The obstructionist-GOP narrative... can we test/prove it?

Great Debates
41

Trinopus’s claim was, imho, overbroad to the point of irrelevance.

But the question I asked was… “here’s a narrative, some people claim this narrative is not true. Can we objective determine whether it’s true or not?”. It’s important to note that being obstructionist at all is certainly not unique, it’s a question of degree, which is of course part of what makes this a topic which requires some difficult analysis and proof, hence this thread. (For example, look at the filibuster. Clearly the filibuster has existed for ages. Clearly both sides have used the filibuster in the past. Presumably both sides have complained when the OTHER side used the fillibuster in the past. Has the recent Republican use of the filibuster been so much more frequent that it is effectively not just a change of degree but of substance? Well, that’s a question that would have to be debated, but you can’t disprove it just by pointing out examples of previous Democratic filibusters without doing additional levels of counting and analysis.)

So, let me ask you straight up, which of these best describes your position:
(1) The recent Republican congress has been no more obstructionist than the average congress, and we liberals are just pulling this narrative out of our asses
(2) The recent Republican congress has been unusually, possibly even uniquely, obstructionist, but not at all to the degree that liberals are perceiving (ie, maybe it’s 3% more obstructionist than any previous congress, but liberals are acting like it’s 50% more)
(3) The recent Republican congress has in fact been SIGNIFICANTLY more obstructionist than previous congresses, as liberals believe, but the blame for this lies just as heavily on liberals in congress and the white house, who have been proposing out-of-left-field crazy shit, leaving the responsible Republicans no choice but to obstruct
(4) The liberals are right, the Republicans are being obstructionist for no particularly obvious reason, but hey, it’s all part of the game of politics, so why are we making such a big deal out of it?
(5) The liberals are right, the Republicans are being obstructionist for no particularly obvious reason, and you wish they weren’t, but at the same time you feel compelled to leap into this thread and point out potential liberal hypocrisy wherever it might rear its ugly head.

42

I say #3 comes the closest. One reason the Republicans have been so uncooperative in the Senate is that Harry Reid keeps on filling up the damn amendment tree to prevent his Democrats from having to take tough votes. While this has the virtue of preventing Republicans from introducing poison pill amendments, it also prevents them from legitimately making changes to bills that would otherwise gain majority support.

The logical response to the majority party filling the amendment tree is to just vote against the bill. Even on a bill Republicans should ostensibly support, a “take it or leave it” proposition is not likely to gain much support even in a situation where Republicans were not trying to be obstructionist.

43

Tracking Senate filibusters by party provides some strong evidence as well.

44

See It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, by think-tankers Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein. Mann is with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, Ornstein is with the conservative Heritage Foundation, and both agree that stubborn ideological Pubs are almost entirely to blame for the present political gridlock in America, and for the debt-ceiling crisis and government shutdown in particular.

45

I agree with that as far as it goes, I just think liberals a) exaggerate it, since Congress is actually passing laws, just at a slower rate, and b) it’s not just because Republicans decided to obstruct Obama from day 1. The Democrats did a lot to contribute to the atmosphere, starting with being arrogant in victory. When the Republicans first took over Congress in 1995, the first thing they did was to reform things to make it easier for the minority to propose amendments, bring bills to the floor, etc. It was a way of showing Democrats, “We meant the things we said about Congress being more open and we invite you to participate”. Democrats responded to their victory by making Congress less open and reducing the power of the minority even further than it naturally would have been by Republicans’ low numbers. And of course Obama had to do his victory dance: “Yeah, yeah, great ideas, but just remember, I won.”

46

(2) is close. Each succeeding Congress (in situations where one house thereof is not the same as the President’s party) has been increasingly more obstructionist than the previous version, but if liberals think that the increases have all been on one side, they’re off base.

In other words: D’s set the dial to 2. R’s get control and set it to 5. D’s get control back and set it to 8. R’s get it back and dial it up to 13. Etc.

But that makes (3) close too, since indeed each iteration of Congress is more obstructionist than the last, and it’s not a linear progression. Maybe an nlog n one.

That also makes (4) arguably correct as well. Liberals seem willfully blind to what they did when they were the minority power – probably because they were fighting for the CORRECT causes, which makes their behavior excusable.

This is illustrated by the famous New York Times flipflop on filibusters, arguing in 2013:

And in 2005, when Democrats were in the minority:

In that piece, humorously enough, the paper recognized that it had previously taken a contrary position during Clinton’s presidency, when Republicans had the minority:

The Times’ position can be summed up predictably and neatly, just like liberals’ positions on this issue in general: the filibuster should be used when Democrats are in the minority and repealed when Republicans are in the minority.

It’s like Whack-a-Mole. (The arcade game, not the poster)

47

Opposing legislation via the legislative process is not obstructionist.

Excessive use of filibustering can be obstructionist, but it is not definitional of it.

Your definition would hold the use of the veto to be “obstructionist.” It ain’t. It’s a feature, not a bug.

You are conflating different ideas and trying to generalize from them. This is extraordinarily bad reasoning.

48

It can also involve a majority refusing to negotiate in good faith, and refusing to compromise, leading to consequences that are worse than the failure of the goals sought after.

The damage the shutdown and the sequester did was worse than the damage the proposed tax increases would have done.

We’re in the presence of people who will burn their house down rather than let their brother-in-law sleep in the basement.

49

If you read the wikipedia article on “the one drop rule”, it would seem that the main reason that was not codified into law in the mid 19th century is that people were still aware of how much racial mixing there had been in previous generations. Many, if not most, white families that had been living in the South for generations feared they would end up on the wrong side of the color line. It’s not that attempts weren’t made to pass “one drop rule” laws, but none was successful.

By the 20th century, people had “forgotten” that such mixing had taken place, and it was politically possible to pass such laws.

And of course we now know that it’s possible to have had an ancestor not that many generation back and have ZERO genetic contribution from him or her because of the way chromosomes recombine during miosis. (Ignoring direct male-line descendants where the Y chromosome usually passed on intact and direct female-line descendants where mt-DNA is passed on mostly intact.)

50

I suspect this entry really belongs in THIS thread:

But it makes an interesting commentary right where it is.

51

In general, I agree with Bricker’s posts to this thread and am not going to repeat them.

I would just add that to the limited extent that it’s possible to make any factual observations about this hopelessly subjective subject, it seems to me that over the past few decades the pattern has always or almost always amounted to Democrats breaking new ground and taking partisanship to places it had never been taken before, to be followed by Republicans than using the same tactics that the Democrats had pioneered. Some examples:

[ul]
[li]Political opposition to the Bork (& other judicial, e.g. Thomas, Estrada et al) and Tower nominations, including routine filibusters[/li][li]Passage of the ACA via reconciliation[/li][li]The Reid maneuver for keeping the Senate in session (to oppose Bush), followed by the Obama administration deciding that it was invalid (when Republicans did it).[/li][/ul]
As I recall it, all these were noted as breaking new ground at the time they were done. The Republicans by contrast don’t seem to do that as often but just run with what the Democrats have already carried out.

That’s my perception. But the bottom line is it’s a hopelessly subjective issue and it’s virtually impossible to measure (for reasons noted by Bricker).

It’s impossible to determine what a party “really wants” (and can also be distorted, as in bogus claims that the ACA was a Republican idea which float around these discussions). I remember reading about US/Soviet arms negotiations where (it was claimed) that the Russians would open with a completely ridiculous position (e.g. they get to have 6 times as many warheads as the US) so as to leave them more room for “compromise” while still maintaining an advantage.

But beyond that, it’s frequently not a matter of numbers. Suppose for example that Republicans propose a bill cutting all welfare benefits 50%. Are the Democrats “obstructionist” if they don’t agree to a 25% cut?

52

Here’s another metric. Instead of looking at what the Republicans aren’t doing, let’s look at what they are. What do they actually want to do? It’s one thing for them to say they don’t want the ACA or cap and trade or whatever, but what do they want instead? Blank pieces of paper?

53

After 50+ votes, it should be clear what their top priority is. What else has even come up for discussion?

54

It should also be noted that the Democrats decried the nuclear option, but they were the ones who actually went through with it. So I think Fotheringay makes a great point. Democrats do things, then get mad when Republicans turn the tables on them. Or I think they actually get mad because the Republican are better at it.

55

Thanks, I had forgotten that one.

I would go with the first. (In what way are the Republicans “better at it”?)

56

They hold their ranks better. Democrats tend to have more conservative members in red states and districts that have to worry about keeping their jobs.

57

So, just to be clear… you and I agree that Republicans are more obstructionist than previous congresses. To me, they seem significantly more obstructionist, so much so that I view it as not just an evolutionary change but a revolutionary one. To you, while they are more obstructionist, it’s just the next step in an ongoing progression of increasing obstructionism.

So far, so good, reasonable people can disagree, and this is a classic case where we’re both seeing the situation through our own lenses and biases, which for human beings, even human beings named Bricker, is precisely how we perceive just about everything.

So, my response to that is to realize that these lenses potentially exist, and to start this very thread, hoping that there might be some hard numerical data of some sort which will either lend support to my position, or not, because it bothers me to be espousing a position that “feels right” but that I have no proof of. Your response is to go into that thread and lol at the hypocrites. I gotta say, I don’t see that reflecting very well on you…
As for the NYT, I think the filibuster is a good focus here (although it’s not the be-all and end-all of obstructionism). The liberal narrative goes like this:
(1)in the old days, when we kinda liked the Republicans even while we disagreed with them, the filibuster existed, but it was used sparingly by either party when in the minority, and was a useful check and balance to keep a party from getting a 51-49 majority and then suddenly just going banananuts crazy passing every single law they supported no matter how controversial.
(2)more recently, the Republicans have used the filibuster to effectively mean that almost every substantial law of any sort requires 60 votes to pass, which is a nearly insurmountable hurdle with our current rancorous partisan divide.

IF that narrative is correct, then I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to have supported the existed of the filibuster during (1) and opposed it during (2), with no reference to party loyalty at all. And filibusters are at least kind of quantifiable, and there’s a nice graph here which shows two things:
(1) the Republican-controlled senate under Obama filibusters at by far the highest rate ever, more than TWICE that of the Dem-controller senate under Bush.
(2) Historically, it has ALWAYS been Republicans who “up the ante” in terms of rates of filibusters, which the Dems then more or less maintain.
(3) There is one notable exception, which I would be hypocritical not to point out, namely the Democratic-controlled senate of 1925-1926. who jumped the filibuster rate from zero all the way up to four. So, for the record, I condemn their actions. The great depression was probably their fault!

58

I think that was more true of the Reagan era before the South turned than it is today.

And counterbalancing that is the liberal orientation of the media. IMO the Republicans are constrained in ways that the Democrats are not in that if they do something perceived as extreme they will be crucified in the media, while the Democrats will not be. So in the case of the Republicans you have this constant tension between Tea Party flamethrowers and the more responsible leadership which bows to practical realities, while the Democratic leadership has a freer hand.

59

Yes, I agree that that’s part of what makes this issue tough to quantify. Proposing a law which you are absolutely certain your opposition will filibuster/veto/whatever just to put them on the defensive when you propose your NEXT law, but meanwhile it’s making THEM look like the obstructionists, is a crafty strategy, but one which muddles conversations of this sort. That said, Occam’s razor says that if party A proposes a law and party B opposes it, the most likely situation is that party A actually DOES support that law, since after all that’s what they are fundamentally trying to do, pass laws.
In any case, your claim that it’s the Dems who are constantly raising the obstructionism stakes is very strong belied by the filibuster-use graph that I just posted. (And note that the “nuclear option” is not a way to BE obstructionist, it’s a way to FIGHT obstructionism…)

60

There aren’t any Democratic office-holders spewing crap like implications that the President supports jihadists, or that the President is not a citizen, etc.