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What just happened in Washington, DC? After all the screaming, all the denying that they would ever “compromise”, the Republicans caved and passed a budget that will keep the government running throughout 2014.
What gives? In short, it is an election year and most of the House members who have brains in their heads realized that last year’s shutdown was a disaster. They want none of that kind of thing while they seek another term in office. Only the 68 diehards voted against the deal and those who did generally represent House districts where you can never be too far to the right if you want to get back in office.
While most news stories last year attributed the shutdown to “the mess in Washington”, voters are not that stupid. They knew who was behind the shutdown (Republicans and the hard right outside groups that now bankroll them) and they weren’t confused. The rating of Congress in public opinion polls sank about as low as they can go and then kept falling.
The Republican “plan” was never going to work from the start. You can’t fly an aircraft sitting back in the passenger section and you can’t run the government controlling only one half of one of the three branches of government. There is a lot of power (mainly veto power) in controlling the House, but to really use that power, it has to be handled skillfully and carefully, two words that do not apply to the newest members of the House who came in on the tea party wave of 2010 and 2012.
Unless the object is to create discord for the sake of having discord, just blocking stuff without a particular plan toward a reasonable deal, a compromise, doesn’t really accomplish anything. As far as anyone on the outside could tell, there was never a clear pathway toward any reasonable, reachable goal. They were trying to look tough against the “evils” of overspending and the Obama administration without anywhere to go. What the Republicans were doing was a bit like an “Army” of six guys shooting up hill at thousands of others. To those on the far right, this represents courage and “fighting the good fight”. To those who are aware of how government and democracy work, it was a dangerous exercise in futility, especially the threat to default on America’s debts.
Why has it taken so long for this to dawn on various forces in the capital? Partly it is because the media played along, creating the appearance of power where it did not exist. The news media thrive on conflict and they’ve had a good running story of that for the last three years. Writing a story about a budget being passed, as opposed to blocked, is a lot less interesting. Is that a reason that a lot of the media blamed both political parties for the mess and wrote about “gridlock” rather than sabotage and road blocking by the Republicans? Regardless, the nation and the public have not been well served.
So, now is it over? Maybe not. Once the congressional elections are done with this year, the Republicans can reassess where they stand and start the whole thing over again with the knowledge that a presidential year will only be 12 months away.
Doug Terry, 1.17.14
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