Hope from the Erosion of Party Identity
Both the NY Times and the Washington Post had articles pointing out the significant number of Republicans who voted with the Democrats on the early agenda items.
Eighty-two Republicans joined Democrats in approving an increase in the minimum wage; 68 Republicans backed the new majority’s measure that puts into force remaining recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission; 48 supported a return to pay-as-you-go budget rules, and 37 endorsed expanded embryonic stem cell research.
It is refreshing to see a trend of independence among Legislators to do what they know to be right and in the interest of their constituents. I hope the Democrats are wise enough to aggressively court these swing voters and invite their participation in crafting policy.
Meanwhile the Times points out that “…Republicans have been quietly building their own political case against Democrats, inserting policies popular with swing voters into their procedural alternatives, hoping to spring them later as 30-second advertisements”
What a sad contrast. Perhaps with non-partisan redistricting reform we might see more competitive districts and more willingness to work across party lines to appeal to the swing voters.
The GOP missed so many chances to craft balanced policy. They could have increased the minimum wage with a few appropriate breaks for business that might be negatively impacted. But rather than reach a wise compromise they allowed the Democrats to pass a law without such protections.
When they passed the Medicare Plan D they could have allowed the purchase of drugs overseas and they could have allowed all the relatively small insurers to pool together to negotiate with the Drug companies. But rather than stay true to their party philosophy of promoting competition they allowed the Democrats to pass a law that allows the government rather than the market to determine prices. They seem, to a laymen, to have laid down for Big Pharma at the expense of senior citizens on fixed incomes.
Instead of promoting competition in the energy industry they craft laws that favor the most destructive fuels.
The Administration gives no bid contracts to vendors in Iraq and Katrina.
Even Health care costs could drop considerably if obstacles to interstate competition were reduced along with increased standardization of administration.
I am a believer that open and fair competition makes participants stronger and efficient. But to me it is becoming fiction that the GOP stands for promoting market forces. Unless my faith is restored at some point I may abandon my political neutrality and throw in with the Democrats, not because I think they are smarter but because they are relatively more honorable and true to their values.
Meanwhile my faith in government is partially restored by the wise representatives willing to cross party lines in the spirit of not letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.
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15 Responses to “Hope from the Erosion of Party Identity”
OMG. Paul, I agree with your entire post. I don’t even have any snarky comments to insert.
Strange isn’t it.
The GOP has viable solutions to most issues; they just don’t do it because it appears that they have been bought off.
Thanks for your clear, concise and specific views on a very important subject. Well-done Paul.
Great post Paul, you sum up my feeling about the so-called Republican ideology.
Republicans are supposed to stand for smaller government, fiscal responsibility and belief in the power of the market. Instead, we’ve seen huge increases in the size of the Federal government under Reagan and the two Bushs, while it’s been the Democratic administrations that have reduced government spending. With that increased spending we’ve also seen the deficit grow and grow.
And the Republicans definitely don’t believe in the market, otherwise they wouldn’t use our tax dollars to give grants to big businesses. Republicans always talk about Democrats want to redistribute wealth, but the Republicans have been doing it, it’s just they are redistributing from the poor and the middle class to the rich.
Republican conservatism has failed under the current crop of Republican politicians. Until there start being some better candidates, their party should be avoided like the plague.
Tom Davis is staying on the Repub bandwagon, even though it’s on fire, and the natives are circling. He will lead the NRCC meeting and play an important role in D.C. in the next few days. He’s not a Whip, but he’ll be doling out the money for the next Congressional race, and he’ll be punishing the people who voted with the Democrats with his decisions to withhold money for their races.
Republicans tell WaPo
Tom Davis voted his conscience, and it’s all RED. He told Va voters he was “his own man.” Yet he voted with Bush 90% of the time in the first 100 hours.
I would guess that most of the Republicans voting for Democratic initiatives realize that the Republicans are headed to irreleventcy. Thus, if those Republicans want any chance of bringing home programs that will get them re-elected they believe that they have to go along with the Democrats.
However, in the long run, I would guess that the Democrats will stab most of them in the back and just redistrict them out of offices.
In the long run, the Democrats will be the one, dominate party and will get whatever they want. Why shouldn’t the very shorted-sighted Republicans go along in order to “bring the bacon” home to their districts.
I wonder if all of the proponents of bipartisanship will worry about it when the Democrats get more than 60 seats in the Senate or if it will all be forgotten by then.
Superdestroyer- I agree- The Democrats were smart enough to put forward a simple, common sense agenda with a wide public appeal, instead of going for complicated problems (social security) or wedge issues (gay rights or abortion). Their 6 for ’06 has a 70-80% approval rating, which is why their Republican colleagues are joining them in approving them. That way the Dems can point to specific legislative accomplishments in ’08, and the Republicans can claim they were not totally obstructionist.
I read in WaPo today, that some Republicans are actually relieved that as part of the minority faction, they can vote their conscience or along with the wishes of their constituency. I see nothing wrong with it either.
superdestroyer,
There you go with your doom and gloom again. Republicans still occupy 49% of the Senate seats and 46% of the House seats–not inconsenquential numbers, if you ask me. Plus, if they hold together, they have well more than the necessary number to filibuster the really bad Democratic Bills (what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right). And finally, as President, Bush has the power to veto really bad Democratic Bills. For all the excessive power that I believe Bush has wielded over the last six years, the veto is one power that he definitely has not wielded enough and I fully expect him to wield over the next 24 months.
They risk support if they continue to support this disastrous war, but as I predicted before, the tide is already beginning to shift in terms of GOP support for the war. Senate Republicans were particularly aggressive in their questioning of Condoleezza Rice the other day, and as more Republicans come out against the war, Democrats will have to come up with a coherent plan if they expect to continue to capitalize on public discontent with the war.
The Republicans don’t need to go along with the Democrats to remain viable. The simply need to stand up for the principles that got them into power in the first place: support for limited government and transparent government–two things that have been sadly lacking these last six years.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The 2006 election was not a mandate in favor of Democratic policies; it was a mandate against Republican policies. Republicans stumbled, but they’re not going to fade into oblivion as you suggest.
Nic- I agree with a lot of what you wrote. Just 6 months ago,we were debating on this very site, whether the Democrats could still be considered a viable party if they failed again in ’06. So, I’m not sounding the death knell yet for the GOP.
But at the same time, I do think that limited government has become an increasingly elusive goal. One reason is that after 9/11 and with our entry into two ground wars, it was impossible to control the size of the bloated DHS or the DoD. Also, the Republicans were mostly successful in calling for smaller government when they were out of power, and they could rail against the “tax and spend liberals”. Once they came back into power, earmarks became a necessity for holding on to it. Most of their time is spent fundraising and campaigning for the next election, and they have to be able to point to concrete things that they have done for their districts.
Common refrain, but it’s wrong. First, individuals within the Dem leadership have offered plans, from Kucinich’s detailed withdrawal and diplomacy plan to many endorsements of the ISG plan to Dingell’s timetable and benchmark approach. But the Republicans hung this albatross around their own necks, and the Democrats really don’t need to agree on a plan for this albatross to continue to drag down the Republicans. I’d say the Republicans better come up with a plan.
The same refrain was floating around during the debate on Social Security reform. Republicans, news anchors, pundits and prominent voices among Democrats joined the refrain which essentially went “where’s your plan?” Pelosi and team correctly predicted that the lack of public support doomed to the Republican plan to failure. Not offering an alternative plan was the Democrat’s plan, and it worked brilliantly. When the Republican plan failed, the Democrats had no need to attempt to compromise. It was a good, clean and complete failure for the GOP without any baggage for Democrats.
George Bush refuses to take advice on Iraq, even from his own party. If his own party, which still controls foreign affairs, continues to defy the will of the public, Republicans are doomed in 2008, and they can cry “where is your plan?” all they want. The public knows who’s mess this is.
Perhaps it is time for the GOP to refine this aim with something more realistic: We are the party of efficient government. We trim waste, bloat, subsidies, handouts, anti competitive regulations and deficits. We aim to give Americans the best value for their tax dollars.
I could get excited about supporting that kind of platform.
Oh brother. Good luck with that. One man’s “anti-competitive regulations” are another’s “visionary systems thinking”. I think the GOP vision has ignored systems thinking entirely, and descended into using talking points like these to justify a massive income distribution from the middle and lower to the rich, who are empowered by their wealth to unduly influence national policy away from the common good to that of their chosen special interests.
My vision is a government “for the people”
Paul,
One problem is that rather than choose appropriate tax breaks to accompany an increase in the minimum wage the Republicans decide to grab too much. They’re not really about supporting small business, that’s an illusion. It’s like their insistence on the elimination of the Estate Tax instead of adjusting it. In states with large agricultural segments they harp on the loss of family farms. Unfortunately for them when challenged on it they can never produce an example of a family farm that’s been lost due to the Estate Tax.
The great problem with the concept of small government is that we are past the time when a small government can do what is necessary for a country of our nature. Consider what you can find out from the CIA World Fact Book.
Land Area not counting territories: 9,631,420 sq km
Population (as of July 2006): 298,444,215
Those are really two of the least important but they reflect something else. Check out the numbers under economics, transportation and communications. I think counting on the market to always produce the best result is like believing in magic wishes to fix our problems. If the Republicans want to reinvent themselves as the party of efficient government they should go for it. It’s something believable. But I still won’t vote for them as long as they have the religious right as a vital and controlling component of their party. It’s the main factor that drove me away from them and their delusional belief in the First Church of Free Market only clinched the deal.
Nic,
The Republicans should have used their time in power to try to acheive the type of small government that would encourage demographic groups that did not normally support them to support them. Instead the Republicans acted like total idiots, abandoned virtually every principle that they campaigned on, and wasted any advantage they had for short term, pork barrel gain.
The result is the future of the United State is one party politics with a dominate Democratic Party like the current situation in DC, Mass, NJ, and even California. The only hope the Republicans have of regaining any real power is a total screwup by the Democrats and that may not be enough to give the Republicans any chance due to the Republicans demographic advantages.
So the future of the politics will be minorities groups voting in elite Democratic Party candidates. This, in the long run, will lead to huge amounts of corruption (like New Jersey or Chicago), a massive and expanding government, and thus will make the U.S. a very unpleasant place to be a member of the middle class because there will no effective moderation on the Democratic Party.
Last I checked, the Gov of California was a Republican. All this doom-and-gloom is a typical GOP tactic. Guess what, the world will not end just because the Republicans lost some elections.
Reform is a good idea. You yourself said what the problem with the GOP as been for the past 6 years or so, “…instead the Republicans acted like total idiots, abandoned virtually every principle that they campaigned on, and wasted any advantage they had for short term, pork barrel gain.”
So instead of the doom-and-gloom speech, why not listen to JimS, “If the Republicans want to reinvent themselves as the party of efficient government they should go for it. It’s something believable. But I still won’t vote for them as long as they have the religious right as a vital and controlling component of their party. It’s the main factor that drove me away from them and their delusional belief in the First Church of Free Market only clinched the deal.”