The new Republican House Majority

What a GOP Majority Would Mean
By Don Monkerud
October 6, 2010

Editor’s Note: Since President Barack Obama took office, the Republican Party and the American Right have unapologetically sabotaged virtually every proposal that he and the Democrats have put forward to address the country’s economic crisis.

Working with the powerful right-wing news media, the Republicans essentially have followed the same disruptive playbook that led them to power in 1994. In this guest essay, Don Monkerud looks at what may lie ahead:

Under the Republican Party's blueprint for America, BP will no longer be required to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the F.D.A. will not restrict the new diabetes drug Avandia just because it's unsafe; and donors will be allowed to keep their contributions to political campaigns secret.

These positions, based on recent votes in Congress, foretell how the Republicans will govern if they win in the upcoming November elections.

Republicans would prevent the unemployed from receiving Medicaid; prevent treatment, screening or compensation for Americans who assisted during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC; eliminate extensions of unemployment insurance; allow the oil industry to write their own rules for oil exploration and clean up; open all off shore areas to oil wells; and stop funding state governments to stimulate the economy.

Senate and House Republicans recently voted to prevent bills from reaching the floor, or took positions, that would: bar homosexuals from the nation's military; allow the ash from burning 136 million tons of coal to be dumped into the nation's waterways; ignore greenhouse gases and the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere, fire tens of thousands of government employee; and drastically cut welfare, food stamps, health care for children and other government programs to aid the poor.

Long-term goals of the GOP include eliminating unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, Social Security and Medicare, most government regulations, consumer protection laws, and federal aid to
education, along with many other government programs they consider detrimental to corporate-business control of the country.

Republicans who are even more radical want to make Christianity the state religion, declare war on Islam, assign the death sentence for performing an abortion, and bomb and invade Iran.

Small government, lower taxes and no regulation, mantras of the Republican Party since the Reagan era, are enshrined in new promises to "take America back." The party's so-called road map -- Pledge to America -- attempts to win new votes for the party and put them in control of Congress, even after their policies led to the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

At every turn, Republicans hamstring the Democrats to create a totally dysfunctional governmental process. For example, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office lists over 300 bills passed by House Democrats that cannot make it to the Senate floor due to Republican opposition.

Democrats overcame major Republican opposition to pass bills, often with the aid of only one or two Republicans who switched positions to vote with the Democrats.

While there are no estimates of how many of the 300 bills are progressive, a number of them involve significant changes in the areas of most concern to voters: economic recovery and job creation, consumer protection, assistance to homeowners, affordable health care, clean energy jobs, fiscal responsibility, and national security.

In the Senate, the Democrats again convinced one or two Republicans to join in passing major bills signed into law by President Obama. These laws include: a $30 billion lending program and $12 billion in tax cuts for small businesses; stimulus funds to save 3.5 million American jobs; a new manufacturing enhancement act; extension of unemployment benefits; estate tax relief that protects inheritance for 99.8 percent of citizens; Wall Street reforms; a credit cardholder bill of rights; health care extension for 11 million children; and the creation of 1.7 million jobs in clean energy.

Republican opposition was almost unanimous.

"It's hard to compromise with people who are against government solutions," said Rep. Sam Farr of California, a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

"Republicans pushed for the election of ultra-conservative ideologues who don't want to cooperate because they don't think the government should be doing education, fire protection or jails; they want to contract out government jobs to the private sector."

The principle of democratic government -- majority rule -- is being turned on its head. Minority rule is especially troublesome in the Senate, where the GOP holds up bills passed by the House and threatens to filibuster every Democratic proposal. They also refuse to confirm over 240 Obama appointees, in an effort to paralyze government.

Historians haven't seen such minority obstructionism since 1917. In the 1960s, 8 percent of major Senate bills were subject to filibusters: Today Republicans filibuster 70 percent of major Senate business.

Senators with few constituents are behind many of the filibusters, which point to systemic problems. For example, a California senator represents 18 million voters, while one from Wyoming represents 260,000 voters.

The country is in a serious economic crisis, trying to recover from four large items that President Bush put on our national credit card -- tax cuts weighted in favor of the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program -- in addition to the collapse of the housing bubble.

Republicans hope their obstructionist behavior will depress the vote of frustrated liberal and moderate voters and allow better-motivated conservative ideologues to put the Republicans in charge.

Whether Americans fall for the Republican refusenik stance that's full of contradictions, negativity and faulty logic remains to be seen. The new Republican roadmap to prosperity doesn't add up.

Republicans are not only at war with logic, but they are also at war with America.

Don Monkerud is an Aptos, California-based writer who follows cultural issues and politics and writes occasional satire.

Early perhaps, but I think the 2012 GOP ticket is McDonnell/Boehner.

GOP Voters Have The Leadership They Deserve
Posted on November 3rd, 2010 by Daniel Larison

Before the election, I argued that “reformist” conservatives would likely wind up wielding inordinate influence on Republican policy thinking in the event that Republicans won a House majority. This seemed likely to happen because their arguments will seem more timely during a slow recovery than they did before the bursting of the housing bubble, and it seemed likely to happen because there will not be any serious competition from those conservatives that have sometimes been dubbed “traditionalists” or those conservatives who believe that there is no policy problem that a “return to first principles” cannot solve. However, looking at the sheer scale of Republican gains in the House, the political case for following reformist conservatives does not appear all that compelling.

It might be deplorable and maddening to watch, but what incentive do Republicans have to reflect on the errors of their former ways? None. What incentive have their supporters given Republicans to do this? None. What incentive do they have to abandon their tired refrains and formulate policies that address existing problems? None. Yesterday was a clear sign from Republicans’ core supporters that casting some symbolic nay votes and using the right kind of rhetoric are more than enough to keep them loyally voting for the very same people who just a couple years ago were seen (correctly!) as subverting and tainting the party and the conservative movement with their corruption and folly. There was a brief timeout followed by empty promises of doing better, and now one could assume that all or almost all is forgiven. Not only is there no reason why the Republican leadership would act differently this time, but they would be acting irrationally if they sacrificed the benefits of promoting corporate interests for the sake of principles in which they do not really believe.

The midterm results didn’t represent a dramatic shift in the overall public’s views, but they did confirm that rank-and-file Republicans and movement conservatives are quite happy to enable a party that badly disappoints them every time it is given an opportunity to govern. Four years ago, movement conservatives were looking for the exits and claiming that they as conservatives had nothing to do with those unpopular Republicans. Today, Republican triumph is taken as conservative vindication, and the deeply dysfunctional, unhealthy identification of conservatism with the cause of the GOP has become stronger than ever. In a little while, maybe a few months or a year or two years, the people who made John Boehner the next Speaker of the House will be groaning and complaining that Boehner and his colleagues are reverting to their old ways. That is inevitably what Boehner and his colleagues will do, and why wouldn’t they? They have every reason to return to their old habits, and they have just been shown that change or reform is entirely unnecessary to advance their careers. For a while, the disillusioned movement conservatives may be receptive to critiques of Republican leadership, but as soon as the 2012 campaign gets going they will begin rushing back to empower another batch of Republicans so that their interests can be neglected some more.

The refomist case takes for granted that Republicans need to have relevant policy ideas to be able to compete as a national party with a changing electorate. The GOP has just won one of its largest midterm victories in the last century while having no relevant policy ideas (as opposed to slogans, of which it has many) and relying heavily on its traditional constituencies. Yes, it was a midterm election and the electorate was more heavily slanted towards constituencies that tend to favor Republicans, but that isn’t going to register unless 2012 proves to be a particularly bad year. If the GOP’s overwhelming concern is to acquire and wield power, rather than actually serve the interests of its constituents, the brief four-year period in the minority would seem to be a small price to pay if the party can come storming back to better than 2004-era levels of control in the House without doing anything to earn it.

Reformists argue that Republicans have to be more than a rejectionist party, but rejectionism has rescucitated the party and undone most of the political losses of the last six years. It doesn’t matter that this is akin to the reanimation of a zombie. As long as there is some sign of life or undeath, that will be enough. Reformists and dissident conservatives alike have insisted that Republicans have to answer for their years of disastrous misrule and incompetence before they could hope to win back the public’s trust. Granted, the GOP doesn’t really have the public’s trust now, but they have been entrusted with much more power anyway, and they did this with an unreformed, unchanged party leadership. The Republican Party that the public rejected and repudiated four years ago has not meaningfully changed, and all that it had to do to regain power was engage in reflexive opposition and wait. Even if one believes, as I do, that time is not on their side, and that they are throwing away their future with the next generation, why would the current Republican leadership care? Their preferred way of doing things is to reap the benefits in the present and defer costs and responsibilities until later.

During the last few months, I have been reading the argument that angry Americans want to restore some measure of justice and order in society so that rewards go to the deserving and failures are not bailed out. It is a significant problem that the chosen method to express this anger has been to reward the undeserving and promote the failures.

You're right about that. I just think he's the best groomed or at least he's been the front man since "You lie!" I don't think the GOP plans to run a moderate campaign. They'll be running a larger campaign not just targeting Obama but the large number of Dems in congress still. They want a super majority and the White House. I think the idea will be to keep feeding the populist meme.

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Republican conundrum
In a sense, Ms. Palin and Mr. Ryan represent opposite sides of the Republican conundrum at the moment. Ms. Palin is an outsider with a serious following in the party’s grass roots, but she has not shown that she has a plan to actually govern. Mr. Ryan is a powerful Washington figure with an office full of detailed flip charts, but he has little, if any, following out among the faithful.

Mr. Boehner or his newly empowered lieutenants probably see some peril in pursuing either kind of opposition. Translating all of this Tea Party rhetoric about spending and deficits into some kind of alternative governing plan is a sobering undertaking — so much so that most Republican candidates this year refused to endorse Mr. Ryan’s version, which would partly privatize Social Security and Medicare.

But to adopt a less substantive, more cultural kind of opposition, while it might satisfy a lot of Tea Party types, would be to court another voter revolt in 2012 or 2016. After all, if exit polls and conversations with individual voters are any indication, a lot of the unrest that came to the surface Tuesday had to do with the perception that no one in Washington is serious about solving problems like the national debt. It’s hard to see how more subpoenas and more blocked judges are going to change that perception.

Many Republicans seem to hope they won’t have to choose the direction, that they can just sit back and respond, either culturally or intellectually, to various pieces of Mr. Obama’s agenda. But there will be pivotal moments of choice for the Republican opposition, and one of them may be only weeks away.

In December, Mr. Obama’s debt-reduction panel (of which Mr. Ryan is a member) is supposed to release its findings on the budget, which, assuming the bipartisan panel can’t reach a consensus, will most likely encompass several options for reducing spending in the long term.

A Palinesque opposition would probably seize on proposed tax increases or benefit cuts in the plans, accuse Mr. Obama of creating the commission as a gimmick and dismiss the whole exercise as just another waste of the citizens’ money. A more intellectual approach would be to embrace the most conservative option offered by the panel and take it up for debate, in hopes of pressuring the White House into some meaningful compromise.

Which way the new Republican majority goes will say a lot, perhaps, about whether it intends to oppose the president’s identity or his ideas.

if things get better in any way, the Republicans lose.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

if things get better in any way, the Republicans lose.

As I also stated above, if this happens, the spin will be that they deserve the credit.

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You're right about that. I just think he's the best groomed or at least he's been the front man since "You lie!" I don't think the GOP plans to run a moderate campaign. They'll be running a larger campaign not just targeting Obama but the large number of Dems in congress still. They want a super majority and the White House. I think the idea will be to keep feeding the populist meme.



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If the "mandate" Boehner hears is to roll back health care then he doesn't have a clue. But, I predict that's exactly what he's going to focus on.

I'm at work

and once again, I do detect the whiff of the Republican media machine emanating from your posts, whether you wish to admit it here or not.

Nonsense. However I'm no longer interested in the discussion on your terms.

We got to put the TV on and watch the election coverage last night. This meant Fox News for almost 12 hours.

Quote:

We got to put the TV on and watch the election coverage last night. This meant Fox News for almost 12 hours.

Jesus, another slack ass. Get to work fer christ's sake!

What do you think is going to happen? Will the Republicans try to defund health care? Will they shut the government down? Will they compromise on bills in order to get budgets passed?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

What do you think is going to happen? Will the Republicans try to defund health care? Will they shut the government down? Will they compromise on bills in order to get budgets passed?

I think that's a very easy question. Mr. Boehner's top goal is "ensuring Obama is a one-term president." (Source: Reuters.) His "hello-no" strategy couldn't have worked better for him towards achieving his goal. The obvious conclusion for him, then, is to do more of the same. I expect complete obstruction from the Republican Party.