Reflections for the Republicans

Today, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1 - The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Not a single Republican voted for this bill. It didn't matter. It's politics as usual.

I began trying to read the bill last night. It was 674 pages (if I recall); I copied it to Word, changed the font size and margins, and got it down to 103 pages! I got a solid ten pages or so into the bill before I gave up. I realized a couple of things... First, this hardly qualifies as stimulus. I know that's the GOP/right-wing rhetoric, but, in this case, it's true. It is a huge amount of spending - all classified as emergency to get around budget restrictions put in place by the 110th (Democrat-controlled) Congress. Second, there is no way that any Representative would have had any chance to read and understand the whole thing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it. In many cases, the bill calls for amendments to previous acts of legislation. It would take hours upon hours to actually research all of these changes to know what's going on.

But, I'm not typing tonight to talk about that. Sure, I'm disappointed that this thing passed, but that's nothing new. There's not much legislation that I'm actually for! My point here tonight is that the Republicans have made their own bed, and they have to lie in it. Unfortunately, this serves as a blow to all fiscal conservatives - including libertarian types, and, perhaps, even Blue Dog Democrats.

I'm watching the Glen Beck Show from earlier tonight (DVR'd it), and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is on trying to defend the GOP position. I just saw Mitt Romney on Neil Cavuto before I came upstairs and starting typing... why does this matter? Because these two guys both play a role in the GOP story that was today's vote. I'm going to point to three things that I think put the Republicans in the position they were today - helpless.

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1. The neoconservatives took control of the party and helped create the unpopular George W. Bush administration.

Bush had his ups and downs. At the end of the day, he left office as one of the least popular Presidents of all time. He put a lot of eggs in the national security basket, abandoned fiscal discipline, and compromised the GOP. By surrounding himself with the neocons, moderate "Republicans" with dreams of world domination as modern-day Wilsonian/Troskyites, Bush and his administration peddled fear and faux-patriotism to maintain support with the masses while cow towing to the so-called "religious right". By the end of his administration, it was clear that his GOP was not the GOP of small government, fiscal discipline, and protection of individual liberty.

The Democrats have pounced on his unpopularity and characterized every member of the GOP as supporters of Bush (which, 99% of the party leadership probably did), and it has helped them make their case for change.

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2. The GOP allowed the budget to get out of control during the last eight years culminating in the passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to bail out Wall Street banks.

This is admittedly similar to the first point, but there is an important difference. Here, I want to concentrate on the Republican controlled Congress which was in place during the first six years of the Bush administration. They were complicit every step of the way as the budget and size of government grew out of control. Some of this may have been due to neoconservatives in the party leadership within Congress, but (I haven't corroborated this with evidence) I'd have to believe that the entire rank-and-file of the GOP (with minor exceptions) followed along even when it may have been against their principles. This came to a head with the EESA/TARP program. Yes, a lot of Republicans voted against it; but, the party leadership, including Mr. Boehner, supported the legislation which would not have passed without them.

This has allowed the Democrats to justify their support for "bailout" and "stimulus" legislation since the Republicans in Congress supported similar legislation when their President was in office.

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3. The GOP Presidential nomination process is flawed and allowed John McCain to be served up as a sacrificial lamb while forcing rank-and-file Republicans to move to the middle.

The race for the nomination of the Republican Party was wide open in 2007 and early 2008. Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney seemed to be front-runners; Mike Huckabee came out of nowhere to be a true contender; and John McCain hung around gaining momentum with a win in New Hampshire. Let's look at this a little more closely...

John McCain finished fourth in Iowa. He won New Hampshire in an open primary where independents were a large proportion of voters. McCain's next big win was a 3% point margin of victory over Mike Huckabee in South Carolina. Romney was still the leader in delegates at this point. Then came the winner-take-all primary in Florida. McCain received Governor Charlie Crist's endorsement and beat Romney 36% to 31%. I hardly see this as a mandate, yet McCain took 57 delegates giving him the new lead (which drives a lot of perception in the media) going into Super Tuesday.

On Super Tuesday, McCain wrapped it up by winning nine of twenty-one states. He captured 42% of the popular vote with Romney taking 34% and Huckabee 20%. But, McCain was awarded 602 delegates with Romney taking only 201 and Huckabee 152. Why did McCain get so many delegates? He won Arizona (his home state) with 48% of the vote for 50 delegates, California with 149 delegates, Illinois with 55 delegates, New Jersey with 52 delegates, and New York with 101 delegates. California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York... these are four Democrat strongholds which the GOP had little chance of winning. These wins effectively wrapped up the nomination for McCain. It was a good campaign strategy for him, but I question the effectiveness of the GOP's process.

So, there's a trip down memory lane. With the moderate "maverick" as the nominee, the GOP had to get behind him - after all, almost no one has the guts to do anything but back an R or a D. Even as his popularity waned, the far right still stuck behind him and half-supported him and his support of the EESA/TARP.

This further backed the GOP into their current corner.

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I have no sympathy for the Republicans... You can't decide that you actually stand for something when you haven't stood for it for eight years. When you insist on always playing political games, you are bound to lose some of the time.