Dreaming of a broken GOP: dream on

Dreaming of a broken GOP: dream on

by digby

Ed Kilgore has a great post up today about something I’ve been noticing as well — the argument that the only way to break the gridlock is for the Republicans to win:

In a Bloomberg column, Ramesh Ponnuru makes an argument for Mitt Romney’s election that you are going to hear a lot more of soon: it’s the only way that partisan gridlock in Washington can be broken. The basic theory is that Republicans will not change from their current savage ideological course (which will actually get more savage if they lose this election they think themselves destined to win) and are very unlikely to lose enough congressional support to reduce their veto power over legislation. So if you want something new to happen, a President Romney and a Republican-controlled House and Senate (presumably using reconciliation to do whatever they want without Democratic support) are the only ticket.

Here’s Ponnuru’s response to those (including the President) who have suggested an Obama victory will humble Republicans:

Republicans famously failed to react to their drubbing in 2008 — after which, let’s recall, Time magazine was running cover stories on their impending extinction — by softening their line on anything. Why would they react that way after an election that goes better for them? Especially when they will be looking forward to the gains that the party out of the White House typically makes in midterm elections.

Not to mention the nomination of a real conservative, not some flip-flopping wimp like Romney, in 2016, eh?

That’s exactly right. In spite of what Democrats across the land are trying to sell right now, it’s highly unlikely that the Republicans are going to magically “moderate” in the face of defeat this time out. When have they ever done that? And it’s even less likely now with the make-up of much of the congress being from the far right. It’s not reasonable to think they are going to lay down their arms just because that squishy Mormon from Taxachussetts screwed the pooch.

As Kilgore quips, Ponnuru’s advice to mataphorically lie back and enjoy it is really a Sopranos style threat:

So as a cap to four years of political hostage-taking, a final general election pitch from Republicans this year is to hold the next four years hostage as well: give us total power to begin implementing our agenda and start dismantling this silly, expensive New Deal/Great Society system and this European-style progressive tax code, or nothing at all happens. We’ll get our way eventually, so why not get started now?

But I bring this up because I’m not just hearing this from Republicans, but from some liberals as well. They put it like this: if the Republicans have the White House and the congress, the Democrats will stop their agenda just as the Republicans stopped Obama. It’s Obama being in the White House that’s made the Democrats so willing to sell-out their own agenda. To that, I have to say again: when have they ever done that? It’s just not how they roll.

Now it’s true that they stood in the way of Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme, but Bush was a weak second term president and Republicans themselves weren’t clamoring to touch the third rail while Iraq’s civil war was blowing up around them. And I have seen nothing since then that leads me to believe the Democrats would be able to control the agenda from the opposition the way the Republicans have done it. There are far too many of them who buy into the Wall Street Worldview and/or believe that bipartisanship is an end unto itself. I doubt very seriously that they would hold the line from the minority.

Kilgore points out that it’s the commentariat that is most longing for a break in the gridlock, many of them sounding like the jaded European elite of he 20s, and like them opening up the discussion to some very unpleasant anti-democratic notions. He concludes by saying that regardless, the dynamic is going to be different after the election. He notes:

Even if there is no perceived “mandate,” the President’s hand will be greatly strengthened in the negotiations over how to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

Indeed. Unfortunately, I just saw Dick Durbin tell Andrea Mitchell that he knows for a fact that the president is going to use Simpson Bowles as a template in the 2nd term, so that strengthened hand is a very dubious advantage.