Well, frumps, the past week turned out to be quite a rhetorical showcase in the tumultuous world of 21st Century American politics. Most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, agreed that President Obama sailed through the dangerous shoals of the State of the Union address in a fairly seaworthy manner. Democrats characterize his performance as “getting the job done right” and Republicans, although snarky and critical, have to admit that Obama did not commit political suicide as some of them might have hoped. I think it’s safe to assume, at this point, that oratory is the least likely way that our President might seriously damage his political standing.
Little did we know on Wednesday night, during the SOTU that the real “tour de force” was yet to come. On Thursday morning, when President Obama was scheduled to meet with the House GOP’s retreat in Baltimore for a routine Q & A, it was not yet certain that the informal meeting was important enough to be televised. An hour before show-time, the decision was finally made to let the cameras roll and the rest is history. Needless to say, Republicans are now sorry that they allowed the cameras and Obama’s advisors and base are delirious with joy because, for the first time, Obama went “mano a mano” with his detractors and, basically talked circles around them until they were handily herded into a corner that is going to be pretty hard to get out of unscathed.
The Republican verdict? – “we were lectured by Obama, as usual” (but that sentiment didn’t stop Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-TX) from asking for Obama’s autograph afterward). The Democratic verdict? –“it’s about time!” And a two hour MSNBC primetime impromptu “special” featuring Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews (who got so excited he forgot he was white for an hour) gleefully recapping the highlights. Stunned Republicans, immediately after, remarked that the cameras had not been a great idea. Perhaps the best barometer that something majorly embarrassing was occurring was Fox News decision to cut into their live coverage, half-way through the broadcast, in an attempt to spin things away from the obvious spanking that Republicans were taking.
Since this was the Republican’s shindig, I’d be willing to bet that the decision to broadcast was one made in a fit of hubris. Coming so soon after their recent special election win in Massachusetts, perhaps they truly believed that they had the “right stuff” in the room to win a war of words with Obama.
Old Idealogues Don’t Die, They just Filibuster Away . . .
One of the age old political ploys is to attack the opposition’s basic ideas and prove them defective or altogether missing. That strategy discourages new, untested ideas from bubbling to the surface and encourages sticking to the tried and true. It costs a lot more in political capital and campaign finances to go out on a limb with a new proposal than it does to campaign on notions that appear to have worked in the past. It is an unfortunate shortcoming of modern politics that the only time that valid new approaches are countenanced is when catastrophe has struck.
For many years we’ve had to listen to a Republican administration bewail the Democrat’s dearth of ideas (ironic, to say the least, given the particular administration advancing that claim). Now the tables have turned, though, and it is Republican’s turn to prove that they have anything substantive to bring to the national discourse. That development has barely ruffled the feathers of the Old Guard GOP but it has led to some interesting exchanges between members a new generation of Republicans who have not yet become bogged down in historic Republican ideology.
From last February, following the huge Democratic gains of 2008, here is a fairly cogent observation made by Patrick Ruffini, of The New Right, followed by a response from Daniel Larison of American Conversative Magazine:
RUFFINI: If you want to get a sense of how unserious and ungrounded most Americans think the Republican Party is, look no further than how conservatives elevate Joe the Plumber as a spokesman. The movement has become so gimmick-driven that Wurzelbacher will be a conservative hero long after people have forgotten what his legitimate policy beef with Obama was.
We need to advance our ideas without ever once saying the word “conservative” or “Republican” in a speech. We need to define these ideas not as conservative, but as American. We need to be confident, like the left is, that we are the natural governing party because our ideas are in alignment with basic American principles, and quit treating middle class, working class, or rural Americans like an interest group to be mollified by symbolic, substance-free BS.
LARISON: Symbolic gimmickry does stem in part from a lack of confidence, but it is more the product of a movement and party that have ceased to understand, much less address, most of the pressing concerns of working- and middle-class Americans. The party assumes that all it needs to do is show up, push the right pseudo-populist buttons and reap the rewards, and for the most part the movement cheers. See Palin, Sarah.
Now, I said these were cogent observations but certainly not dazzlingly insightful since these guys had already seen the movie – The 2008 McCain Campaign – which amply showcased how retrograde and bankrupt Republican polical thought is these days. In August of 2008, with the campaign in full swing, Greg Anrig wrote an Opinion piece for the Washington Post which sketched out McCain’s, by then, painfully obvious shortcomings, calling it “Sen. John McCain’s limping, message-free presidential campaign.”
Angrim describes the essential problem facing McCain (and probably many Old Guard Republicans to come):
“McCain’s ongoing difficulties in exciting voters aren’t just a tactical problem; his woes stem largely from his long-standing adherence to a set of ideas that simply haven’t worked in practice. The belief system and finely crafted policy pitches that enabled the right to dominate the war of ideas for the past 30 years have produced a relentless succession of governing failures, from Iraq to Katrina to the economy to the environment.”
The modern conservative movement’s adherence to the conviction that government is always the problem and market forces always the solution depends on an almost naively utopian delusion that the private sector naturally has the public’s welfare in mind. So the conservative solution to domestic issues – like health care, education, jobs, and the environment – is that they will naturally resolve if only unfettered market forces are permitted to work their magic.
Of course, we all know how this experiment ends. As Anrig points out:
“ . . . in practice, those ideas have all failed to deliver on the promises the conservatives made, and in many instances, the dogma has actually created new problems. Particularly after Hurricane Katrina, when Americans saw how hapless the Federal Emergency Management Agency was, the public has begun to realize that the right’s hostility toward government has produced only ineffective government.”
“One can see the results in recent headlines: a Justice Department where non-conservatives need not apply; tainted spinach, jalapeño peppers and pet food; dangerous imported toys; poorly enforced environmental laws and a warming planet; the regulatory failures that led to the subprime mortgage fiasco. Meanwhile, large tax cuts (as under Reagan) have weakened the country’s fiscal health without significantly improving the lot of the vast majority of citizens. And the right’s enthusiasm for Bush’s brand of “benevolent hegemony” in foreign policy, which insists on the U.S. right to wage preventive war and dismisses the United Nations as a band of meddlesome bureaucrats, has weakened our security — most notably through the unnecessary calamity in Iraq — by diluting our military capabilities and diverting their focus from genuine threats from al-Qaeda.”
So, given all of that, it’s time to abandon or at least modify some of these notions, right? Don’t bet your life on it. Angrim made these observations over a year and a half ago and the prevailing sentiment on the right seems to be that what is needed is to “double down” and get even more radical about these failed policies. The disarray that the Republican Party (despite some off-season electoral success – and failure, as in NY-23) has exhibited over the past year speaks to me of a dawning realization, however painful, that there might be some truth to recent criticisms of their approach to policy. Obama summed it up pretty well when speaking to the Department of Energy last Thursday :
“Republican proposals are “rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems, that government doesn’t have a role to play, that half measures and tinkering are somehow enough, that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges. Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed.”
Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to abandon old formulas for success especially if one is soaking up the advice of the Old School graybeards like Newt Gingrich or Grover Norquist. And why would those guys change their tune now? The fact that anyone even considers listening to their advice is due to their seemingly successful application of such ideas. If the next generation fails, they are likely to believe that their failure is due to some lack of ideological purity, commitment or execution on their part.
On the other hand there are a few new voices like Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam who argue in their book Grand New Party, that the time has come to “move beyond the Reagan legacy and the mindset of the current Republican power structure.” And, as Greg Angrim observes:
“They suggest plenty of proposals that many progressives would support, including a fairly ambitious and expensive national health-care plan, subsidies for entry-level jobs and more investment in infrastructure.”
That, of course, will never do. Despite the energy and idealism of the young, political campaigns these days require an ocean of cash in order to stay afloat and that network is already built and quite satisfied with the status quo (whatever that happens to be at the moment). Think of the mega-businesses and secretive tycoons who have bankrolled the right-wing institutions like the Heritage Foundation, or Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity and the US Chamber of Commerce or the vast right-wing Astro-turf mills that feed conservative media.
As Angrim says:
“That money flowed because its sources benefited directly and enormously from such policies as tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Those sugar daddies are unlikely to find much to be enthusiastic about in a Grand New Party, and their money will largely determine whether and how conservatism will transform itself.”
The Current GOP Class
“Party leaders speak of the need to refurbish the “Republican brand.” The problem goes far beyond packaging, though. It’s not that the box needs to be more colorful; it’s that the ideas inside have long since gone stale.” Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post
So, if there’s very little wiggle room and you need to prove that you really can come up with ideas that are just as good as the next guy, what do you do? Well, one approach is to think — think about real problems and try to figure out a way to solve them – that works. Then articulate the idea in a convincing way with, ideally, some proof that the idea can work.
To hear the GOP tell it, they’ve had plenty of great ideas over the past year on health care reform but Democrats have ignored their ideas. Their allegation doesn’t exactly hold water, though, since as columnist Timothy Egan noted in a New York Times Op-Ed, the Senate health reform bill is based largely on ideas promoted by leading Republicans. Many of the bill’s key provisions — including the lack of a public option and the requirement that everyone has health insurance or pays a penalty — are very similar to the Massachusetts health reform law championed by former governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. In fact, Romney said last summer that the Massachusetts plan was “a good model” for federal reform.
“Well, that was six months ago. At the time, it appeared that Democrats were going to pass some kind of government alternative to private insurance. So, Romney was pushing and saying: “Republicans are not the party of ‘no’ when it comes to health care reform,” in July. This Republican is proud to be the first governor to insure all his state’s citizens.”
He may not be so proud now. Critics have given him an earful over his association with the Democratic plan. As Tim Egan points out:
“The sad thing about the broken state of our politics is that good solutions, once they get branded by one party or the other, are quickly dismissed by the rabid partisans who drive early election cycles and dominate the airwaves.”
The proposal to tax the premiums of people with so-called Cadillac coverage might sound familiar and that would be because Sen. John McCain, (R-AR), was pushing that idea during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Solutions, Anyone?
These days, Eric Cantor seems more than willing to take a whack at the Ideas Game but hasn’t come up with much more than righteous indignation and some dead-end web-templates for capturing Republican talking points.
Last April, smarting from Democratic criticisms, Cantor undertook to create something that he called the “Solutions Center” to prove that the GOP was getting a bad rap and has tons of great ideas. The idea is to address simple questions Americans are asking themselves in the face of economic calamity: “How will I keep my job?” … “How will I keep my house?” … “How will I grow my savings?”
Quite populist . . .
Here’s how Politico covered that:
“Cantor explained that the goal is to answer the questions with Republican proposals that contrast starkly with legislation offered by President Barack Obama and his congressional allies.”
“What this Republican leadership is trying to do is define what the choice is,” said David Winston, a GOP pollster who monitors the environment for House Republicans. “If Republicans are defining what their policies are, they will fare better than if they go up against Obama as a personality test.”
At the time, Republicans were admitting that their message had become fragmented but that they believed Cantor’s idea was a step in the right direction. A House Republican aide said the site is designed as a “one-stop, digestible” resource that can be drawn on by local and state GOP officials to give them handy responses to Democrats.
“The Internet makes it possible to communicate cheaply and quickly, in a mass way. The short-term, tactical reason for the site is to dispel the myth about having zero ideas. The long-term reason is to serve as a vehicle that people get used to using.”
In reality, Cantor’s website was like a big recycling bin. Regarding jobs, Cantor reiterated the party’s commitment to small businesses tax deductions and reducing the tax rates on the lowest income brackets. The housing section repackaged the GOP alternative to the bankruptcy bill Democrats passed as part of a broader measure.
Future plans for the site were to feature Republican proposals for health care reform and an energy overhaul. Well, that website, which is oddly reminiscent of an Eisenhower era public service poster, never took off. There wasn’t much of anything useful there, not even links to “real” government websites that have actual helpful information for desperate people searching for answers on housing, unemployment and lack of health care insurance. You really ought to go take a look at it just for entertainment value.
Say what you will about Eric Cantor, but the man is not a quitter.
He recently appeared at the Economist’s World in 2010 conference where he took exception to NBC’s David Gregory characterizing Republicans as “not really a party of ideas, because they don’t want to be.” Think Progress was there to capture the story:
“Cantor claimed that it’s actually the media’s fault that no one hears about Republican ideas, because “it’s not as sexy of a story to cover our ideas right now.” But when the Economist’s Daniel Franklin gave Cantor an opportunity to present his big idea for job creation, Cantor couldn’t come through:
Keep in mind that this is a year after Cantor appointed himself “GOP Solutions Czar” with jobs being one of the four issues he set out to address. He’s also borrowed the talking point about the “un-sexiness” of the GOP message directly from his colleague, John Boehner (or is it vice versa?).
Here’s Boehner, last February, wailing to a luncheon crowd of Christian Science Monitor staff about media bias. The story appeared in a WSJ blog:
“The Wall St. Journal reports that John Boehner made an interesting observation about the Republican Party’s problems: It’s simply harder to sell their own ideas to the public, compared to the easy answers offered by the Democrats.”
“We have a tougher job than our friends across the aisle. They’ve been offering Americans a free lunch for the last 80 years, rather successfully. Those of us that believe in a smaller, more accountable government, we have a tougher time making our principles relevant to the American people. But it’s our challenge, and we’ve got to do it.”
“A note about free lunches and small government: Boehner voted in 2003 for the Medicare drug bill, a mega-expensive expansion of entitlement spending with no method laid out on how to pay for it. And the modern GOP’s platform is based largely on tax cuts, with the constant claim that they’ll result in even more revenue.”
If this is the sum of a year’s worth of political thought, I’d say the GOP is still in for some stormy weather. And just one more question to end with: What, exactly, do these guys do every day to earn the salaries that we pay them?
Maybe it’s timeCongress goes to a performance-based pay scale . . .
Technorati Tags: ideas, conservitives, Republicans, Democrats, President Obama, GOP Retreat, Baltimore, Eric Cantor, John Boehner
