Monday, March 8, 2010

Obstruction, obfuscation and outright lies – death panels! – the Republicans have doggedly pursued a one-line to-do list: bring down Obama. Never mind we fail if our president fails.

As we shed another 36,000 jobs in February, Americans are increasingly furious and frustrated – Pentagon shootout! Pilot attacks Austin IRS building! A CNN poll found 62 percent believe most members of Congress don’t deserve re-election – a 10-point surge since 2006.

Filibustering Senate Republicans delayed 80 percent of major legislation in 2009, compared to an average of one a decade from the dawn of the Republic until the Civil War. Filibusters are obviously no longer the weapon of last resort, but a strategic element in calculated gridlock. In the meantime, a consequence of this cynical strategy is that trust in government is extinct.

Tea, a grassroots movement which isn’t really a party, but homage to the 1773 Boston Harbor protest, is fascinating and a force for the two parties to reckon with like they haven’t had since Ross Perot in 1992. Many regard themselves as independent thinkers against big government who, like George Washington, desire politics without parties. These angry Americans are blinded by their rage to one salient fact: the government could play a role in solving huge festering national problems that have been kicked down the road like dodge balls for decades. Debt, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care, energy, climate change, plus two endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which patient terrorists will count as a win if they succeed at bleeding us into ruin.

Solving such intractable problems requires an America-first spirit of compromise and bipartisanship. The conservative revolution elected Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. After the GOP lost the White House to two terms by Democrat Bill Clinton, Republicans realized political polarization could level their playing field by bottling up Democrats, then using their failure to win elections.

In the ’80s there still were such quaint things as moderate Republicans who represented blue states from Oregon to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Their collegiality in an era when “activist government” were not yet swear words accomplished things, such as the 1986 reform bill to simplify the tax code – Mark Siljander was our congressman! – and the 1990 Clean Air Act setting pollution limits.

Since Republicans occupied the White House, trying to demonize federal government as corrupt and incompetent would damage their party. Clinton’s ascendancy to power ushered in a new breed of Republican, such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. “Under President Reagan,” Gingrich recalls, “we never had a majority in the House, so every bill had to include a lot of Democrats. The negotiating was difficult, and the debates were tough, but in the end we got a lot done … President Clinton and I had a series of very tough negotiations, but in the end we accomplished welfare reform, Medicare reform, the first tax cuts in 16 years and the first four consecutive budgets (reducing the public debt by $450 billion) since the 1920s.”

Gingrich, who used filibusters to brake Clinton’s agenda, adds, “Some GOP partisans so deeply distrust Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that they assume even meeting with them is an act of betrayal.”

Like sleazy ads, Republicans cling to this line of attack because it works. They quickly grasped that Americans so loath political infighting they take out their ire on whoever happens to be in charge, like the 1994 midterms. Jubilant Democrats thought Obama roared onto the scene strong. They underestimated how the Republican strategy feeds on polarization. The Senate Republican caucus petrified as it shrank.

Obama persuaded three Republicans to break ranks for his stimulus plan – the two women from Maine and Sen. Arlen Specter, who switched parties. Now we’re down to the sickening spectacle of Republican leader Mitch McConnell filibustering a deficit-reduction commission he demanded. Republicans keep getting rewarded by public revulsion with Washington, crippling health care reform by chipping away at government credibility.

Our hot tub time machine has delivered us back to 1993!

The highlight of 2010 so far is the televised exchange in Baltimore between Obama and the House Republican leadership.

Honest debate can be civil, neither side has a monopoly on the truth and not everyone across the aisle is evil.