Watchword Politics

A few days ago, tea party Republicans quoted polling results to support their battle cry: The people are afraid of Obama’s health care reform! Indeed, not even every fourth person polled in mid-September considered “Obamacare” an improvement of the health system, while nearly half predicted harm to America.

Unfortunately for Republicans, these same pollsters have new data. With almost just as large a margin, Americans blame Republicans for the fact that many government offices have been closed since the beginning of the month, while Congress sits immobile. The tactic of holding America’s funds (and if possible, its checkbook) hostage in order to force the president to repeal health care reform has met with little understanding. Only 24 percent have anything nice left to say about Republicans, and even fewer like the tea party. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has spent the last two weeks trying to make the reforms more appealing to the American people.

Conservative strategists predicted all of this. But it apparently took a public opinion poll before John Boehner, Washington’s top Republican, along with the moderate majority of his party, dared move in the direction of accommodation. The confrontation, however, is by no means at an end. Before the U.S. stands an ugly autumn, with a budget debate in which self-righteous dogmatists will continue to put their efforts into thwarting sensible voices with watchword politics.

The Budget Crisis Won’t Disempower the Tea Party

It is no Republican fantasy that the U.S. will only bring its deficit under control by reforming its social welfare programs. On the other hand, it is also not a perversion of American freedom when Democrats refuse to tolerate the poverty that has grown up in the niches of U.S. economic hegemony. The billion-dollar American budget should be large enough for both sides to find “common ground.” That phrase is still allowed, though the tea party has designated “compromise” a word unfit for conservatives. Just like “tax hike.”

Despite the high price they have paid in the polls, we cannot expect that the tea party’s willful generation of a budget crisis will lose them all their charm and power. In fact, national polling data does not play a large role in their elections, and those party strategists who are rubbing their eyes in disbelief have themselves to blame for their clients’ behavior. Through the shamelessly partisan-motivated redrawing of election districts, the map of the United States has become a patchwork of ever crazier polygons, which each contain as homogeneous a population as possible. This is an old tradition in America, but in the age of total data collection it has reached new dimensions. Most likely, more than nine out of ten districts are so contorted that their voter populations are sure to remain either Democrat or Republican for a long time.

Obama Needs To Compromise Too

The real elections happen therefore in party primaries. In most states, registered party members get to choose their candidate — and only a small few are interested in doing it. Because of this, small, passionately ideological groups of citizens decide who goes to Washington. Often, candidates with purely ideological platforms get ahead, who can disparage Washington without a hint of embarrassment because they haven’t been there often enough to get their hands dirty. More than half of Boehner’s team was elected for the first time in 2010 or 2012.

For a while, Obama can look on contentedly as tea party Republicans and moderates, Republican representatives and Republican senators fight in the wake of their defeat. But taking back the majority in Congress next year is still a bold dream for Democrats. The president will not get around the budget cuts that run counter to his promises and anger left-wing Democrats. Already the debates over drones, the National Security Agency spying programs and Syria have taught Obama that his party does not stand resolutely behind him. The unity Democrats displayed during the financial crisis was a present from Republicans, and a short-lived one at that. If Washington no longer wants to be the target of the world’s ridicule, not only Boehner but also Obama needs to compromise.