| Today's New York Times contains an eye-opening account of how weeks before President Obama had even taken office, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican caucus had already settled on a strategy for regaining power that involved using parliamentary tricks and tactics and to shut democracy down.
In the article, McConnell says a number of interesting things.
He deploys polling data to urge Republicans against what the Times called giving into the seduction of "the attention-grabbing possibilities of cutting a bipartisan deal."
He says the reason Republicans are feeling really good about themselves right now "is they believe that the reward for playing team ball this year was the reversal of the political environment and the possibility that we will have a bigger team next year."
And he seemed particularly pleased that Republican abuse of the filibuster had forced Democrats to, in the Times' words, "cut questionable intraparty deals and jump through legislative hoops in an ugly process that helped sour the public on the party and its legislation."
I was particularly struck by McConnell's statement that Republicans needed to steel themselves against the temptation to act in a bipartisan way that might earn public applause for the GOP in the short run, but at the long-run expense of the strategy of rigid party-line obstruction that McConnell intended to use to regain power for the GOP from a frustrated, fractured and dispirited public tired of Washington gridlock.
And while all of this is going on, of course, McConnell has been cynically attacking Obama for failing to live up to a bipartisanship that even McConnell now admits would be the kiss of death for the GOP.
I think we can deduce from this that Republicans have a very different definition of bipartisanship than the rest of us. It's one, unfortunately, that he MSM and Beltway Establishment lets them get away with. Bipartisanship to Republicans does not mean compromise or cooperation. What it means is liberal Democrats who govern like right wing Republicans, or not at all.
Conservatives seem particularly susceptible to the moral failing of seeing everything through their own self-flattering lenses. To conservatives, Republicans OUGHT to be able to block legislation they don't agree with via parliamentary rule manipulation. So, any attempt by Democrats to get around these GOP blocking tactics with parliamentary rule manipulation of their own is seen by conservatives as corrupt and illegitimate. It's not consistency to principle that counts. It's whether some action does or does not advance the right wing agenda.
Democracy is not the form of government to which all peoples everywhere instinctively aspire, as George W. Bush used to self-servingly say by way of rationalizing his invasions. On the contrary, democracy is hard. The idea of respecting political enemies and putting oneself under their control until the next election does not come naturally to people, especially those with very strong views, powerful financial interests, or commitments to religions or political ideologies that do not tolerate compromise. Democracy will not work in many cultures or parts of the world for precisely this reason, since democracy ultimately rests on trust, and sacrifice.
It is therefore fair for us to ask at this juncture -- after watching Republicans and their right wing base for the last year and a half -- if they are truly committed to democracy.
It's a naive question, I know, because the answer is obvious. No, they are not. By their actions and their rhetoric the Republican base seems committed to destroying that minimal measure of trust between political antagonists without which democracy is impossible. And by their obstruction Republicans have shown themselves unwilling to accept the very baseline condition of any democracy, which is to abide by the verdict of a free and fair election.
But as naive as this question may be, it needs to be asked again and again and again to keep us focused on the most important challenge facing this country, which is the viability of our political system itself. And in this regard, conservatives should no longer be allowed to pretend with their rhetoric that they support democracy when they show by their deeds that they don't. |
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