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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Robert Schlesinger
If you want an example of how entrenched political habits remain in Washington, consider President Obama's visit recently to the House Republican Conference.
"I would just say that we have to think about tone," the president said, repeatedly picking up on a theme he had laid out in his State of the Union address. Politicians, he argued, need to "close the gap a little bit between rhetoric and reality" and treat each other civilly. How else can they hope to eventually agree? And his appearance nicely illustrated his point. Both sides were blunt and forceful but managed to avoid appearing angry or overly partisan.
Then almost as soon as the meeting was over, Washington returned to its regularly scheduled programming, with both sides tallying political point-scoring.
Americans
United for Change, a liberal group allied with the Democrats, for
example, quickly sent out an E-mail bragging that "Obama calls out
Changing the tone of politics is fine. But in the meantime, the noise machine needs to be fed, and the base is hungry for its red meat. In fact, it's one of the ironies of contemporary politics that some of the groups that rail loudest and longest about changing Washington's political culture -- the activists and true believers who make up each party's base -- are a big part of that culture's intractability.
"We've got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together," Obama told the Republicans. Some voters "don't know sometimes this is just politics, what you guys -- or folks on my side -- do sometimes." Words matter, not least because activists have a tendency to believe them.
This is a particular (but not exclusive) problem for the
Listening to the Republican talking points about health reform, Obama noted, "you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot" and that the president "is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
If you doubt that, consider the results of a recent poll of 2,000 Republicans, commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos but performed by the independent pollster Research 2000. Fully 63 percent of GOP-ers think that Obama is a socialist, while almost a quarter of Republicans think the president "wants the terrorists to win." (One third weren't sure whether or not he supports the terrorists.) A plurality of Republicans (39 percent) think Obama should be impeached (32 percent don't, and 29 percent are unsure).
Republicans are in a strong position.
They have a core of animated,
angry, passionate supporters, which is what you especially need in a
nonpresidential election year. But that core could become an albatross
if the
Republican incumbents could be damned by swing voters for implacable opposition and damned by their base for any appearance of cooperation. This is especially true at a time when the inchoate tea-party movement is letting Republicans know that its support must be earned.
And the problem is fed by the unshakable faith from base voters in
both parties that they reside at the heart of the American mainstream.
They are like Mr. Dooley's definition of a fanatic: someone who "does
what he thinks the Lord would do if he knew the facts in the case."
Substitute "the people" for "the Lord," and you get the idea. It's an
inability to distinguish between political necessity and political
sufficiency. A motivated base is necessary to win a congressional
majority or the
After the 2008 elections, some conservatives argued that voters had
elected Obama because they thought the
But I frown when liberals indulge in the same kind of fantasies.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean,
appearing on Hardball days after the
"They vote for a conservative Republican who is totally against healthcare to tell the country they want a progressive healthcare program," the incredulous host, Chris Matthews, summarized. "Are voters crazy? Are voters crazy?"
Some surely are, especially those who see ideological affirmation in every election result. But crazier and more dangerous are the political leaders who cater to and nurse that particular delusion.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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Obama Can't Change Crazy Voters Or Crazy Politicians | Robert Schlesinger
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