Conservatives believe creative destruction is good for the economy. Now Republicans will learn if it can work for party politics.
House Speaker John Boehner announced Sept. 25 that he was leaving. Thursday, heir apparent Kevin McCarthy abruptly withdrew from the speaker race. Now chaos and confusion seem to rule the GOP. Establishment Republicans curse the impertinent Tea Partiers who have smashed their old system.
The old guard is right to be worried. The tumult that has brought down Boehner is the same tumult that has brought about a government shutdown, threatened to hit the debt limit and jumbled up the presidential field. “Tea Party” is a fine short-hand word to describe the whole phenomenon. But there’s something bigger at play here than a few dozen intransigent lawmakers or a handful of populist radio talkers and uppity SuperPACs.
The disruption that has upended so many aspects of American life in recent years has finally crossed the Potomac.
Innovation and change have overthrown the old regimes in many aspects of American life. Our media used to be Walter Cronkite plus a giant print daily or two in every city. Thanks to cable and later the Internet and blogging tools, the old order has been smashed — and replaced. To ink-stained wretches whose skill sets became less useful, this revolution is disastrous. But ask the reading public, or the young skilled hustling reporter, and you might get a different view.
Growing pains and transition costs are real. There are winners and losers. But competition drives innovation and experimentation, and soon new ways of doing things emerge.
The same thing may be happening in politics. Instead of being the collapse of the GOP, the current tumult may be the remaking of a national party to reflect changed realities.
When people compare Boehner’s success and failures as speaker to the records of his predecessors, fair commentators always note that Boehner’s job was far harder. The disobedience of the post-2010 Republican House majority was unique in recent decades.
Many causes contributed to this. One factor was simply the spirit of the Tea Party, producing politicians more anti-government than the average Republican, and fiercely anti-establishment.
Changes in campaign financing and political communications also decentralized power. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling supercharged outside groups, which could now operate SuperPACs. Internet fundraising changed the game, too. These factors all combined to end the monopoly on Republican fundraising previously held by the cartel of committee chairmen, party leaders and their K Street funders.
In the old days, getting cash for reelection mostly meant asking your committee chairman or the whip to headline a reception for you where his lobbyist friends would bring their corporate clients with $5,000 PAC checks in hand. Step out of line, and you’ve got to hustle for your own cash back at the Terre Haute Rotary Club.
The new decentralized fundraising system means that you can upset the party and still raise funds. In fact, from the grassroots you can raise cash nationally by battling your own party’s leadership.
The earmark ban was also a huge factor in decentralizing power. Handing out pork was how party leaders enforced loyalty and whipped votes. When Republicans agreed in 2010 to forgo earmarks, that didn’t just weaken appropriators, it weakened party leaders.
Republican unity isn’t the only thing that crumbled along with the old order. Also, the whole budget process stopped working, quite apart from the shutdowns and threatened shutdowns. Back in the day, after Congress passed a budget, each appropriations subcommittee would pass its bill. The full committee would pass each of a dozen or so spending bills, then each chamber would pass them from the floor.
That doesn’t happen anymore, and it’s not because of Tea Party obstruction. Senate Democrats, for instance, filibustered the only spending bill to come to the floor this year.
So the old ways don’t work. Old techniques are ineffective and old rules — written and unwritten — have died. Party unity traditions are gone, and Senate comity is a joke.
Washington can grumble, curse the Tea Partiers and wish for the good old days of Dan Rostenkowski, Jim Wright, Tom DeLay, Bob Livingston and Dennis Hastert. Or Republicans can come up with new ways of doing things.
Technology has led to new ways of doing things in the economy — Yelp, Uber and Twitter harnessing the wisdom of crowds to replace the judgments of a few elite insiders. Republicans can think in the same vein and find a new way to run a party, and Congress. Because the old way isn’t coming back.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
