The Party of No

Time magazine correspondent Michael Grunwald is the author of The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era, a new book that examines the president’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the stimulus package. In an insightful interview with Slate.com, he discusses the difference between the White House’s nuanced, deliberative attempts to promote the bill to the American public, and the Republican response: “The Republican message was much simpler: No.”

Later, he talks about the current Republican nominee’s approach: “There’s a reason most of Romney’s ads feature the stimulus... He’s running against the idea that government can produce positive change.”

This is a nice illustration of the pervasive sickness infecting the conservative movement, or at least what passes for it these days. As many of the ideas of Reagan Era conservatism have been absorbed into the mainstream, as ideological purity has taken precedence over bipartisan pragmatism, as the extremes of the American right have gained more traction, dragging the center toward them, conservatism has taken on a distinctly nihilistic edge. This manifested in various ways throughout the Republican primaries: the dunderheaded, bumper sticker bravado of Rick Perry; the boldly intellectual yet cravenly opportunistic bluster of Newt Gingrich; the frothing radicalism of Michele Bachmann; the appealing vapidity and corporate festishism of Herman Cain – all are symptoms of a disease that corrodes the party’s very soul. And, of course, so too is the resulting candidacy of Mitt Romney, a campaign that has from the beginning attempted to sell its very emptiness as vision. This shape-shifting, weak-kneed, disingenuous, philosophically bereft cipher has taken pains to avoid specifics or sticky definitions. In fact, there is only one thing he has been willing to be, one identity he has been willing to fully inhabit at all times in all situations: Not Obama.

This has been the Republican Party’s favored and only approach during the Obama presidency, ever since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, after a decisive midterm victory for his party, that the Republicans’ “top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” Obstructionism. Contrarianism. Rhetorical dodges and philosophical pirouettes. Bold-faced hypocrisy. All of these were merely benchmarks along the descent into all-out nihilism. Simply put, the Republican Party of 2012 stands for nothing – unless relentless, knee-jerk, lockstep opposition to any and everything the president says, does or wants can be said to qualify as an ethos.

The Republican Party has made it clear that it believes government is the enemy. Big government is the obstacle to progress. Government intervention is an intrusion on our freedoms – unless, of course, it furthers the conservative agenda and/ or pleases the all-important base. But if government is such an intractable, unsolvable problem, why are they trying so hard to be a bigger part of it? Sure, they can claim that their goal is to take control of big government so as to dismantle it, but Republicans in power have consistently proven just as quick and willing as Democrats to expand the size of the federal government and increase deficit spending. Their quest for ideological purity, coupled with their desperation to
win at all costs, has given rise to an increasingly self-devouring philosophy. They seek to undermine the very intellectual foundation of our federal system, while at the same time attempting to secure for themselves greater control over its machinery. Any inherent and painfully obvious contradicitions in their positions are simply ignored or denied. Their only real belief is opposition, their only true aim victory over perceived enemies, their only philosophy the desire to win at what they view as a zero-sum game. In a word: no.