More interested in hearing thoughts and opinions rather than trying to settle the matter, but since it is political GD seemed the right place for this.
My thought is that the House of representatives is currently operating (ie. failing to) much like British Parliament when a coalition government is required.
The Republicans are clearly split into mainstream (MS) and Tea Party (TP) factions. Without both on-board, the republicans have no majority. Speaker Boehner is trying to uphold the “Hastert rule” that nothing comes to a vote unless the majority of the majority is for it, and with a unified TP, and natural differences among the MS, it ends up being that the TP is running the show. No-brainer legislation like the Hurricane Sandy relief funds are getting stopped by a minority faction of the House.
Because the Tea Party faction got elected as republicans, and got on the ballot via republican primaries (in some cases ousting MS republicans) this is something of a forced coalition. But in fact many cases the MS republicans are closer to the Democrats than to the TP.
Speaker Boehner could ignore the Hastert rule, and accomplish almost anything MS republicans want with the help of a few Democrats, and there are plenty of blue-dogs available for that.
Would Speaker Boehner be more effective if he treated the TP as a third party rather than a republican faction? How might he possibly do that and still retain the speakership?
No. Despite the fact that many people both on the left and in the more Romneyite wings of the GOP want to pretend that the national political debate and the Tea Party in particular are all about a hardline free-market economics, any conversation with an actual Tea Partier or examination of the issues that one of their favorite-son candidates raises show that they are actually concerned about social-conservative issues. The rest of the Republicans don’t oppose the Tea Party conception of a land with no abortion, homosexuals, or Muslims, they just know how to be more diplomatic about it. The Tea Party has no fundamental disagreements with the large mass of Republican politicians or voters and is already ceasing to have influence as any kind of independent force.
The ideological makeup of the House and Senate is bimodal not a bell curve. Thus trying to govern from the center with a mixture of moderate democrats and republicans is impossible.
No, it didn’t. The bill allocating funds passed in the House. What didn’t pass was the bill that was also loaded with pork.
Maybe in some cases, but not in most cases. The TP is 1st and foremost about lowering taxes and scaling back government. There is nothing non-mainstream Republican about that.
No. Why on earth would you think he would create an advantage by cutting off part of his party?
What was the pork? I hadn’t heard this claim until Jon Stewart mentioned it, and then pulled.out the… one page pork free bill, suggesting the pork claim was bullshit.
Perhaps moderate republicans wouldn’t need to worry so much about being primaried from the right if the republican congress didn’t look so useless. When they accomplish zero anyway, then you might as well have someone who fires up the base with talking points, as someone who talks moderately yet still gets nothing done.
By ceding control of the agenda to TP, which is basically insisting on no compromise ever, the Republican party is often ending up with far less control over what finally gets passed than if they were able or willing to work deals that involved give and take. Even in those cases when they do get their way, it is with grave consequences to their popularity. I give you the last debt limit fight as an example. Boehner repeatably had the rug pulled out from under him by TP, and ended up looking like an impotent fool with zero ability to speak for his caucus.
The bimodality of congressional makeup may look symmetric, but is being driven from one side. Democrats are not the ones refusing to compromise ever…but they have zero reason to do so when it doesn’t move the republicans closer to center. If republicans were able to do deals, there are plenty of moderate democrats willing to meet them halfway…the President among them. By refusing to do so, they can’t pass anything that has any chance to ever become law. Over time people take them less and less seriously.
Arguably. I’ve heard the argument made that they are basically just the latest iteration of the Dixiecrats. The argument goes that America is basically a three party state with a two party system; the economically right wing party, the economically left wing party, and the xenophobic, socially conservative, highly religious “Dixiecrat” faction which exists as part of whichever main party serves its agenda best. Which for a long time was the Democrats, until the Civil Rights era and the Southern Strategy caused them to switch to the Republicans. So in effect yes, they are a third party in some ways and always have been; but they aren’t likely to split off formally since there’s no room in our system for a formal third party.
There’s an economically left wing party? Really? All I see in the news is an economically hard-right party and an economically moderate-right party.
An economically left wing party? Huh. News to me. What is it called?
ETA: No, the Tea Party is the just the far-right wing of the GOP, with some significant overlap and/or sympathy with mainstream GOP. The small gov’t economic talk is all posturing from the GOP, to be sure, but the Tea Party has already morphed into mainly an anti-immigration, pro-gun, anti-progressive on social issues, anti-labor rights entity. It fits into the GOP just fine.
Smaller government was supposedly part of the TP agenda when it formed – although one immediately wonders, if that was so important to them, where they all were hiding during the W. years – but the most heated rhetoric from most TPers nowadays as far as I can tell is mainly anti-immigration, anti-Obama (regardless of policy), and extreme conservatism on social issues (opposition to gay marriage, etc.).