The coming policy paralysis

Wave elections tend to weaken the center, as moderates in swing districts lose their jobs. The elections of 2006 and 2008 decimated the already thin ranks of moderate Congressional Republicans, and this year dozens of moderate Democrats representing swing districts were also swept out of office. The new Democratic caucus will be more liberal than the outgoing one, and the Republican caucus, infused with tea partiers, will be even more conservative.

In this context, can policy paralysis be avoided? The signs so far are not good. President Obama says he believes there is common ground, and he has specifically mentioned some possibilities, such as eliminating earmarks and extending tax cuts if they can be paid for. But GOP leaders say their task is to undo much of what the last Congress did, and they say they even will try to stop healthcare reform by refusing to fund it. Indeed, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has candidly stated that his priority will be to prevent President Obama from getting re-elected — not to deal now with an economy in crisis, but rather to defeat the president in two years so that the Republican legislative agenda can then move forward in 2013.

The Republican Congress will pass some symbolic bills, such as a repeal of healthcare reform, that have no chance of making it through the Senate or being signed by the president. The apocalyptic rhetoric likely to accompany debate on these dead-on-arrival bills will excite the ideologues, but it will damage whatever dim prospects there might be for much real legislation to deal with real problems. And the showdown with President Obama when Congress refuses to appropriate funds to implement health care reform could be incredibly toxic.

The margins for pragmatic compromise are slim for both ideological and political reasons. Many Republicans, especially incoming tea partiers, see cooperation with the Democrats and the president as betrayal of principle. There can be no compromise with the enemy. Now is not the time for half measures – it is time to realize their dream of shrinking the government. More pragmatic Republicans know that they move to the center at their peril. Democratic moderates may have been defeated in the general election, but Republican moderates, and even pragmatic conservatives like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), were purged in primaries and state GOP conventions. The pragmatists know the Tea Party has them in its sights.

By contrast, Democratic moderates have suffered only a temporary setback. Two years from now we will again see moderate and even conservative Democrats nominated to challenge very conservative Republicans in swing districts across the country. Since these districts are where the 2012 Congressional elections – and possibly the presidential race — will be decided, a key question is whether gridlock will sway swing voters back to these sorts of Democrats, or whether gridlock will favor the rightwing Republicans who won this year.

With a few exceptions, Republican leaders are claiming that the 2010 election was a rejection of Obama’s policies — a mandate to roll back health care reform, slash domestic programs deeply, and renew the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Republican presidential candidates may be expected to spend the next two years trying to sing this hymn louder than their rivals.

Polling data, however, suggests that this election, like the election of 2008, was not driven by ideology. Rather, it reflected a strong anti-incumbent feeling, typical of elections held when unemployment is high. Polls show clearly that the public was not voting for tax cuts for the wealthy, drastic cuts in social programs, or the repeal of health care reform. Those who swung to the GOP this year were voting against a bad economy — and they say they dislike both parties.

Much political science literature suggests that, because of the state of the economy, there was little that Democrats could have done to prevent the wave of 2010 — just as there was little the Republicans could have done to stop the Democrats two years ago during the financial meltdown. If leaders in Washington spend the next two years fiddling while the economy burns, incumbents will get punished again.

And yet it appears they will. The only real question will be who gets blamed more, the Democratic president or the Republican Congress. 

Michael Contarino, Ph.D. is director of the Politics and Society Program at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. He was Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the presidential campaign of Bill Richardson.