At some point, but probably not this week, Harry Reid is going to force the Senate Republicans to vote on Paul Ryan’s budget plan. In my parlance, Majority Leader Reid will offer every Republican senator the opportunity to experience the wonders of gonorrhea. How many senators will willingly infect themselves with this nasty disease? It’s a question that many commentators, e.g., Nate Silver, are asking.
One can also take a more post-modern view toward special elections, like the one advocated by The Washington Post’s Jonathan Bernstein: special elections matter to the extent that people think they matter. We may get a better indication of how much Republicans think this one matters based on the way they vote when Mr. Ryan’s budget comes to a vote in the Senate, possibly later this week.
Republicans could try to toe the party line — there are solid reasons, both from a strategic standpoint, and from a morale standpoint, for them to do so. But that doesn’t necessarily make the problem go away: Democrats are all but certain to make a major issue of Medicare and Mr. Ryan’s budget in every competitive Congressional election next year.
I don’t think the Senate roll call vote on Ryan’s Budget Plan is really going to be all that meaningful, and I will tell you why because it is related to the reason why the president cannot apply any pressure on the Senate to do any damn thing at all.
As of right now, there are only ten Republican seats up for reelection next year. Two of those seats are held by senators who are retiring: Jon Kyl of Arizona and Kay Bailey Hutichison of Texas. Obviously, they have no fear of losing their seats over the voucherization of Medicare. Here’s the list of the eight Republican senators who will seek reelection.
- Richard Lugar of Indiana
Olympia Snowe of Maine
Scott Brown of Massachusetts
Roger Wicker of Mississippi
Dean Heller of Nevada
Bob Corker of Tennessee
Orrin Hatch of Utah
John Barrasso of Wyoming
These candidates fall into three loose categories. Sens. Wicker, Corker, Hatch, and Barrasso come from four of the most Republican (or, in Tennessee’s case, anti-Obama) states in the Union. Lugar and Snowe (and Hatch) are facing strong Tea-Party challenges from their right. Heller and Brown are newbies who will be facing the voters for the first time in a November election, both in states that Obama carried comfortably in 2008.
Sen. Brown, unsurprisingly, and after quite a bit of waffling, has stated his intention to vote against Ryan’s gonorrhea. So, somewhat bravely, has Olympia Snowe. Maybe Lugar will be brave as well. Maybe Heller will be cautious. But the rest of this list has nothing to fear no matter how they vote. If we could find the right candidates in Mississippi and Tennessee, we might be able to take advantage of Corker and Wicker’s diseased state. But, right now, they look and probably feel invulnerable.
The biggest choke point blocking progress in this country is the U.S. Senate and its unaccountable members and minority-rule procedures. If we want to make any progress we have to make Republicans more scared of the general electorate than the primary electorate. Ryan’s plan offers us that opportunity but it won’t matter if we can’t take advantage of it. Winning back the House will help us prevent horrible things from happening, but as we learned in the last Congress, nothing positive can get done without 60 senators. So, progress is basically blocked and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it until we can win back 60 seats in the Senate (not a possibility this cycle) or get the Republicans to fear the average voter more than their crazy base.
So, the vote in the Senate on Ryan’s plan won’t really tell us much at all. Because we already know the Republicans feel unaccountable. Why shouldn’t they? Only Sens. Brown and Heller have any realistic chance of losing to a Democrat next fall.
