Letter 2 America for December 13, 2013

Dear America,

The Tea Party seems to be facing its most pivotal moment to date.  First there was the profound failure of their petulant insistence on the Republican shut down of our government as a ploy with which to vitiate the Affordable Care Act--Obamacare as it is destined to be known, much to President Obama's credit ultimately I predict--which some of them even admitted they didn't think could work at the outset.  It did result in an agreement to extend the national debt limit and approve a continuing resolution to operate the government at extant funding levels, but that was only temporary, for the purpose of allowing discussion between the parties about an on-going budget agreement in which the Tea Party apparently expected to have its way.  But now that budget agreement has been formulated between Paul Ryan, the Republican House Budget Committee Chairman and Patty Murray, his Democratic Senate counterpart, the members of The House, which is controlled by the Republicans and therefore ostensibly in the thrall of the Tea Party, and it has overwhelmingly passed in The House with almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans.  The Tea Party were left to huddle amongst themselves to choose the next debacle to inflict on their party, the nation, and themselves for that matter.  They will complain loudly about the apostasy of their fellow Republicans and do a lot of finger pointing, but the ones who want to remain in congress will quickly relent and recognize that their fangs have been blunted and all that is left to them is licking their wounds.  Meanwhile, The Senate, which is under Democratic control, will certainly pass the two year budget, and President Obama will no doubt sign it to complete the rout of what can only be described as a particularly American political anomaly.  

While everyone complains that this two year budget isn't what they would like, the vast majority of congressman say that it is a good thing in that it keeps congress from "lurching from crisis to crisis"--Paul Ryans phrase, not mine--and tacitly it is an acknowledgment that the Republicans don't want to be fighting this battle during the next election.  Excluding the Tea Party, it seems that the rest of the Republican Party is clever enough to recognize that, while being led by a reactionary minority like the Tea Party was exciting, it has no future and it never did.  The American people, much to their credit, did a better job of restraining excessive governance than did even The Senate, which touts itself as the body that is inefficient by design so as to accomplish just that: restraint.  In the end, the Hamiltonian rationale for a Senate that would be populated by grayer heads who would damp the most populist trends so as to prevent populism from overcoming reason, and even true democracy, was a failure.  And with John Boehner facing the press when it was announced that a deal had been struck, the concept was repudiated in favor of a demonstration that even The House of Representatives eventually sees reason collectively, whether out of self-preservation instinct or just folk-wisdom.  Boehner was asked about the opposition to the two year deal, the terms of which still hadn't been made public, and he said, "Are you kidding?  We haven't even told them what's in it yet;"  the first a phrase he used again when he was discussing the government shut-down and the response of the Tea Party members in his caucus when he announced that the Republicans were going to capitulate in light of the damage being done to the party in terms of public opinion.  According to Boehner, when he made the announcement, one of the Tea Party members said, "we didn't really think it would work."  "Are you kidding me!" Boehner shouted to the press the day before yesterday when he was announcing the deal.  After a near martial castigation of the conservative forces inside and outside the congress, calling them users of the people and the party for the accomplishment of their own selfish ends, both he and Paul Ryan then effectively pleaded with their members to put the budget deal through over the objections of such outside groups led by the likes of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers, and that is what Republicans did.  Goodbye Ted Cruz.

So what will be the next Republican strategy?  My guess is it will be in the way of several acts of contrition taking the form of abandoned snarkyness in committees looking for ways to hang an albatross around President Obama's and the Democrats' necks, like the Issa hearings, which are more like a side-show than a congressional oversight effort, in The Senate where Janet Napolitano is garroted once every two weeks by some sanctimonious conservative Republican who still hasn't gotten the Boehner memo.  And there will be less of a tendency to obstruct, since that is what the Republicans have become known for, and it hasn't done them any good.  Mitch McConnell and John Boehner...McBoehnell, as I call them...will show their softer sides, and once again, there will be collegial smiles up on The Hill.  That isn't always ideal, and the occasional scandal devolves from too many people glad handing too many other people, but it's better than nothing, which is what we have gotten since 2008 when conservative forces...even in the Democratic Party in the form of the self-styled Blue Dogs...seized control from a minority position.  Hail the return of true representative democracy...for now.  In this atmosphere of partisan comity, the Obama administration can have a second life, and the American people might once again be served by their government; a sort of Pax Washingtonia.  Let's hear it for us.  After all, if it hadn't been for the threat of how we might vote, none of this renaissance of principle over politics would have been possible.

Your friend

Mike