Even before the ‘defund Obamacare’ movement sprang and even after the shutdown tennis rally between the House and the Senate ended, little has changed in the Republican Party’s view of current law and the economy. The nation’s employment shortage was and remains stubborn, and is in need of smarter tax and regulatory policies. Overspending, which is fueling shrinking yet enormous deficits and an unsustainable debt, was and remains a serious threat to the future generations that will inherit the country.
And most relevant to the recent ‘debate’, the President’s health care law was and remains that hackneyed word, nightmare — whereas the nightmare was blurred when it began, it has come into high-definition focus with its implementation. From then to now, the GOP has been united in opposition to the program, voting over and over and over some more to repeal it outright, or at least strike some of its more unworkable provisions.
It is impressive that the party has scored multiple victories, getting an intractable Senate majority and a politics-obsessed White House to go along with more than a half-dozen bills that cut the law’s funding or eliminated a specific mandate or entitlement. These successes are not well-known, otherwise there would be no semblance of a narrative that Republicans are somehow a cadaverous opponent to Obamacare.
Policy differences, then, cannot explain the autumn rift between Tea Party Republicans and their more establishment colleagues. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the barely relenting champion of defunding the health care law, and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a vocal intraparty adversary, occupy mostly the same universe, and acknowledge hearing complaints about the program that sound interchangeable.
“We’re not sure of what the [exact] consequences are going to be, but we are very certain they are going to be very bad consequences,” one of the two said of Obamacare. “So many full-time employees will be knocked back to part-time. We have so many businesses and companies who have come to us and told us the tremendous economic impact it’s going to have.”
“The complexity is so much that it is causing more and more small businesses to stay small — avoid Obamacare altogether,” said the other. “They can’t decipher the rules and regulations, so they don’t. If they have under 50 employees, they can get out from under it. I cannot tell you how many small businesses are not hiring right now.”
Who said what? It does not matter. Cruz and King have communicated the same concerns, detested the same law, and prior to the recent impasse, fought it with every reasonable tool available to a minority party in Washington — and in Cruz’s more difficult case, a minority party in the Senate.
The differences between these two men, which are indicative of the differences between the rival factions of the GOP, are in tactics. Cruz and his ilk were willing to hit full-stop on the government and muddy additional negotiations over raising the debt limit to pursue a plan that stood zero chance of achieving its nominal aim: the total stripping of money for Obamacare. King protested this route.
Cruz and groups like Heritage Action identified their Republican foes as feeble in the cause to take down the law. They did so through either rhetoric or warning GOP members against voting for plans that lacked sufficient anti-Obamacare language. Their efforts, timed to be last-ditch as the law took fuller effect Oct. 1, discounted dozens of previous votes against the program as true measures of ‘conservative’ bona fides. They also skewed reality — as if dismantling the President’s health care law in this fashion was even realistic, given that the same President was still President, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) still controlled the Senate.
The pressure cracked members like King, who in turn lobbed rhetorical volleys at Cruz.
“We have too many people in our party, it’s a minority, who are following Ted Cruz, and they are tying up the entire Republican Party,” he said. “I’m tired of having Ted Cruz call the shots for the House Republicans.”
All of this over a single strategy. This, not the two men’s mutual and demonstrable opposition to the Affordable Care Act, became the purity test by which their and their allies’ conservatism was judged.
Tactics, not policies.
There is a place for tactics, but only if they are shrewd when occupying weak turf, and only if they are achievable when possessing the upper hand. There was nothing sharp about using must-pass spending legislation as the bluntest of instruments to attack Obamacare, and holding a narrow majority in the lower house was not a trump card against a more powerful and represented Democratic Party.
“We must not confuse tactics with principles,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said to his Republican colleagues Wednesday. “The differences between us are dwarfed by the differences we have with the Democratic Party, and we can do more for the American people united.”
They also can do more to set themselves up for greater electoral success that way — the only way to turn weak turf into strong ground, implement the policies on which they largely agree, and undo the ones they unanimously oppose.
