David Drucker, writing in the right-wing Washington Examiner, chooses to emphasize the divisions in the Republican Party and to amplify the message of the dissenters who never wanted a fight over ObamaCare that could lead to a government shutdown. He uses some math that is becoming familiar:
The growing group of lawmakers was publicly silent until now, voicing concerns privately only to their GOP colleagues while publicly rallying around the proposal, in part, to ensure the GOP caucus maintained a united front. With the government now closed and Democrats refusing to negotiate any changes to Obamacare, these Republicans are saying flatly that they’ve had it…
…There are 233 Republicans in the House, and most of them never approved of using the threat of a government shutdown to slow Obamacare, a strategy spearheaded by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, and adopted by a few dozen House Republicans. It was plainly obvious that the GOP did not have the 60 votes needed to advance the bill in the Democratic Senate and Republicans didn’t have enough votes in either chamber to override President Obama’s certain veto.
The “few dozen” number puts the size of the Tea Party suicide brigade at somewhere between 36 and 60, which corresponds to the other number I keep seeing (180) for the dissenting faction. With 233 members, perhaps 53 are in favor of the shutdown and 180 are against it.
If the numbers are indeed that lopsided, it doesn’t bode well for the long-term cohesiveness of the House GOP. Yet, so far, almost of all the House Republicans who have been willing to go on the record are from culturally blue states or are representing a lot of government employees. I wouldn’t describe all these members as politically vulnerable, as most of their districts are drawn to be safe. But they are culturally alienated. You can be fairly invulnerable in your gerrymandered district in the Philly suburbs, but that doesn’t mean you can explain yourself or your party at the supermarket. As for the Virginia lawmakers with a lot of government employees, they are completely freaking out.
I try to be a forgiving person, but some cases are harder than others. I can’t read Andrew Sullivan’s vituperative denunciations of the “nullification party” without harkening back to his Oedipus Rex-level of blindness during all the years that he served as a cheerleader for the rise of the party of Tom DeLay. But now he gets it, and your average Mid-Atlantic Republican gets it, too. The modern GOP is (deep-) southern culturally, and increasingly secessionist in temperament.
I am reminded of what William F. Buckley (not a southerner) wrote in his 1955 mission statement for the newly-launched National Review:
The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if NATIONAL REVIEW is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
Setting aside the familiar conceit that, despite any indications to the contrary, the country is a bastion of conservatism, the inclination to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” is fundamental to what we are witnessing right now. History, after all, doesn’t stop. It grows insuppressibly with each tick of the clock. Even as the government is shut down to frustrate the launch of the health care exchanges, the health care exchanges are launched on schedule. Meanwhile, the Tea Party suicide brigade remains back at the starting blocks, stuck in the world as it existed on September 30, 2013. Or, perhaps, November 19, 1955 at 8:00am, which is the publication date of the first National Review. I read somewhere that the Romney campaign ran more advertising on reruns of The Andy Griffith Show than they did on any other single program. That was both appropriate and ironic. It was appropriate because the show depicts an idealized 1950’s southern town that corresponds heavily with conservatives’ view of a perfected and disappearing America. It was ironic because Andy Griffith was one of the biggest supporters of the Affordable Care Act.
John Dickerson at Slate might have started the following by saying “if Republicans want to stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop,’ unity during the shutdown is critical.”
If Republicans want to stand fast against overwhelming public opinion, unity during the shutdown is critical. They should be singing from the same song sheet…But there is no unity in the Republican chorus.
There is no unity because only a small minority of Republican lawmakers still live in communities that resemble Mayberry.
What I am going to do is call and speak directly to the staffers for Thune. Thune and the repukes are stabbing their own staff in the back.
Many more live in communities that resemble Wysteria Lane.
Yeah, I was gonna respond to that sentence, too. So far as I know, no communities resemble Mayberry once you get past the exterior sets. (That’s why they call it fiction.) The people on the show were certainly archetypes, but there were plenty of other types of people in that sort of small Southern town that never got the casting call. Just to pick the most obvious example, your average rural Southern county seat town a half-century ago was one-third to one-half black.
Not to mention, it’s increasingly obvious that a return to 1955 wouldn’t be enough for the Tea Party. More like 1855.
Some of those people that live on Wysteria have businesses that get 1/4th or more of their income from a government contract. IT services or supplying toilet paper for the local SS office.
Maryberry has the dairy farm that supplies the milk for those closed Head Start programs, the unfunded WIC program, Meal on Wheels, and any other government funded food program.
I would recommend to them an obscure film called Back to the Future, documenting the evolution of another Mayberry.
So 180+ professional politicians are completely deferring to an “extreme” splinter group strategy they deem highly risky? Or are somehow “forced” into the insane strategy by the 26-60 “real” idiot-wingnuts?
Sorry, this doesn’t make political sense. It’s highly unlikely to be the actual state of things. This is instead Repub propaganda issued for corporate media consumption and meant to reassure the foolish “independents” that still support their beloved Repub.
If there is a huge faction of sane Repubs that oppose this strategy they wouldn’t have under taken it, end of story. And they would very quickly renounce it via voting to get the gub’mint re-opened.
The reality is that the vast majority of Boner’s Boneheads think (or thought) Tea Party shitdown was a grand idea and fully supported it. Not that reality will matter to the nation’s “independents” come Nov 2014. They are “independent” in that they won’t admit to being Repubs, but hate the people that make up the Dem party even worse, without even mentioning the hundred or so Repub gerrymanders….
For decades now I’ve wondered why Democrats don’t use Republican unity (in voting, when it counts) against them in campaigning. They might win more blue-state elections if their “moderate” GOP politicians were tied with their extreme colleagues. Repeat after me, Dems:
When you vote for even the best Republican, you also vote for the worst of them.
Dear Mr. Drucker–
If Dem House leaders could/can routinely ignore the Dem progressive caucus, why can’t the Drunken Boner ignore the (smaller) Tea Party caucus? Thanks kindly.
That one’s pretty easy. No on fears a movement that lacks money and wants to kinda sort a little bit maybe reduce a few tax deductions.
In the other words, because progressives have not given them a reason to fear.
Well, I recall that there were some challenges to incumbent Dems from the left, but I take your point.
My objection is that by the very terms of the propaganda, Repubs are engaging in a gub’mint shutdown solely to maintain the (supposedly false) appearance of party “unity”. Do they think that this makes them look good in the eyes of voters?
If the reality of the situation is that the plutocrat-backed Tea Turd movement has terrified ALL Repubs into cowardly acceding to the every demand of 36-60 TeaTurd-approved imbeciles or face a serious primary challenge, then THAT should be the story, not this shit about needing to wreck the country over party “unity”.
because Progressives can’t be counted on to vote in every election
The “few dozen” number puts the size of the Tea Party suicide brigade at somewhere between 36 and 60, which corresponds to the other number I keep seeing (180) for the dissenting faction. With 233 members, perhaps 53 are in favor of the shutdown and 180 are against it.
So why did they, along with a few stupid Democrats, vote for the shutdown? It’s like Susan Collins in the Senate. She spews bullcrap for TradMed consumption then always votes with the rest of the Pukes.
They do it because they deeply fear getting ousted in their next primary. Look up who Mike Lee replaced in Utah – a staunch conservative, well-respected, but who didn’t give lip service to the full crazy.
Not sure what the folks of Mayberry would think about Obamacare, but they absolutely wouldn’t want the government shut down to force through a change to a constitutionally approved law. Wherever these Tea Party types are coming from, it’s nothing like Mayberry.
All this reminds me of the attempt to recall Scott Walker. Some voters disapproved of Walker but voted not to recall him because they felt the recall election was out of line; that’s what regular elections are for.
That is to say, small-c conservatives will not approve of the Tea Party’s tactics.
Andy Griffith supported the ACA before he died, so I would guess the town would be all for it.
In October 2014 when people have largely figured out Obamacare and the approval rating for it is somewhere in the 60% range (85% of non-tea party) I hope the Democrats find some what to hammer home EVERY DAY FOR THE SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION how hard the GOP fought it – not giving it even a single vote in 2009-10 and shutting down the government in 2013.
Well argued, BooMan.
What you are seeing is the argument in the GOP between the Buckley-spawned conservative movement and the John Birch Society-White/Conservative Citizens Council conservative movement. The latter, with their Koch Brothers and Dick Armey (the two strands) funding have given the Tea Party the mis-label of libertarian only because Ron and Rand Paul (previously of the Libertarian Party) celebrate that movement.
And what has made the argument rabid is the degree of groupthink, self-talking, and isolation from other points of view. And those are the result of the purity strategies that the movement enforced as a primary election tactic. And the result of the tremendous control of the media message that the Buckley form of the movement gained after the Powell memo and the John Birch-White/Conservative Citizens Council part of the movement leverage under the Tea Party brand in 2009.
In 2009, a desperate Republican leadership legitimized the crazies. This is the consequence of that failure to follow normal American political processes. This is the result of making winning more important than representing the public interest.
There’s a cautionary tale in there for future Democratic triumpahlism, if the GOP collapses.