In the Senate, there were already signs that an emergent group of 14 centrist senators from both parties was looking to make an impact on the fiscal battles ahead. The group, led by Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, has already planned to meet in the coming weeks. Mr. McCain, also a member, said Wednesday, “We are not going to let this kind of partisanship cripple this body and injure the American people.” (From this Morning's NYT)
Really? How are they going to stop it? The Times article goes on:
Speaker John A. Boehner’s strategy always involved a gamble that his members would come away from this clash chastened. He intentionally allowed his most conservative members to sit in the driver’s seat as they tried in vain to get the Senate to accept one failed measure after another — first to defund the health care law, then to delay it, then to chip away at it. His hope was that they would realize the fight was not worth having again.
The worry among many Republicans is that the Tea Party flank will not get the message, mainly because their gerrymandered districts are so conservative they do not have to listen.
Theda Skocpol in a Salon interview this morning thinks they and the rest of us should be worried:
A decade ago, you observed a long-term decline in American civic participation and the groups that used to foster it. What does the Tea Party mean for that?
At the grassroots, it’s a return to some traditional methods. The grassroots Tea Party actually formed, at their height, about 900 local groups – genuinely new groups. I wrote in Diminished Democracy that the Right has been more effective at either sustaining or recreating federated action, which is the key to American politics – to be able to organize across many districts, many states, and still be part of something national. The Tea Party is a different kind of manifestation of that.
They’ve actually destroyed the organizational integrity of the Republican Party right now. That’s why the situation is so scary for the United States. The Washington press corps wants to write again and again that both sides should compromise. The fact of the matter is that Obama doesn’t have anybody to compromise with. He can’t make a deal, because the Tea Party forces have discombobulated the Republican leadership. John Boehner can’t make a deal with anybody. He can’t deliver even on what he wants for breakfast.
“Destroyed the organizational integrity of the Republican Party” how so?
Republican Party committees can’t necessarily keep themselves at all levels from being taken over or end-run-ed by Tea Party forces. The leadership in the Senate, [and] especially in the House, can’t control their various actions, can’t use a combination of carrots and sticks to put things together. It means even that in elections, Republicans can’t control the message they’re sending out. You can declare that you’re going to have outreach to women and minorities, and the next day Rush Limbaugh can say god-knows-what. People can show up at the U.S. Capitol with a confederate flag in front of the White House. Things are kind of out of control.
So the answer is No. They won't feel chastened, and if McCain, Graham et al. have a plan to chasten them, I'd be interested to hear about it. The only real solution is to make sure that after 2014 the Republicans remain the minority party until the Tea Party dissipates.
What strikes me in the media accounts of this is the narrative that the Tea Party is stupid because they don't know how to play the game, and this gambit was doomed to fail. What they don't take into consieration is that they could care less about the Beltway establishment and that they are on a mission to destroy it. There's a part of me that wants to cheer them on, but I have no reason to believe that something better would emerge from the rubble if they succeeded. There are plenty of good reasons to believe it would be a lot worse.