We really do need at least two strong political parties, creating true debate and electoral checks and balances, to keep our democracy strong and viable. The Democrats won the presidential election by a slim popular vote but a fairly wide electoral margin. The problem for the GOP is not their current hold on states or that they have no voice in Congress. Quite the contrary. There are 29 Republican governors, and they control a majority of state legislative seats. It’s more about issues and trending. Not just the demographics of the new American voters – a definite issue for the GOP that is clearly out of touch with the rising tide – but of issues held by a vast majority of Americans… who now live in or around cities.
Republican stances on abortion, gay rights, Social Security, Medicare and taxes for the rich fly in the face of the majority of Americans in virtually every poll conducted on the subject. The GOP cannot function without sanction from the extreme right – religious and fiscal – who no longer represent anywhere near an American sentiment. When pressed for specifics, Americans do not want to dismantle the social programs that are now embedded in our social fabric. There are no modern nations without strong social programs – none. Calling everything you don’t like “socialist” only holds traction for party-diehards… it’s useless rhetoric for everyone else. It’s time to stop living in an era that has long passed.
The populace has been terrified with sloganeering that the “socialist” Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) will bankrupt the nation and create a massive cut in jobs as employers have to drop workers or provide health insurance. Yet the largest job growth over the past few years has been in healthcare, and given our historical precedents on Social Security and Medicare, after a few years with the new act, they won’t be any more likely to give up those benefits either. Canada went through precisely the same political turmoil when it passed its healthcare, the same bankruptcy/job loss threats, and today, they would give up hockey (lockout notwithstanding) before they would sacrifice their healthcare system.
The entire focus of the GOP over the recent past has been to increase regulation and control through statutes (and even the Constitution) to force the most conservative evangelical values against a majority that clearly has voiced its opposition to these platforms, to reduce taxes (particularly for the rich) and to eviscerate government including environmental and financial regulation. Nobody in their right mind would tell you government cannot be cut significantly, but the dismantling of social programs is at the heart of the GOP effort. Republicans can tell you that deficits are evil, but after a Democratic president left the nation with a budgetary surplus, they voted in lock-step to cut taxes while strongly supporting two useless wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – that instantly shot up the deficit and blew the government bureaucracy upwards. A Republican administration added the Department of Homeland Security, which quickly grew to be the third largest cabinet-level agency. They knowingly put the squeeze on the entire federal budget, a useful policy for future negotiation.
“Deficit reduction” is an exceptionally useful tool is you want an argument to take out social programs that eviscerate government. Perhaps the GOP built them on purpose? Just say we cannot afford these programs anymore (even though Republican administrations created the new deficit pattern in the first place!!!!!), make every spending cut you suggest focus almost exclusively on the programs you hate, create a few scared conservative cows (like defense spending that is one of the most bloated parts of the federal budget), and voila, the minority party uses its one majority in the House to effect a policy that the most Americans (remember those polls) indicate that they strongly reject. The GOP lost the presidential race precisely on these issues. While the GOP effort may please the Republican base (a shrinking demographic) in the short term, as the Democrats well recognize, this blockage will be the main focus in the mid-term elections. It will provide election fodder for exactly how far away from mainstream American sentiments the GOP is becoming.
The United States has the actual ability to fund the deficit at relatively low interest rates, even though some serious debt reduction that doesn’t embrace the foolhardy austerity job-killer adopted by Europe is in order. Sure, we do expect some inflation in the not-too-distant future, but the relative borrowing of other nations may just balance that out. So this really isn’t a fiscal cliff… it’s really just a battle of political will. The world would not end if we just kept going (undoing the automatic and drastic cuts that kick in on January 1st), but the Republicans want to get by force what the election itself denied them.
Liberal economic commentator, Paul Krugman (December 13th NY Times), lambasted the GOP rhetoric of doom (often enunciated by Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, pictured above) as follows: “Why the scare quotes? Because these aren’t normal negotiations in which each side presents specific proposals, and horse-trading proceeds until the two sides converge. By all accounts, Republicans have, so far, offered almost no specifics. They claim that they’re willing to raise $800 billion in revenue by closing loopholes, but they refuse to specify which loopholes they would close; they are demanding large cuts in spending, but the specific cuts they have been willing to lay out wouldn’t come close to delivering the savings they demand… It’s a very peculiar situation. In effect, Republicans are saying to President Obama, ‘Come up with something that will make us happy.’ He is, understandably, not willing to play that game. And so the talks are stuck.”
Boehner’s no fool, and with the writing on the wall and notwithstanding staunch resistance from GOP Tea Party stalwarts, on December 15th, he blinked, offering to include higher tax rates on the wealthiest Americans as part of a deficit-reduction deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. Getting blamed for falling off that cliff is something he knows the GOP must avoid, but the caving that is in store for the GOP is going to be very tough to sell to their base, furious at the loss of the election, the changing demographics of the country as a whole and their grip on future policy-making that is slowly slipping away. But as the Speaker and the President near an understanding, there is going to be some serious selling to Tea Party representatives who really don’t actually understand the word “compromise.” Still there should be enough pragmatists to break ranks… until the next issue allows battle lines to form.
Nobody likes an angry, bitter, obstructionist nay-sayer trying to get its way. Any publicity expert would tell you avoid that perception. But since the only rudder in the GOP remains the faction of the Republican Party whose policies lost the last election for them, the Party simply does not seem to know how to get out of its own way to reunite with the voters they are going to need in the future. Becoming a party that embraces efficiency and job growth, conserves the environment, and represents all working Americans – not just the rich or the angry evangelicals – has to be at the forefront of GOP planners seeking a future.
Or perhaps, the answer lies in a new configuration that would require more political parties. The ultra-right (rich who want no rules and evangelicals who want a religious legal system), moderates (which would embrace Blue Dog Democrats and moderate Republicans) and the ultra-left (social extremists). As rural America contracts, white America has less than replacement birth rates and “minorities,” mostly urban, become the new majority, Republicans are committing political suicide by adhering to their ultra-right policies.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it is truly sad to watch the Grand Old Party becoming much less grand and a whole lot more “old.”
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