Filed under: U.S. Politics
“…they believe there is one accountability moment for a President, and that is the four year election. And once you get that election, you’re done.”
Those words belong to Jon Stewart, spoken about the Bush Administration in 2007 during an interview with Bill Moyers. Stewart could easily have applied this standard to the two-year cycle of the House of Representatives, as well. His words seem especially prescient as the 112th Congress has kicked off, and Republican rule under Speaker Boehner is in effect.
It seems to a certain extent trite and pointless to harp on an individual politician breaking a campaign promise. I’m not so ideological as to ignore that broken campaign promises might be the most truly bipartisan thing in Washington. I don’t entirely dismiss a politician on those grounds, either, because I realize that the process of getting elected in American politics more or less demands a certain amount of duplicity. On the subject of faith, for example; an atheist man or woman would be well served to do a few photo-ops at a church and get on their knees now and then. It may be anathema to their very core, and they may feel depressed or like craven liars to do so, but the political benefit of that lie is undeniable.
These are individuals, making individual choices (many more sympathetic than others- I tend to feel more for the closeted Senator than the guy raving about death panels, personally, but that’s my kick) that they may feel is motivated by political necessity. It doesn’t demand, though, that they abandon all the specific policy proposals they’ve made, or that the basic platform they ran on can’t hold true, even as particular promises therein may be unrealistic, or too arduous to tackle. It’s quite another thing, though, for a major political party’s entire rhetorical narrative and professed philosophies to come into such sharp conflict with the reality of their habits and desires.
To say the Republican Party sold its soul to the Tea Party movement wouldn’t quite be right; it’s more like the Tea Party loaned them a set of crutches. The Tea Parties’ stated principles, as generally defined as possible, were predominantly spending cuts, limited government, and lower taxes. There was/is also a strong reliance on the Constitution (and a generally conservative interpretation of it) and the use of Constitutional imagery to stir up the ol’ patriot’s blood. Because this movement was (in addition to a lot of funding from a number of extremely wealthy conservative and libertarian businesspeople) ideologically aligned with the stated philosophy of the Republican Party, the GOP was able to easily cash in the Tea Party, promising they’d restore fiscal sanity to Washington. Seeing as there is no credible third party in America at this moment, the choice becomes academic: can the Tea Party organize into its own elected faction? No. Can they vote third party and have any sort of impact on the government? No. So pull the lever marked “R” come November!
The problem is, limited government and reduced spending isn’t really what the Republican Party writ large is all about. True, they talk about it a lot- seemingly endlessly, as a minority party. But when Republicans have held substantial governmental power, you don’t see the kind of cost-cutting, bureaucracy reducing measures their talking points would lead you to expect. The story of the American government’s evolution is largely consistent: a state, which fluctuates in the particular ways it exerts control (business regulation vs. drug laws, for example), but never coming at much expense to the true size and power of the institution as a whole. Democrats, when they’re being honest and unafraid, will admit to you that the core philosophical difference between them and Republicans is that they believe the government can be a positive force in people’s lives, and that even at the risk of a bloated government the positives of the service provided is critically important to society. Republicans profess more or less the opposite (again, speaking in broad narratives here), that the government is an impediment to individual freedoms, economic growth, and should get out of the way whenever possible.
You can say what you will about the merits of either philosophy, but the reality is that when Democrats take power, they come a hell of a lot closer to doing what their narrative would have you believe they want to do. When the Republicans ascend, they invariably have to begin the endless, awkward dance of explaining why they were acting like Congressional supplies were going to be bought at the dollar store, when they really want to go to Staples like always.
See these past few days, as the Republican “Pledge To America,” which promised $100 billion in spending cuts this year, begins to be reeled back in. Now it’s just “hypothetical” language, and as they’re unwilling to tackle Medicare (political suicide), Social Security (the same), or defense (which is loaded with wasteful spending that the Pentagon would like to cut, but runs squarely against the other biggest Republican narrative), those cuts may not be there. And it’s only the first way in which those truly passionate about spending, restraint, and transparency in government should prepare for Speaker Boehner to mess with their world.
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