Tuesday Open Thread [9.24.13]

“The only real way to repeal the healthcare law is to win elections,” – The Wall Street Journal.

Indeed. But the GOP has taught us that elections have no consequences, and that an opposition party must oppose a President’s entire agenda absolutely. The President can never me allowed to do his job or see his nominees or policies enacted. So, if a miracle happens and a Republican gets elected President, he or she should expect Democrats to treat him or her as Republicans have treated Obama.

Ha!:

The President joins a long line of husbands doing things because they are scared of their wives.

Calgary Texas Senator Speaker Ted Cruz has a plan, and it has nothing to do with responsible governance. David Frum:

“Start with this fact about Ted Cruz: He is no Sarah Palin or Donald Trump. He is a hugely smart, highly focused political player, with a clear-eyed view of political realities. He defeated the most powerful Republican in Texas to win nomination to the U.S. Senate in months of hard campaigning. As a senator, he has overshadowed his senior colleague, John Cornyn, a former chair of the Republican National Senatorial committee. Cruz makes mistakes; everybody does. But he thinks before he acts, and his critics should appreciate that he has a plan.”

“The plan is obvious enough: to emerge as the next acknowledged political leader of American conservatism in the apostolic succession that begins with Robert Taft, continued through Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, and has had no agreed successor since Newt Gingrich’s retirement from Congress in 1998.”

Stu Rothenberg: “Political parties seem to suffer through internal battles periodically, but the current state of the GOP is much worse than what Democrats went through some 25 years ago, when organized labor and old-style liberals fought against the Democratic Leadership Council for the soul of the party. The structure of today’s parties and the way we consume news make it more difficult for the GOP to resolve its differences successfully.”

Ezra Klein on why 2013 is different than 2011.

What’s lost in the comforting analogy is how much the two sides agreed on in 2011:

1) Republicans had just won a massive victory in the midterm elections, so both sides broadly agreed that Republicans had a mandate to cut spending.

2) Both sides agreed that there should be negotiations over the debt ceiling. Indeed, by the time the debt ceiling hit, negotiations had been ongoing for months.

3) Both sides agreed that the aim of those negotiations was reducing the budget deficit.

As deep as the disagreements over policy were, these broadly shared premises led to negotiations that led to an agreement that cut the budget deficit by cutting a trillion dollars in discretionary spending and another trillion dollars through sequestration’s spending cuts. The ultimate deal, in other words, precisely tracked the issues on which the two parties agreed.

In 2013, however, the parties don’t agree on anything:

1) Republicans believe Obamacare’s unpopularity gives them a mandate to defund or delay the law. Democrats believe that their victory in the last election gives them a mandate to implement their agenda.

2) Republicans believe there should be negotiations around raising the debt ceiling. Democrats emphatically don’t. Currently, there are no ongoing negotiations, nor any plan for them.

3) Republicans believe the aim of these negotiations should be defunding or delaying Obamacare. Democrats say they will not, under any circumstances, delay or defund Obamacare.

There is, quite literally, no shared ground for a deal. Democrats and Republicans disagree on everything from the principle of negotiations to the potential objective of those negotiations. And “disagree” is almost too light a word. They hold mutually exclusive positions that neither can abandon without sparking an overwhelming backlash from their base and seriously harming their credibility in negotiations going forward.

The GOP is operating by analogy to 2011, assuming that the Obama administration — or at least Senate Democrats — will eventually crack and offer concessions. The Democrats are also mindful of 2011, but for them, it’s an object lesson in why they can’t negotiate: Otherwise, the GOP will keep taking the debt ceiling hostage, putting the U.S. at a permanently higher risk of default.