It’s looking increasingly
likely that the GOP will take control of the Senate. The New York
Times’ model gives Republicans a 65
percent chance of gaining a majority and Five Thirty Eight
is giving them a 62
percent shot. “Midterm
momentum belongs to GOP” says The Washington Post,
whose latest poll with ABC News finds that even Hispanics, often
the target of Republican immigrant-bashing, are up for the
change.
So what might Republicans actually do if they have majorities in
both houses of Congress? If past behavior is any indication of
future performance, the short and likely answer is: screw it all
up. The Wash Post’s “Right Turn” blogger Jennifer Rubin offers up
advice, much of which makes sense. She says the GOP should think
about legislation as belonging to one of two piles. The first is
stuff that “enjoys bipartisan support.” The second includes things
“the GOP cannot accomplish without the White House.” For the
latter, she says, Republicans should take their case to the public
and force President Obama to ‘splain why he’s dragging his heels.
In all cases, says Rubin:
Bills should follow some basic criteria: 1. The principle
purpose is reform, not penny pinching; 2. The lower or middle class
benefits; and 3. If the welfare state bureaucracy is doing
something poorly (e.g. Obamacare, food stamps) replace it with
something better. That leaves the field wide-open for welfare
reform, full-blown tax reform, regulatory reform, and an Obamacare
alternative. Legislation may include a more decentralized solution
in which the feds take a more supportive role (e.g. funding)
but states construct programs.
That all sounds pretty good. But of course we know what
Republicans and conservatives really want to do is spend
lots of money on stuff that favors their constituencies and
ideological fixations. So that means:
What Republicans can’t do is spend their time
trying to chop chunks of government, obsess on the spending side,
cut holes in the safety net, perpetuate cronyism or let paranoia
gut anti-terror measures (e.g. drones, NSA). Senate gadflies are
about to learn that being in the majority is far different than
throwing spitballs from the minority. They will need to show they
can problem-solve (or they will confirm concerns that they
cannot).
I agree with Rubin that this election is not
about Americans being suddenly dazzled by Republican proposals.
People are fed up with Obama, whose signature legislative
accomplishments either didn’t work as advertised (the stimulus) or
remain genuinely unpopular (Obamacare). “Voters are looking
for executive competence,” writes Rubin, “something the Congress
can affect only indirectly through oversight and the budget.” She
warns that Republicans “misread public opinion at their own
peril.”
True, true. But so do Washington
Post bloggers. First and foremost, it’s clear that
Americans want Congress to do its job and actually vote on a war
declaration regarding the current adventures in Iraq and Syria.
According to the latest Reason-Rupe Poll, fully
78 percent of us want to see that. And don’t mistake the recent
post-beheading spike of support for action against ISIS as a
long-term shift. The Reason-Rupe Poll found that 52 percent of
Americans are against ground troops fighting in the Middle East.
Tellingly, the poll also found that more people today claim to have
supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq than actually did at the time.
We’re a nation of summer soldiers, it turns out.
The Republicans would in fact do well to “obsess on the
spending side.” Rubin is probably right that it’s not a winning
political strategy to start calling for an end to the Department of
Commerce, but the GOP should absolutely make the case that spending
and debt is a real issue and that we need to get by with less of
both. Had the GOP in the past actually started cutting corporate
welfare first and social welfare second, they would have confounded
expectations and won some plaudits from libertarians as well as
fiscally serious independents and Democrats. But when you cut food
stamps without targeting farm subsidies, the jig is up. A
Republican Congress could kill the Export-Import Bank (a corporate
welfare institution that is supported by such progressive Democrats
as Sen. Elizabeth Warren) as an opening salvo.
If the GOP is interested in hitting on specific measures
that enjoy broad majorities of approval, it would do well to follow
Rand Paul’s lead in pushing on sentencing reform and other criminal
justice fixes. Polls routinely
show 75 percent and more of voters believing in such things. Given
that such measures would disproportionately affect minorities, they
would also help recast the Party of Lincoln as something other than
a good old boys’ club too.
If the Republicans are interested in catching some spark
with millennials, they would also do well to push social issues
(including immigration) off their near-term agenda. The GOP pulls
poorly among 18-29 year olds, with just 23 percent of millennials
self-identifying as Republicans. The
Reason-Rupe Millennials Poll released over the summer
strongly suggests taking a break from freaking out over gay
marriage and pot legalization. Millennials support both and
Republicans are generally against them. Yet the Republicans could
also tell a story about economic policy that might resonate with
younger Americans. Large majorities of millennials believe that
government is too big and regulates too much; that cutting taxes
would help the economy; and that cutting spending by 5 percent
would help the economy. Younger Americans are worried about state
surveillance and tend to be anti-war too.
The GOP would be wise to think through its
approach to foreign policy. George W. Bush left office with
record-low approval ratings. Obama may well set new lows. While
both presidents have done poorly economically, both have followed a
largely interventionist, largely disastrous foreign policy. It’s
not tough to outline a defense strategy that protects Americans
without breaking the bank or coming to the aid of every country in
the world which nonethless votes to kick us out after a decade of
occupation (such as Iraq). An engaged America needn’t be an
American that spends itself to the poorhouse on the
military.
If the Republican majority actually laid out policies that
fell into line with all that while explaining a theory of limiting
government and increasing individual freedom, they might just win
over people who worry (not without reasons) that the GOP is simply
a socially reactionary party that wants to cut spending on the poor
but lard it up on wealthy people and the military-industrial
complex.
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