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In the second-day discussion of Paul Ryan’s latest budget proposal, the dominant theme among critics is that this document does not exactly reflect any growth or willingness to compromise by the defeated 2012 vice presidential nominee. TNR’s Jonathan Cohn offered an analogy:
Imagine Walter Mondale returning to Congress in 1985 and proposing a budget that undid President Reagan’s agenda and reduced deficits by raising taxes on the middle class—in other words, the exact same thing he’d proposed in his losing campaign for the presidency.
Republicans would object that Romney-Ryan didn’t lose as badly as Mondale-Ferraro, and in any event, disagreeing with Ronald Reagan was an act of sacrilege, not just politics (I’m only half-kidding here). Still, the general point holds: in the 1980s, when Democrats found themselves on the south end of a northbound electoral-demographic trend line, they adjusted pretty dramatically, or at least had big and ideologically meaningful arguments about it with the forces of the status quo ante having the burden of persuasion. Republicans in a similar situation seem determined to scream defiance at the electorate. Their way is the Truth and the Light, and it’s the country which needs to adjust!
But let’s don’t forget the specific reason for the specific contours of this latest Ryan Budget. As Will Marshall points out in a piece at RCP:
What, then, is the point of this exercise? One is to draw the sharpest possible contrast with Democratic calls for tax increases and faintheartedness when it comes to slowing health care spending. But Ryan’s budget also is a concession to restive Tea Party conservatives in the House. Earlier this year, they reluctantly agreed to back a temporary extension of the government’s borrowing authority. In return, the Republican House leadership promised a new plan to balance the budget in 10 years.
That’s right: Ryan’s budget is a tug of the forelock by the House GOP to the Cut-Cap-Balance crowd who think a radical and permanent reduction in domestic spending, read right into the Constitution, should be the eternal message of the Republican Party, no matter what happens electorally. All their endless and redundant RINO-bashing and demands for adherence to “conservative principle” reflect that belief-set. The American people are to be offered a chance to reverse the tragic mistake they made in 1964, again and again until they finally get it right. So it’s important to Ryan’s core constituency that the party’s largely symbolic budget documents keep on that shining path, world without end.
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jprichva on March 13, 2013 9:15 AM:
Cue that famous Brecht remark about the government dissolving the people and electing another.....
c u n d gulag on March 13, 2013 9:29 AM:
The funny thing is, that if Goldwater, Nixon, or Reagan, never mind Ike or Bush I, were politicians today, they would be too Liberal to be elected as Republicans, because they'd lose in every primary.
Manicheans, only see black (bad) and white (good).
You're either WITH God, or with Satan.
You're either Conservative, or Liberal.
And so, any shading from white, God, and Conservative, by political figures, is considered as being satanically Liberal, and leaning towards blacks.
Republicans seem to have forgotten that old maxim from Einstein - "The definition of insanity, is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result."
Less power to them.
And by that, I mean that we'd better hope they don't regain power until they've regained some sense of sanity.
boatboy_srq on March 13, 2013 9:29 AM:
Republicans in a similar situation seem determined to scream defiance at the electorate. Their way is the Truth and the Light, and it’s the country which needs to adjust!
Democrats have a natural interest in governing effectively, which means that if the situation on the ground changes, they adapt.
Conservatists have a natural interest in adhering to artificial ideals of Right™ and Wrong™, which only change when presented with a non-caucasian President (or non-male - HRC would have the same problem) who might agree with one or two of those ideals for practical reasons.
T2 on March 13, 2013 9:31 AM:
Another example of why today's GOP has become more of a cult than a viable political party. When will the Media figure that out?
Norbert on March 13, 2013 9:31 AM:
Until either a chunk of the 40-something percent who voted Republican in the election wakes-the-fuck-up to how they are getting shafted or enough big donors lean on them, Republicans in congress have zero incentive to moderate their positions even a little. Hard to imagine what else at this point it would take to dislodge either of these obstacles.
Celui on March 13, 2013 9:37 AM:
'True Believers' are the 'blindered few' who propose to decide for the many what should be the course of the future. Blindered, by nature, is simply not a mindset that can possibly see present needs or future planning, save in the same direction always, to "keep on that shining path, world without end. " Amen, Ed
Somehow: Craptcha today:: liquid oatingu Certainly apropos this GOP direction; a flowing nothing
Robert on March 13, 2013 9:41 AM:
It seems the anti-science party, the republicans, are trying to dis-prove Einsteins theory...again, and again, and again...E=MCsquared is still valid as is his insight on insanity...
terraformer on March 13, 2013 10:10 AM:
One of the saddest - and truly maddening - aspects of this is that the spending cuts they so decry are often on programs and services that they use or take advantage of. We have all seen the charts about how much of your tax dollar spent in a given state comes back to the fed via tax revenues, and how those states are overwhelmingly populated by those who support spending cuts.
But the easily led are not interested in facts and reason, continually falling prey (paradoxically) to those who make money off of them while telling them it's someone else's fault; always someone else. As Douglas said in "The American President": "They're interested in two things, and two things only - making you afraid of it, and telling you who to blame for it."
jim filyaw on March 13, 2013 10:22 AM:
i'll give republicans credit for one thing-they're like those blow up weighted dolls of my childhood. you could hit them as hard as you wanted, but they always came bouncing back as if nothing had happened. on the other hand, the democrats fold like a cheap tent at the first opposition, like the elections of 80, 84, 04, hell,even the 2000 election when the democrat got the most votes. the democrats couldnt wait to sign on to dubya's tax give-away, something that's haunted the economy ever since.
Peter C on March 13, 2013 10:27 AM:
I'm still having trouble believing that the Tea Party and the Republican Party are different and distinct things. I still can't help thinking that the Tea Party is just the Republican Party with a silly hat on. Back in the Bush Administration years, was Dick Armey really the head of a competing faction? I don't remember that we was.
Republicans want a different government than we. They want it to fund the military and not bolster the social fabric of the nation. They want it to defend corporations and not labor. They want it to work for the rich and the powerful. They DON’T want a government which works for the people and solves problems.
The Bush administration accomplished the much of these goals; it greatly expanded the military and worked to privatize much of government spending. These were goals that could only be accomplished while they were in charge of the administration. Mission accomplished.
The Tea Party is working at the next goal - the dismantling of the social safety net. This is a goal that they can accomplish when they are NOT in charge of the administration, because Congress controls the purse strings. Through Congress, they can keep government from working well. They can slow it, stop it, and keep it in permanent crisis mode.
One group breaks government, the other dismantles it. But they are not competing factions; they are all in the same cast reading from the same script.
Their next goal, after the safety net, is to weaken democracy as a whole. The courts and state government are pursuing those goals. Thus, you get hackable recordless electronic voting machines, voter ID laws, an attack on the Voting Rights Act, Emergency Managers in Michigan displacing local governments, maladministration of elections resulting in long lines, a destruction in campaign finance laws, corporations as ‘people’, money as ‘speech’. All this moves us from ‘one man, one vote’ toward a system of ‘one dollar, one vote’. When democracy is weak, the rich are more powerful. When democracy is strong, government can curb the excesses and safeguard the people from the exploitation of the rich.
So, I can't see this a the Republican Party bowing to the Tea Party faction. The Tea Party is a fiction which allows different Republicans to work on different goals depending upon what bits of government they control.
iyoumeweus on March 13, 2013 10:35 AM:
He spoke from his hollow black heart showing neither
SACRIFICE LEADERSHIP or BALANCE
I am 75 years old. I know the so called ‘chain COL’ and these austerity programs will cost my wife and me some hardship, my wife, even more after I am gone. We are not willing to accept our reduced status since we know ‘sacrifice is for suckers’. Our elected seem to ‘love’ sacrifice so let us join together and ask them to make a few once shown the way perhaps we would be more willing. Here are a few suggestions our elected and appointed government officials could sacrifice as follows:
1. Have their own cost of living adjustments also calculated based upon the chain COL
2. Raise the amount of ‘out of pocket’ payments for their own pensions and healthcare, thereby reducing the tax payers share
3. Either allow the government to negotiate directly with Medicare D providers or pay the same amount for their meds as Medicare recipients pay
4. Let them reduce their pay by the same amount Federal Worker’s pay is to be reduced
5. Once an elected official leaves office, all of their unused campaign contributions will go into a For the People Fund
Please add your own.
NeedMoreCoffee on March 13, 2013 10:44 AM:
Concessions for the tea partiers? So We, the People elected state representatives and sent them to Washington to please the constituency of Congress?
jjm on March 13, 2013 10:51 AM:
There is not, despite everyone's believing it, an ounce of idealism or sticking to principles in the GOP. They are ONLY serving the interests of the 1%.
Mimikatz on March 13, 2013 11:20 AM:
Jjm: One must always distinguish between the leaders and followers in the GOP. The leaders do the bidding of the 1% primarily, but the followers do see themselves as principled in that they want to stick by their ideology even if it hurts them too. Many of the GOP Housemembers don't qualify as leaders and are as deluded as their flock. Boehner, McConnell and a few others do, plus the Rove types outside gov't are the real leaders, and they are principled only when it serves their and the 1%'s interests.
c u n d gulag on March 13, 2013 11:30 AM:
Peter C, and iyoumeweus - SPOT ON!!!
Zorro on March 13, 2013 11:53 AM:
Moving further to the right is a strategic move for the GOP, and very likely an excellent one. Given that the mid-term electorate tends to be more conservative than the one that just defeated Romney-Ryan, it's only logical to try to rev up the most-likely voters by playing to their preferences.
Translation: screw the Obama coalition, they're not going to vote in '14, so let's make sure that our voters come out in droves.
It worked like a charm in '10, and it's an extremely good bet that it will do so again in '14. The only way that it backfires is if liberal + true moderates actually get off their asses and vote next November. But we're Amurricans- we leave the... cough... hard work of voting to someone else.
Sigh,
-Z
jwarren66 on March 13, 2013 12:04 PM:
Better example: what if Democrats in 2001 actively pushed proposals advocated by Al Gore in the 2000 election.
You know, the guy who actually won.
How many "get over its" did we hear from 2000-2004 or so?