Good morning, folks. The Washington Monthly has retained me as one of their weekend bloggers, so please head over there and show some support.
Something I want to discuss this morning are the comments from Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who has compared the impact of the government shutdown on public opinion to 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Lehman Brothers collapse, and the debt ceiling fiasco of 2011.
…once there is this level of movement and change, it takes months for things to settle down in a way that is stable and easier to understand. This type of data creates ripples that will take a long time to resolve and there will be unexpected changes we cannot predict at the moment as a consequence.”
I think it’s not just the polls this time. This crisis has had a profoundly destabilizing effect on the composition and functioning of the Republican Party.
Care to predict how it will all shake out down the road?
Congrats on the weekend gig! Looks like the Monthly will get the Booman bump.
Bigger than the Colbert bump I understand.
yeah, right.
The cream has a way of rising to the top. Don’t sell yourself short.
If we had a functioning mainstream media that reported accurately, the republican party would be over. But we don’t and, as SteveM wrote yesterday, the MSM is already providing another of their endless GOP reborn mythologies. “The mainstream press always does this — always tells us that the GOP that just drove the car off the cliff two minutes ago isn’t the real GOP. When the party’s problem was seen as racism, Marco Rubio was declared to be the real GOP. When the problem is seen as “Washington,” Chris Christie is said to be the real GOP. For now, it’s Ryan. And if the current talks break down and Ryan gets some of the blame, it’ll be someone else. The Republican Party is never at fault, because the Republican Party is endlessly malleable, in the mainstream press’s view.” http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-gop-is-dead.html
What will shake out down the road?
More people will grow more and more disillusioned with our government.
The Republicans will continue to run against big government, and keep the House in 2014 – where they’ll continue working to undermine the government that pays their excellent salaries, and gives them great benefits AND a pension!
In the meantime, the Republican Governors and state legislatures will continue the work of undermining the United States of America, one state at a time.
The Republicans are determined to turn the US into the worlds best-armed Banana Republic.
With a large military that protects… well, nothing much left that’ll be worth protecting – except the wealthiest of the wealthy, and their property.
That’s a feature, not a defect – at the nation’s founding only landed white men (mostly) were permitted to vote. Government of, by, and for the (wealthy) people.
I understand your cynicism. I just think it’s not accurate. Things aren’t black and white. On the one hand, we have this transformational presidency and this transformational moment with the shutdown. Things are changing for the better. It just doesn’t happen all at once. The House has been gerrymandered to death. In the short term, this creates an artificial stasis. But in the long term, it erodes confidence in the GOP by unmasking them (or, rather, giving them free reign to unmask themselves).
It will take a wave election to flip the House in 2014. It may not happen. By 2016, the job won’t be quite as tough. If we can take our share of governorships by 2020, the gerrymandering will be undone. Things are moving our way.
Look it; I know how hard it is to be patient. I’m 50 years old. I’ve been aware of politics since my mom told me that man, at age five, that the man on the screen making some big statement about not running again, was the President of the United States. My friends and I watched Nixon go down and we cheered the day he resigned. We suffered through Reagan, a Bush who believed in nothing but capital gains cuts and a second who had a fuzzy vision of himself as savior of the right. Things may not be great, but in political terms I’m happier now with what is than I ever was before.
Me too. I feel the tide is turning. I felt that way even a few years ago, and the GOP has only deteriorated since then. This latest fiasco reveals tremendous deterioration since the elections less than a year ago.
Congratulations on the gig – you’ve more than earned it!
The 2016 GOP primary will make the 1980 GOP primary appear kind and civil by comparison. Grab popcorn, and a bulletproof vest, and a bomb shelter – there’s no telling where it will go, but it won’t be pretty.
Congrats on the gig!
Strategically I don’t see how the Republicans steer between the Scylla of harming the country by being intransigent about Obamacare and the Charybdis of infuriating the Tea Party by not harming the country to stop Obamacare. What they’ve absolutely got to do to survive is tamp down the conservative opinions about Obamacare from “the worst evil the country ever faced” to “a poor way to address the healthcare crisis”. But I don’t see how they can and in any case they aren’t. They are still laughably comparing it to slavery. I’m sure slaves toiling away under the broiling Southern Sun were thinking “gosh, this is just like getting health insurance”.
Congratulations to Washington Monthly!
So im reading on the twitter that Boehner has told House caucus that there is no deal deal with WH and discussion are at an impasse. So it looks like WH and Senate Republicans are the ones who are going to have to move something through.
Yes, Republican and Conservadem have a proposal that included this phrase…The bill would also delay Obamacare’s tax on medical devices for two years, while paying for the lost revenue by altering the way that pensions are calculated.
Anyone one want to guess what this euphemism refers to?
Oh more messing with our pensions I see.
Congrats on the Washington Monthly gig. I have more respect for the wisdom of the editors over there. And they picked (or you picked) and excellent piece to publish today.
What I see is that both party establishments are vulnerable; it’s just that at the moment the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot with the shutdown.
The public wants results. But a generation of conservative propaganda means that the actions the public sees as bringing those results cannot in fact do so.
Austerity cannot in fact reduce the debt.
Reducing taxes and regulation will not in fact create more jobs.
Signing more free trade agreements will not in fact mean more US exports and the revitalization of the US economy.
Increasing defense spending will not in fact make us safer.
Allowing the NSA and other intelligence agancies to run unchecked will not in fact preserve our freedoms.
Loosening gun laws will not in fact reduce gun violence.
And continuing the marketing style of campaigning will not in fact create stronger parties, better candidates, and better policies.
Between now and next November the Great GOP Wurlitzer will be engaged in the same sort of confusion that it engaged in during 2009 and 2010. And the Republicans might be able to pull off another rebranding stunt like they did with the Tea Party “movement” and “death panels” and…
You will know that there has been significant change for the better if right-wing talk radio and cable TV collapses like Father Coughlin’s radio audience did during World War II. If Rush Limbaugh finally retires to live off his millions. If libraries stop stocking every free RWNJ book by Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, …., that interest groups send to them.
I am not sanguine that that will happen because Steve Israel is in no way preparing for the campaigns that might roll up Tea Party candidates, the DNC has not rediscovered the 50-state strategy, and no one has figured out how to respond if the Supreme Court rule to open up the money floodgates in the one billionaire-all votes case.
Trying to figure out how to rate a comment higher than excellent.
I can see the TV ad in my head, based on the format Obama used in his TV ads when he was running for senate. (I live in Illinois.)
They listed all the bills Obama had passed while a representative – in a scrolling list – with perfect timing so you could read each one but not have to wait for the next one.
It would have a simple voiceover at the beginning, with a single sentence that would be something that any thinking person might relate to. Maybe something about pausing now and again to look at what we believe in, or where we’re going.
Make 7 versions of the commercial, all with the same lead-in sentence, or maybe different ways of asking all of us to pause and take stock of what we believe. Then we hear only one of the 7 points from the voiceover, and we are left to read the remaining 6 as they scroll by.
The ad should run NOW, not during election season when everybody tunes out the ads, because the goal is to challenge all of us to be better, challenge all of us to look at what we believe.
It should definitely run before the 4th of july, memorial day, etc when people are predisposed to be in touch with their love of our country.
(TarheelDem, I hope you’ll forgive my removing your last bullet point and adding a different one.)
Austerity cannot in fact reduce the debt.
Reducing taxes and regulation will not in fact create more jobs.
Signing more free trade agreements will not in fact mean more US exports and the revitalization of the US economy.
Increasing defense spending will not in fact make us safer.
Allowing the NSA and other intelligence agancies to run unchecked will not in fact preserve our freedoms.
Loosening gun laws will not in fact reduce gun violence.
Letting billionaires buy elections will not in fact preserve our democracy.
doing the happy dance!!!
Well, you could maybe trace the shakeup back to the moment when a black man with an African name was elected President of the United States. At that point the conservatives had the choice of accepting reality or trying to reverse history. And of course history only moves forward, so they’re never going to get “their country back,” so the other option is to destroy it.
As far as what happens next, I think the critical facts to keep in mind are that they’re a shrinking minority, and they can be depended on to react to both victory and defeat by getting more and more “conservative”–i.e., ever more self-centered, delusional, intransigent, and seething with hatred for everyone who isn’t them.
Oh, and plus, they’re total idiots. So I’m confident they’re going to lose, and the real (and scary) question is how much damage they’re going to do in the meanwhile.
Congratulations, Booman, that’s good news.
I learned years ago not to trust my instincts of how the public will or won’t react to what their political leaders do. I was shocked when Bush was re-elected, well after it was evident he’d taken the country into a disastrous war under false pretenses.
However, it does make me happy hearing how the Repubican’s are cratering in polls, and I sure do hope lots of peoples’ eyes are being opened.
Adding my congratulations.
I agree that we can’t know how much this event will impact long-term perceptions. First, there does seem to be a half-life of less than a year for most major events. Watergate and the 2008 crash greatly impacted the 1974 and 2008 elections, but the 1999 impeachment trial and the 2011 debt ceiling bullcrap didn’t have much impact on 2000 or 2012. Heck, by 2010 a lot of people had forgotten how 2008 happened (and we have to partly blame the Democrats “look forward, forget the past” approach to public communications for that).
But Katrina in 2005 was different – it permanently changed perceptions of the Bush administration amongst a significant part of the population. Enough for a Democratic landslide in 2006, despite the Democratic disadvantage in off-year elections and despite an economy still doing very well on the housing bubble.
One reason why Katrina worked is that people watched it on TV for weeks and it really hit emotions hard. Unfortunately the gov’t shutdown isn’t doing that … yet. There needs to be more emotional broadcasts of people hurt by the shutdown, not just numbers.
The other reason Katrina worked is that it reinforced notions that had already been planted by previous events. The “Bush admin incompetent” notion (fueled by a number of books from ex-Bush admin people, the disaster in Iraq, and his general bumbling nature) was simply reinforced in a big way with his bumbling, tone-deaf response to Katrina. Now, the notion that the tea party is a bunch of extremists is already well-established in the national mind – even if the low info voter doesn’t agree with it they are familiar with the notion. Other notions are almost as well established – tea party owns GOP, tea party racist, tea party incompetent, tea party crazy.
So, there is an opportunity here if this goes on long enough to get the meme into the mainstream that: the GOP is under control of an extremist element so crazy and scary that the only solution is severe election losses until the GOP reforms.
This would be a good thing. Alas, and unfortunately, the shutdown/default has to have more emotional impact for this to happen.
Congrats, Martin! Very well deserved.
My prediction for the GOP’s future starts here: Name a candidate who can unite the Tea Party with the Chamber of Commerce as the Republican nominee.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
The latest polls on the subject show the Republicans in Congress with a 24% approval rating. Bush’s floor, of course, was 27%. That could be a matter of demographic shift, or statistical variance, but I believe that we are seeing tea party respondents starting to turn on the GOP, which looks so ineffectual in their eyes. If they don’t walk away from the ’16 convention in firm control of the ticket, they’re going to run Cruz themselves; and if Cruz ends up the face of the party, the country clubbers are going to abandon ship.
These people now hate each other openly. That can’t be walked back.
Very happy for you Booman. Went over to leave some comments.
How it will shake out? One thing is clear. The symbiosis between the crazies and the banking/corporate wing of the GOP is over, and will not return.
The Tea Party has attempted to take over the entire GOP, and on what we might jokingly refer to as the legislative and policy end, have pretty well done so.
But that’s only because the big boys have been okay with it. Until now. Where they are now is that the Tea Party, having failed to gain total control of the party but having built up a very good loyalist infrastructure and vociferous base — will have to leave.
Their interests have become too divergent. They hate the non-Tea GOP, and as the friction increases they will hate them all the more. The Tea Party must either have total control, or walk. The first is no longer possible, therefore they will walk. And in the process, probably splinter into a number of warring factions.
All those Tea Partiers will still be out there, but they will have little power in Washington, and their hold over local enclaves will weaken, as non-TP republicans find they can vote for more appealing candidates.
Here’s somebody thinking long similar lines:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/11/tea_party_secedes_the_gop_civil_war_is_over_and_so_is_the_gop/