I agree that the Republicans need to moderate their brand image as a general matter. But I dispute the conventional wisdom that the Republicans are now going to be held responsible by the voters for getting things done.
Most people tend to regard the president as the Guy in Power. They hold him responsible for everything that happens in government, or even out of it. If good things happen in the next two years as a result of Obama and the Republicans working together, then Obama will get the credit for it, and the Republicans will be harmed. And conversely, if bad things happen, e.g. the economy doesn’t do well, then it will further cement Obama’s unpopularity and help the Republicans by default.
It would be instructive to recall the Clinton years. Clinton’s accomplishments that earned him enduring popularity were generally those that he had little or nothing to do with, either imposed on him by a Republican congress (welfare reform and budget restraint) or accidents of timing (economy). But that’s not how people see things.
All that said, as an elected official, you have a responsibility to the people and not just to furthering your political cause. It would obviously be wrong to deliberately sabotage the country in the hopes that people will blame Obama. But it’s incorrect to assume that you’ll get credit for doing the right thing, as a party controlling congress. You won’t.
You’re right that the President is viewed as the guy in charge, but controlling Congress does give Republicans more of a hand in things in the eyes of voters than they had before. Conventional wisdom says that if they just lay low like Democrats did from 2007-2008, then things should go their way in 2016 assuming Obama remains as unpopular as he is today. But the Republicans don’t lay low. They will probably make a lot of headlines throwing a ton of stuff at Obama’s desk, plus all the investigations and whatnot. So while Obama will still be the most important factor in voters’ view of how the government performs over the next two years, what the Republicans do will still matter. The shutdown business nearly cost them the House. More stupidity like that, and voters notice.
But I also agree with you that if Republicans do a fantastic job, Obama will get more credit for it than Republicans will. But that’s a price worth paying. The Republican brand is in the dumps. Even if people feel better about Democrats heading into 2016, I like our chances if there are fewer voters who outright hate us.
I’m tempted to post a longer thread about this, but it also fits here.
There’s a broader story about how it seems like the country is about to willingly go down the decades-long Charles-Dickensian neoliberal path that Latin American countries and Greece/Portugal/Spain went through while ruled by right-wing dictatorships, mostly supported/installed by the US. It’s perverse, baffling, and often bipartisan, but I like to think that it’s been going on long enough (since 1980 or so) that we’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the US electorate will stop deliberately harming themselves…
The problem with all of this, though, is that there isn’t any time for all that. A few previous posts have mentioned the ascent of climate denial. What part of “Game Over” do we (collectively) not understand? I resisted meeting my nephew for a long time because I knew that I would be struck with sadness about the world he’s going to inherit. I went to an anti-Keystone XL rally at the White House earlier this year, and at the end, a lot of us stopped to watch a little girl hug the shins of somebody in a polar bear costume.
How can this, and the environment in general, be controversial? How can it be such a low priority for voters? Don’t we all live on the same planet? Don’t life and death matter more than your own immediate economic circumstances, especially when the path we’re on is likely to end up costing you/us much more (penny-wise, pound-foolish)? How can it be so rare to care about the many millions living in places like Bangladesh who are extremely vulnerable to problems they played very little role in creating?
Republicans started the EPA. The environment was pretty bipartisan for a long time. There are a couple of reasons for optimism, the first having to do with self-defeating GOP overreach, and the second having to do with the inevitable collision between Congressional deniers and the Pentagon and corporations like Coca-Cola, which all accept scientific reality.
This is all compounded by the likelihood of awful things set to come out of statehouses around the country, some of which will make it even harder to prevent children from coming into this world. I’m so glad that I’m sterile.
BTW folks, if you really want to know what Republicans are going to do over the next two years, I invite you to read right-wing blogs, like Redstate, National Review, Worldnetdaily, American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and conservative columnists like George Will and Ross Douthat. It may be painful, but I like to read Ezra Klein and Daily Kos to get a sense of what Democrats are thinking about the issues of the day. One of the lessons of 2014 should be from Sun Tzu: Know your enemy. Democrats’ assumption that Republicans are just nutballs isn’t totally wrong, unfortunately, but it’s not the whole picture.
@143: Yeah, despite the big contributions of this count to the problem, I’m hoping there’ll be enough sanity and improvements in other countries to delay things long enough to get everything in order. May not be possible, but it may be the best/only shot.