Holy Omelet! A Pax Republicana?
--Why the GOP leadership might not be so clueless after all.
Faced with the recent befuddling decisions by the Republican leadership, it would be quite easy to dismiss its headliners as clueless halfwits altogether indifferent to our nation's future. Led by the usual suspects, Republicans under President George W. Bush have been responsible for such policy gems as: 1) unprecedently cutting taxes while fighting a costly war, giving American citizens no personal stake in the war while discouraging consumer saving; or 2) nominating to the Supreme Court a woefully underqualified fawning crony who vacillated on even the most basic constitutional issues; or 3) publicly opposing anti-torture legislation at a time when America desperately needed a credibility facelift in the "War of Ideas;" or 4) passing a budget bill so laughably laden with earmarked pet projects, you wonder if those much-vaunted Republican budget hawks actually exist.
However, and I ask for your indulgence, what if: the plan all along was to establish not a sprawling compassionate conservative hegemony, but a small-government conservative dynasty? What if: the GOP was cutting taxes while increasing expenditures and creating a huge deficit so that future conservative administrations will be "forced" to cut government spending and shrink the size of government in the name of fiscal responsibility? Given the inherent unpopularity of spending cuts, the GOP probably knows that it must persuade voters to accept the cuts as absolutely necessary measures for our national fiscal well-being (and for our national security, they might even add). So perhaps they plan to starve the government of funds, then cut off a couple of its limbs to compensate.
We already have examples of this-- two of last century's towering monuments to social liberalism, Social Security and Medicaid, have been systematically hacked away in recent years. Whether or not we would be better off with a more privatized system is a matter for another debate. Nevertheless, it still stands that the GOP has been attempting (none too transparently, I'll add) to dissolve the responsibility of the federal government to maintain a social safety net. In short, the current debate among Republicans over whether to cut taxes or social spending is not a matter of which to do, but which to do first.
Regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, maybe Bush knew that she would split the Right and would be ultimately unconfirmable. But he needed to get a strong firebrand conservative on the Court. After Miers stepped down, Bush could then nominate a highly qualified, but highly conservative judge to the bench. After having unloaded so much effort on the Miers nomination, his critics wouldn't be up for a bloody fight, he might have reasoned. To critics of his new stalwart conservative pick, he would say something like, "You wanted someone qualified, didn't you? You've already conceded that Miers' views weren't as important as her underqualification." Indeed, compared to Harriet Miers, practically any thoughtful federal judge would look like the next Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
As a result of the Miers tactic, he was "forced" to appeal to his evangelical Christian base and nominate Judge Sam Alito, a far more conservative nominee than would have been otherwise possible. Aside: I think Alito will be confirmed in the GOP-controlled Senate; a recent bipartisan compromise restricts the filibustering of judicial nominees to "extreme circumstances" that would be difficult to prove here, despite Alito's disturbing tendency to treat grown woman like girls. What's more, Bush will probably enjoy more support from social conservatives in the long run, now that he's served them up an abortion-slayer. Both evangelicals (who were lukewarm about Miers anyway) and conservative Beltway intellectuals (who hated her) have rallied around "Scalito."
It is true that the Republicans have paid a political price for their excesses, in the form of a newly emboldened Democratic party. The pervadingly negative image of the administration's handling of an Iraq war that produces little news of concrete progress, together with the loud cacophony of corruption scandals back at home, has continued to frustrate the administration's efforts to spend its political capital. I'm not saying that these difficulties fit into some grand Republican power scheme at all; I think they are simply political miscalculations. True, meticulously planned strategies for victory have never been strong suits of the current administration. But no matter-- the trick is to win before you plan.
Regardless, concluding that "Republicans are a bunch of idiots!" doesn't give them enough credit. After all, they're politicians-- you might not want to invite them to housesit for a month, but they can be generally trusted do what is in the interest of themselves and their party (and occasionally their constituencies). Along the way, it makes sense that Karl Rove and the GOP would have to break some eggs in their quest for the Holy Omelot: their dream of a Great Republican Majority.
Faced with the recent befuddling decisions by the Republican leadership, it would be quite easy to dismiss its headliners as clueless halfwits altogether indifferent to our nation's future. Led by the usual suspects, Republicans under President George W. Bush have been responsible for such policy gems as: 1) unprecedently cutting taxes while fighting a costly war, giving American citizens no personal stake in the war while discouraging consumer saving; or 2) nominating to the Supreme Court a woefully underqualified fawning crony who vacillated on even the most basic constitutional issues; or 3) publicly opposing anti-torture legislation at a time when America desperately needed a credibility facelift in the "War of Ideas;" or 4) passing a budget bill so laughably laden with earmarked pet projects, you wonder if those much-vaunted Republican budget hawks actually exist.
However, and I ask for your indulgence, what if: the plan all along was to establish not a sprawling compassionate conservative hegemony, but a small-government conservative dynasty? What if: the GOP was cutting taxes while increasing expenditures and creating a huge deficit so that future conservative administrations will be "forced" to cut government spending and shrink the size of government in the name of fiscal responsibility? Given the inherent unpopularity of spending cuts, the GOP probably knows that it must persuade voters to accept the cuts as absolutely necessary measures for our national fiscal well-being (and for our national security, they might even add). So perhaps they plan to starve the government of funds, then cut off a couple of its limbs to compensate.
We already have examples of this-- two of last century's towering monuments to social liberalism, Social Security and Medicaid, have been systematically hacked away in recent years. Whether or not we would be better off with a more privatized system is a matter for another debate. Nevertheless, it still stands that the GOP has been attempting (none too transparently, I'll add) to dissolve the responsibility of the federal government to maintain a social safety net. In short, the current debate among Republicans over whether to cut taxes or social spending is not a matter of which to do, but which to do first.
Regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, maybe Bush knew that she would split the Right and would be ultimately unconfirmable. But he needed to get a strong firebrand conservative on the Court. After Miers stepped down, Bush could then nominate a highly qualified, but highly conservative judge to the bench. After having unloaded so much effort on the Miers nomination, his critics wouldn't be up for a bloody fight, he might have reasoned. To critics of his new stalwart conservative pick, he would say something like, "You wanted someone qualified, didn't you? You've already conceded that Miers' views weren't as important as her underqualification." Indeed, compared to Harriet Miers, practically any thoughtful federal judge would look like the next Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
As a result of the Miers tactic, he was "forced" to appeal to his evangelical Christian base and nominate Judge Sam Alito, a far more conservative nominee than would have been otherwise possible. Aside: I think Alito will be confirmed in the GOP-controlled Senate; a recent bipartisan compromise restricts the filibustering of judicial nominees to "extreme circumstances" that would be difficult to prove here, despite Alito's disturbing tendency to treat grown woman like girls. What's more, Bush will probably enjoy more support from social conservatives in the long run, now that he's served them up an abortion-slayer. Both evangelicals (who were lukewarm about Miers anyway) and conservative Beltway intellectuals (who hated her) have rallied around "Scalito."
It is true that the Republicans have paid a political price for their excesses, in the form of a newly emboldened Democratic party. The pervadingly negative image of the administration's handling of an Iraq war that produces little news of concrete progress, together with the loud cacophony of corruption scandals back at home, has continued to frustrate the administration's efforts to spend its political capital. I'm not saying that these difficulties fit into some grand Republican power scheme at all; I think they are simply political miscalculations. True, meticulously planned strategies for victory have never been strong suits of the current administration. But no matter-- the trick is to win before you plan.
Regardless, concluding that "Republicans are a bunch of idiots!" doesn't give them enough credit. After all, they're politicians-- you might not want to invite them to housesit for a month, but they can be generally trusted do what is in the interest of themselves and their party (and occasionally their constituencies). Along the way, it makes sense that Karl Rove and the GOP would have to break some eggs in their quest for the Holy Omelot: their dream of a Great Republican Majority.
posted by TheTrayTiger at 1:15 AM
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