We’ve spent a lot of time trying to unearth “the real Mitt Romney.” What does he stand for? What positions are merely for convenience and what positions are non-negotiable? Will he govern more like a Massachusetts governor facing an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, or the more-conservative-than-thou candidate we saw in the primaries? And how much freedom does he have to choose?
We don’t even know if Romney will be a realist or a neo-conservative in his foreign policy. His word counts for nothing. But there is one area where he is going to have to reveal himself. He is going to have to take sides on a government shutdown in September. The White House has now guaranteed this.
I try to avoid writing about the budget both because I’m not that good at it and because it’s obviously quite boring. But the budget is going to wind up being the biggest domestic issue in this campaign. Let me try to explain. In the big picture, the dispute about the budget is really a proxy for two diametrically-opposed visions of the federal government and what it should do. Romney isn’t the driver of this vision. He just wound up in the ship’s cabin at this particular point in history. And this point in history is the high-water mark for the modern conservative movement. The Republican Party has been completely taken over by conservatives and they have more power in Congress than in any time in our nation’s history. They will either win this election and begin to implement their radical revision of the New Deal and post-war consensus, or they will lose this election and see their numbers recede as demographic changes force the party to moderate. So, yes, the stakes are really big.
That’s the wide-angle view. The narrow-angle view is a lot more specific.
In a major escalation of a slowly building fight over funding the government, the White House has warned House Republicans, in no uncertain terms, that the government will shut down in September if the GOP does not adhere to an agreement they cut with Democrats in August during the standoff over raising the nation’s debt limit.
“Until the House of Representatives indicates that it will abide by last summer’s agreement, the President will not be able to sign any appropriations bills,” writes Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in a letter addressed to congressional appropriators Wednesday.
You can read the full letter here.
Now, there are two major components to this. The first is that the president is arguing for the merits of the agreement he made with the Republicans. He’s saying that the budget deal was good because it cuts $2 trillion in debt from the budget while creating the right balance between military and domestic spending cuts. It makes needed investments in education, research, and infrastructure. He’s saying that the deal is acceptable and that it keeps the government at an appropriate size while acknowledging the need to downsize somewhat. So, that’s the argument about what the federal government should do.
The second component is about the fact that the Republicans are reneging on a deal they made. They aren’t honoring their word. They’re going back on what they agreed to. They’re acting in bad faith.
A person can disagree with the president about the appropriate size of government and still think that the Republicans should honor their commitments and keep their promises. If you want to shrink the government more, then go and win the election. But don’t shut down the government after you promised to keep it open.
It’s this second component of the disagreement that really gives the president the upper hand. And it complicates things greatly for Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is going to have to make a choice. Is the president right that the Republicans made a deal and should keep it? Does he want to defend a government shutdown in September that is a direct result of broken promises? After all, he can set the size of government next year if he’s elected. There’s no need to have this battle 60 days before the people vote.
If Romney sides with the president, he will sell out the conservatives who have banded together to force John Boehner to go back on the budget deal. And, since Boehner is pretending that he’s doing exactly what he wants to do, Romney would be selling out the Speaker, too.
If, on the other hand, Romney sticks with the Republican position, he’ll be pushed far out on a limb.
This isn’t so much brilliant strategy by the Obama team as it is blundering insanity by the Republicans. The president wants to run against Congress. What better way to do that than to have a fight about a government shutdown in September? The president wants to force Romney to reveal himself. What better way to do that than to force him to choose between backing a bad-faith move and alienating his entire party?
The GOP set itself up for this. It’s a result of John Boehner’s staggering weakness. Can Romney corral the unruly conservatives when Boehner couldn’t?
So, we will have this fight. We will fight over the appropriate role and size of the federal government, and we will fight over whether a political party should negotiate in bad-faith and break its word.
And I think we can win this argument on both fronts. And I think the Republicans could be setting themselves up for losses in Congress that are far bigger than anyone is imagining to be possible right now.