Just Another Government Shutdown Rant

Everyone else is sounding off on the government shutdown today, so I might as well chime in before real information becomes available and all the bloviating and pontificating and ranting and raving becomes just so much dross and drivel and we find out what the effect of the shutdown really is.

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First off, I doubt the shutdown will be as bad as the hype. There’s no doubt that there will be real world effects, but consider the motivations of the naysayers. Democrats benefit from making the Republicans look bad (and Republicans will look bad), news media benefits from a crisis because it’s the only time people watch, and the Republicans who are forcing the shutdown are raising gobs of money from the activists who support their actions.  But will the world stop?

No. Government shutdown has happened before (seventeen times, including eight times during the Reagan Administration) and we’ve survived.

But there’s a saying out there–“never let a crises go to waste“–and few politically savvy people are letting this one pass them by.

Second, Republicans are going to get the blame. In spite of this, few Congressional Republicans will see the effects at the ballot box. While Congress regularly receives low marks in polling, individual Members of Congress tend to poll well with their constituents…which means Congressional approval ratings are largely pointless (and so, in a somewhat-ancillary-to-this-shutdown-rant, I wish the news and associated bloviators would stop pushing those particular statistics). We don’t vote nationally on retaining Congress as a whole but locally on retaining individual Representatives. Ergo, the only polls that matter are for each individual member of Congress.

And they’re not going to be significantly harmed by like-minded majorities in their districts. I’ve heard it said that the United States Congress has a higher incumbency rate than the Peoples Republican of Korea (North Korea). I doubt it’s true, but it is telling.

US Senators, on the other hand, beholden to statewide constituencies that cannot be redistricted into more favorable mixes of voters (as House districts are), may face more push back at the ballot box to the extent that voters recall the government shutdown of 2013. If voters remember, and see their Senator as connected, then some Senators may feel the pinch.

(On the other hand, after watching half a dozen Senators take to the floor to express their “outrage” at the shutdown in the same terms that I would use to talk about the weather with a random stranger on the street, maybe it would be good for them to feel a pinch of emotion every now and then).

Last, while individual Republicans and Democrats will get reelected in districts favorably drawn to their best advantage, and even Senators might survive reelection battles, Republicans will be impacted by the battle on the national stage, especially in the Presidential campaign. While the Presidential election is still three years away, Republicans will find the failure by both parties to work out a compromise as an albatross they must explain, especially since many of the GOP frontrunners are currently in the national legislature.  Democrats will repeatedly beat them on why they chose to attack a healthcare law that had been passed, upheld by the Supreme Court, and as yet not fully implemented, rather than just tweak the law to repair problems. People may hate “Obamacare,” but they are more equivocal about the actual benefits promised by the Affordable Care Act.

Instead of finding resolution to immigration–either in one package or piece meal ala Senator Lee— or ending the National Security Agencies domestic spying programs or working on our relationship with Iran and Syria or any number of public policy areas, Republicans have opposed the implementation of Obamacare in a series of moves that create the visual effect of obstinacy, not diplomacy and leadership.  A “filibuster” (which really wasn’t a filibuster) on the floor of the Senate plays great for the base, but doesn’t win fans among your opponents or the middle voter.

Or, as it might be said, you win more friends with honey than with vinegar.  Filibuster and government shutdown is more vinegar than honey. As much as I may agree on policy grounds with House Republicans, I cannot see how the optics of the actions does anything to change or reform the Affordable Care Act, let alone stop its implementation.

Because even as the government shutdown, the healthcare exchanges still went into effect today.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t a time and a place to stand and fight.  However, the way this fight is playing out can only reflect poorly on Republicans. They deserve credit for holding their ground, but they are falling short in their efforts to pin the blame on President Obama and Democrats for the lack of compromise. As such, whether it is reality or not, anger and frustration for the government shutdown is going to fall on the Republicans.

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Related articles

• Rebutting Conventional Wisdom: Government Shutdown and the Battle to Stop Obamacare (heritageaction.com)
• U.S Government Shutdown Begins (beaudreux.com)
• Here’s what worries Republicans about the looming government shutdown (dailykos.com)
• Political hardball steers U.S. government into shutdown (wtvr.com)
• Wonkbook: Obamacare is alive but Congress doing its job is dead (washingtonpost.com)
• Government Shutdown: Senate Democrats Refuse to Negotiate With House, Close The Government (thegatewaypundit.com)
• Vintage Media Pulls Out All The Stops Trying to Blame #ObamaReidShutdown on GOP (thegatewaypundit.com)
• Every government shutdown ever, in one chart (washingtonpost.com)