http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-house-gops-nihilistic-anarchism/
Writing in the wake of the Fiscal Cliff deal and the amateurish attempt to challenge John Boehner for Speaker, National Review’s John Podhoretz rails against the conservatives on Capitol Hill who seem to have taken the Republican Party down a very bizarre path:
The problem is that conservatives seem to think there were other choices, other ways, other possibilities — when all those choices, ways and possibilities had been exhausted.
And so many of them are literally embracing chaos. Though they oppose raising taxes, by voting against the tax bill on Tuesday night they effectively voted to raise taxes on 98 percent of Americans.
(…)
Then came talk that Boehner should be fired as speaker of the House when the time came to vote in the new speaker yesterday afternoon. Yet none of the insurgents was brave enough to stand against him; instead, a bunch of them cast nonsense votes for someone else or refused to vote at all.
In so doing, they came close to handing Boehner a humiliating and entirely destructive defeat — forcing a second ballot and leaving their own party leader critically injured. They seemed to crave disorder.
This is how people who are more comfortable on the margins than in the middle of things behave. This is cannibalism, not political combat. This is unreason, not reason. This is temper, not temperament.
This is anarchism, not conservatism.
I suppose the only question I would have for Podhoretz about this insight, which I tend to agree with, is where they heck he’s been all this time. It’s been evident for at least the last two years that there’s a not insubstantial portion of the Congressional GOP, mostly in the House but increasingly becoming a powerful force in the Senate GOP Caucus, for whom the idea of governing means only getting what they want. The idea of compromise and legislative bargaining, a part of American politics from the beginning of Republic is not only anathema to them, it doesn’t even seem to exist. During the recently concluded Fiscal Cliff negotiations, this was epitomized by the people who asserted that the GOP should not consent to any deal that didn’t extend the Bush Tax Cuts for all taxpayers. The fact that it was blindingly obvious that such a bill would never make it through the Senate or past the President, thus resulting in taxes going up for everyone, didn’t seem to occur to these people or, if it did, it didn’t seem to matter.
This is the danger of the all-or-nothing philosophy when it comes to legislative politics. When running for office, it’s typical for politicians on both sides of the aisle to talk about high minded ideals and strict adherence to principles. This is what gets the base enthusiastic about the campaign and brings in the votes, and it’s been part of American political campaigns from the beginning. However, it’s also been part of American political history from the beginning that legislating is, by definition, the art of compromise. As I noted in the wake of the Fiscal Cliff deal, which I’ll admit was imperfect but was likely the best deal that could be gotten under the bizarre circumstances we live in, expecting perfection in legislation is a foolish proposition. Even in those limited eras in American history when one political party has held all the levers of government, it has always been the case that political horse trading of one kind or another was necessary to get legislation passed. When you’re in an era where the political party that you support only controls one-half of one branch of the Federal Government, the idea that you can hold the nation hostage and get everything you want is not only stupid, it’s completely irresponsible.
This isn’t to say that every Republican in Congress is like this. The Atlantic’s Molly Ball has an interesting interview up with now-former Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette, who makes these comments about the current state of the Republican Caucus in the body he used to be a member of:
Q: The impression, particularly among Democrats, is that the Republican majority in the House is a bunch of crazies determined to do everything in their power to stand in the way of functional government. Is that wrong?
Former Rep. Steve LaTourette: It’s wrong because the whole conference isn’t crazy. The majority are trying to get the right thing done. But if you do the math and you need 218 out of 233 [to pass a bill], you don’t need many people to leave the reservation to have a nonfunctioning majority. It’s reasonable to say that within the group are some extremists.
I have no doubt that LaTourette is largely correct here. The vast majority of the Republican members of the House aren’t really part of the “let it burn” caucus. However, thanks in no small part to the fact that people like LaTourette have been leaving Congress in drovers over the past two years, the power of that caucus has been growing ever more extensively. In addition, the growing power of third-party advocacy groups such as the Club For Growth, which just yesterday said that it would hold a “yes” vote on Hurricane Sandy relief against any Congressman who voted that way, has significantly changed the motivations of Members of Congress. Rather than being most concerned about winning a General Election against a Democratic opponent, many of them are now more concerned about avoiding a challenge from the right in a Republican Primary. Thus, even those Members of Congress who might be willing to support reasonable legislation find themselves conflicted. This has all become most apparent in the last week with the Fiscal Cliff near-debacle and the idiotic, incompetent, and yet righteously indignant effort to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House.
At this point, it seems rather apparent that a different philosophy has come into vogue in the entity that continues to call itself the Republican Party. Instead of being a philosophy of limited government and fiscal responsibility, it is a philosophy where there are only two alternatives. Either the nation moves in the direction that those who advocate it want it to, or it burns. There’s no room for compromise, no room for debate other than on the terms already set. This is not the philosophy of a party that wants to govern, and it’s not the philosophy of a party that is going to last for an extended period of time in its present form. It is, in the end, a philosophy of anarchism in which one really doesn’t care what happens. For a party that claims to care about morality, it is amorality at its most extreme.
Writing in the wake of the Fiscal Cliff deal and the amateurish attempt to challenge John Boehner for Speaker, National Review’s John Podhoretz rails against the conservatives on Capitol Hill who seem to have taken the Republican Party down a very bizarre path:
The problem is that conservatives seem to think there were other choices, other ways, other possibilities — when all those choices, ways and possibilities had been exhausted.
And so many of them are literally embracing chaos. Though they oppose raising taxes, by voting against the tax bill on Tuesday night they effectively voted to raise taxes on 98 percent of Americans.
(…)
Then came talk that Boehner should be fired as speaker of the House when the time came to vote in the new speaker yesterday afternoon. Yet none of the insurgents was brave enough to stand against him; instead, a bunch of them cast nonsense votes for someone else or refused to vote at all.
In so doing, they came close to handing Boehner a humiliating and entirely destructive defeat — forcing a second ballot and leaving their own party leader critically injured. They seemed to crave disorder.
This is how people who are more comfortable on the margins than in the middle of things behave. This is cannibalism, not political combat. This is unreason, not reason. This is temper, not temperament.
This is anarchism, not conservatism.
I suppose the only question I would have for Podhoretz about this insight, which I tend to agree with, is where they heck he’s been all this time. It’s been evident for at least the last two years that there’s a not insubstantial portion of the Congressional GOP, mostly in the House but increasingly becoming a powerful force in the Senate GOP Caucus, for whom the idea of governing means only getting what they want. The idea of compromise and legislative bargaining, a part of American politics from the beginning of Republic is not only anathema to them, it doesn’t even seem to exist. During the recently concluded Fiscal Cliff negotiations, this was epitomized by the people who asserted that the GOP should not consent to any deal that didn’t extend the Bush Tax Cuts for all taxpayers. The fact that it was blindingly obvious that such a bill would never make it through the Senate or past the President, thus resulting in taxes going up for everyone, didn’t seem to occur to these people or, if it did, it didn’t seem to matter.
This is the danger of the all-or-nothing philosophy when it comes to legislative politics. When running for office, it’s typical for politicians on both sides of the aisle to talk about high minded ideals and strict adherence to principles. This is what gets the base enthusiastic about the campaign and brings in the votes, and it’s been part of American political campaigns from the beginning. However, it’s also been part of American political history from the beginning that legislating is, by definition, the art of compromise. As I noted in the wake of the Fiscal Cliff deal, which I’ll admit was imperfect but was likely the best deal that could be gotten under the bizarre circumstances we live in, expecting perfection in legislation is a foolish proposition. Even in those limited eras in American history when one political party has held all the levers of government, it has always been the case that political horse trading of one kind or another was necessary to get legislation passed. When you’re in an era where the political party that you support only controls one-half of one branch of the Federal Government, the idea that you can hold the nation hostage and get everything you want is not only stupid, it’s completely irresponsible.
This isn’t to say that every Republican in Congress is like this. The Atlantic’s Molly Ball has an interesting interview up with now-former Ohio Congressman Steve LaTourette, who makes these comments about the current state of the Republican Caucus in the body he used to be a member of:
Q: The impression, particularly among Democrats, is that the Republican majority in the House is a bunch of crazies determined to do everything in their power to stand in the way of functional government. Is that wrong?
Former Rep. Steve LaTourette: It’s wrong because the whole conference isn’t crazy. The majority are trying to get the right thing done. But if you do the math and you need 218 out of 233 [to pass a bill], you don’t need many people to leave the reservation to have a nonfunctioning majority. It’s reasonable to say that within the group are some extremists.
I have no doubt that LaTourette is largely correct here. The vast majority of the Republican members of the House aren’t really part of the “let it burn” caucus. However, thanks in no small part to the fact that people like LaTourette have been leaving Congress in drovers over the past two years, the power of that caucus has been growing ever more extensively. In addition, the growing power of third-party advocacy groups such as the Club For Growth, which just yesterday said that it would hold a “yes” vote on Hurricane Sandy relief against any Congressman who voted that way, has significantly changed the motivations of Members of Congress. Rather than being most concerned about winning a General Election against a Democratic opponent, many of them are now more concerned about avoiding a challenge from the right in a Republican Primary. Thus, even those Members of Congress who might be willing to support reasonable legislation find themselves conflicted. This has all become most apparent in the last week with the Fiscal Cliff near-debacle and the idiotic, incompetent, and yet righteously indignant effort to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House.
At this point, it seems rather apparent that a different philosophy has come into vogue in the entity that continues to call itself the Republican Party. Instead of being a philosophy of limited government and fiscal responsibility, it is a philosophy where there are only two alternatives. Either the nation moves in the direction that those who advocate it want it to, or it burns. There’s no room for compromise, no room for debate other than on the terms already set. This is not the philosophy of a party that wants to govern, and it’s not the philosophy of a party that is going to last for an extended period of time in its present form. It is, in the end, a philosophy of anarchism in which one really doesn’t care what happens. For a party that claims to care about morality, it is amorality at its most extreme.
