Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, writing in the Washington Post, have an opinion piece looking at why D.C. is so dysfunctional and concluding, no, it’s not “both sides fault,” we can blame the Republicans on this one.
The response I’ve seen has been interesting if, maybe, predictable. I had one friend ask wearily, “since when did being conservative equal being the bad guy.” And, Doghouse suggests that this observation is at least thirty years too late. (“They called Truman a commie, for chrissakes”)
I’m too young and maybe not well enough educated to know whether the present political dynamic is different in kind from McCarthyite politics or is just pitching a different product. But, to my conservative friend, I can respond that this isn’t simply an indictment of conservatism – at least if that term means anything independently of “what the Republicans are doing at the moment.”
-Most recently: Allen West (R-Florida) – “78 to 81” Democrats are members of the Communist Party. No notable backlash within his party for this kind of stupidity.
-Moderate & center-right Republican lawmakers are a dying breed. Cites Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, and Chuck Hagel. (We can look more locally to what’s happening to Dick Lugar.)
-Ascendancy of Grover Norquist and his absolutist, no-tax regardless of the need pledge. 238 of 242 House Republicans are signatories as are 41 of 47 Senators.
-Ascendancy of Newt Gingrich and his campaign to convince the electorate that Congress was corrupt in an effort to remove the then-majority Democrats from office. This one got away from him after it was successful and the Republicans took office and he tried to dial it back so he could govern.
-Nearly every Obama initiative has met with “vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition.” Compare this with the Bush administration wherein Democrats weren’t exactly lovey dovey but where many Democrats were willing to work with the Republicans on No Child Left Behind, the Bush tax cuts, post-9/11 war and security state measures, and the Iraq War.
-The filibuster has become routine, applied to even widely supported bills and to Presidential nominations. The press has become complicit in this, often failing to call it a filibuster or to note that the tool was once used sparingly and as a last resort. Now the press frequently just implies that 60 votes is a standard requirement in the Senate; but that’s certainly not how the Founders envisioned things. The Republicans have used this far more frequently than Democrats ever did when they were in the minority or even than minority-Republicans have done historically.
-The party has become dismissive of even non-partisan analysis and evidence where it does not conform to the prevailing ideology.
On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.
-They abandon policies that they, themselves, endorsed when Democrats adopt those policies. (e.g. “seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded”)
So, the problem isn’t “conservatism;” rather, it’s the ideological rigidity and reflexive partisanship that’s problematic. Democrats bring some of that themselves, but not nearly as much and not nearly as uniformly. The Democrats occasionally bring a knife to what is turning into a perpetual gun fight.
Doug,
I will say that I am a conservative and what I feel is dragging conservatism down is this NEO-conservativism attitude. Neo-conservatists, just like Neo-libs do not see anything outside of their own radical viewpoints and they are unwilling to work together to solve the crisis of our nation and soceity. They are creating a hate fueled culture where “my opinions right and yours is wrong”. When did Americans become such big cry-babies? This attitude conflicts with the American values that I grew up with. Attitudes such as bravery, commitment, loyalty, and respect. You are right about one thing, moderate republicans are a dying breed. I feel like I represent a small minority in conservatism due to I am a bit more progressive in my views towards many traditionally conservative points. I would like to see the republican party return back to its progressive roots again. I also would like to see more cooperation with democrats and republicans and not this polarized partisanship we have seen since 2009.
A good start is recognizing that your political opponent is not your enemy.
One strategic difficulty is that, if one is regarded as the enemy, he is going to lose if he is playing as if he is merely an opponent — knife to a gun fight.
The only moderate Republican I know is to the left of me, a moderate Democrat.
In communication and conflict studies, the step of complete breakdown is when one person develops contempt or disgust with the other party. At that point, the conflict is virtually insoluable. And we are almost always at this point.
Many say were are as divided now as we have been since the Civil War. But why? We are faced a political dynamic that is insoluable, but not problems that are insoluable.
The Founders left us with a form of government where power is very diffuse. It cannot function without compromise. And it is not functioning. The political parties, especially the Republican party, is faced with what Madison feated most, “factions.”
I think some of the dynamic is just prisoner’s dilemma math. The party behaving “badly” gains a temporary advantage while the other party behaves well. The only reasonable strategy at that point, for the second party is to start acting badly. Then, both sides start losing, but the second party doesn’t lose by as much and the first party stops benefiting.
Interesting points, Doug. I had never considered the dilemma in this context, and would have to do some followup for an itteration of the dilemma that matched such an outcome.
Negative strategies greatly benefit the negative party against the party attempting to cooperate. Can you provide some analogies to researched strategies. I confess I do not have much undertanding of the topic.
So if the negative Republicans start negative and stay negative, the Democrats must turn negative, bringing the game to more equal outcomes. So you believe that would reduce the Republican benefit. But what if each party seeks a different outcome?
If the Republican outcome is to win the election, knowing they cannot generally enact any of their positions with a divided government , their ourcome can only be to win elections. They seek only brute force in a political system that almost never gives a party an unassailable majority. This would seem to work at the state level where senates do not have the filibuster and governors veto powers are weak. Therfore their stragegy seems only to win elections, knowing their policies cannnot be enacted.
Carlito:
Was thinking about you asking if this had been researched…. I had a project last year and ended up reading an article by Morton Deutsch and Robert Krauss called “The Effect of Threat Upon Interpersonal Bargaining,” from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (1960, volume 61: 181-89). It’s an interesting read, and while it was written, I believe more with MAD in mind, I think it had some use for the discussion at hand.
here’s a link to my version on dropbox.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30124136/Deutsch%20article.pdf
Thank you, Chris. This looks interesting. I want to spend more time with this.
Problem identified… So what is the solution?
The Washington Post carried a response to their original article, which you cited.
[quote]Mann and Ornstein are on very solid ground then in their assertion that we are in uniquely partisan times. There is considerably more disagreement about whether that blame should lie at the doorstep of the GOP, however.
“Both caucuses have moved to the polar caps as more one-party districts are created and members’ reelections are dependent on primaries and not the general elections,” said Tom Davis, a well known moderate and former Virginia Republican House Member. “The political coalitions have evolved into a parliamentary system, which doesn’t work in a checks and balances framework.”[quote]
Having watched redistricting fairly carefully at the congressional and state levels, I’d agree that this point has great merit. Living in Hamilton County certainly reinforces it for me, but I suppose the non-Democrat in Lake Co feels similarly.
And, it isn’t like Lieberman and Bayh, the long-time centrists of the Democrats, weren’t beaten up by their own tribe in time. The word I see associated with them most is ‘unforgiveable’. Yes, the post is about the House, and the Rs may be most guilty, but I see both camps as demonizing and polarizing, and not at all good at reaching outside their prime constituency groups.
Well, o.k. The Dems gave Bush non-trivial support on tax cuts, Iraq, and No Child Left Behind.
Can you name similar signature items for President Obama where Congressional Republicans have been more or less as accommodating?
Is there any disagreement that Republicans have been much more free with the filibuster?
Most Dems I know argue that all three acts of bipartisanship were poor policy decisions. Assuming that such bipartisanship results in that type of poor decision making, maybe gridlock is a good thing?
(BTW, not to let the facts get in the way of a good story…I believe NCLB was a Dem bill that Bush backed, rather than a Bush bill that the Dems backed. This means that we should hope that Obama gets behind the Ryan plan sometime soon?)
I can’t, but to rephrase the question, can you name any legislation President Obama offered that would appeal to the Republicans that they rejected out of spite? In comparison, Bush offered the Medicare prescription drug item, which of course Democrats signed on for. Clinton offered welfare reform, which even the partisan 1994 R’s signed on to. Obama has nothing that compares.
I can’t as easily explain why Dems backed Iraq, Patriot Act, or NCLB.
The goal line of “what might appeal to Republicans” appears to be a moving target. The individual mandate for health care reform was a conservative, Heritage Foundation idea. Now such an idea apparently heralds the end of the Republic, judging by the rhetoric.
The Conrad-Gregg fiscal commission proposal on debt reduction in early 2010 seems to be one of the more notable examples of “voting against it because they’re for it.” Per President Obama:
Yes, the Republican Party of today is different than the Republican Party under Clinton and has changed views regarding the individual mandate.
This is absolutely normal. The Democratic Party of today is also different than it was under Clinton. Example: a super-majority of the Democratic Party voted against recognition of gay marriage with the Defense of Marriage Act. The list of people that voted for DOMA includes Joe Biden, our current VP, who is 2nd in command in a Democratic administration that now considers DOMA unconstitutional.
Bottom line: the Republican 15 year flip-flop in the making regarding the individual mandate does not excuse an administration from accepting the CURRENT ideas of the Republican Party that happen to be good policy.
And the filibuster by the co-sponsors of the debt reduction commission against their own proposal?
My understanding is that the recommendation of the bipartisan debt commission was dead on arrival in Congress, and while the Debt Commission was basically required to come up with an answer, nobody believed that the debt commission answer would be politically acceptable.
Sheesh. Gotta learn me some html before the 1990s are over. Forgot the link, too: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/is-polarization-really-all-republicans-fault/2012/04/30/gIQAJXFAsT_blog.html
The Information Superhighway is going to be something.
Anyone who says these are the most partisan times evah is missing a couple hundred years of our history.
This is the complaint of Rockefeller Republicans, who’ve had no real home in their party for forty years; they’ve suddenly realized that the religious cultists tend to intractability, and that “conservatives” oppose tax hikes (could be bad news for George H.W. Bush!) ?
Of course it’s the Republicans’ “fault”. They’ve taken an extreme ideological stance, and they refuse to compromise. And they get elected by doing so. Perhaps they wouldn’t if the Democrats had made the case for the last thirty years that widening social stratification, lunatic military spending, elimination of the social safety net, and incontinent tax “cutting”–that is, replacement of the progressive tax with regressive ones that don’t get blamed on Republicans (see Daniels, Mitch)–in the service of letting the wealthy run things without too much inconvenience, was a really crappy idea for the vast majority of voters. Instead, they fled in terror. So that we have a system now where the traditional party of monied interests has been joined by the other party of monied interests. If there’s gridlock, it’s largely because they can’t agree on just how much avarice and piracy they can get away with.
Here is more from Mann and Ornstein. What is regrettable is that the branch of government the Founders considered the cornerstone of government has devloved into a state of utter dysfunction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-e-mann/its-even-worse-than-it-looks_b_1465713.html