How Conservatives May Have Actually Won the Shutdown

Great relief resounded throughout the land this week when the GOP hardliners finally stood down.  I myself took great heart in the fact that the Republicans had demanded a stop to Obamacare, and ended up getting nothing.  I gloated with and high-fived my progressive friends, happy to see the Tea Party get its due.

After some reflection, however, I've come to realize that these feelings may have been premature.  While the Tea Party types did not get what they wanted, I doubt they will face any real consequences.  Gerrymandering makes it difficult to flip most districts, and the election won't be until next year anyway.  Our amnesiac voting public and its ever-shortening attention span will ensure that this latest episode in right-wing perfidy will slide right on into oblivion.  The US almost went to war with Syria a month ago, but nobody is even talking that conflict on these shores anymore.

Not only will Republicans not be punished, they might well be in a better place now because of the shutdown.  This does not mesh with conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is never to be trusted.  The answer is simple: conservatives have, yet again, determined the parameters of our national political discourse.  After Sandy Hook they managed to swat away a much-desired look at gun control.  Despite the fervent hopes for immigration reform across the country, Congress hasn't even come close to passing legislation.  Now, in the aftermath of the shutdown, all talk centers around budget and taxation.

These are the bread and butter issues of modern conservatism, and the ground where conservatives would prefer to fight.  During the 2012 presidential election,  Mitt Romney took great pains to make his campaign a referendum on the budget.  He nominated Paul Ryan, the posterboy of modern-day Reaganomics, to be his running mate and lend credibility on the issue.  While most Americans don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with Republicans on this issue, the GOP gets into serious trouble with the electorate when it comes to issues like women's rights, gun control, and immigration.  If the national political conversation begins to take up these topics, the Republicans know that their goose is cooked.  Hence, they must do everything they can to prevent them from even being discussed.

The shutdown basically accomplished that.  Now in Congress there will be nothing but budget and taxation-related action, and if there is another Sandy Hook or Syria, no worries, since the deadline for another continuing resolution to fund the government is always around the corner.  The rest of us will be forced to make concessions to head off another hostage crisis, and all other issues will fall by the wayside.  It is an unfair and dangerous strategy, but will continue to happen for the simple reason that it works.

Forget Ted Cruz, John Boehner Is The Real Villain

Rarely do extremists ever get a majority of the public to support their agenda.  To get power, they must attract more mainstream allies who can see a possible benefit in joining with extremists.  Historically, this has led to some pretty awful things.  For example, Italian elites were willing to support Mussolini, seeing his Fascist hordes as a bulwark against the Left.  For years northern Democrats were willing to bend over backwards to please their Dixiecrat wing, even if it meant not pushing for anti-lynching legislation.  Power is a drug, and those threatened with losing their connection to it will make all kinds of dirty deals with all kinds of unsavory characters to maintain their positions.

That is exactly what we're seeing in Washington this week.  The Tea Party extremists like Cruz, King, and Bachmann are getting the blame, but they would not have been able to shut down the government without the machinations of John Boehner.  As Speaker of the House, he has control over what legislation reaches the floor, and he has totally refused to allow a vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government.  I have no doubt that plenty of moderate Republicans would join Democrats in voting for it, which would bring a quick end to an entirely avoidable crisis.  The nation would win, but Boehner would most certainly lose.  The Tea Party base of the GOP, along with some of its hardline moneymen, would call for his orange head on a pike.

Conversely, great things are done by politicians with the courage to do the right thing, even if it means losing power.  Lyndon Johnson admitted that the Civil Rights Act would lose the South for the Democrats, but he knew it had to be done.  Back in the late 1800s, Illinois governor John Altgeld pardoned the three surviving members of the group of eight anarchists convicted of the Haymarket bombing on scant evidence.  He was rewarded with the kind of vitriol pictured below, and lost the governorship.  However, it was much more important to him that three innocent people were not put to death.  Justice trumped personal gain, as it should.

It is easy and fitting to blame ideological extremism and hyper-partisanship for our current impasse, but much of it boils down to pure venality.  That the future of this country could be hanging in the balance over such base motives might be the most depressing thing of all about this mess.