One would think that in a two party political system one party would be thrilled to have an opponent that was eager to compromise with them on everything, frequently giving in even when they had the upper hand. And yet the lengths to which the democrats go to find consensus are only barely outdistanced by the republican’s determination to avoid them. Why? Shouldn’t the republicans be a little happier to be working with these consensus-driven democrats?
Granted, disagreement is very important in politics. Disagreement helps to establish a party’s particular brand, its philosophical difference from another. The ability to say what a voter (or a donor) is supporting when they support one party over another party is important. And proprietary ownership over one's own message is threatened by too much consensus.
Too much consensus would not be a problem for republicans were it not for the fact that democrats have been moving steadily to the right since Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1992. They have come pretty far to the right in that time. Enough so that Cenk Uyger was able to do a comparison of presidents Barak Obama and Ronald Reagan and conclude that on issues such as amnesty for immigrants, many of Obama’s positions today are actually to the right of Reagan’s during his presidency.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
In any event there is plenty of common ground between the two parties today, enough that if the republicans really wanted to get things done they would likely be very successful. But they have gotten so little done they were just named "Another Do Nothing Congress" by the Chicago Tribune:
"The 112th Congress is on pace to be one of the least productive in recent memory -- as measured by votes taken, bills made into laws, nominees approved. By most of those metrics, this crowd is underperforming even the 'do-nothing Congress' of 1948, as Harry Truman dubbed it. The hot-temper era of Clinton impeachment in the 1990s saw more bills become law."
http://politicalwire.com/...
Keep in mind that in order to get this little accomplished, a good deal of obstruction has been necessary and not just of their opponent's ideas, they have also had to block policies that originated on their side of the aisle.
Rachel Maddow (in this recent segment-http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...) sites several sources as evidence of a pattern of republicans abandoning their own ideas once the democrats have agreed to them:
Health Care Republicans Oppose Their Own Idea (Time Magazine (Feb 10, 2010) Which describes the republican opposition to the health care individual mandate as, and yet it was in fact a republican invention, one that they supported in the 90’s when the Clintons were trying to pass a health care bill.
(http://swampland.time.com/...)
Remember When Cap and Trade was a GOP Idea? (Mother Jones Dec 21, 2010) describing how...
“It might have been hard to tell during the past few years, with Republican opponents branding all attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions "cap and tax," but the idea of capping emissions and trading emission permits was originally a GOP idea introduced to deal with acid rain.”
http://motherjones.com/...
The current dynamic between the two parties has been characterized as an unevenly matched battle between strong idealists refusing to accept anything less than what is right and spineless government lovers who compromise so much because in their gut they always knew they were wrong anyway. But how accurate is this picture of republican strength? For one thing, one has to wonder how strong their convictions really are if all it takes for them to abandon them is for the democrats to agree.
Which brings us to the current issue of the debt ceiling, about which Ezra Klein writes:
“The Obama administration has agreed to a debt-ceiling deal that's 83% spending cuts and 17% tax increases -- mere inches away from the magic 85:15 ratio that the Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee asked for back in March...”
“But there's little evidence, at least as of yet, that Republicans are going to take the deal -- or even that they can take the deal. That raises the question of whether they've gotten here by being savvy, tough negotiators, or whether the reason they keep saying "no" is that they've lost the ability to say "yes."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
While cringing at the democrat's actions I admit to feeling slightly amazed at what their compromising has exposed: namely that the Republican Party today does not have proprietary ownership over its own message. This is a major problem for them.
To survive as an entity separate from the democrats they need some space on the political continuum on which to plant their own flag. With every compromise the democrats make, republicans are forced to dig up their flag once again and march on.
Republicans are desperately looking for that line in the sand over which the democrats will not cross and if they have to shut the government down indefinitely to find it they have shown that they will. The question of whether to default on our nation’s debts has been reduced to a mere a variable in the struggle of one party to survive the total encroachment of another.
Republican policies are only republican while the democrats disagree. They have zero incentive to achieve bipartisanship on anything. Even when they get everything they want--especially when they get everything they want--they defend the conflict because conflict is the only thing left that defines them.