If there were ever doubts about the negative effects of established factions in American politics, the current state of the country’s two major political parties should be front-and-center.
In the year since the 2008 election, health care reform has evolved (or devolved) from idealistic campaign platitudes to fingernail-biting negotiations of archaic Senate procedures.
While such a painfully cathartic process is common once we detach ourselves from the exaggerations of campaigns, we have, so far, witnessed a damning indictment of the Republican and Democratic parties in their current forms.
Many Republicans, after being booted out of Washington last November, have retreated to their conservative think tanks and consulting firms in hopes of mounting a GOP comeback in 2010 and 2012. Those who were lucky enough to survive the Democratic sweep have since decided to play the time-honored role of the loyal opposition with the least amount of tact and realism — not to mention long-term success — of any political party in recent memory.
When a party loses its grasp on the levers of power in Washington, it’s a clear sign that the elusive independent voters have left them, making them turn inward.
The immediate reaction, then, is to go back to the people they know will always be there — their base of contributors and canvassers, block-walkers and telephone call-makers.
For the GOP, nationally at least, this means forgetting about the hemorrhaging of independent and moderate voters in their ranks and attempting to remind those who make up Sarah Palin’s “real America” that the Republican Party belongs to them. This creates a terribly narrow, rigid and self-destructive party.
As much as Democrats throw the “Party of No” label at Republicans, GOP leadership in Congress has often confused opposition with obstruction.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate, said last week that every Republican would vote against cloture on the Senate health care bill Democrats unveiled last Thursday because it could not be amended in any way that would produce a positive result.
In other words, anything and everything is failure.
The political axiom that elections have consequences holds true. But for Democrats, the 2008 election has had less-than-positive consequences so far.
As the theory goes, since Democrats carried Congress and the White House last November, the national agenda is in their hands. The issues they deem most important are what dominate the news cycles and our conversations.
The president chose health care, and Congressional Democrats, at least according to custom, are supposed to be right behind his efforts, doing the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making law. This is not the case.
As Americans, we like to tell ourselves that we value inclusive and bipartisan approaches to solving the nation’s problems. However, one party must win a majority. Grabbing that threshold isn’t easy for a party that has to reconcile its base’s demands with those of independents.
What ends up happening is that the party tells its base that the only way they can win a majority — and thus make the change the base wants to see — is to recruit others who may not share much in common with the base. Often, the base complies, knowing that little is possible without a majority. But when the party grabs a majority on Election Day, it begins to realize that it has been so changed to accommodate for a majority that it may not at all resemble what it started out as.
When the House passed its own version of health care reform earlier this month, it was with five votes to spare. That margin does not necessarily smack of a mandate-worthy majority to most Americans. Had an outside observer seen what was happening on the House floor the Saturday night the vote was taken, they could easily assume Americans had failed to give any party a terribly strong majority in the last election cycle.
The cause of such a narrow margin was an amendment offered by a conservative Michigan Democrat concerning abortion and federal funds. Now, as everyone focuses on the Senate’s attempt at passage, the lingering doubt is that when it comes time for both chambers to settle on a single bill, the conservative Democrats who supported inclusion of the abortion language and thus pushed the entire bill over the top will bolt from negotiations if their amendment is stripped.
In the pursuit of a majority, what was once the people’s mandate for change can easily become an ambiguous wish list.
The merits of running a government on the principles of bipartisanship are obvious and numerous. The argument with the most merit will rise to the top if an open and public debate is allowed among informed citizens. But our national obsession with bipartisanship and fractured government is not always a formula for success — or progress at all, for that matter.
Cervantes is a government and journalism junior.
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Republic endlessly debates
this alarming chain of events,
the Supreme Chancellor has
secretly dispatched two Jedi
Knights, the guardians of
peace and justice in the
galaxy, to settle the conflict. . . .