To hear the conventional wisdom in Washington, John Boehner’s surprise resignation announcement last week represented a sort of 21st century secular passion play. The noble Ohioan, we are told, sacrificed his career at the peak of his powers to save his party from self-destructive conflict, and his country from a government shutdown. And indeed, the riches showered on us all by Boehner’s atonement for our sins might well include such Beltway prizes as the salvation of Eximbank, or yea, even a Highway Bill!
The reality is a bit less stirring, I’m afraid. Boehner is simply accelerating a planned retirement in a way that will also accelerate the timetable for clearing the one-year lobbying ban for former Members. By the time the frost is on the pumpkins in 2016, he’ll be among the richest people on K Street after a year of cooling his heels at a Florida golf resort condo.
Moreover, the blessings Boehner has vouchsafed Washington could turn out to be ephemeral. As the budget wizard Stan Collender has observed, the avoidance of a shutdown this week has massively increased the odds of a shutdown in December. And Ted Cruz could personally wreck the dreams of those who imagine a brief Era of Good Feelings where Boehner and House Democrats liberate all sorts of gridlocked legislation.
So does that mean congressional Republicans are doomed to perpetually refight the internal battles that led to Boehner’s resignation? No, not at all. No matter what happens in December, there will likely follow an intra-party election year truce in Congress (though probably not on the presidential nomination primary trail). And then, if Republicans win the White House and hang onto control of Congress, most of the fighting will go away as the party comes together joyfully to implement most of the conservative movement’s agenda.
This last conclusion may come as a shock to those used to hearing about various struggles for the soul of the Republican Party, or the many cries of treason aimed at congressional leaders from the Right and from the grassroots. But what must be understood is that virtually all of these conflicts revolve around arguments over strategy and tactics, not principles, goals or policies.
Every single congressional Republican is for repealing Obamacare. They all, even the most egregious RINOs, oppose the Iran Nuclear Deal. All but a very small handful favor defunding Planned Parenthood, criminalizing abortions to the maximum extent the Supreme Court allows, slashing upper-end and corporate taxes, dumping Medicaid on the states, and cutting safety net funding while boosting defense spending. The fighting has been over how to advance these goals when Republicans do not entirely control the federal government. If they do entirely control the federal government, the fighting will mostly go away, or will migrate to new ideological demands that are too extreme to contemplate just now.
The “moderation” in the GOP that conservatives attack and the MSM applauds will look very different if Republicans are no longer faced with immovable Democratic opposition at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. This should have been made plain back in the summer of 2012, when plans for a post-election conservative policy blitz utilizing the budget reconciliation process—which disposes of filibusters—were circulating on the breeze of GOP hopes that Mitt Romney would win and inherit a Republican-controlled Senate as well.
Since then the targets of such a single-party offensive have only grown: presidential executive orders on carbon emissions and immigration; Obama diplomatic efforts; the Obama “tilt” in judicial appointments; along with such hardy perennials as Obamacare, the New Deal and Great Society entitlement programs, and progressive taxation. And without question, the “treachery” of John Roberts has ensured that conservative litmus tests for the Supreme Court will be stricter and more focused on purely predictable conservative policy outcomes than ever before.
If, of course, Republicans lose a third consecutive presidential election, the current battles over strategy and tactics might reemerge with a vengeance, as conservatives grow frantic over the frightful damage being done to the America of their imagination by the free-spending, tyrannical, Muslim-loving, race-card-playing and baby-killing Democrats who somehow keep getting elected. And at that point pragmatic Republicans may become truly, not just strategically, moderate in counseling their compatriots that it’s time to stop pursuing the fever dreams of the Goldwater campaign.
Until then, however, don’t believe the hype about the Republican civil war—or for that matter, John Boehner’s salvific role in healing divisions over strategy and tactics.
Ed Kilgore is the principal blogger for Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog and Managing Editor of The Democratic Strategist. Earlier he worked for three governors and a U.S. Senator. He can be followed on Twitter at @ed_kilgore.
Today’s GOP is nothing short of an unmitigated DISASTER ! ! !—
The president, Reid, Pelosi, and occasionally Boehner and McConnell sat at the grownup table and governed, while tea baggers sat on the floor throwing a hissyfit. It’s been such a pleasure to watch the baggers get their asses kicked on issue after issue, after issue.
I agree with the writer on pretty much all points. In their zeal, the loss of the WH and Senate and maybe, a long shot for sure, the House in 2016 will turn them into even more raving lunatics in the future.
His statement about the America they think exists really doesn’t even begin to cover the massive state of denial the Pubs are in. Whether its the majority of voters who do want PP, Medicare, SS, Medicaid and a host of other excellent government programs or our aversion to sending combat troops everywhere at the drop of a hat, they will simply ignore those pleas. So many more topics like the anti-woman equality initiatives, religion in schools, science and climate change denial…the list is almost endless of things they want that the majority does not.
I’ve wondered if Obama’s ascension merely hastened the end of the Republican party as we used to know it. If another Dem. had won the last 2 terms, would the decline in the Republican party have been as rapid? As rabid?
I do think so since as a few writers in other venues have stated, the loss of the WH and the Dems. ability in the minority to block the most egregious of the Pubbie’s bills has set their hair on fire. That and the realization the Rinse P*nis’s guide for them in the future was correct: they cannot continue in their current tactics or they will suffer massive future voting bloc losses. Let’s hope they continue their death ride of the Valkyries and when the Fat Lady sings, they’ll be done for a long, long time. We can only hope!
As usual Ed is spot on. The fight in the GOP is over tactics, not goals. The Republican purged every single moderate long ago.
I was trying to figure out exactly what about this article bothered me. I think Kilgore doesn’t understand the degree to which the GOP has truly morphed into a White Nationalist Party that is hell bent on destroying the country in order to save it. .
I’m not seeing this at all. We’ve got Carnival Cruz who OPENLY called Yertle a liar on the floor of the Senate and who is actively fomenting insurrection in the House. We’ve got a de-facto Klansman running for Speaker of the House. Kilgore thinks that IF a Rethug gets into the WH, all will return to whatever the GOP calls “normal.” Maybe prior to 2009, I would agree with him. But, now? No.
First, I cant really see how a Rethug captures the WH. Second, how do things go back to the way they were? Where does he see the Rethugs coming together to settle on some semblance of governance?