Friday, July 29, 2011

Modern Republicans and the invented crisis

Jeanne Cummings and Mark Niquette wrote a decent piece for Bloomberg recently suggesting that the ultimate cause of the current debt ceiling crisis is the rapid rise in party loyalty in recent years. This is only partially right. Hyper-partisanship is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for this crisis.

To be sure, polarization has occurred among both parties, and both parties' Congressional leaders are willing to play serious hardball to get what they want. But only one party chose to impeach a president for lying about fellatio. Only one party proposed shutting down the government to force a president to agree with its agenda. And today, that same party has chosen to use the pretty routine task of raising the debt limit to pay for past commitments as a weapon to constrain future spending. This is simply how the modern Republican Party operates when Democrats control the White House: they invent crises. I do not say this to score partisan points -- it is simply an observation of recent political history.

Why do they choose such high-profile showdowns, especially given the outcomes of previous showdowns? After all, while the Clinton impeachment embarrassed the White House and possibly affected the 2000 election, it failed to remove Clinton from office, portrayed the GOP as extreme, and cost Speaker Gingrich his job. Similarly, the government shutdown of the mid-1990s is, among Republican officeholders, widely believed to have been a huge miscalculation that damaged their party's reputation and strengthened President Clinton's hand.

But the Republicans do not pursue such tactics to become loved. For one thing, you don't need to be loved to win an election, just hated slightly less than the other guy. For another, the GOP approach to governing is a logical consequence of how they whip up their activist base in order to win elections. If you tell people that the president is an illegitimate, immoral monster or that government spending is a mortal sin enough times, eventually you have to deliver on it or your base sees you as a fraud.

1 comment:

Richard Skinner said...

What's the solution? I agree that nonpartisan redistricting, blanket primaries, etc. are unlikely to make much of a difference. Reforming the rules of the Senate to reduce or eliminate filibustering would be nice, but unlikely.

It's easy to say, "Elect Democrats." But sooner or later, there will be a recession, a scandal, or an unpopular war, and the Republicans will return to power. And the most conservative, most partisan Republicans will have a disproportionate share of power.

It seems that what is needed is to loosen the hold of the most conservative voters on the Republican Party. (It's worth noting that the most ardent Tea Partiers come from the safest Republican districts).

Perhaps, as a counterbalance to the Club for Growth, some group of centrist donors could fund moderate Republican candidates in open-seat races in safe GOP seats. (I can't imagine conservative incumbents losing primaries, except for non-ideological reasons such as scandal). Or they could back vulnerable moderate incumbents like Richard Lugar. Such a group would have to keep a low profile, since being tarred as a "squish" is the curse of death in Republican primaries.

There's a model for this -- in New York State, wealthy Wall Streeters have pledged to protect those Republican state senators who voted for same-sex marriage.

I actually doubt that this would work, but I can't think of anything else with a better chance of success. There's plenty of evidence that ideological extremism hurts at the polls, but that doesn't dissuade those who practice it.