So let’s see:
1) The first major economic package of a Democratic administration passes…with exactly zero Republican votes in the House.
2) Rush Limbaugh is out making typically erudite and reasoned observations.
3) Republican Congressmen fall about themselves to avoid offending El Rushbo.
4) The entire GOP gameplan – the whole thing – consists solely of voting no across the board and hoping for a monumental collapse in the midterm elections.
What the hell is this, 1993? Who’s got my Blind Melon CDs?
Now, from a tactical standpoint, this isn’t the worst idea. The GOP went full-obstruct in 1993-94 and wound up in charge of the House and Senate. The Dems went full-capitulate after September 11 and got their asses handed to them in ’02. Message: cooperation doesn’t pay. Like APSA recommended in 1950, like Gingrich tried to implement in the 104th, we are now living in the age of American Westminster. One party gets control of all the federal governmental engine, runs their program, and if the public doesn’t like it, turns them out at the first opportunity.
However, there’s no splitting hairs, no wiggle room, and most important, no incentive to compromise. Obama talked quite a game about bipartisanship, but if this is the way it’s going to go – with a handful of concessions that ultimately shift no votes – then the proper thing to do is to wad it up, throw it out, go balls-to-the-wall with your program and let the voters decide whose vision they like better.
This is a dangerous time, though. Sixteen years ago, the House of Representatives had been forty years in Democratic control, talk radio was a new and invigorating force, and Newt – for all his freshman-with-ADD-in-his-first-PSCI-101-class ramblings – was actually trying something radically different in Congressional politics. And to cap it all off, the new President – who did have more votes than anyone else got in 1992, in fairness – could hardly count on mustering a popular majority in the electorate after polling 43% in the general election. And the economy, while bad enough that impressionable undergrads got a queasy feeling reading The Grapes Of Wrath, wasn’t nearly as banged up as today, when somebody’s perfectly good AAPL holdings have donked off half their value since the summer, not that I’m pissed or anything.
Plug in the constant stream of Reagan nostalgia, and we come to an uncomfortable realization: the GOP in 2009 = the Washington Redskins in 2004 when Joe Gibbs came back. The faithful are fired up, they want to believe, they want to see the counter-trey and 50 Gap and watch a big back plow the field behind a new generation of Hogs and finish up on the Mall clutching a Lombardi Trophy while the President slaps Mr Cooke on the back and then we all head to Duke Zeibert’s to celebrate.
If memory serves me right, though, Joe went 5-11 that first year back. Duke’s is still closed, the Skins finished last in the division, and Joe Gibbs is back in retirement. If I were a Republican, I would feel very very uneasy about building the offense for 2010 on radio-driven pitchfork populism and a string of no votes. Somebody is going to have to step up and offer some sort of shadow-government program, because the alternative is just hollering and waiting for Obama and his crew to drive off the road. Ask Hillary how well that worked out.
(I don’t use the phrase “shadow government” by accident. Go read http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com as it contains some smart shit written by smart people.)