A Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Republican Anarchists…

The New Yorker ran a piece yesterday chronicling the “Anarchists of the House,” a profile of the hardcore conservative House Republicans who drop bombs into the wheels of government.  The article is (not surprisingly) very unfavorable, arguing that the congressional Right’s ideological extremism has created “an inscrutable void of paranoia and formless rage… twisting the Republican Party into a band of anarchists.”  The latest right-wing innovations include withholding support from any Obama initiative, including those based on Republican principles (like Obamacare); procedural sabotage, like refusing to appoint NRLB commissioners or “block[ing] the appointment of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for three years”; and hostage-taking around the once routine vote to pay the country’s creditors, where Republicans “extract[ed] over a trillion dollars in spending cuts” from Obama.  The results have been fiscal austerity, the emasculation of many regulatory agencies, an historic slowdown in the passage of legislation, defeat of new gun control measures, the downing of a bipartisan immigration bill and lags in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Is Anarchy the new Birchism?

Has this strategy been successful?  The New Yorker argues that “the rational way to view these events is that Republicans have marginalized themselves.”  But is this really true?  I would argue that on issue after issue, Republicans have punched well above their weight in the face of a sometimes overwhelming Democratic majority.  Ever since the brief period of pseudo-bipartisan accord ended in mid-2009, the Right has been able to limit or cut discretionary spending (debt ceiling concessions, sequester), incapacitate or slow key regulatory agencies (CFPB, NLRB, DOL), kill any public option and delay Obamacare and generally cripple the Federal government’s ability to create new programs and laws.  All of these achievements are central objectives of the anti-government Right, and all have been accomplished while Democrats control the presidency and one or both houses of Congress.  This is in addition to the Republican wave at the state level passing all kinds of crazy socially conservative and anti-worker shit now that they control 27 legislatures and 30 governorships.  And the machinations of the most pro-elite Supreme Court since the 1930’s.  Obstructionist Republicans have suffered few setbacks at the polls, and are actually predicted by many to take back the Senate while retaining the House in 2014.

How did the Right pull it off?

How the fuck have these kooks been able to accomplish so much from a minority national position?  How is the Right even relevant after the Bush debacle and incredible economic collapse brought on by greedy capitalists on Wall Street?   I would argue that the Right propagates a clear ideological worldview that, although basically incoherent and lacking any real factual basis, they’ve stuck to and been able to clearly convey (that, that and boatloads of money…. like ruptured Titantic hulls filled with gold bars type money).  Slow job growth?  Government spending/Unions.  Economic sluggishness?  Government spending.  Poor education?  Unions.  Municipal decay?  Government spending/unions.  Basically everything boils down to government spending and unions destroy freedom and kill jobs.  The Right is also well organized at the state and local level, utilizing one of the last organized groups in America as foot soldiers (churchgoers).  And, conservative politicians, as anti-government legislation government legislators, are in the weirdly unique position of being able to enact their favored agenda just by showing up and not doing shit – kind of like anti-death penalty executioners or pacifist soldiers.

A tepid progressive response

The mainstream progressive response has been to assume the mantle of technocratic centrism and rail against these extremists and ideologues.  This is a tremendous mistake.  There is a bubbling anger in America, caused by 40 years of stagnating incomes, vanishing opportunities to climb the ladder and widespread industrial decay, which deserves a full-throated response.  Proposing “sensible,” centrist policies which fail to solve the problem even in their purest form, before they’re fed through the congressional sausage works (see: stimulus, healthcare, financial regulation), makes you look like you don’t have answers (which, in the case of national Democrats, you don’t).  At some point, voters will assess your record and realize that none of your proposals will help them much, the opposition won’t even allow these weak proposals through anyway, and you are therefore unable to govern.  At that point, voters will hand power to your ideologically driven foes who, although they may be headed into uncharted waters, are at least going somewhere.  The only answer for the Left is crafting a potent ideology of it own based on freedom, equal opportunity and democratic revival that can tap into the legitimate anger of Americans and become the alternative that people look to as they become increasingly disaffected with Washington politics.