The Duty to Stonewall

An idea is getting greater currency:  Bipartisan Cooperation is for Saps.   

In recent posts I have distinguished between the norms in local government where citizens of various political persuasions work together to pass budgets and vote to make community services work.   Roads get built.  Police departments and jails do their work.  Schools are open.  Toilets flush.  Not so at the federal level.   There, gridlock is common.

Lugar.  Primary loss.

Don't Cooperate, or else.  Stonewall, or else.    There is a new normal at the federal level, which is now affecting directly the presidential race, a duty to obstruct.  Bi-partisan cooperators and compromisers are called sell-outs.  They face primary opposition.  It is not an idle threat.   Number two House Republican Eric Canter was "primaried" and lost to an unknown challenger.    Veteran Senators Richard Lugar of Indiana lost a primary election and Senator Bob Bennett of Utah lost a primary caucus.  Both had cooperated with Democrats to pass legislation.

The idea is that the other party and its candidates are so very intolerable, so impossibly beyond acceptance, that there is a duty to obstruct rather than a duty to find common ground.  De-legitimization of the opposition has been a tactic of the Gingrich revolution of 1994, where he coached a body of candidates to a very successful election.  His plan worked.  They won big.   He advised to change the language of politics.  One's opponent is not "misguided", he is "corrupt"; not "incorrect", but "disgusting"; not "wrong" but "treasonous."   The new language fit the rise of talk radio and it caught a public mood and then amplified it.

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The current election sees the full flowering of the tactic.   Trump calls out "losers" and "liars" and "utterly corrupt" Hillary.   Hillary says Trump is completely "unfit" and "unhinged."

Having defined the opposition as beyond acceptability there is less opportunity for the compromises necessary to find governing majorities.    Republican House members now refuse to pass budgets to allow the government to operate if they do not get their way.   Republicans have a 247 to 188 majority over the Democrats,  but the "Freedom Caucus" of about 50 Tea Party members serve as a veto block within the Republican majority, keeping them from the 218 needed for a majority.  It caused headaches and early retirement for Speaker John Boehner, and now headaches for Paul Ryan.  He is a Speaker without a governing majority.   

When the death of Justice Scalia created a vacancy on the Supreme Court Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that no nominee of Obama would be considered in these last ten months of his term, since the new president should have the right to appoint.  The election would give voters a choice.   

This week Senator McCain voiced a new standard: "We will be united against any nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.  I promise you."    He later walked back the statement, saying he would at least consider nominees.

Senator Ted Cruz doubled down saying he and the GOP Senate should allow no nominees from a President Clinton to be approved, not in 4 years, not in 8 years.  This is the extreme form of the policy that is in place now, and there is no apparent political price to pay for it.   Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is the GOP Chair of the Judiciary Committee and he has stonewalled the nomination of Merrick Garland and he is coasting to re-election.

Click Here: Obstruct. Don't Compromise.

Simultaneously with Cruz's suggestion a thought piece emerged in The Federalist, reprinted by the Cato Institute, providing an ethical basis for switching from saying that the new president should nominate into saying that the new president can never nominate.    Ilya Shapiro notes that the advice and consent power of the Senate is absolute and they are fully entitled to allow the Third Branch of government to die out by refusing to fill vacancies, and they should do exactly that if they believe any nominee of a Democratic president would harm the Republic.  They have a duty to obstruct.

The political calculus for compromise has changed.  It is more dangerous politically to be perceived as a political deal maker than it is a political obstructionist.  Sanders and Trump say that political dealmaking is corrupt and the language of the presidential race from both sides is that the opposition is an existential threat to the nation. Compromise is worse than weak; it is aiding and abetting the enemy.    

My podcast co-host, Thad Guyer, made a related point in the current podcast.   I interpret what he said to be that vigorous non-violent opposition to the legitimacy of an election result is a right and a perfectly reasonable course of action and an election loser need not quietly consent.  His work with the Voting Rights Law and the ACLU made him skeptical of the integrity of elections, he said in the podcast.   An election may have been rigged, the constituency gerrymandered, the voting rolls tampered with, the media biased, and the results therefore are not necessarily legitimate.   "Nobody should be pledging loyalty in advance to the outcome of an election. . . . Unconditional loyalty to election integrity would undermine the resiliency of our body politic."  He said ones duty is to "undermine to the maximum extent" the governing mandate of a opponent.   Knuckling under to an apparent election defeat is for saps.   History has not been kind to Al Gore, he noted.  (Don't trust my interpretation.   Listen for yourself in the podcast, starting at 40:20:    https://soundcloud.com/stream) 

The current state of the 2016 election is not simply an artifact of Trump's personality and the media environment.  Each party is re-organizing itself and the coalitions are changing.  Intra-party heresy is more dangerous politically than is opposition from the other party, and each party is trying to purify itself, so the language to stamp out wrong-thinking is harsh.  The GOP is divided between its establishment wing and its Trump wing.  The Sanders people are already warning Hillary Clinton who she had better not appoint to be Treasury Secretary.  Being attacked from within can be fatal.   Being attacked by the hated opposition party is politically safer   Indeed, opposition from the other party proves ones own bone-fides.  But the language is harsh

One result is an ugly campaign arguing over whether voters will allow the opponent to completely destroy the nation if elected.  Another is "take no prisoners" policies, which are becoming normalized.   Obstruction is integrity.  Cooperation is disloyalty.

Expect gridlock if Hillary is elected.  The people who put us into gridlock will not feel cynical or hypocritical.  They will do it certain they are saving the Republic.

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Here is this week's podcast on the Presidential Election.   Thad Guyer and I discuss the poll data and whether or not Trump is self destructing. (I think he is, but maybe not enough.)  I assert that he is stepping all over his message.  Thad has strong views on the USC/LA Times poll, which show Trump ahead.   Yes, ahead.   I get angry about Trump's Gettysburg Address. Thad makes the observation that there are some good things to come out of this long, long campaign. And at the 40 minute mark he discusses the duty to question the legitimacy of rigged elections.     Click Here for the Podcast