Manu Raju has a piece up in the Politico about how the Republicans plan to create fissures in the Democratic Party. In part, this is a no-brainer. On the House side, the Republicans will need to remain unified and find about forty Democratic dissenters to stop anything. On the Senate side, to stop anything, the GOP will have to avoid losing even one member of their caucus or find Democratic defectors. In both cases, that’s a tall order, but the strategy is clear. To be effective as a minority party the Republicans must create cleavages in the Democratic caucus.
Even if the GOP did not set out to use such a strategy it would develop organically because of the power dynamics in Washington. One wise Republican acknowledged as much:
Tom Ingram, staff director of the Senate Republican Conference, said creating a wedge is not a GOP strategy but that one could develop naturally as Obama tries to works with members of a Democratic majority who hold a diverse set of views.
If the Democratic majority devolves into an acrimonious round of finger-pointing, “that’s their problem,” he said.
Anytime power in Washington switches as abruptly and dramatically as it has in the last two years, the party in power will have a lot of young, vulnerable members from districts or states that are used to voting the other way. In a true political realignment, it may very well be the case that some of those states and districts have moved firmly into the other camp and intend to stay there for a long time. But that phenomena won’t be clear until it is ratified by another election cycle and, at the moment, the Democrats have enlarged their numbers mainly through poaching on Republican turf. That means that the Democrats have enlarged their conservative/centrist wing even as the committees have been taken over largely by long-serving liberals from safe districts/states.
One new spectacle we’ll see will warm the cockles of many a Democrat’s heart. Republican moderates will begin to act much like Democratic moderates acted during the Bush years. They’ll say all the right things (to their base) and then vote the wrong way. They’ll cut deals with the White House at their leaders’ expense. They’ll take the pork where they can get it, and they’ll co-sponsor bills to pad their legislative resumes. Of course, they’d like you to believe that they’re doing this as some grand strategy to divide Democrats.
“In our quest to do good policy, we’re going to find a lot more areas of commonality with Obama than we are with House and Senate Democrats,” said one senior Senate GOP aide. “When Obama and congressional Republicans do work together, the byproduct of that is in-fighting on the left.”
There may be some areas where the Obama administration truly cannot muster Democratic majorities (new trade deals could provide such an example) and will need the Republican caucus to help. But, in most cases, the Obama administration will be looking to pick off just one to five Republican senators to cut off debate and allow for the famous up-or-down vote. The Democratic infighting this will cause will be over the conditions under which the Obama administration gathered those handful of Republican votes. If you’re honest, you know that such deals are more likely to create fissures in the Republican caucus.
Most of the remaining Republicans in office are from safe districts/states, and that will provide them will the freedom to remain unified in obstruction up to a point. As a strategic matter, obstructionism will not help them trim Democratic majorities in the near future. In fact, if the Republicans marginalize themselves then the recent Democratic gains may become cemented and the center of gravity (endangered seats) may move even further to the right. But, even if the Republicans don’t follow their strategic interests as a caucus, their individual members will want to have some legislative legacy other than voting ‘no’. Republicans will trade votes for some say-so on legislation passing through their committees.
The GOP is better at opposition than the Democrats, but they’ll find that remaining consistently unified in their opposition is impossible, and they’ll have to pick their battles…just like the Democrats did when they were on the outside looking in.
