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| Google Images: David Brooks |
Over the past months, Republicans enjoyed enormous advantages. Opinion polls showed that voters are eager to reduce the federal debt, and they want to do it mostly but not entirely through spending cuts.
The gist of Brooks argument?? Republicans had an unprecedented chance to work with the President in moving this country center-right. According to Brooks,
Instead, Republicans have decided to completely bypass the above scenario, opting instead to attempt to pass a balanced budget amendment that has absolutely no chance of ever being signed into law. Moreover, the vital time they’re spending with this bill means that compromise in the House is all but out of the question. House Republicans will be forced to cling to a Senate compromise between McConnell and Reid, eliminating any and all leverage that they had with the president and with the American public.
There was a Democratic president eager to move to the center. He floated certain ideas that would be normally unheard of from a Democrat. According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.Not only could they have moved the country to the right, but they could have completely fractured the Democratic Party. Imagine if you will, a president elected largely because of mass liberal support, working with conservative Republicans in Congress to raise the Medicare enrollment age and freeze all discretionary spending. Democrats in Congress and Democratic supporters would flip and be forced to assess who they liked more, their congressmen or their president. Either way, the rift would most likely have caused many Democratic voters to stay home in 2012 and open up a path for Rick Perry (Yep, I said it) to win the White House in 2012. But this is not what happened.
Instead, Republicans have decided to completely bypass the above scenario, opting instead to attempt to pass a balanced budget amendment that has absolutely no chance of ever being signed into law. Moreover, the vital time they’re spending with this bill means that compromise in the House is all but out of the question. House Republicans will be forced to cling to a Senate compromise between McConnell and Reid, eliminating any and all leverage that they had with the president and with the American public.
Brooks concludes,
Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the G.O.P., who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control.
Instead of being seen as a great moment in conservative history, where republican principles permanently became a part of mainstream America, Republicans will always look back to this debt ceiling debate as a horrible, missed opportunity.
Read the whole article here.
