I grew up during the high water mark of "the Loyal Opposition" bipartisanship, linked to Cold War politics aka "politics stops at the water's edge" all thanks to the elite consensus over containing communism and maintaining the global institutions established after WWII. Having a party system in which the parties themselves agree on the Constitutional order and believe in giving up power after losing an election is paramount to the future political stability of the USA and therefore the world.
I think that's why this recent piece of analysis about the internal GOP fight over the House Speaker resonated with me (Nymag's Jonathan Chait via the OG blog Digby's Hullaballo (https://digbysblog.net/2023/01/04/eating-their-own/):
By way of illustration, take this op-ed by Representative Bob Good, one of the anti-McCarthy rebels. “We must elect a speaker who will utilize the power of the purse as leverage to restore fiscal sanity and defund the government tyranny we campaign against,” he writes. “For the good of the Republican conference, for the good of Congress and for the good of the country, let’s hope Republican leaders will listen to the will of their constituents and vote for transformational change on Jan. 3.”
Good believes that the Biden administration is imposing “government tyranny” and that the House will somehow bring it to an end through a funding agreement with the Biden administration. He believes the House should be a venue for “transformational change.” Many political activists and candidates have called for transformational change, but only on the right wing is it considered normal to expect this to happen while the other party controls the presidency...
Because this anger has no productive channel, it returns again and again in the form of internal recriminations. The House [Republican] caucus during Democratic presidencies for the last quarter-century has been an endless procession of coup attempts. Gingrich was deposed for failing in his holy mission of forcing Clinton to slash government. John Boehner and Paul Ryan were driven into retirement. The House Republican caucus will be a cauldron of rage, because the party, at its core, does not believe it should be forced to share power. (emphasis added)
Hullaballo is really one of the better political blogs out there, clearly Democratic in orientation (not just anti-MAGA) but full of reasoned analysis. Congressional politics don't make it into HS history surveys, but having lived through the 1994 Gingrich-led "Republican Revolution" and all that came after, that final paragraph stings. Gingrich was also taking the fall for the ill-fated attempt to remove Bill Clinton from office after Clinton lied under oath about his extramarital affairs, but the recent history of GOP Speakers is not encouraging and there have been periodic government shutdowns as a series of GOP House caucuses insisted on trying to make refusal to pass a budget a way of taking a hostage and negotiating for major policy changes on that basis. While the far right has lost most of these showdowns, Ryan and Boehner basically did quit in frustration with the far right, and the far right is the dominant wing of the party in the House of Representatives, and the country at large. So here we are. The next opportunity to "take a hostage" will be the debt ceiling fight coming up in a few months and that could threaten global economic stability. More on that another time unless a student blogger beats me to it.
2 comments:
Cold War politics allowed the potential for bipartisanship, and this political stability is essential for the US even after one party loses in an election. Now, political stability and the period of compromise are almost (if not already) nonexistent. Republicans are basically fighting over whether to accept the limits of sharing power, and the far-right demands that conservative agenda be pushed through even under Democratic presidents (inevitably impossible). This is causing Republicans to turn against their own leaders, resulting in a "cauldron of rage." I think one quote from the analysis article really highlights the Republican party right now: "They live in a fantasy world and their fantasy is that they don’t live in a democracy that requires negotiation, compromise and sometimes, losing. This is one big reason they love Donald Trump. He not only tells them that they can’t lose, he takes it one step further and tells them they didn’t lose even when they obviously did." I mean, Rep. Matt Gaetz literally voted for Trump for House Speaker... It's really a mess.
Democracy is dependent on a number of things happening, including the will of the governed, the ability to have a peaceful transfer of power, and the ability of a democratically elected government to get things done. Having members of any political party (currently the Republicans) continually attack the government they were elected to manage is not productive, and will lead to an ineffective government unable to properly serve the people. It may play well in certain political circles, and at some level, certain constituencies are voting for elected representatives who behave this way (Matt Gaetz case in point). Generally, these fringe elements have not had enough real power to do much damage, other than forcing a change in house leadership, with the new leadership having to deal with the business of governing just like the leadership which was just removed (after they forced out Paul Ryan, did the next person really do anything different?). The real risk is that you end up in a situation where you have a party (in this case Republicans) with a very slim majority, and a few fringe elements can hold up vital legislation, like increasing the debt limit. The more often the nation's welfare is held hostage by a few radicals, the more likely that an agreement cannot be reached and an economic catastrophe actually comes to fruition. However, at the end of the day, even if a few radicals try to hold things up, Democrats could propose legislation that would potentially attract some moderate Republicans, especially those who don't want to gamble with the nation's economy to satisfy just a handful of radical party members. Democracy is not perfect and often involves the art of compromise with at least some elements of the opposing party, which I suspect will be more necessary to prevent a fringe minority from holding the government hostage and help the nation to continue governing effectively.
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