Insurgent Republicans: Goodbye
P. Schultz
December 11, 2012
“As
their leaders inch toward agreeing to higher tax rates, dozens of House
Republicans find themselves caught between the will of a larger American public
that favors higher taxes on the rich and the wishes of constituents who
re-elected them overwhelmingly to oppose the Obama agenda at every turn.”
This
is the lead paragraph in a story in today’s NY Times about the Republican Party
and its attempt to deal with Obama’s victory last month. It portrays the
“insurgents” in the Republican Party as “caught,” which is accurate. But they
are not only “caught” between “a term not heard often in the House – the
national interest,” as the article has it, but also they are “caught” between
their constituents and the establishment Republicans – who basically have these
insurgents right where they want them. That is, they, the insurgents, can
remain true to their constituents’ desires regarding taxes and spending, in
which case they will be rendered powerless in the House, or they can renege on
their constituents, in which case they will probably be defeated in the next
election. In either case, the establishment Republicans will prevail while
preserving their own power and prominence, which is of course what they, the
establishment types, want to accomplish, even if it means joining Obama and the
Democrats in constructing a deal to avoid what is called “the fiscal cliff.”
You
see, when this alleged “fiscal cliff” was created – and even recently – many
were critical, seeing it as a disaster waiting to happen. But, as we now can
see, it was nothing of the sort – except of course to the insurgent
Republicans. As Boehner and other establishment Republicans must have known,
this “fiscal cliff” helped to create a no win situation for the insurgents:
They could cause the government to go over the cliff or they could renege on
their principles. In either case, they would lose! And, from this perspective,
all the better that Obama won the presidential election as that makes the
insurgents’ situation even more perilous than it otherwise would be. Compromise
is one thing; but compromising with a “socialist” who is the epitome of a
“radical liberalism” is another thing altogether.
This
is the sort of thing that is very common in our political system, viz., the
collusion of the “two” parties that preserves the power of the establishment
faction in each of those parties. Our textbook view, according to which the
Republicans and the Democrats want to win elections, to win every election, as
well as to win every political battle, cannot account for the behavior we are
witnessing now. The desire to win every election or every battle is obviously
not the case and especially not the case when winning an election or winning a
political battle threatens the power of those in “leadership” positions. Here,
the establishment Republicans, as is becoming evident, are quite willing to
“lose” the deal to be struck with Obama to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” Hence, this
explains why “responsible” Republicans are now using “a term not heard often in
the House – the national interest” to justify this “loss.” Of course, these
“responsible” Republicans are actually motivated not so much by the national
interest as by their own self-interests, especially by their interests in
retaining their power and prominence. In this case, their self-interests may
align with the national interest but it is the former at least as much as the
latter that is driving them and when the former and the latter do not align, it
is the former that prevails.
A
troubling question is: How far would these politicians go in order to preserve
their power? That is, what kind of losses would they accept to preserve their
power? Would they, for example, fight what they knew to be a losing war to
preserve their power? Would they propose policies or institutional reforms they
knew would fail to preserve their power? It is hard to say but not difficult to
imagine instances where such behavior actually was undertaken, aka’ Vietnam or
FDR’s “court packing” proposal.
It
is often said that politics is not for the faint of heart. Indeed. We might
even say that our politics, based as it is on self-interest [just read the Federalist], is for those with no heart.
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