AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
In an irony befitting the political vertigo of the Trump era, the far right's obstruction continues to stymie Republicans and, in some sense, help Democratic progressives. The latest example is the aftermath of the failed move to kill the Affordable Care Act.
President Trump, after declaring to the press last month that he was moving on to other issues as a result of his failed health-care push, apparently changed his mind.
During an Oval Office gaggle with the press pool last Tuesday, he announced an effort to gather votes for yet another iteration of ACA repeal, just days before a two-week recess. Almost immediately, sources in the Senate and House familiar with the revival talks reported that the White House and arch-conservative Republican lawmakers are still at an "impasse."
"There's no deal in principle," emphasized North Carolina's Mark Meadows, one of the talks' participants and Chairman of the Freedom Caucus-the faction of Republican representatives credited with tanking both initial versions of the AHCA. First, because it was not drastic enough of a repeal, then again, even after the insertion of amendments that moved repeal further to the political right, and caused a loss of even mainline conservative support.
Unsurprisingly to participants and observers alike, no progress toward policy cohesion was reported before the recess. Instead, the renewed negotiations-characterized during a press conference by Speaker Paul Ryan as merely "conceptual" over half a dozen times-at this point appear to have been functioning primarily as an optical symbol of reconciliation after tense intraparty fighting following the failure of Obamacare repeal in March.
"Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!" Trump tweeted. Which prompts an equally unexpected thought: Has POTUS actually gained some insight?
The far right sparing Democratic liberals from a more unified and thorough Republican effort to roll back government is not a novel story. A re-visitation of recent history shows Republican hardliners have, for nearly a decade, been a crucial force standing in the way of supposed moderate Republican legislative deals that-despite their label of moderation and their approval among the ranks of high-toned conservative think tanks and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal-would have been draconian in their effects: cutting social spending programs, defunding Planned Parenthood, and generally creating greater economic fragility in the name of debt reduction.
McKay Coppins of The Atlantic hinted at this in a piece about the unwieldy ideological contours of the right in the contemporary era:
Many of the most high-profile intra-party battles in recent years have been fought not over ideas, but tactics and a willingness to compromise. While Republicans in Washington were essentially unanimous in their opposition to President Obama's agenda, they differed-at least at first-over whether they should cut deals at the legislative bargaining table, or, say, shut the government down until they got exactly what they wanted. The absolutists largely won out during the Obama presidency.
Fading from the collective political memory is the summer of 2011, when Barack Obama and former House Speaker John Boehner came close to shaking hands on a "Grand Bargain" debt-reduction agreement that-according to a New York Times/FiveThirtyEight analysis using Gallup polling data-was to the right of the preferences of even the median conservative voter. It included a near 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax revenue and reductions to social program benefits.
"Much to the chagrin of many Democrats, the mix of spending cuts and tax increases that Mr. Obama is offering is quite close to, or perhaps even a little to the right of, what the average Republican voter wants, let alone the average American," FiveThirtyEight wrote at the time.
Still, the agreement was not drastic enough for the far right, then led by the Tea Party.
Ascendant and intransigent, Tea Partiers twisted arms and whispered threats of revolt as Boehner and his deputy, Eric Cantor (who would later be ousted for his insiderdom by David Brat, now a Freedom Caucus member), weighed Obama's deep concessions through back channels. Boehner, feeling the pressure, would eventually back off.
The White House and Boehner held dueling press conferences, each accusing the other of leaving a good-faith negotiator at the altar. However, the Obama administration, like the Bill Clinton camp before them, had effectively "triangulated" and whipped their progressive faction into line. It was Boehner who could not bring the Tea Party on board.
And so, the big deal failed. And citizens were spared historic cuts-to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and a whole host of other spending programs-at a time when most families were still reeling from the Great Recession as the real unemployment rate (U-6) hovered at 15 percent.
The smaller deal that did prevail on the eve of default on U.S. Treasury debt, the Budget Control Act of 2011, among other things added the automatic sequester-and still cost Americans hundreds of billions in support, from heating assistance for low-income families during the winter months to furloughs on military bases-spending cuts that economists now say also likely hobbled the strength of an already tenuous Great Recession recovery. Nevertheless, without the encumbrance of the far right a more severe deal with a longer budget horizon surely would have been enacted.
When one of Obama's proposed budgets in his second term had steeper immediate budget cuts than the GOP to both Medicare and Social Security (yes, this happened) there was another chance for a possible deal; and it was summarily batted down by a mix of absolutists, libertarians, and anti-establishment ultra-conservatives who were opposed to any tax hikes.
That dynamic of the far right indirectly saving the left's hide echoed again this year on ACA repeal, which, while deeply unpopular (in both its versions) among the electorate, was initially cheered on by a significant number of Washington conservatives. And with tax reform, immigration, and the budget still on the docket in 2017, there are plenty of other arenas in which the Freedom Caucus can spoil Paul Ryan's agenda. A so far very un-populist agenda for which Trump, in yet another irony, has become the chastened pitchman.
What remains to be seen is whether the proposed Trump budget-which would impose devastating cuts of the sort long craved by Freedom Caucus types-is too extreme for other Republicans in Congress. Leading mainline Republicans have already pronounced the White House budget dead on arrival. However budget-making is an iterative process, and cuts that are a middle ground between their scuffling factions could still disable many key programs.
Even so, a precedent in which the far right, by refusing to compromise, saves the Republic from more complete budgetary carnage may continue.
Centrist figures on cable news continue to bemoan the prospect of another Congress that fails to "get things done."
But if the result of the current administration and congressional leaders getting things done is "the deconstruction of the administrative state," as Steve Bannon has fashioned the pursuit, then GOP legislative dysfunction at the hands of the House Freedom Caucus may become the unlikely rampart that partially salvages valued social outlays.
Representative Peter King, a less severe conservative, backed away from the AHCA once it was redrafted to appeal to the Freedom Caucus. In 2015, King proclaimed with annoyance that "the crazies have taken over the party." Speaking with The Hill after the initial "repeal and replace" failure, he expressed his hope that the mainstream GOP, in grand bargain style, can "find a way to reach out to get at least some Democrats involved. I think President Trump can do it."
Still within the first 100 days, there's evidently more time for some of Trump's more heterodox campaign statements to manifest themselves in proposed legislation-not all of which may necessarily be anathema to liberals. The president and many Progressive Caucus members, for instance, agreed on scrapping the TPP trade agreement. And weirdly, there's talk that Trump may get together with progressives on a partial resurrection of the Glass-Steagall Act-though eyes will be kept on the fine print.
In the end, Trump taking King's advice, lightening up the most ferocious aspects of GOP legislation, and corralling electorally vulnerable Democrats like Joe Manchin into a package of deals on Republican terms is the surest way to damage progressive priorities whilst receiving applause from highfalutin editorial pages for bipartisanship.
With Democrats out of power in every respect at the federal level, the triumph of "The Crazies" over the more moderate dealmakers may, counterintuitively, be liberals' best bet.
