But the Democrats don't ever attack, even for their own survival, and least of all does the hapless excuse for a chief executive now in the White House. Like I said, lame I get. Bought-off I get. But this?
Oh well. Nobody in Washington is going to change their stripes tomorrow because I told them to. But if we're looking for lessons from these last weeks, here's another -- and it's a powerful one. One of the country's preeminent comedians showed half the political class what they couldn't figure out for themselves -- namely, how to accept gift-wrapped opportunities from the other half for the latter's annihilation.
These are not exactly surprising revelations, and they're not even necessarily newsworthy. But there has been one development lately that is semi-novel and potentially very consequential. Or, at least, it would be, if the Democrats had even the slightest bit of gumption.
What I'm referring to is the splitting of the Republican Party on several of the key votes cast over recent days. On Don't Ask Don't Tell, on the New START treaty with the Russians, on the tax bill and on the 9/11 first-responders health care bill, the heretofore highly monolithic Republican Party showed fissures that are really unusual compared to most all of their historical behavior over the last thirty years. It's not that the GOP never splits, it's just that it's so rare. And to have it happen this many times in this short a period presents some intriguing possibilities.
Party discipline has been key to Republican success during these years, especially the last two, when they were in the much repudiated minority, and at a time when every single vote in the Senate was potentially the difference between having the 60 necessary to move forward on legislation that had clear majority support, or seeing it bottled up forever. (There was, of course, always the third alternative, in which Democrats would make Republicans actually do the filibuster over an unpopular cause, thus forcing the GOP to bring a public relations disaster down on their own heads. Or the fourth alternative, in which the Democrats could have used their majority to change the rules of the Senate in order to make it far more democratic in nature. Of course, either of these would have required the Democrats to be interested in genuine public service and to have even a moderate willingness to stand up for themselves, which explains why neither occurred.)
In any case, there are now some preliminary indications that the Republicans are not so disciplined anymore. And, what's more, while it's very early to tell, the fissures within the party seem to perhaps be multiple. I see the GOP as having essentially three camps, which can be thought of as being arrayed ideologically, from right to way far right. There is also a chronological ordering these factions as well.
On the left side of the spectrum (though far from being left) are the last gasps of the old center-right, Eastern, Rockefeller Republicans who once in fact dominated the party. They are virtually extinct nowadays, either abandoned by constituents because of their association with the freaks controlling the party, beaten by those freaks in a primary challenge, or reinvented as some sort other creature, as Arlen Specter (who actually fits into all three of these categories) tried to pull off. But there are still a few of them around - Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine, sometimes along with Richard Lugar, may be the only remaining such dinosaurs - and in close votes they can matter.
To their right are the Establishment Republicans, which is simultaneously both the old insurrectionary class and the current defenders against the new insurrectionary class. These are folks who are the radical-bonkers-predatory-Cro-Magnons of 1990s vintage, who became the mainstream by virtue of the country's politics moving rightward and by their killing off the Neanderthals mentioned above. These are the children of Gingrich and the grandchildren of Reagan - people (at least in appearance - they could as easily be reptiles instead) like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.
They've had the party to themselves for a while, but now the tea party guerillas (or is it gorillas?) have arisen, in part by trashing the old guard as irresponsible big spenders. It's not at all clear that the party leadership has control over these professed radicals, and not at all clear what happens if they refuse to play ball on, say, spending, or raising the debt ceiling.
All in all, this makes for some interesting opportunities and possibilities. Or, it could, that is. Again, there's not much use for potential fissures in the opposition if there's no one around to actually exploit them. There might be some real possibility here for the use of wedge issues to explode the differences in the GOP, or at least to make them pay at the ballot box for what they have to do to paper over those differences. Republicans have been doing this to their opponents for quite some time, to enormous electoral success - for example, using gay-bashing to peel off social conservatives from the Democratic Party and getting them to vote against their own economic interest.
But that would require Democrats to do what has come naturally to Republicans for decades, but is more or less anathema for the helpless, hapless Dems.
It's called playing hardball. It's called playing to win.
The lame duck Congress brought some surprises and some notable victories. It's fair to say, for instance, that repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell may the biggest single civil rights leap forward we've seen in half a century. That's no small thing, of course, but it's well to remember two caveats there. The first is that what we're talking about is essentially a negative victory - the undoing of what was a really bad idea to start with, going back to its beginning nearly two decades ago. That may be progress of a sort, but it's kinda like somebody reaching into your pocket and pulling out a hundred dollar bill, then later handing it back to you. You might feel like you're that much richer, but you really shouldn't.
The other missing ingredient here is that the president, who may not have even worked particularly hard behind the scenes for this legislation, surely didn't get out front on it. That is to say that he - unlike Lyndon Johnson or Jack Kennedy - never used the bully pulpit to make the moral case for why this is the right and essential task for the nation at this time. Civil rights legislation and moral haranguing go hand in hand, each reinforcing and further advancing the other. Barack taking a powder on one of the great moral causes of our day doesn't exactly help make life in America better and safer for gays and lesbians. Indeed, it's worse than that. By stating that he still opposes gay marriage, he is absolutely part of the problem, not the solution.
My guess is that we're going to be seeing more of that. The last two years have been disappointing and arguably quite disastrous for the country. That produced a lovely vicious cycle, which gave us Election 2010, the results of which are now likely to produce even more disastrous politics over the coming two years.
This was all ridiculously unnecessary, but that's how it works with Obama and his party.
If it weren't for the degree to which the actions and non-actions of Democrats wind up savaging the American people, you could say they were their own worst enemy.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
