There is nothing in the middle.
Jay Cost
October 11, 2013 1:31 PM
The findings of the newly released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll
are simply brutal for congressional Republicans. Not only are they
getting the lion's share of the blame for the government shutdown, but
President Obama's numbers have actually improved. Worse, Obamacare's numbers are improving, as well.
That poll caused quite a sensation on Twitter last
night, and while it is worse for Republicans than recent readings from
the Associated Press's poll, NBC News/Wall Street Journal has a long track record of solid readings. This is not a result to be taken lightly.
Moreover, it makes empirical sense considering the
message coming from congressional Republicans in the last week—or
perhaps better put the lack of a message. Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post aptly labeled this the "Seinfeld Shutdown,"
a shutdown about nothing. That is not how it was supposed to be, of
course. It was supposed to be a shutdown about Obamacare, but Republican
leaders were quickly sidetracked by low-hanging fruit like the closure
of the National Mall, Harry Reid's gaffes, and Obama's refusal to
negotiate. Tactically, this might have made sense, but strategically it
was a terrible move. If the shutdown was supposed to be about Obamacare,
then that should have been the only topic Republicans discussed.
Moreover, insofar as Republican leaders have
discussed Obamacare, they have done so ineptly, and have repeated Mitt
Romney's grievous mistakes from 2012. Looking at the topline numbers on
Obamacare, we can see it is very unpopular, but dig a little deeper and
only about 30 to 40 percent of people believe that the law will make
them worse off. This is a significant failure in political communication
by the Republican party. Government agencies like the Congressional
Budget Office and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have
warned since 2010—in their dry, technocratic rhetoric—that Obamacare was
going to harm middle class families. For weeks now stories have been
trickling out about people receiving letters from their insurers
notifying them that their rates are being doubled. For over a year we
have similarly heard stories about hiring freezes or hours being cut
because of Obamacare. And yet despite all this hard data, the public
still has not connected the dots.
The blame belongs not to the Tea Party, not to the
Republican grassroots, not to the back-benchers in the House, but to the
party's leaders, the ones who have the microphones stuck in their faces
every day. They, and only they, have the power to make the case to the
American people that Obamacare is such a danger to them that it needs to
be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Mitt Romney should have, but did
not, get on the television in late October 2012 to warn people that a
vote for Obama was a vote to double their premiums, make it harder for
grandma to get hospital care, and make it harder for you to make your
ends meet because of job cutbacks. Similarly, Republicans should have,
but did not, acknowledge that while the shutdown was harming certain
sectors of the country, it was far less damaging then the havoc
Obamacare is set to wreak on the people.
And so it is that people would rather have the
government reopened (largely a symbolic gesture as this shutdown has
left vast swaths of the country unaffected) than have Obamacare
dismantled (something that will prevent material harm done to millions
of middle class people).
Obamacare is not going to defeat itself. If it is
going to be taken down, it is up to the Republican party to formulate a
coalition of people who have been or will be made worse off because of
it. Those people are out there, but Republicans have failed to unite and
mobilize them under the party's banner. So long as they continue to
fail on this front, Obamacare will remain on the books. It has the
benefit of our system's status quo bias, and Democrats have an 80-year
track record of capturing interests through the distribution of
benefits, transforming them into party clients, and delivering them at
the ballot box.
Republican leaders tend to come from one of two
camps. The first is the go-along-to-get-along camp that is happy merely
to manage the never-ending growth of government. The second wants to cut
back on the size of government, but couches their rhetoric in the hazy,
forgotten past of the country's founding; their arguments against the
growth of government are always framed in terms of the Constitution, the
rights of man, or other abstract concepts that have little impact on
the lives of average American.
Ronald Reagan was the only political leader since
the New Deal to argue effectively that government should be reduced
because it is bad for people in a concrete sense. Yes, he talked about
the Founding, and yes he was willing to compromise where it counted. But
in his Inaugural Address he said, "Government is not the solution to
our problem; government is the problem." For the next quarter century,
American liberalism was on the run, so effective was Reagan's framing of
the debate.
Republicans who wonder why they have generally
failed to win national electoral victories since Reagan should ponder
his statement, and how they have failed to expand upon it. Poll after
poll indicates that today it is a popular position. People think
government is harming them. If Republicans want to win, not just
electoral victories, but policy victories, they need to follow the
Gipper and explain in real terms how government is harming average
Americans and how they will fix those harms. They have failed to do that
in general over the last decade, and they have failed to do that in
particular with Obamacare. It is a big reason why they only control the
House and why Obamacare is still on the books.
And if congressional Republicans are not prepared
to begin making that case loud and clear right now, the sooner they
capitulate the better. Their only hope of victory in this fight is to
convince the public that keeping Obamacare is worse than shutting down
the government. If they are not prepared to make that case, then they
have no hope of winning.
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