By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, January 17, 2013
It has become conventional wisdom that Republicans are
suffering an internal split that President Obama is successfully exploiting to
neuter the Republican House. It is not true, however, that the Republican split
is philosophical and fundamental. And that a hopelessly divided GOP is
therefore headed for decline, perhaps irrelevance.
In fact, the split is tactical, not philosophical;
short-term, not fundamental. And therefore quite solvable.
How do we know? Simple thought experiment: Imagine that
we had a Republican president. Would the party be deeply divided over policy,
at war with itself in Congress? Not at all. It would be rallying around
something like the Paul Ryan budget that twice passed the House with near 100
percent GOP unanimity.
In reality, Republicans have a broad consensus on program
and policy. But they don’t have the power. What divides Republicans today is a
straightforward tactical question: Can you govern from one house of Congress?
Should you even try?
Can you shrink government, restrain spending, and bring a
modicum of fiscal sanity to the country when the president and a blocking
Senate have no intention of doing so?
One faction feels committed to try. It wishes to carry
out its small-government electoral promises and will cast no vote inconsistent
with that philosophy. These are the House Republicans who voted no on the
“fiscal cliff” deal because it raised taxes without touching spending. Indeed,
it increased spending with its crazy-quilt crony-capitalist tax “credits” — for
wind power and other indulgences.
They were willing to risk the fiscal cliff. Today they
are willing to risk a breach of the debt ceiling and even a government shutdown
rather than collaborate with Obama’s tax-and-spend second-term agenda.
The other view is that you cannot govern from the House.
The reason Ryan and John Boehner finally voted yes on the lousy fiscal-cliff
deal is that by then there was nowhere else to go. Republicans could not afford
to bear the blame (however unfair) for a $4.5 trillion across-the-board tax
hike and a Pentagon hollowed out by sequester.
The party establishment is coming around to the view that
if you try to govern from one house — e.g., force spending cuts with
cliffhanging brinkmanship — you lose. You not only don’t get the cuts. You get
the blame for rattled markets and economic uncertainty. You get humiliated by
having to cave in the end. And you get opinion polls ranking you below head
lice and colonoscopies in popularity.
There is history here. The Gingrich Revolution ran
aground when it tried to govern from Congress, losing badly to President
Clinton over government shutdowns. Nor did the modern insurgents do any better
in the 2011 debt-ceiling and 2012 fiscal-cliff showdowns with Obama.
Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put
you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view:
Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.
The debt-ceiling deadline is coming up. You can demand
commensurate spending cuts, the usual, reasonable Republican offer. But you
won’t get them. Obama will hold out. And, at the eleventh hour, you will have
to give in as you get universally blamed for market gyrations and threatened
credit downgrades.
The more prudent course would be to find some offer that
cannot be refused, a short-term trade-off utterly unassailable and
straightforward. For example, offer to extend the debt ceiling through, say,
May 1, in exchange for the Senate’s delivering a budget by that date — after
four years of lawlessly refusing to produce one.
Not much. But it would (a) highlight the Democrats’
fiscal recklessness, (b) force Senate Democrats to make public their fiscal
choices, and (c) keep the debt ceiling alive as an ongoing pressure point for
future incremental demands.
Go small and simple. Forget about forcing tax reform or
entitlement cuts or anything major. If Obama wants to recklessly expand
government, well, as he says, he won the election.
Republicans should simply block what they can. Further
tax hikes, for example. The general rule is: From a single house of Congress
you can resist but you cannot impose.
Aren’t you failing the country, say the insurgents?
Answer: The country chose Obama. He gets four years.
Want to save the republic? Win the next election. Don’t
immolate yourself trying to save liberalism from itself. If your conservative
philosophy is indeed right, winning will come. As Margaret Thatcher said
serenely of the Labor Party socialists she later overthrew: “They always run
out of other people’s money.”
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