One of Ed Kilgore’s many talents that serves him well in his current gig as lead political blogger for Washington Monthly is he has a memory like…well…an elephant.
His post earlier today reminded everyone that President Obama’s DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy was originally announced in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign as
“…a preemption of a pending GOP initiative being crafted by Sen. Marco Rubio for the relief not just of DREAMers, but of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who was trying to find something to embrace to offset the “self-deportation” position he had embraced during the primary season. Had Obama not announced DACA, its substance would have probably become the dominant GOP position.”
Instead, with their vote Friday night, House Republicans have made “deportation for all” the party’s de facto policy, to the dismay of even the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
This is what happens when you’re always “organizing against” and not “organizing for”.
“Organizing against” is reacting to a given situation. Anti-war movements are a good example. The primary goal is to stop the war. What to replace the war with, what to do instead of continuing to wage war, is (at best) a secondary concern. Anything or anyone that seems to escalate the war, anti-war movement organizers will use to “organize against”.
“Organizing for” is taking action in favor of a given agenda or issue. The work that the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization did in 2005-06 that helped lead to the creation of “Romneycare”, or that the PICO National Network did in 2008-2010—along with numerous other organizations and allies—that led to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, are examples of “organizing for”. People identified universal health care as a priority, and used their power to negotiate something that got as close to their goal as they could at the time.
For almost six years now, congressional Republicans have been “organizing against”. In December 2008 and January 2009, party leaders and strategists settled on a strategy of “massive resistance” as the party’s best and quickest route back to power. Their experience and analysis told them that a popular young president taking office at a time of crisis would receive credit from the public for every accomplishment. Thus, there was no short-term benefit for Republicans (in fact, there were political costs) in adopting a public stance of bipartisan cooperation.
By contrast, acting as the “Party of No” would have two benefits: 1) it could help rally and reunify a dispirited political base, and 2) it would create the perception that President Obama was a “partisan divider”, and not the political unifier he had campaigned as.
The strategy paid almost immediate benefits as congressional Democrats appeared caught off-guard by the lack of Republican “cover” for major (and minor) initiatives. It then paid huge dividends in the 2010 election as Republicans retook the House and slashed the Democratic advantage in the Senate.
But the problem with “organizing against” is you put yourself, to some degree, at the mercy of your opponent. The onetime community organizer in the White House has deftly exploited this time and again, repeatedly claiming the middle ground for himself—as he did with DACA—and leaving Republicans clinging ever more zealously to an ever-shrinking piece of the political turf.
Despite having won the House, Republicans haven’t spent the past 3 1/2 years putting forward a positive conservative agenda for, say, jobs, health care, immigration, and education. Instead, they’ve put most of their energies into blocking the Democratic agenda (which they’ve done quite successfully) and continuing to oppose anything President Obama says or does.
It’s a strategy that works if all you care about is blocking whatever your opponent supports. But if Republicans care about governing the country again, they’re eventually going to have to do the hard work of going on the offensive and figuring out how to build a political majority that supports what they’re “organizing for”.
crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/