The 1962 Mets were awful, going 40-120. \u00a0They were so bad that Jimmy Breslin\u00a0wrote a classic baseball book, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?<\/a>, describing\u00a0manager Casey Stengel’s exasperation at his Amazin’ Mets. \u00a0In New York Baseball terms, the Mets were the Stupid Team, committing 210 errors and giving up 948 runs, 137 of them unearned. \u00a0The Yankees, by contrast, continued to be the Evil Team, winning another World Series, 4-3 over the Giants.<\/p>\n

One gets the sense that, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” is the constant groan of the Republican managers in the stands of national politics these days. \u00a0Obama continues to chug along, reinterpreting or flat-out ignoring the law, Congress seemingly powerless to stop him. \u00a0Indeed, this Republican Congress seems to go along with his plans with dismaying regularity. \u00a0It’s understood that it would require \u00a02\/3 vote to overcome a veto, but they could at least put the Democrats on record as opposing common-sense ideas, force them to take some uncomfortable votes, and set the table for the eventual nominee with some vetos to complain about. \u00a0And confirming Loretta Lynch, on top of it.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, sometimes there’s more going on than a simple vote. \u00a0Steve Heyward over at Powerline<\/a>, in a couple of posts, nicely dissects Mitch McConnell’s strategy regarding the execrable Export-Import Bank. \u00a0A powerful symbol of cronyism, it’s also know as\u00a0the Bank of Boeing, since Boeing alone typically receives about 80% of its benefits. \u00a0It wasn’t tied to any other funding legislation. \u00a0It wasn’t a piece of some other appropriations or authorizations bill. \u00a0Killing it didn’t require a special vote. It just required doing nothing. \u00a0Which, shockingly, Congress did.<\/p>\n

Killing it didn’t require a special vote. \u00a0Keeping it alive did. \u00a0And a special vote is just what Mitch McConnell organized, an amendment tacked onto an appropriations bill. \u00a0It passed overwhelmingly, and was sent to the House, where Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California pronounced it DOA. \u00a0The Senate will take up the House version of the appropriations bill after the August recess, without the ExIm Bank.<\/p>\n

It should have been apparent that this was set up beforehand, in order to give cover to Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. \u00a0Boeing is headquartered in Chicago. \u00a0Kirk will be in a tight re-election race, and it would be nice to keep the Senate. \u00a0Nevertheless, the Republican grassroots, frustrated at so many other capitulations, screamed that McConnell was in the pocket of the cronies, and no better than the Democrats. \u00a0In fact, he had just managed to kill the bank while letting a vulnerable Senator take credit for trying to save it. \u00a0And yes, while people\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>aware of that, what would change the outcome is a change in the\u00a0House<\/em>, not the Senate, and there are probably few Republican pick-ups to be had in Chicago at this point.<\/p>\n

Instead of recognizing that this was a win disguised as a loss, too many of the Republican peanut gallery assumed McConnell was\u00a0actually trying to throw the game. \u00a0<\/em>Personally, I think McConnell and Boehner have been way too easy, and way less aggressive than they need to be. \u00a0They’ve missed opportunities to pick winnable fights, put telegenic and capable spokesmen out there to make the case, and force the Democrats to take unpopular and irresponsible positions. \u00a0And who knows but that the crying over the ExIm Bank doesn’t actually give additional cover to McConnell’s gambit.<\/p>\n

But we should also look at the long game sometimes. \u00a0McConnell didn’t get where he is by really being stupid. \u00a0And people are only going to elect a Republican president if they think the party is serious about governing. \u00a0(That last is why I would love to see Sen. Mike Lee of Utah be the Majority Leader in 2017.) \u00a0There’s plenty of stuff going on at the committee level where the Democrats and Obama don’t get their way. \u00a0Good luck, for instance, getting any more judges through. \u00a0There won’t be any more major initiatives, at least not legal ones. \u00a0And they are planning on passing a bill for Obama to veto that would start to reclaim\u00a0some of the regulatory authority that Congress has given up over the years. \u00a0Ultimately, though, this just emphasizes the need for a Republican president, and one who’s energetic, and willing to devolve power back to Congress and to the states, which won’t be an easy task.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, it’s not the leadership, but the party they’re trying to lead, who can’t play this game.
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