I quote from Politico because I care.
With no nominee yet to spell out the party’s agenda, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is locked in a behind-the-scenes debate with other Republicans over their strategy for winning back power.
The divide within the party is sharp. McConnell and other influential senators believe the party should avoid putting out a detailed platform and focus squarely on Obama’s record, while a range of junior senators — and some veterans like Sen. John McCain — think the conference should lay out a Contract with America-type agenda. Others, such as Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, want to more aggressively push House Republican bills in the Senate in order to speak with one voice coming out of Congress.
But the strategies all carry great risk. If the GOP rolls out an agenda, it will be picked apart and take the focus off Obama. If the party doesn’t bother, it risks giving the president more opportunities to slap the “do-nothing” label on Congress.
And all of this is coming to a head now because the nominating contest involving Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum is showing no signs of ending, with Gingrich even warning that he’d take the race “all the way to the convention” in late August.The ongoing debate has prompted Senate Republican leaders to schedule a special meeting next Wednesday to discuss election-year tactics, allowing the 47-member conference to continue talks it was unable to conclude at a daylong retreat at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate last week.
Let me lay this out with more pungent language. The Republicans came up with an economic plan. It was created by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. At the core of Ryan’s plan was a proposal to end Medicare as a guaranteed benefit and replace it with private insurance, with insufficient subsidies to pay for that coverage. The Democrats reacted with glee and ran against the Republicans’ plan to end Medicare as we know it. It was a perfect example of a party putting its own most unpopular ideas to the test and discovering that people don’t like to eat dog chow. The Democrats, including the president, would like nothing better than to run against Paul Ryan’s budget plan. They will likely win House seats they haven’t held in living memory. And, yet, the Republican candidates are afraid to run away from Ryan’s budget. Gingrich tried, a long time ago, but the whole party came down on him so hard that he had to get in line. As a result, the Republicans’ economic policy (at least in its legislative form) is so toxic that it’s like trying to sell Native Americans blankets contaminated with yellow fever.
Another option is lay low and wait for the Republican nominee to lay out their vision, and then to get behind that vision. There are several problems with this. First, Obama will be running against a do-nothing Congress. The way to combat that is to actually work on a few areas of agreement and pass some bills that the president can sign. The STOCK Act was a good start. When that bill gets to the president’s desk, the Republican leaders should all show up in the Rose Garden to celebrate the historic reforms and praise themselves for their ability to get things done. They should identify two or three more significant bills that they can put on the president’s desk that he will sign. But the Republicans don’t want to make the president look effective or like someone they can work with, and they’re too divided to produce much that the Democrats are interested in making into law. And that’s also why the congressional Republicans won’t get much mileage out of passing partisan bills in the House. They’ll go nowhere in the Senate, and so they’ll do nothing to blunt the do-nothing charge. This will be true whether the House bills are passed willy-nilly or as part of some new “Contract on America.” Finally, pushing a Contract package of legislation won’t help the Republicans if it isn’t consistent with the eventual nominee’s campaign. It could wind up undermining their message or contradicting their positions.
Finally, waiting for the nominee to provide some guidance is problematic because the nominee hasn’t been decided and may not be decided for a couple of months. That would leave Congress no time to push any agenda. Moreover, the likeliest nominee, Mitt Romney, is going to want to pivot far to the left of the median Republican member of Congress. If they wait for him, they probably won’t like what he asks them to do (or not do).
The bottom line is that the GOP is an unholy mess.
