on a simple majority, is the only other solid victory the GOP can so far claim.

The only reason that we were able to do them is they were 51-vote situations, McConnell said.

McConnell has made clear that the overhaul of the tax code is the only other big piece of legislation that would fall under special budgetary rules allowing for a simple majority in the Senate.

Everything else will require a minimum of eight Senate Democrats, and all 52 Republicans, to overcome a filibuster in that chamber. That makes it much more difficult for Republicans to get things done than those early regulatory repeals and confirming members of Trumps cabinet.

Its unclear what Republicans will do while leaders and committee chairmen continue haggling behind closed doors over the big battles on health and tax policy.

Their agenda is starting to look pretty barren.

After they figure out a way to keep government agencies funded by April 28, Republicans do not have much lined up to push onto center stage on the House and Senate floors.

Theyve got some bills waiting to reauthorize the Food and Drug Administrations collection of user fees on the makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, along with legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration and the state-based Childrens Health Insurance Program.

If theyre not careful, Republicans could head into the long August recess without adding anything more to their win list than the already-repealed regulations and Gorsuchs confirmation.

Thats not exactly the sort of vision that Trump cited in his January inaugural address when he vowed: The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Sixteen years ago, the George W. Bush administration operated with amazing early efficiency. By mid-June 2001, Bush had signed into law a $1.3 trillion tax cut and the House and Senate had approved their versions of the No Child Left Behind education legislation each passing with significant Democratic support.

In 2009, Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), then the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then the House speaker, set out to get some early singles by approving a large expansion of the CHIP and a pay-equity bill.

Before Memorial Day in 2009, Obama enacted legislation giving consumers more rights against credit-card companies, with the support of 113 House Republicans. A month later, he signed a bill to allow the FDA to more forcefully regulate tobacco marketing to prevent children from taking up smoking with the support of 70 House Republicans.

We all agreed on the need to hit some singles and doubles, Jim Manley, a senior Reid aide, recalled of the strategy session with Emanuel and congressional leaders.

Those early wins helped teach everyone how things are supposed to work, building up confidence at the White House and Congress. Eventually, Democrats passed most of their big-agenda items, and voters recoiled, leading to devastating losses in the 2010 midterm elections for Obamas party.

But Democrats had succeeded on one level passing some progressive laws and giving their supporters something to show for the losses they suffered politically. Now, Republicans are struggling to enact their overarching agenda, and their counterparts think that its because the GOP never learned how to do the basics as an opposition party. Instead, maybe Republicans should be seeking a few smaller pieces of legislation.

One of the reasons they are in the mess they are is that they didnt do that, Manley said. They swung for the fences immediately with batters who didnt have a lot of batting practice and werent used to hitting at all.

Read more from Paul Kanes archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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Republicans may be making a mistake by swinging only for the fences - Washington Post