Unlike in 2008, Republicans don’t need to stonewall the incoming president’s agenda to make him a one-term president. President-elect Joe Biden will likely decide to do so independently. At 78 years old, Biden will be older on Inauguration Day than Ronald Reagan, our oldest president ever, was on his last day in office. The former vice president has silently signaled to aides that he wouldn’t seek a second term.
Biden, a relic of a party that used to prioritize pragmatism, reportedly wants to reach across the aisle. Republicans should meet him halfway. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it will also advance Republicans’ own electoral odds, given the national climate for spending.
Republicans may have had a leg to stand on when opposing President Barack Obama’s costly agenda, but after four years of the GOP rubber stamping President Trump’s trillion-dollar deficits even before an unprecedented pandemic and tyrannical lockdowns crushed the economy, Republicans have shot their credibility on fiscal responsibility to hell. Furthermore, elections have consequences, and the GOP’s razor-thin Senate majority will have to pick its battles.
Luckily, the electoral incentives align.
Despite Trump’s baseless protestations that the election was rigged, 2020 was actually a relative success for Republicans, especially considering the long-term demographic realignment of GOP gains with Latino and black men. Defying the overwhelming polling, Republicans shrank Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority in the House to the thinnest margin in decades, and even if Republicans throw both of the Georgia Senate runoffs in the beginning of next year, Democrats will rely on Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s swing vote if and only if they manage not to have a single defection from the party line. This means that even without the White House, Republicans have plenty of leverage to convince Biden to prioritize the parts of his agenda that centrist members of the GOP can endorse.
If Biden’s talk about reaching some bipartisan agreements is simply that, talk, then of course Republicans shouldn’t give an inch if it just means Biden wants to ram through a Hyde Amendment appeal or start new wars. But if Biden is serious, everyone can win.
The most obvious would be infrastructure spending. On climate change, Republicans could help redirect the agenda away from hamfisted and economically onerous regulations and toward nuclear power, which would both be much more effective at reaching carbon neutrality in the long run and result in a positive return on investment.
Biden should tell Republicans that he won’t go along with the Left’s goal to use taxpayer money on abortion or deregulate it if they can agree to spend more on Title X funding or make contraception over-the-counter, a proposal already introduced in the Senate by Republican Sens. Joni Ernst and Cory Gardner. Furthermore, there are plenty of less sexy bureaucratic tweaks like expanding pandemic-era telehealth allowances into standing law and licensing reform that could tangibly make life better, cheaper, and easier for millions of Americans without delivering any political faction a flashy headline win.
And if appealing to your conscience doesn’t work well enough, here’s the heartless case for why such an approach would further help the GOP’s electoral odds.
Biden has snubbed such rising stars as Tammy Duckworth, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Stacey Abrams in his early staffing picks. Although it’s possible that he reverses course, it increasingly seems like he’s paving a clear path for Harris to emerge as a presidential nominee as uncontested as possible in 2024. If so, that’s great for Republicans, giving them all the more incentive to work with Biden.
For starters, Harris would have to justify for her left-wing base why she didn’t go scorched-earth on the GOP to her own base while pissing off Biden’s base. More importantly, we’ve already seen Harris flame out in one presidential primary. Biden might be able to secure her primary victory, but why would we believe that Harris could fare any better against a Republican (likely) not named Donald Trump?
With Trump on his way out, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can start talks with Biden about what he wants to plan come January. He should take advantage of this as an opportunity, not just to help his constituents, but also to put the groundwork in place for Republicans to win back the House and the White House.
