Faking Right (Weisberg on Slate)

[Recursion]

http://www.slate.com/id/2272766/

How the Republican Congress will abandon Tea Party ideas and legislate toward the center.

In the likely event that Republicans capture control of one or both houses of Congress next week, the new leaders will face a strategic question. Should they pursue the agenda of the Tea Party movement that brought them to power? Or should they try to mollify their party's base with gestures and symbols, without taking its radical ideology too seriously? While they'll never discuss this problem honestly, indications point in the latter direction. That is, the GOP's congressional leadership will feint right while legislating closer to the center.

The choice is between a Ronald Reagan strategy and a Newt Gingrich strategy. Reagan, who first rode a new conservative movement to the presidency in 1980, was a master of the right fake. After one brief and disastrous attempt to reduce Social Security spending in 1981, Reagan never seriously challenged federal spending again. But Reagan sounded so convincing in his rhetorical flights that most conservatives and liberals walk around today thinking that he cut government. Reagan was just as slippery with the religious right, embracing them while wasting little political capital on issues like abortion or school prayer. President George W. Bush followed this same model, humoring the base while letting government expand.

After Gingrich became speaker of the House in 1994, he was much more literal-minded. He and the Contract with America Republicans made the terrible mistake of taking their own anti-government rhetoric seriously and thinking they had a mandate to implement it. They proposed a budget that really would have slashed federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. And when Bill Clinton wouldn't roll over for them, they were willing to shut down the government, which they had convinced themselves everyone hated.

A recent Wall Street Journal article suggested that the future leaders of a Republican House remember Gingrich's mistake and intend to avoid repeating it. The House candidates most likely to win are experienced politicians who understand they're being handed a gift, not a mandate. They don't think working with Democrats is evil. On the big picture tax and budget issues, they plan compromise with President Obama.

The actual governable center of the country doesn't move very quickly. But hopefully we won't have to find out if this piece is accurate...