He writes:
Reihan Salam’s effort to explain how you can know congressional Republicans believe something they don’t mention publicly or support legislatively gets at the heart of one of D.C.’s most pernicious illusions: The idea that we should worry about what congresspeople believe in their heart of hearts, as opposed to what they’re willing to vote for at this time….
…if you created a model based on “what position would a person take if they wanted to help their party win the next election,” you’d find your model almost perfectly accurate. And when you take that model in which policy barely matters and partisan incentives govern behavior and add the filibuster into it, you understand why the Senate is so dangerously broken.
The Republican Party does not currently exist as an institution interested in working with Democrats to shape policy, just as the Democratic Party in 2005 did not exist as an institution interested in working with Republicans to shape policy. Pundits and commentators like to ignore this fact as we like to write pieces about how if Congress followed our policy preferences somewhat more closely, it would surely be more successful. That’s what Salam was doing in his original post, in which he said there was a conservative consensus that included a large number of lawmakers behind a conditional version of state and local aid. But there isn’t. There’s a Republican consensus in favor of winning the next election and a Republican consensus that winning the next election means obstructing Democratic accomplishments and that, and not policy disagreement, is the central operating reality in the United States Congress.
Any model you have about politicians must include the fact that the primary concern of all politicians, regardless of party, is power - keeping the power they have and working towards increasing it.
Bull! This President decided early on not to work with Republicans.
Not even now close to the election do the Democrats wish to work with the Republicans.
It’s just pure political posturing by the democrats that all of a sudden now they are for jobs.
Come on!! Sending the Stimulus funds to the States who can’t even manage their own budgets?
Going green when the Major Resources are in China, Russia, and Bolivia.
My god!!! This president doesn’t even understand basic foreign policy
“A nuclear free world” and this is after his own group made the case “though weak” for a nuclear world.
Klein sounds right to me. Sadly.
Kinda hard to work together when your group Laurence shut my group out from the get go.
The democrats didn’t need to work with republicans because of the super majorities that they have, and they still don’t have too.
That’s reality. The Barney Frank Chris Dodd Financial Bill that excluded Fannie,freddie,ginnie mae.
At least you have to face up to these facts.
Fernando,
By the context of your comment, I’m going to assume that “my group” is the Democrats. Given the alternative, I guess I’m OK with that, though it seems strange.
I think you and Klein are talking about two different things. It sounds like your upset that “my group” won the last election and therefore have a near filibuster-proof majority in the Senate which, theoretically (though rarely in practice), would allow them to push through any legislation they liked.
OK. I can see how that would be upsetting for you, and I’m sure the next election will help to re-balance my group and your group.
But what Klein is talking about is something different. He is simply making the point that politicians from either party will nearly always work in their best self interests. Klein takes great pains to make his argument non-partisan. I think he’s right about 90% of the time.
For example:
The Republicans who voted for Financial Reform were Brown, Collins and Snowe - all Republicans from traditionally Democratic districts with a vested interest in not being seen as overly hostile to the Obama Administration and who were able to negotiate modifications to the Bill that were beneficial to their constituents. The Republicans who voted against the Bill, on the other hand, are almost all from safe Republican districts where a vote for Financial Reform might conceivably spur a grass-roots primary challenge from a “more conservative” candidate in their next election. Pretty much everyone acted in their own best interest.
In this case, Feingold might be the lone exception that proves the rule. Politicians rarely make a stand against their own self-interest.
It’s just that we have two different philosophies.
Your group believes that people left to their own devices WILL eventually destroy each other.
While my group believes that with a strong moral upbringing and ingenuity we can achieve anything we set our minds too.
It’s the balance of these two differing philosophies that end up clashing.
Yet we have common interests so to state that neither side can achieve a bi-partisan goal would be disingenuous.
Yet the reality remains that your group has no incentive in working with my group.