JONATHAN CHAIT DECEMBER 20, 2010
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There's a tendency among liberal Democrats to believe that the Republican Party is tougher and meaner and more effective. I think it's true that the GOP is more ideologically cohesive and less bound by social norms (the filibuster should be rare, impeachment is a response to extremely serious crimes, etc.) that might constrain their power.
On the other hand, ideological intransigence very frequently backfires on Republicans. Matthew Yglesias lists ways that the GOP could have prevented the Affordable Care Act but, out of sheer radicalism, failed:
[B]efore the right goes all-in on an ad hoc constitutional change driven by dislike of the Affordable Care Act, that different conservative behavior could have avoided this outcome. For example, Tom Davis would have been a formidable contender for a Senate seat in 2008, but the right decided he wasn’t conservative enough so they’d let Mark Warner win in a landslide. Then they decided Arlen Specter wasn’t conservative enough, so they drove him from the party and gave Democrats 60 votes in the United States Senate. Then they steadfastly refused to offer any compromise proposals that might have peeled the Ben Nelsons and Mark Pryors and Evan Bayhs of the world away from the pro-ACA coalition. I recall that after Scott Brown’s election there was mass panic in Democratic circles and lots of people wanted to abandon the ACA. For a while, I thought that those of us urging continued action might lose the argument to those who favored passing a “scaled-down” health care bill. But in the end we got a bailout from the GOP, which refused to offer any indication that it would actually accept such a bill.
One common thread here is the GOP's tendency to push for all-or-nothing outcomes -- rather than settle for a moderate Senator or bill, they make the choice between a pure conservative one and total defeat. If the Republican Party had more tactical flexibility in its candidate selection and legislative strategy, nothing like health care reform would have succeeded. Luckily, as Yglesias notes, the structure of the conservative movement is such that it is only able to criticize left deviation and never right deviation, even when right deviation created a worse outcome by conservatives' own terms. The primary challenge against Specter, in particular, was an utter disaster, yet you simply never hear Republicans admit this,
8 comments
Perhaps it's time for a Conservative backlash, to return some rationality to a Republican Party co-opted by the irrationality of the Tea-Party movement. For instance, the Tea-Party is protesting "high tax-rates" at a time when they're historically low. The Tea-Party protested ACA as a hugely wasteful spending program, when instead it's an attempt to CONTROL medical costs. The Tea-Party keeps claiming the "bail-out" was "700 Billion dollars for wall-street", when in fact 675 billion dollars of that amount has been returned to the Treasury. These knee-jerk reactions are not rational, and pull the Republican Party in a very destructive direction which does not allow for moderation.
- AllanL5
December 20, 2010 at 11:14am
Yes, "toughness" and a monochromatic ideology helped to evict the Republicans from the majority in Congress in 2006 and it assisted the election of the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, in 2008.
- liberal reformer
December 20, 2010 at 12:15pm
Allant: You are right to focus on a potential backlash. There have been a number of posts here commenting on the backlash against the excesses of liberalism in the 1970's and early 1980's, and the role of TNR in providing the intellectual basis for that backlash. When I was in college (late 1970's), John Cooper (modern American History professor at the University of Wisconsin, and author of a recent biography of conservative bete noir Woodrow Wilson) delivered an out-of-sequence lecture on the importance of the choice of Carter over Kennedy by the Democratic Party. His thesis was that in chosing Carter, the Democrats chose to reject the escesses of liberalism and move to the center/left. In his view this was the proper location for the Democratic Party in America. I found this lecture compelling, and it has remained part of the foundation for my view of American politics. I think the Republicans are on the cusp of a similar choice. Recent comments on the site indicate many of you are thinking along the same lines. I do not believe the Republican Party can be a responsible participant in the resolution of our national problems until they move back to the center/right. (Obviously from the last election, they are a participant in the national debete, just not a responsible one.) Unfortunately, I do not see anyone coming forward in the Republican Party to challenge the hard right orthodoxy of the Party today in the way that Carter, however imperfectly, challenged Democratic Party orthodoxy in the late 1970's.
- spd1955
December 20, 2010 at 12:40pm
SPD is right. One reason for the radicalism of the current GOP is that the Dems have occupied the center. This requires Repubs to either work with Dems and try to pull policy a little to the center right, or, move farther right to maintain a clear distinction between them and the Dems. So far, the Repubs have chosen the latter path, which requires them to lie, not some of the time, but virtually all the time, and take positions that even their dimmest bulbs (I'm looking at you, Pence) must realize are somewhat shaky. It doesn't help that the GOP base has a fair amount of bigots, and the bigots make the most noise. (Parts of the Dem base can be unreasonable too, but they don't get as agitated as right-wing bigots, and Dem leaders with national aspirations don't pander to them.) McCain was willing to risk pissing off the bigots in his 2000 "Agents of Intolerance" incarnation, but I'll predict here and now that no such figure will present him/herself in 2012. (Or, if he/she does, he/she'll get fewer votes than Kucinich did in 2008.) The Dems will have to slay the beast so convincingly that the Repubs see moderation as their only hope. As an optimist, I think that time is coming; as a realist, I know it's going to take a while, and there's going to be a lot more ugliness before things get better.
- Geoff G
December 20, 2010 at 1:38pm
"Slay the beast" is the answer. A responsible Republican Party will not arise from the ashes until voters soundly repudiate the far right. At this point, it is impossible for anyone advocating cooperation with Democrats and responsible policies to survive the Republican nominating process. Elected officials may be cynical and may not all be the brighest bulbs in the bank of lights, but they are proficient getting elected.
- spd1955
December 20, 2010 at 2:05pm
True, and these characteristics are a big reason why abolishing the filibuster would hurt them a lot more than the Democrats. Another is that the filibuster is a huge enemy of try-and-see. And try-and-see helps good ideas (predominantly Democratic) tremendously, by exposing and eviscerating lying propaganda about them, and it hurts bad ideas (predominantly Republican) by exposing them and showing the falseness of their propaganda first hand.
- RHSerlin
December 20, 2010 at 4:29pm
For more on this see: http://richardhserlin.blogspot.com/2009/08/key-reason-why-51-democratic-senators.html
- RHSerlin
December 20, 2010 at 4:31pm
Chait and mamy commentors above seem to imply that: 1. Weak and right is better? What a pile of. BHO and the Dems Senate fully met the first desired criterion and half-met the second. And my bet is they go downhill from here, in large part because of the Obama tax cut bill that you like BHO all think is "just right" -- just like the stimulus package. 2. Progressives and liberals are batshit crazy in their desired policies.What a pile of. Most of us would like to see the policies advocated by Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Dewey. BHO has managed to make RMN look like a real winner. 3. Spector would have defeaed Toomey, but Sestak couldn't. Not necessarily from the polls taken months before the election and BHO's underwhelming performance July-October.
- drofnats1
December 20, 2010 at 5:08pm