I believe I'm detecting a strategy from the Democrats both nationally and locally with regard to the results of the midterm elections. It is this: let people experience the consequence of what they voted for, and then reap the benefits of being the party that saves them from themselves.
The short story:
1. The Republicans are running a variation of the Shock Doctrine as their strategy.
2. The Dems, both national and statewide , are forcing them to make hard public policy choices which the Dems can use to score political points and gain traction for the 2012 elections.
3. This is a high-stakes game and the results are far form certain.
4. There is a danger that great harm will be done to most vulnerable both locally the nationally.
5. Even if the strategy plays out well for the Dems, they must be positioned to win the messaging ofwar that will be part of the battle.
The longer story:
I attended a Townhall meeting on Wednesday. Present were 3 state representatives, Bohak, Farrar, and I think Watson. It had been called by the Springbranch school board, to inform parents voters about the coming cuts to the educational budget. Additionally, they got to ask questions to legislators about these cuts.
After hearing the gory details - huge educational cuts , no local ability to rise revenue because it would be captured by Robinhood provisions and sent elsewhere, etc. - I stood and said:
"You've told us what can't be done, tell us what we can do.!" Farrar, the head of the House Democratic caucus answered for the panel and said , in essence, that they, the people's representatives, were waiting for the people to tell them what they wanted done.
It occurred to me later that was again, in essence, what Obama's budget said to the House Republicans. The budget did not propose entitlement reform. It offered a laundry list of possibilities and, said here you choose!
GOP Denounces Absence of Entitlements Overhaul President Barack Obama's $3.7 trillion budget plan unveiled Monday punts the most pressing fiscal issues driving up U.S. debt to at least later this year, when the White House and Republicans are expected to meet behind closed doors to tackle deficit reduction.
Republicans denounced Mr. Obama's spending plan as a failure of presidential leadership-"an unserious budget," as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) put it-citing a failure to address the growth of Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs.
The Republican game plan going into the midterms had been to run against Obama to run against Obamacare. In other words, they would be the party of protests of opposition. The polls going into the election showed the potential for success in this particular approach. The Republicans were not anymore popular then the Democrats , perhaps even less so. The angry tea party people, the unmotivated Obama core voters, and the usual dynamics of a midterm election produced the Republican victories which we saw.
Let's consider for a second the logical underpinnings of the Republican position prior to the midterms.
The Shock Doctrine At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq's civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves.... Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the "War on Terror" to Halliburton and Blackwater.... After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans's residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.... These events are examples of "the shock doctrine": using the public's disorientation following massive collective shocks - wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.
Well, we didn't have a tsunami or a bloody invasion or a hurricane, but we have had the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression. Republican reaction under Obama has been to say no to all constructive efforts to deal with the ongoing consequences of that disaster. The consequence of this strategy has been to sharpen the crisis and open the door to the policies and events which are now unfolding in Washington and Wisconsin.
If I am right, then we will get to see how far the state and national Dems want to carry this strategy. At some point the Republicans will have to govern, vote for something. Then the Dems get to be the critics of hard/harsh and bitter policy choices. The irony will be that Repubs have created the very conditions that will have forced them to make these unpopular choices. As Farrar kept saying, "This is what smaller government and no taxes looks like..."
The last thing I read nationally was that the Senate Dems were willing to go along with most/all of the cuts proposed by the House Repubs. That angers me, but it is consistent with the strategy I am detecting. Further, it means the Repubicans have to address the third rail issue of entitlement reform because most of current Republican cuts are purely political theater or grandstanding. They will not solve the deficit problem since the lion share of that problem is in entitlements!
One last note. This strategy of letting the public taste the bitter fruit of electing hard core right wingers to office will only work if the Dems can blame the Repubs for the resulting train wreck. Given the media and messaging environment and history of the last several decades, that is NOT a certainty at all, quite the contrary.
