If independents really feel this way, they should severely punish the Republican Party for their lockstep obstructionism over the past four years.
Independent voters are not a monolithic bloc. Nor are many of them truly independent in their voting patterns, according to a new study by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nearly two-thirds of Americans who describe themselves as independents act very much like partisan Republicans or partisan Democrats.
Still, one clear factor that separates them from Democrats and Republicans is a near-uniform call for greater cross-party cooperation. Seven in 10 independents say they favor compromise between the parties rather than confrontation, according to the survey. Just as many say they are dissatisfied with the country’s political system.
President Obama ran on and initially attempted to break the partisan gridlock in Washington DC. His book The Audacity of Hope was largely predicated on the idea that the two parties can come together to work on the things they agree about. There is no reason to believe that Obama was disingenuous in this belief. And even if you want to criticism him for being naive, it was a conscious choice by Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders to oppose Obama at every step and to throw as many procedural roadblocks in his path as possible.
Before the health care fight, before the economic stimulus package, before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down, take advantage of the difficulties Democrats would have in governing and deny Democrats any Republican support on big legislation…
…The strategy that has brought Senate Republicans where they are today began when they gathered, beaten and dispirited, at the Library of Congress two weeks before Mr. Obama’s inauguration. They had lost seven seats in November, another was teetering, and they were about to go up against an extraordinarily popular new president and an emboldened Democratic Congress.
“We came in shellshocked,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “There was sort of a feeling of ‘every man for himself.’ Mitch early on in this session came up with a game plan to make us relevant with 40 people. He said if we didn’t stick together on big things, we wouldn’t be relevant.”
In 2010, the Republicans were richly rewarded for their obstruction. If independents were fooled two years ago, they’ve now had plenty of time reassess that decision. There is no longer any doubt about which party is responsible for gridlock in Washington.
