Why Republicans are failing to govern

[catbyte]

Does Mitch McConnell want Trump to be a one-term president?

By Ezra Klein on August 17, 2020 9:00 am

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in October 2010.

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This is the strange truth of 2020: The dynamic in Congress is virtually identical to what we saw in 2010. Democrats want more economic support; they passed a $3.5 trillion bill in the House in May. Republicans don’t, and they’ve refused to act on the House bill, or offer an alternative that reflects the size of the crisis. Worse, they’ve let the provisions from previous packages expire or run out of money, draining aid from workers and businesses who remain under lockdown, and now face poverty or bankruptcy. The total failure of governance is matched by a bizarre absence of urgency: McConnell could hold round-the-clock sessions in an attempt to strike a deal. Instead, the Senate is adjourned until September.

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Politically, the Republican Party’s current approach is so suicidal that I figured I must be missing something. Someone must have a plan, a theory, an alternative. Chaos is Trump’s brand, but surely McConnell won’t walk passively back into the minority. And so I began asking Republican Hill staffers and policy experts for correction. What wasn’t I seeing? What was the GOP’s policy theory right now? What do Republicans actually want?

I posed these questions to Tea Party conservatives, populist reformers, and old-line Reaganites. The answer, in every case, was the same. Different Republican senators have different ideas, but across the party as a whole, there is no plan. The Republican Party has no policy theory for how to contain the coronavirus, nor for how to drive the economy back to full employment. And there is no plan to come up with a plan, nor anyone with both the interest and authority to do so. The Republican Party is broken as a policymaking institution, and it has been for some time.

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“There hasn’t been a coherent GOP policy on anything for almost five years now,” a senior aide to a conservative Senate Republican told me. “Other than judges, I don’t think you can point to any united policy priorities.”

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https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2020/8/17/21368234/trump-republicans-covid-19-2020-democrats-senate-relief-stimulus-polls

[SheltieLover]

1. Taking orders from putin!

[Scarsdale]

6. Bingo!

My first thought exactly. The fix is in, so why work for anything?

[SheltieLover]

7. Right!

Lock his ass up!

[HotTeaBag]

2. The Swamp really does

need to be drained if we are to have a functioning Washington - Trump was actually on to something, though he was certainly not the one best suited to do the draining.

I am completely flabbergasted by Congress' inaction and bickering in the face of the worst confluence of events that most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.

Republicans lost interest in governing a long time ago and were content with being the party of 'No' - but then they accidentally gained real power and have no earthly idea what to do with it beyond grasping for more.

[getagrip_already]

3. I humbly disagree - there is a definitive plan at work now.....

The gop is now certain they will lose the election. Well, they are still trying to steal it but they aren't quite sure they can.

So their operating strategy is to set everything on fire on their way out the door. F' every system up so badly it will take a decade to recover, and then they will sit back and sharp shoot at dems for not being able to fix it in one term.

Then they plan to swoop back in on the tails of a great depression they will blame on biden.

What little strategic actions they are taking is to keep the senate. With one chamber they can keep progress stalled. They can frustrate any attempt to rebuild gov't agencies, the courts, or the economy.

They will make it so painful for people to survive that they can come back into power.

That is their plan. Clear as day. Cynical to the extreme.

[lagomorph777]

9. Like Saddam blowing up the oil fields.

[Laelth]

4. They're acting like they are the minority party already.

Back when they agreed to pass the CARES act, they still had some hope of retaining power, so they actually tried to govern a bit. Now, their hope of retaining power is gone, so they have reverted to the only strategy that they have when they are in the minority—say “no” to everything. That’s precisely what they are doing now.

-Laelth

[JHB]

5. Gosh, Ezra, it couldn't possibly be that...

...ideological zealots inside and outside the administration see the opportunity to push their pet projects as long as long as Republicans keep Congress hamstrung and the projects can be framed as boons to Trump.

One Cather push them through, or at least very far along, they'll fight like berserkers to stop Democratic efforts to reverse them.

[SharonClark]

8. Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

[cbdo2007]

10. This is their problem with Health Care reform also - they say they want change but don't have a plan

They pretty much run on the basis that they hate everything and are going to make it better, but then when you press them for any ideas or anything they don't have any because they don't believe in facts or research and trying out dumb ideas is past its shelf life for them.

[Beartracks]

11. Come Jan 21, 2021, the GOP will blame Biden for the Trump economy and debt. It's what they do. n/t