What to Say About the Government Shutdown?

~ Laura

Well, government is up and running again. I’m not sure what to say about that colossal waste of time, energy, and money. Is there any silver lining? I can’t see one. Does this mark the end of the Republican party?

UPDATE: From Ross Douthat:

But with tonight’s vote done and the government open once again, I want to return to the theme of my Sunday column, and stress once more the essential absurdity of the specific populist gambit we’ve just witnessed unfold, drag on, and now finally collapse. However you slice and dice the history, the strategery, and the underlying issues, the decision to live with a government shutdown for an extended period of time — inflicting modest-but-real harm on the economy, needlessly disrupting the lives and paychecks of many thousands of hardworking people, and further tarnishing the Republican Party’s already not-exactly-shiny image — in pursuit of obviously, obviouslyunattainable goals was not a normal political blunder by a normally-functioning political party. It was an irresponsible, dysfunctional and deeply pointless act, carried out by a party that on the evidence of the last few weeks shouldn’t be trusted with the management of a banana stand, let alone the House of Representatives.

Absurd. Irresponsible. Dysfunctional. Deeply Pointless. Harm. Disrupting.

It didn’t just tarnish the Republican Party. It tarnished our entire government.

Published by Laura

19 thoughts on “What to Say About the Government Shutdown?”

  1. No silver lining, though recovering the house in 2014 and keeping the senate might have been worth it.

    Republicans still sound completely defiant to my ears, though I’d like to hear from others if they here ways of moving forward with bipartisan ideas. I only hear dems talking about reconciliation.

    I don’t see how we’re not going to find ourselves in the same place again unless, as Krugman says, the “non-extremists” start being a force in the rep party.

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  2. Given that your state is about to re-elect a Republican governor by a massive landslide and that he will likely become the early frontrunner for 2016 as a result, I’m going with “no” to your last question. But there’s surely no benefit whatsoever accruing to the GOP from what happened.

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  3. That is a question, actually, whether anyone would vote against Christie for governor because of the shutdown.

    I wouldn’t have voted for him in the first place because an alderman in Chicago convinced me in 1992 that even if you liked a particular Republican, you couldn’t vote for him, because you would be giving power to the Republican apparatus that you disagreed with. He convinced me that giving power to the apparatus had significant practical effects, on who was appointed to head individual agencies, who controlled the committees in congress and in the state house, . . . . As an example, that Scott Rigell might be OK, but that if he’s going to vote for Boehner for Speaker it doesn’t matter if he’s one of the lone Republican voices that voted against the shutdown. He convinced us that you had to remember who you were handing control of government to when you voted for an individual who would participate in it.

    (of course the same logic applies for a Republican, and applies to anyone who has strong views on any position that will be decided in the government. I’ve never been a centerist, so I don’t know how the logic applies if one honestly thinks switches opinions about which party they like — as opposed to following a candidate).

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  4. I continue to be confused by politics, like why Ron Johnson & Tammy Baldwin can be elected by the same group of people (in WI, and, in other unlikely pairings, Landrieu & Vitter, LA, and Nelson and Rubio, in FL).

    Is that something you would try to understand/explain in your academic guise, Laura? Are those just local stories and personal narratives of individual candidates? Or do people purposely balance their state representatives?

    (Those are states in which Republican Senator voted NO and the Democrat voted YES).

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  5. Given the shutdown, had Booker run for governor, he might have had a fighting chance. (This would have been a reversal of the time that Christie Todd Whitman nearly beat Bradley in a Senate race that sort of became a referendum on state-level political issues.) But Booker instead kept his eye on the Senate seat that he expected would open up in 2014 (or that he would force open, through a primary challenge if necessary.) To some extent, it’s the failure of the Democrats to find a strong candidate that is going to give Christie his landslide.

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  6. In Wisconsin, I think it can be attributed to turnout. When Tammy ran in 2012, there was huge turnout here in Madison and the other more-liberal towns. (I think Tammy personally knows every single Madison resident, I’m not kidding.) It was a presidential election year too, which also brought out more dems. (Obama came to Madison more than most candidates.) When Ron Johnson ran in 2010, it was a midterm election. Lower turnout, overall, and more importantly, I suspect that fewer students/Obama-voters made it to the polls.

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  7. What Douthat doesn’t seem to want to admit is that, at the national level, the Republican Party is highly dependent on the tea party crazies: without those gerry-mandered districts of extremely conservative, and fearful, older whites in the South and West, the GOP would not have its slim majority in the House, and thus no influence in either executive or legislative branches in Washington. (Remember: in the last House election, Dems had many more votes than Reps nationally). He may want to part ways with them, but, if he continues to want to hold onto the Republican Party, he can’t….

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  8. Silver lining? It gave me a lot of extra time for backing and forthing with MH about whether Obamacare is triggering more part time employment. And for moving from ‘squalid’ to merely ‘untidy’ in our recently-moved-in house. And I get paid for this! Thank you, American Taxpayer. It does underline the ‘have-six-months’ advice of financial guys, those of my coworkers who didn’t have a college fund to raid (we’re gonna put it back!) were in trouble.

    It was confusing and poorly thought through on the part of the Reeps. It was not popular with centrist voters, not a bit. It moves Cuccinelli from slight to prohibitive underdog for Governor of Va., which contest is week after next. My guess is that it’s largely forgotten before 2014, Dems will do their God damnedest to make it a live issue and the Reeps try and glide. Might have enough lingering effect to put the Senate out of reach for the Reeps.

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  9. I was reading someone bemoaning the Republican future and felt like progressives heard similar things in 2001+.

    http://www.salon.com/2000/11/08/nader_26/

    and all the antagonism “mainstream” democrats shared against Nader (and the “extreme” left, which is more than just the folks who support Nader). I don’t know any tea partyers, but I do know Naderites, so I feel like I’ve seen the same arguments the TP makes from the other end of the spectrum.

    When I think I hate everyone, I read Gitlin’s column on the 2000 race.

    http://www.salon.com/2000/10/28/nader_24/

    You could re-write the diatribe w/ Tea Party and the shutdown and read something very similar. Are they going to listen?

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  10. Nate Silver had a good piece about the political effects of the shutdown a few days back. http://www.grantland.com/fivethirtyeight/story/_/id/9802433/nate-silver-us-government-shutdown. Bottom line: the answer to Laura’s question is no. More generally, the whole episode is unlikely to have much electoral effect.

    There was another piece I saw today, with a Yale professor who mentioned, inter alia, that he did not personally know a single person who identifies with the tea party. I wonder if anyone here knows anyone who does? In my case, I think the brother-in-law of one of my best friends might: he is a small businessman, in a low-margin business (he owns a trailer park), and he is very conservative. But I usually avoid political conversations with friends, so I don’t know for sure.

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    1. I’m on Facebook with basically my old high school. There’s a chunk tea party people there.

      As for Silver’s thing, I agree that talk of getting back the House is very much overly optimistic. But that’s a very quick response of his and he doesn’t mention primaries. If the effect of the shutdown is more Republican primary challengers (or rather more challengers with money and name recognition), it will have a negative impact there that you won’t see the polls. Also, I’ve been mostly interested in how this might influence governor’s races, especially Republican governors in states that voted for Obama in 2012. He doesn’t discuss those, but I think they will be more vulnerable because they can’t be gerrymandered and because they hold offices where effective governing is nearly the whole kettle of fish.

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  11. The Princeton election consortium has some analysis, too on effects. Sam Wang is predicting 6mo polling effects, but also says the shutdowns may be more significant in the “gerrymandered” district states, where the democrats have been packed, leaving some suburban districts with independents who may be swayed by the dysfunction.

    http://election.princeton.edu/

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  12. I’m related to several tea party folks. They’re real. They’re completely illogical and cannot be reasoned with. They really believe the stuff they say, but they can’t really tell you why. I can only hope that their numbers shrink.

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    1. There was a good article in the WSJ a day or two ago, suggesting that the tea partiers are:

      1. “Jacksonians,” i.e., suspicious of all entrenched power and inclined to believe that government favors and labors to advance the interests of big business and elite institutions over the common good. So explaining that most Harvard graduates don’t share their views doesn’t move them much. (Chicago and Yale grads evoke the same skepticism, I hasten to add.)

      2. In a more Marxist vein, mostly small business owners with low-margin, low-wage businesses (like the trailer park I mentioned). As such, they are hostile to major increases in regulation, especially mandated increases in labor costs, which they think will destroy their profit margins. Thus, explaining that Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein don’t share their views also doesn’t move them much.

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      1. There’s more than one aspect of Jackson’s views that I see there, but looks like the tea party has devolved to basically a straightforward self-interest group of old people trying to protect their government-provided benefits by making sure that others get as little as possible. You’ve got a bunch of boomers whose ideas are that entitlement form is necessary, must start immediately, and that it must not touch Medicare for those already getting it and must not provide any help for those who aren’t old enough yet.

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    2. “They really believe the stuff they say, but they can’t really tell you why. I can only hope that their numbers shrink.”

      And then they get really mad at you for asking them if they have any evidence for their beliefs (like my aunt, who is only a couple of years older than I am, saying that Obama just scares her).

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  14. You asked if there were any benefits from this thing: I was sorta snarky in my first answer, talking about the benefits to dave.s. and the .s. family, but here is an article from Breitbart: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/18/Business-Community-Backing-Moderates-in-GOP-Civil-War-Against-Conservatives suggesting that Main Street Reeps will try and take the party back from the trogs. Being as I am kinda fond of Main Street Reeps, I wish them success and it can constitute a benefit.

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