SOTU Republican responses in preview: a creaking, cracking mass of incoherence

WaPo's Jonathan Bernstein notes that for 20 years congressional Democrats have played the shrewd incrementalists--grandly strategic, principled dreamers who thrust and fall back, but not all the way, thereby achieving something of their original goal. He cites the 1990s' State Children’s Health Insurance Program in lieu of President Clinton's national healthcare rubble: "they looked for a way to improve actual, rather than symbolic, health care, and found an area in which they could work productively with Republicans."

There is a shorthand word for this. Politics. And that old art, argues Bernstein,

is open to Republicans today: Find common ground, and get some of what you want, even if you can’t get it all. But that works only if you have real, substantive goals that you actually care about. More and more, it appears that many Republicans simply care much more about symbolic stands rather than substantive policy.

By "symbolic stands" I assume Bernstein is loosely referring to Republican ideology, yet that's where things get increasingly tricky. Just what, now, is it?

A mere five years ago Republican ideology was essentially a sick hybrid of neoconservatism and deregulatory, supply-sided crackpotism--resulting, not unexpectedly, in catastrophic conflict, soaring debt and a pancaking economy--which, though diseased, was at least somewhat consistent.

Today, opposition to everything congressional Democrats say and obstruction of everything President Obama attempts no doubt exemplify Republicanism, but opposition and obstruction aren't an ideology. Yesterday's neoconservatism is a shambles--muscularism reduced to Dick Cheney's evil sneer and John McCain's galloping senility--and contemporary Republican economics is just about anyone's guess. It chiefly struts as a principled opponent of debt, yet in practice opposes every known fiscal efficacy in slaying it. This leaves the sole consistency of deregulatory madness. Anarchy, anyone?

That's a tough sell. And as a "symbolic stand," it's more of a last one. Yet Republicans can't even close ranks on that. Tonight we'll hear two divergent presentations of modern Republicanism, which in itself pretty much defines the party: a creaking, cracking mass of incoherence.

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

I have spent way too much time in small-town rural Tennessee McDonald's surfing the net and over-hearing the local Republicans talk among themselves.

The striking thing is how much of a foregone conclusion it is that all is lost and it's not coming back. I wait to hear the choir break out in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".

A common meme is "Obama's 4th or 5th term". Trust me guys, they REALLY believe that. In a way they should, which goes back to PM's post and bernstein's article.

One does not have to be counting his chickens before they hatch and smoking pot to believe a future of two Hillary Clinton terms following the two Obama terms following (with an 8 year pause)the two Bill Clinton terms.

And at ths point, Obama seems to be puttingthe real political profile to the Democratic agenda. Last week, Bill told the party that they now own healthcare; so their future mandate is to own it and make it work (cut excess costs). That will become Hill (and Bill's) goals and objectives over those two (presumed) terms.

Reagan who?

[Susan Zoon]

"many Republicans simply care much more about symbolic stands rather than substantive policy."

That's because symbolic stands get you TVee face time and puts money in your pockets once you've mailed out the letter telling your funders what a rebel you are.

Substantive policy gets you an actual voting record and a possible primary.

The twenty-four hour punditry parade on cable "news" has created this monster. I'm ready to go all Howard Beale on everyone. Turn off the cameras and send these self agrandizing bastards back to work.

[BobH]

The SOTU is an exercise in the macabre. I never watch unless forced to do so. POTUS should simply phone it in (as in an address from the Oval Office) and avoid the "nattering nabobs of negativism" (sorry Spiro!).