Cooperating with a Romney administration? Treason.

In an impossibly generous, utterly unrealistic assessment of the non-existent, "high-information" and yet undecided constituency, Ross Douthat concludes in much the same civics-textbook spirit that I heard former Democratic governor Ed Rendell conclude the other day in an MSNBC interview:

[Y]ou could see the improving odds for what once seemed like an unlikely 2012 outcome — a Romney victory in which Democrats hold the Senate — as a nod to the necessity for bipartisanship, and an attempt to make a significant change in Washington while also forcing both parties back to the negotiating table.

Nonsense. What I'm about to suggest will sound cynically irresponsible, but what Douthat and Rendell suggest would spell the end of the republic.

My suggestion is this: should Romney be elected, then Senate Dems should shut it down, they should shut it all down--they should fold their arms and obstruct and deny and dispute and investigate and repeatedly, obsessively propose the same pointless bill (something really pointless, say, single-payer) as the GOP House has done with abortion and they should play brinkmanship on the debt and of course persist in inflicting as much conceivable pain on the middle class as congressionally possible and in general cause nothing but sleepless nights for the sitting president. Just pretty much shut it all down.

Payback? Sure, there's some of that. But mostly it's a matter of virtuously denied rewards. Should Romney win, he will have established the vilest imaginable precedent in American politics: that Goebbelsesque, Big Lie politics can triumph here, just as they have triumphed elsewhere in the squalid course of irredeemably corrupted democracies. He will have demonstrated that truth and straight-shooting and pragmatic competence and even historic accomplishments in the Oval Office mean, electorally, nothing; that it can all be blown away with the fiery howling of a ruthless propaganda machine and a handful of predatory plutocrats. And if such victorious, frankly fascistic tactics are greeted by the welcoming embrace of bipartisan arms and forgiving cooperation and thus a reasonably successful Romney administration, then we could kiss any hope of another honest, honorable presidential campaign goodbye--forever--for that sort of politics would be seen by even the would-be honorable as unserviceably antique.

The parties' "demagoguery gap" could be closed only through a wholesale rejection of republicanism--and with it, in short order, the republic.  

Comments

[Susan Zoon]

"Romney Administration"- those words make me literally shudder.

[Jim Milstein]

PM, is your steadfast confidence in Obama's reelection weakening?

[Peter G]

I accept your logic on the larger issue of not rewarding epic mendacity. But in the event of a Romney presidency, still unlikely, good governance and responsibility to the citizens demands that whatever legislation comes before the House or the Senate be debated and influenced on a case by case basis.

[Alan Mandel]

Per Jim Milstein's comment, I was also wondering if your confidence in Obama's reelection weakening? As Charles Pierce blogs at Esquire.com, the race is now within the margin of chicanery.

[nancy]

A few weeks ago as I recall, you were suggesting to David Simon that basically he needed to get a grip. We've survived through crises before and will again. What has made you change your mind?

[PM]

I guess an intervention is in order.

I was only responding to Douthat and Rendell's "if-ism"--a response similarly loaded down by the conditional tense.

It does not in any way represent a change of heart. Believe me, if I have one, you'll know it, unmistakably.

--PM

[AnneJ]

I tend to agree with you, PM but I just don't see the democrats doing that. I work at Wal Mart and I see parents rewarding their children's bad behavior every time they throw a fit and the parents give in and buy the little brat whatever they want. It's called rewarding bad behavior and it's bad for child rearing and bad for governing. Republicans need what bratty kids in Wal Mart need: A butt whuppin' and a firm, unequevical "NO." Maybe two wrongs don't make a right, but if in the horrible possibility of a Romney Administration, wouldn't it be lovely to have both houses of congress dominated by democrats?

[Turgidson]

There are always enough stray Democrats from purple-to-red states that think they're burnishing their independent/bipartisan cred when they vote for GOP bills and nominees. And the Democrats are too chickenshit to filibuster everything under the sun, too.

So...even with a Democratic Senate, I expect some odious legislation to get through to a hypothetical President Romney. Maybe nothing as purely malevolent as the Ryan budget, but little bits and pieces of it perhaps.

[Steve]

The American Civil War historian Shelby Foote said the "true genius of American politics is compromise." When we failed at compromise in 1860 we got the Civil War. The capacity to compromise is again in short supply. I fear what will come next.