By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Columnist|
February 11, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. EST
Twelve years ago, political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein shook up Washington with their argument that the U.S. government wasn’t working because of what had happened to the Republican Party.
They made their case in a book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” and in a powerful Post op-ed titled “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics,” they wrote. “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...?itid=mc_magnet-cartoons_inline_collection_20
Mann and Ornstein — I should note they’re my friends, and we wrote a subsequent book together — took a lot of grief for supposedly being partisan. This criticism flew in the face of their entire professional careers: thoroughly balanced, appreciative of the work of many Republican politicians and deeply engaged in making our nation’s political institutions work better.
Events of the past week not only ratify what they wrote but suggest that matters are, to borrow from them, even worse now.
It’s one thing for a party to oppose the other party’s proposals over differences of principle. Small-d democratic politics ought to be a contest of ideas and a debate over which remedies are more likely to work.
It’s something else entirely for a party to reject its own ideas to address a crisis simply because it doesn’t want to get in the way of a campaign issue. This is exactly what Republicans did at the behest of former president Donald Trump after President Biden and Senate Democrats offered the best deal the GOP could hope for to strengthen the nation’s southern border.
You have to feel for Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who was chosen by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to negotiate the border deal precisely because he had tough immigration views. Trump himself described Lankford in his 2022 endorsement as “Strong on the Border.”
But if Trump claims the right as president to break the law, he also asserts the right to lie with impunity. He insisted, falsely: “I did not endorse Sen. Lankford. I didn’t do it.” Former students at Trump University are familiar with this sort of thing.
Lankford recounted on the Senate floor what happens these days to Republicans who try to legislate: A “popular commentator,” he said, threatened to “destroy” him if he dared try to solve the border crisis during a presidential election year.
The episode speaks to how the trends Mann and Ornstein caught on to early have metastasized. Power in the GOP has moved away from elected officials and toward those right-wing “commentators” on television, radio, podcasts and online. The creation of ideological media bubbles enhances their power. Republicans in large numbers rely on partisan outlets that lied freely about what Lankford’s compromise did and didn’t do, rather than on straight news reports.
The party’s hostile vibe can also be traced back to a habit in the Bush years to distinguish between “real America” (the places that vote Republican) and what is presumably unreal America. Declaring a large swath of the population to be less than American means they’re not worth dealing with and, increasingly, easy to hold in contempt.
Then there is the denigration of science, dispassionate research and technical knowledge. In his book “The Death of Expertise,” writer Tom Nichols described this mournfully as a “campaign against established knowledge.”
Challenging experts is, of course, a democratic right and can be useful in calling out those who disguise their interests behind claims of special understanding. But Republicans have put this practice to naked political use in pushing back against action on climate, necessary regulation and public health advice.
Something big happened in this arena in the late 2000s. GOP attitudes on climate are a telltale: In 2007, the Pew Research Center found, 62 percent of Republicans believed there was solid evidence of global warming. By 2009, only 35 percent did.
Many GOP legislators — notably John McCain — were active in climate discussions earlier in the decade; not so later. This speaks to the larger retreat from problem-solving, reflected now, in the most perverse way possible, in the flight from an immigration proposal Republicans could have written themselves — and, thanks to Lankford, largely did.
For those who try to be hopeful, there are a few straws to clutch at. The Senate just might approve aid for Ukraine — it cleared a key procedural hurdle on Sunday — which would put pressure on GOP leaders in the House to keep our nation’s commitments. For its part, the House passed an important increase in the child tax credit, which might move Senate Republicans to do the same.
But the way things are going, Republicans in each chamber are just as likely to ignore the other’s better instincts. “Worsest” is not a word, but Mann and Ornstein might need it if they publish a new edition.
Columnist|
February 11, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. EST
Twelve years ago, political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein shook up Washington with their argument that the U.S. government wasn’t working because of what had happened to the Republican Party.
They made their case in a book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” and in a powerful Post op-ed titled “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics,” they wrote. “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...?itid=mc_magnet-cartoons_inline_collection_20
Mann and Ornstein — I should note they’re my friends, and we wrote a subsequent book together — took a lot of grief for supposedly being partisan. This criticism flew in the face of their entire professional careers: thoroughly balanced, appreciative of the work of many Republican politicians and deeply engaged in making our nation’s political institutions work better.
Events of the past week not only ratify what they wrote but suggest that matters are, to borrow from them, even worse now.
It’s one thing for a party to oppose the other party’s proposals over differences of principle. Small-d democratic politics ought to be a contest of ideas and a debate over which remedies are more likely to work.
It’s something else entirely for a party to reject its own ideas to address a crisis simply because it doesn’t want to get in the way of a campaign issue. This is exactly what Republicans did at the behest of former president Donald Trump after President Biden and Senate Democrats offered the best deal the GOP could hope for to strengthen the nation’s southern border.
You have to feel for Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who was chosen by Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to negotiate the border deal precisely because he had tough immigration views. Trump himself described Lankford in his 2022 endorsement as “Strong on the Border.”
But if Trump claims the right as president to break the law, he also asserts the right to lie with impunity. He insisted, falsely: “I did not endorse Sen. Lankford. I didn’t do it.” Former students at Trump University are familiar with this sort of thing.
Lankford recounted on the Senate floor what happens these days to Republicans who try to legislate: A “popular commentator,” he said, threatened to “destroy” him if he dared try to solve the border crisis during a presidential election year.
The episode speaks to how the trends Mann and Ornstein caught on to early have metastasized. Power in the GOP has moved away from elected officials and toward those right-wing “commentators” on television, radio, podcasts and online. The creation of ideological media bubbles enhances their power. Republicans in large numbers rely on partisan outlets that lied freely about what Lankford’s compromise did and didn’t do, rather than on straight news reports.
The party’s hostile vibe can also be traced back to a habit in the Bush years to distinguish between “real America” (the places that vote Republican) and what is presumably unreal America. Declaring a large swath of the population to be less than American means they’re not worth dealing with and, increasingly, easy to hold in contempt.
Then there is the denigration of science, dispassionate research and technical knowledge. In his book “The Death of Expertise,” writer Tom Nichols described this mournfully as a “campaign against established knowledge.”
Challenging experts is, of course, a democratic right and can be useful in calling out those who disguise their interests behind claims of special understanding. But Republicans have put this practice to naked political use in pushing back against action on climate, necessary regulation and public health advice.
Something big happened in this arena in the late 2000s. GOP attitudes on climate are a telltale: In 2007, the Pew Research Center found, 62 percent of Republicans believed there was solid evidence of global warming. By 2009, only 35 percent did.
Many GOP legislators — notably John McCain — were active in climate discussions earlier in the decade; not so later. This speaks to the larger retreat from problem-solving, reflected now, in the most perverse way possible, in the flight from an immigration proposal Republicans could have written themselves — and, thanks to Lankford, largely did.
For those who try to be hopeful, there are a few straws to clutch at. The Senate just might approve aid for Ukraine — it cleared a key procedural hurdle on Sunday — which would put pressure on GOP leaders in the House to keep our nation’s commitments. For its part, the House passed an important increase in the child tax credit, which might move Senate Republicans to do the same.
But the way things are going, Republicans in each chamber are just as likely to ignore the other’s better instincts. “Worsest” is not a word, but Mann and Ornstein might need it if they publish a new edition.
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