The post-showdown/shutdown Republican Party has a problem. Its “whatever it takes” Tea Party faction, led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, has vowed to try again as the current extensions in the budget extension and debt ceiling bills expire early next year. Obamacare has to go, no matter the consequences. While senior traditionalists in the GOP, most of whom are in the U.S. Senate which is not susceptible to gerrymandering, vow to reign in this strident faction that doesn’t seem to care what damage they might inflict on the economy to get their way, the rest of the world is skeptical.
The largest holder of U.S. debt – China with $1.3 trillion in U.S. debt instruments – is both angry and trying to figure out how to deal with what was once thought to be the ultimate safe investment – U.S. treasuries. They clearly aren’t anymore. The official spokes-arm of the People’s Republic, the Xinhua news agency, summarized the Chinese perspective immediately after our Congress relented and extended the vital bills: “[P]oliticians in Washington have done nothing substantial but postponing once again the final bankruptcy of global confidence in the U.S. financial system.” At almost the same time, the Chinese debt-rating agency, Dagong, dropped the A rating on U.S. treasuries to A-. They are less subtle in their statements, but the sentiments are held almost universally among the highest levels of the global financial community.
In additional to a significant loss of political influence, the United States faces new movements to wean the world off the dollar as the reserve currency and to require a higher interest rate on U.S. government securities to make up for the new risk to the underlying value. This could significantly increase our deficit – the opposite of what the Tea Party seems to want – devalue the dollar and increase borrowing and overall economic costs for most Americans. These consequences remain even with the above short-term extensions. And the more the Tea Party faction talks about shutting the government down again if they don’t get their way, the more the world will demand off-setting economic penalties against American economic interests.
There is nothing that is going to move the Tea Party in the House to accept reason, according to GOP insiders. Their mission to eliminate entitlements, kill the Affordable Care Act, contract America’s participation in global influence, contract spending on natural disasters, education, research and infrastructure and force social mandates in teaching creationism, banning gay marriage has risen to the level of a religious mandate where the ends totally justify the means. With state legislatures having defined the majority of Tea Party districts by jiggering the shape of the voting groups so that conservatives never have Democratic competition (gerrymandering), it will take another U.S. Census, not scheduled until 2020, to require reconfiguring these voting enclaves to reflect demographic shifts, the only way to get elected in such a Tea Party district is to tow that uncompromising line, perhaps even moving further to the right. Republican popularity has never been lower.
The question remains as to whether there are enough “other” Republicans to counter this seeming lemming march to the sea! The Tea Party faction calls the “breakaway” Republicans who supported the extension “the surrender caucus.” In turn, those moderates in the GOP call the Tea Partiers, “the suicide caucus,” threatening the GOP in both mid-terms and the 2016 presidential race. Mother Jones has gathered quotes from prominent Republicans who decry this seemly self-destructive move:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): "We're not going to go through the shutdown again. People have been too traumatized by it. There's too much damage…We're not going to shut down the government again. I guarantee it."
Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.): "This party is going nuts."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): "For the party, this is a moment of self-evaluation, we are going to assess how we got here…If we continue down this path, we are really going to hurt the Republican Party long-term."
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.): "On our side of the aisle, we've wasted two months focused on something that was never going to happen. I won't say that I did, but a number of folks did. What we could have been doing all this time is focused on those mandatory changes that all of us know our country needs, and we’ve blown that opportunity. I hate to say it.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.): Called Republicans advocating for the shutdown "lemmings with suicide vests…They have to be more than just a lemming. Because jumping to your death is not enough."
Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Penn.): On his long-held belief that the government shutdown wouldn't work: "I was correct in my analysis, and I'd say a lot of those folks were not correct in theirs."
Karl Rove: "Barack Obama set the trap. Some congressional Republicans walked into it. As a result, the president is stronger, the GOP is weaker, and Obamacare is marginally more popular. The battles over spending, taxes, and debt have not been resolved, only postponed. It's time Republicans remembered that bad tactics produce bad outcomes."
Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.): "All you need to do is look about 200 miles south of here to see the mess that Republicans and Democrats have made of our national government and we should haul all their rear-ends to Camden today to see how bipartisanship works and government works together."
The October 17th Washington Post adds a few key observations from those recently in power on how the GOP should handle the renegade faction:
“‘You roll them,’ advised former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). ‘I do think we need stronger leadership, and there’s got to be some pushback on these guys who think they came here with all the solutions.’ … Only then, he said, can the party begin to push an agenda and ‘get things done,’ rather than obstruct… Added another Mississippian, former governor Haley Barbour: ‘They need to get back on substance.’ Barbour noted that the upcoming conference committee on the fiscal 2014 budget presents an opportunity to do that.”
But the harsh reality is that in the Congressional districts where the Tea Party has sway, in ultra-conservative states like Texas where Ted Cruz looks at reelection to the Senate as a sure thing, there is not going to be any wiggle room. The moderates in the GOP, with strong backing from business leaders who shudder at the results of economic mayhem tactics, are going to have to find a path to compromise that short-circuits the Tea Party… if they think they can buck this movement and still get elected. Or there might just be a need for a third political party that simple treats the Tea Party for what they are, a vociferous and committed minority pretty much out of step with the vast majority of Americans, right, left and center. Oh, and when that 2020 Census does roll around, does Texas move from red to purple? Maybe the kicking (and very stubborn) mule, viewed as the symbol of the Democratic Party, needs to move to a new political affiliation!
I’m Peter Dekom, and change mixed with uncertainty has ravaged political systems throughout history.
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