A conservative movement post-Trump might as well require a powder or pill sold at night on Fox News. Republicans don’t move. They are the blockage. But like their leader in Palm Beach, they are hell at posturing.
E.J. Dionne waxes nostalgic about his time covering the New York state legislature when political posturing was a step toward achieving a policy goal. Not with today’s Republicans. Blockage is the goal:
The problem with Washington in 2021 might be described as posturing without a purpose — beyond scoring points against the White House. The Republican dance around President Biden’s infrastructure proposal almost makes me nostalgic for the sincerity of cynicism.
Republican posturing on infrastructure is not about building things but about not building them. Donald Trump sold himself as a risk-taking real estate developer, a man who built things. But before stumbling into the Oval Office, Trump had long since ceased building. He found he could make more money with less risk by licensing his name to others to slap on things they built at their expense and risk. Then he could point to his name and take the credit.
Republicans in Congress, too, are happy to slap their names on others’ successes. They will strike poses back home about benefits from the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion relief package that their constituents will enjoy but that they themselves voted to kill.
Democrats learned that efforts at bipartisanship with such cosplayers need an expiration date.
But the history of the Obama years has taught Democrats that Republicans aren’t, well, posturing in good faith. They are not staking out one position today to lay the groundwork for reaching a mutually agreeable compromise tomorrow. Rather, many Democrats figure their opponents will string them along, and then, at the end, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) will still have to get the bill done with only Democratic votes.
The real question before Senate Democrats is whether it’s worth seeing if enough Republicans would allow some significant share of infrastructure spending to pass in a bipartisan way. A leading advocate of what you might call the Big Test is Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.). He says it might be worth dividing Biden’s plan into two, with one winning GOP votes and the other passing through reconciliation. But he doesn’t want to give the GOP forever.
Republicans have until Memorial Day.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is “agnostic” about passing the infrastructure package in pieces. He’s looking to avoid a fight over a third bill.
Brown is right to be skeptical: Wagers on GOP goodwill have lately been suckers’ bets. But Coons is also right that there are worse things than being caught trying bipartisanship — with a deadline. Better to know quickly how serious Republicans are about infrastructure. Let the burden be on them to show what brand of posturing they’re engaged in.
The Trump brand, clearly. But Democrats are willing to spend a few weeks doing some bipartisanship posturing as a prelude to achieving their real goal. They’ll be able to tell voters they tried to clear the blockage through negotiation before flushing it out via reconciliation.
It just won’t happen overnight.