The Civil War
My best friend Steve - now dead these 25 years - insisted that the salient characteristic
of American history is that The Civil War has not yet ended.
***
The Republican war with President Barack Obama over funding the government and the new health-care law will play out in the coming days and months. The conflict now exposed within the party may shape its future for years.
An intraparty tug-of-war, largely confined to campaign primaries during the past three years, is exposed on the national stage as Republicans challenge each other on tactics as a governmentshutdown looms, coming as early as tomorrow.
The U.S. Capitol is silhouetted on September 28, 2013 in Washington. Photographer: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg Businessweek senior national correspondent Joshua Green examines the politics behind the potential government shutdown, the efforts of former Senator Jim DeMint to push the defunding of Obamacare and the GOP’s overall political strategy. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg Surveillance.”
“The circus created the past few days isn’t reflective of mainstream Republicans -- it projects an image of not being reasonable. The vast majority of Republicans are pretty level-headed and are here to govern,” said Representative Michael Grimm, a New York Republican.
“This is a moment in history for our party to, once and for all, put everything on the table. But at some point we’re going to come together and unify,” Grimm said, adding that the “far-right faction” of the party “represents 15 percent of the country, but they’re trying to control the entire debate.”
It’s a civil war that has beset the party before, as base activists grow impatient with established leaders they claim have grown complacent in the anti-government fight. The results can be unpredictable, perhaps more so this time given that it’s taking place 13 months before the next election.
Goldwater ’64
The rise of Barry Goldwater in 1964 as the Republican presidential nominee ended in the landslide election of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. A revolt led by Newt Gingrich, then a Georgia congressman, culminated in the 1994 Republican takeover of the U.S. after 40 years in the minority.
Gingrich, who became House speaker, and his majority prompted the 1995-96 partial government shutdowns, which dimmed the party’s approval ratings and fueled the re-election of President Bill Clinton.
“This is a battle that has been under way slowly since 2010 and is now coming to a head,” said David Redlawsk, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “This is part of a bigger question about what that party is going to be. That may have major repercussions in another year.”
The fight in Congress today is between members who want to avoid the fate of Gingrich’s majority and those convinced that conditions have changed to their advantage.
Health Law
“I’ve been elected to fight for the people back home, wherever that takes us,” said Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican. “We’re united in our efforts to do all we can to avert a shutdown. We’re trying to offer a compromise.” Meadows said the health-care law “is not ready for prime time.”
Concern that a shutdown would stunt economic growth sent stocks lower today, trimming the biggest quarterly gain since the start of 2012. Treasuries rallied and the Japanese yen strengthened.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 0.4 percent to 1,682.81 at 12:11 p.m. in New York. All 10 main industries in the S&P 500 dropped, with financial, telephone and energy shares falling the most.
The tactics of a group of Republicans are causing angst among some established party leaders and fundraisers who worry that the infighting is obscuring what could otherwise be a winning political moment.
Fundraiser’s Concern
“I fully understand where the Tea Party and like-minded people are coming from, that Obamacare is a tragically flawed law and it’s not good for the country, but I would also have to add that shutting down the government is not a good for the country,” said Fred Malek, a Republican fundraiser.
“At a time politically where Obama is in a very weak position resulting from his handling of the situation in Syria, the economic situation, and the implementation of a health-care law that is going to be really rocky, we’re basically going in and seizing defeat from the jaws of victory politically,” Malek said. “You’ve got a flawed law that’s bad for the country being met with a flawed approach that is also very bad for the country, and I don’t think it’s good politically or substantively.”
Sal Russo, chief strategist of the Sacramento, California-based Tea Party Express, a political action committee that advocates smaller government, said the episode in Washington is pleasing to movement activists.
“There was a lot of frustration that Republicans weren’t doing anything,” he said. “This is going to encourage them to do more.”
Intransigence Tag
It’s unfair to place all the blame for the fight at the feet of Republicans who come from the party’s Tea Party wing, Russo said. If Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “look intransigent, they will be the losers,” he said. “There is plenty of room for compromise, but the Democrats and the president have shown no willingness to compromise.”
Russo said Tea Party Republicans will also want a fight over the nation’s borrowing limit, which the Treasury Department says will be exhausted no later than Oct. 17. If Congress doesn’t lift the cap, the nation will default on its debts.
“The American public understands you have to pay the bills you run up,” he said. “I also think it is worthy of a fight, and I think there is going to be one.”
The congressional battle is providing new energy to the movement, Russo said. “People are fired up that some people are willing to stand up,” he said.
Strategist Outrage
Several Republican strategists have privately expressed outrage in recent weeks at the lengths to which some of their own party’s activists are willing to go to stoke shutdown fervor, complaining that they are spending time and money targeting their party colleagues while giving Democrats a pass. The Republicans requested anonymity because they didn’t want to publicly disparage party allies.
Among the targets of their complaints are the Heritage Foundation, helmed by former SenatorJim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, which has been leaning on Republicans to tie keeping the government open to defunding the health-care law, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee DeMint founded that backs Republican primary candidates.
The fund released a television advertisement on Sept. 5 saying Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is “refusing to lead on defunding Obamacare.” Last week, it accused McConnell and Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 leader, of “the ultimate betrayal” for allowing a government-funding bill to go forward.
Radio Ads
The fund is also running radio ads against Republican senators in a handful of states in a bid to pressure them to oppose funding the health law. While the group has yet to endorse any Senate Republican primary candidates, both McConnell and Cornyn are facing re-election campaigns next year, and the Kentuckian has drawn a Tea Party-backed Republican rival, businessman Matt Bevin.
Avoiding such primary challenges is driving much of the strife, said Dan Schnur, the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics director at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles.
“There are 30 or 40 House rebels who all know there is no way they could ever lose a general-election campaign, no matter how hard they tried, and the only way they don’t get to stay in Congress is if they face a more conservative primary challenger,” Schnur, an aide in Republican Senator John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, said in an interview.
Of the 232 Republicans in the House, 215 represent districts that voted for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney over Obama. The midterm election is likely to be more pro-Republican than the 2012 election, when Obama’s national campaign was driving turnout. That creates few political incentives for compromise, as most of the lawmakers’ districts were anti-Obama in 2012 and probably will be again in 2014.
High Stakes
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has less pressure to exert on members than outside groups urging confrontation, Schnur added. “Boehner can take away a committee assignment -- these groups can take away their jobs,” Schnur said.
Keith Appell, a consultant whose clients include Tea Party-aligned groups, said “if they cave again they’re looking at multiple primaries in the spring and their base sitting home in the fall, in a base election. Caving is not an option.”
Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, said he’s frustrated that his party can’t advocate vigorously without being accused of “wanting to eviscerate and destroy all of government.” Still, the political risks prompted him to initially back a different strategy for fighting the health-care law and funding the government.
“Harry Reid will do everything he possibly can to precipitate a shutdown because, no matter what happens, Republicans will be blamed,” he said of the Senate majority leader, a Nevada Democrat. “Unfortunately, I think that’s partly of our own doing. We’ve allowed the Democrats to chase us with a government shutdown much like a little boy on the playground chases a little girl with a spider.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Heidi Przybyla in Washington athprzybyla@bloomberg.net; Julie Hirschfeld Davis in Washington at jdavis159@bloomberg.net
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