My first question for Byron York is whether or not he would prefer to have one big Republican civil war or four or five medium-sized civil wars. Mr. York seems to be making an effort to allay concerns that the GOP will break into two warring factions, but his words are not very comforting. He makes an interesting point that the fission points in the GOP on ObamaCare and national security and immigration and the debt ceiling (I might add disaster relief) include shifting and overlapping factions:
Perhaps the most striking thing about the immigration battle, in the context of the other intra-party conflicts now going on, is that the number of Republican senators who voted for the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill — 14 – is barely larger than the dozen who support Mike Lee’s defunding Obamacare plan. But they are a different group. And those groups don’t line up precisely with the sides in the national security debate. Tom Coburn and John McCain were on different sides of the immigration vote, but they are united against the defunding Obamacare initiative. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were also on opposing sides on immigration, but they are united in favor of defunding Obamacare. And Cruz, Rubio, and Lee joined Paul’s famous filibuster in which he mused about the possibility of U.S. government drone strikes against American cities — a filibuster Rubio’s immigration allies McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham bitterly opposed.
In each case, there are enough Republican senators available to work with the Democrats to either get things done or sustain current policy, but in each case the more radical faction is backed by the House Republicans, although the surveillance issue divides the House fairly evenly. The result is that nothing can be resolved. Either the House capitulates, gets rolled, or things stop working or don’t get done.
These fissures are preventing the GOP from making coordinated and concerted efforts, which renders Congress dysfunctional. To some degree, the Senate is operating as it should, with different minority coalitions coming forth on different issues to work with the majority. But, since the work of these coalitions gets blocked by the House, it winds up creating bitter recriminations within and between the Senate factions. And that makes cooperation within the Senate GOP less likely over time. When Sen. Burr (R-NC) says that Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has the dumbest idea ever and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) accuses Lee of being dishonest, it’s hard to see how that could not lesson their degree of cooperation on other issues in the future.
Recent fireworks over national security between Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Rep. Peter King (R-Long Island) cannot be fully understood without referring back to the delay in providing disaster relief for Superstorm Sandy. King and Christie are still furious at the libertarian faction for withholding aid, and it’s informing their war on Paul’s nascent presidential ambitions. Rep. King also famously told Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to stay out of New York and told Manhattan donors to tell Rubio to take a flying leap. That, too, was a result of the disaster relief dispute.
This is an example of how medium-sized disputes can metastasize into larger ones. The result is that the GOP is trying to function without any central operating system. The civil war to worry about is between the GOP and the American public when we default on our debts and watch the government close down.
