Republicans and Confusion

In general I am all in favor of having solid choices. For voters that is. This means that at election time each side of the political spectrum should be able to articulate a clear, or at least fairly clear, idea of its attitude towards the larger issues of the day.

Like Medicare. Like the economy. Like the things we spend our money on.

It looks as if we will fall short of this modest goal in the upcoming 2012 election because the Republicans are all over the lot.

Just this week we discovered that they are hell bent on holding the line on the debt limit – they are adamant they oppose raising it. Yet we also discovered that their very own economic plan requires that limit to be raised.

If they aren’t confused, I certainly am.

Now we hear from John Boehner that he isn’t opposed to limiting Medicare to the wealthy or forcing them to pay more for the service. In other words he will listen to arguments in favor of means testing in health care.

But he is resolutely opposed to raising taxes on those very same folks. He says it’s unfair to ask them to chip in more just because they’re wealthy.

Is it just me, or is this confusing?

Let me see: if I were rich I would be asking why I have to shoulder a larger cost of health care but not taxes. I would be asking Boehner whose side he is on. Then again, were I poor, I would be asking why I should shoulder a larger burden of taxation, but not of health care. I would be asking Boehner whose side he is on.

I think we can get to the root of all this confusion by realizing, or by assuming, that the Republicans are making things up on the fly. There is no coherence in their economic policy because they haven’t sat down and thought it all through. They are advocating contradictory positions and hoping no one notices. They are trying to grab our attention in the headlines without bothering to fill out the details.

This is very much a continuation of the Bush regime. Unfortunately, as we learned to our cost back then, the details actually matter. Numbers have to add up. Things like the budget need to be thought through. Bush presented himself as a fiscal conservative while engaging in wildly radical tax policies that had far reaching and long lasting effects well beyond his term in office. Then again, no one called him on it, so maybe the Republicans think they can continue to position themselves as spending cutters without actually coming up with a plan to cut spending. They can cry that they are holding the line of debt while they quietly raise the debt. They can, as Reagan did, shout that they are cutting the deficit, while they are actually blowing it skyward.

Meanwhile, the Democrats aren’t much better. They are coherent. They are simply weak. Obama consistently takes the number we need to target, and then divides through by some other number he plucks from the air in order to arrive at a third number he then presents as his negotiating starting point, knowing full well that he will, inevitably, retreat to yet a fourth number during those negotiations. Upon arrival at this vastly inadequate end point he then expects us to support him as victorious.

No thank you.

We survived the recession by the skin of our teeth. We could have emerged in much better condition, but we were hobbled throughout by our depressingly weak leadership and the ability of the rich and powerful to protect themselves at our cost.

Behind the scenes there was a much greater consistency in policy making. Those with influence threw back attempts to use the crisis as a rallying point for lasting reform. They watered down both the bank and health care reform efforts such that neither appear to have achieved their aims. This is especially true of bank reform.

It is in this setting that the Republican confusion makes sense.

They don’t need a coherent policy because they are simply trying to defend privilege. They are not trying to roll back the social programs that their more avid supporters hate so much. Yes, they shout about such an effort, but in the background that fuss is simply a means to gain sufficient power to maintain the status quo. They are not the radicals that their zealot base wants. They are afraid of the political backlash they would face were they to be honest about undoing those social programs. So they shout and brag. But they produce plans that make little change.

And when they accidentally produce a radical plan? They run away from it. Exhibit A: the Ryan Medicare plan. It is astonishing how quickly that “epic and bold” – their words, not mine – plan was consigned to the trash heap once the Republicans got wind of voter reactions.

Bold? Not so much.

Confusing? Definitely.

Entertaining? Absolutely.

Edifying? Not at all.

And that’s the problem.

After three long decades of Republicans saying one thing and doing another – they are fiscally irresponsible and yet like to appear so conservative – I was hoping we had arrived at a point where they felt empowered to come out of the closet with their anti-social agenda. The country could then have debated how we want to divide our wealth and to what extent we want to redistribute it. Do we want to be more or less unequal? Do we want to help or abandon our elderly, poor and young? Do we want save or spend? These are among the questions that a more coherent Republican platform could have pushed into the limelight.

Instead we have evasion, muddle, self-contradiction, and confusion.

I would have welcomed a strong argument over priorities. I still do. But for such an argument to take place we need two sides capable of articulating an argument without flip-flopping all over the place.

At the moment we don’t have that. Which is why I am not looking forward to this next election. And it is also the reason why there is an almost historical lack of support for any of the Republican candidates. All the better ones are running for cover.

Maybe they’re as confused as I am.