If you have watched any of the many Republican presidential debates and have managed to catch any of the very few (and strangely hidden) Democratic debates, you have observed one very distinct difference between the two political parties. And that difference says a lot about where the ideologies are for both.
On the Republican side, the candidates have no desire to indicate a willingness to “cross the aisle” to pass legislation. Almost any mention of the other party in the exchanges between the candidates makes note of the alleged failures of Obama’s legislative achievements.
You never hear any of the candidates bragging about the times they crossed the aisle to work with like-minded Democrats to push a legislative initiative. Quite to the contrary, the candidates all seem intent in showing that each is more resistant than his or her opponents to working with, let alone supporting, Democrats in legislative efforts.
The Democrats’ candidates, on the other hand, are much more inclined to talk about “finding common ground” and “working across the aisle” to push legislation. At last Sunday’s debate, they were asked to comment on President Obama’s “regret,” as he expressed it in his State of the Union address the week before. That regret was that he had not been able to bring the parties (and, implicitly, the country) together during his presidency.
Each of the three Democrats responded with hard evidence of their ability and willingness to work with Republicans. And they were proud in pointing to specific instances of when they had. Even Bernie Sanders (the self-described democratic socialist) talked with pride of having worked with John McCain on a bill to improve veterans’ rights. Martin O’Malley spoke of how he had gotten support from Republican legislators to pass major legislation on gun control and climate change as governor of Maryland. And Hillary Clinton pointed to her years as senator when she had often joined with Republicans to pass legislation.
You just don’t hear that kind of talk from the Republicans. They aren’t even asked that kind of question (presumably because it isn’t one that any moderator would think they would respond to). Instead, when they are pressed at all, the Republicans are more likely to be asked how they will balance the budget with the massive tax cuts they want, or how they will close the income gap when all of their programs seem to favor the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
I think Barbara Boxer said it best after the State of the Union speech. It was the thirty-fourth in a row that she had attended (and the last: she’s retiring from the Senate at the end of this year). Commenting on the changes she has seen in Congress over those years, she said that the Democrats have moved towards the center and the Republicans have moved to the far right. And it’s hard to dispute that characterization.
Consider that in 1964, Barry Goldwater (who today would be a “moderate” in the party) was so extreme that some Republicans (who wouldn’t be accepted in the party today) refused to endorse him even after he had been nominated. And consider that George McGovern, who was the Democrats’ standard bearer in 1972, would be viewed as being on the outer fringe of his party today. Only Bernie Sanders comes close to McGovern, and even he isn’t proposing anything as drastic as a 100% tax on inheritances over $5 million (as McGovern initially did, before he scaled the percentage back to 55% in his presidential campaign).
In the current iteration of the parties, Democrats seek to accommodate, while Republicans continually resist. The Affordable Care Act is a great example. The essence of it was the Republican alternative to Hillary Clinton’s proposed national healthcare bill in 1993. Twenty years later, not a single Republican legislator supported it, and most would gladly see it repealed. Climate change is another good example. The carbon tax was a Republican proposal in the 1990s. Today, to even concede that climate change has a human component is anathema to the Republican candidates. Bill Clinton got bi-partisan support for modest gun control (an assault weapons ban and mandatory background checks) during his tenure in office. Today, no Republican will acknowledge that there is even a need to control the availability of guns, let alone vote for the most innocuous of measures on the subject.
Immigration was a big concern in the 1980s. That’s when Ronald Reagan agreed to an amnesty bill that legalized the residency of millions of undocumented aliens at the time. Today, even a bill that provides for a daunting and circuitous path to citizenship (as long as ten years to even apply for citizenship—hardly “amnesty” under even the loosest of definitions) is damned by every Republican candidate, most of whom, instead, argue about which of them can build the taller and more impenetrable wall.
When then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said at the outset of Obama’s presidency that his number one job was making sure that Obama didn’t get re-elected, he wasn’t just making a typical political statement. He was charting the course for his party and telegraphing his plans, which he then carried out most effectively by denying Obama any Republican votes on the Affordable Care Act, the Economic Recovery Bill, and a host of other center-left measures.
In earlier times, predecessors of McConnell (the gravelly-voiced Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen comes to mind) would have worked on a bill like the Affordable Care Act to get compromises that would have made the law more palatable for Republicans. It’s called compromise, which is the essential requirement to “work across the aisle.”
And compromise used to be a positive, something that public servants understood was part of the job of faithfully representing diverse constituents. Listen to the Republican candidates now and you don’t hear much talk of compromise. Instead you get promises to repeal Obamacare, to deport all the “illegal immigrants,” and to continue to deny that climate change exists.
For Republicans in 2016, it’s that aisle itself that has become impenetrable.