Obama and the Party of No

Those whacked out Republicans are the real drama in this election.

“If the election is about anger and apathy colored by amnesia, we’re in deep trouble. If the election is about what are we going to do now and who’s more likely to do that, the president and the Congress have a real chance to come out of this fine.” That’s a quote from a famous source, from someone who knows what midterm elections are like when you’re a quarterback who has just been sacked by the Republicans: Bill Clinton. He may be one of Obama’s sharpest critics, but he’s also ready to help him in an exceptionally difficult campaign.

There are significant differences from 1994 when Clinton lost 54 seats in the House of Representatives and 8 in the Senate: Obama has been much more successful in his first 18 months in office. In contrast to the chaotic start of Clinton’s first term, Obama was able to get health care reform passed. Neither are the Republicans of 1994 comparable to those of today. In 1994, the GOP signaled its intention to strike compromises with the White House despite a hard-fought election. Today, the implacable Republican tone comes from slavering tea party ideologues, bomb-throwers at Fox News and Sarah Palin — to this conservative freak show, compromise and political horse-trading are foreign concepts.

The real drama in this election isn’t so much the fact that Obama seems unable to reassemble the broad coalition of independents, liberals and young people that swept him into the White House and get them to now support Democratic congressional candidates. Neither is it public disappointment, the persistent economic downturn nor the recent poor timing on the part of Obama’s campaign team. It is largely due to the ideological conditions within the Republican Party. And that could well result in a complete paralysis of the American political system after the Nov. 2 elections.

Even hardcore Republicans like Ronald Reagan’s economic advisor David Stockman, who was the face of Reaganomics at the beginning of the 1980s, have distanced themselves from the agenda demands that dominate what used to be the party of business. In a New York Times article recently he said, “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.”

Back then, Reagan was successful in ironing out the differences between the business faction, the ideologues and the national security hawks in the Republican Party. But that would be impossible these days. The GOP has become the party of “no.” Because they can’t come up with any plausible opposing policies of their own, they resort to polarization and confrontation.

If this strategy works and the Republicans actually realize the electoral landslide some are predicting, that will mean political firefights and a two-year crippling of Obama’s domestic agenda. David Stockman is even saying that no significant legislation will be enacted until fiscal year 2015. That would mean not just “big problems” but a dangerous threat to the United States and to the rest of the world as well.