GOP HAS NO SENSE OF DIRECTION

"If the public puts us in the majority, they're saying that they want us to go forward." Thus spoketh Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!

If the Republicans do gain a majority in the House (and possibly the Senate) next Tuesday, the direction is backwards. "Backwards" is the promise the GOP, along with the Tea Party, has made for the past two years. They are committed, at least rhetorically, to unspecified reduced spending, repealing or gutting health care reform, and less government in areas such as regulation of the financial industry, the chief culprit for the current deep recession. With these policy promises, along with a host of other anti-change positions such as anti-immigration reform, it is difficult to see how McCarthy and his fellow right wing promisers can claim that a GOP/Tea Party victory is anything but regressive. About the only policy they seem determined at least to continue is President George W. Bush's tax cuts for upper income earners.

But the comforting and reassuring thought is that we are a country that seldom makes great leaps forward or backward in public policy. The fundamental pattern of policy making in this country is to legislate a policy base and then expand it bit by bit over time--incrementalism. Or, if it can be done, shrink it slowly--decrementalism. There have been a few windows of opportunity for what can be called great leaps forward, such as the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt in the mid-1930s, and the civil rights/Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. In both cases, these quantum leaps in policy were possible because the political stars were in the correct alignment. That is, a progressive Democratic President and very large majorities of like-minded Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate. Republicans have not had a similar alignment since the l920s and that was not progressive, nor have there been serious efforts by Republicans to undo the major pieces of our social policy.

Despite the nostalgia some still have for the conservative era of Reaganism when there were some budget cuts and deregulation, there was no repeal or gutting of the New Deal or the social policies of President Johnson. Perhaps the closest we have seen to a presidentially led effort to make a major overhaul of social policy was W. Bush's failed attempt to overhaul social security by privatizing a share of tax payments and putting the money into the hands of Wall Street. What we did get from Reagan and W. Bush was a great leap upward in the national debt because of their upper income/business-biased tax cuts, accompanied by huge increases in defense spending to fight the Cold War and launch hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The key point is that great policy leaps in either direction require that a President and Congress be in alignment on the direction in which they want to go, and the Congress must have very large majorities to make it happen. Happily, neither will be the case for the next two years. President Obama with his veto power will still be in office and whatever the size of a GOP majority in either chamber, that majority will be too small to even get such direction-changing legislation to the President's desk. And it is not even certain that, despite their loud promises, they will even achieve small steps backwards over the next two years.

All of this makes it even more certain that the real GOP congressional strategy is not the achievement of change, but to continue the "Party of No" strategy of the current Congress. That is, the only real change they will be seeking is a change of President in 2012, supporting that goal by thwarting any new or renewed efforts by Obama to deal progressively with our economic/jobs problems. So McCarthy, speak not of the way forward, your real direction is backward. Likewise for the rest of the GOP and its Tea Party adherents.

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P.S. I don't want it thought that I just have knee jerk reaction against anything a Republican says. I am in complete agreement with , of all people, Karl Rove in his latest assessment of Sarah Palin as a possible President. In an interview with a British newspaper, Rove expressed doubt that Palin had the "gravitas" to be President. "There are high standards that the American people have for it (the presidency) and they require a certain level of gravitas, and they want to look at a candidate and say 'that candidate is doing things that gives me more confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world'."

Can't disagree with that when it comes to non-gravitas Palin.