GOP Centrists Ask Democrats To Clean Up Their Mess Again

There was a revealing conversation on All In with Chris Hayes last night between former Republican congressman and never Trumper David Jolly and former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. The segment was ostensibly about how Republicans are actually talking about impeachment more than Democrats in an attempt to fire up the GOP base. I recently saw a study (which I can’t locate right now – update: h/t to CwV at DKos for providing the link) which found that, of the over 800 major Democratic primary candidates running this year, only one specifically ran with a message of impeaching Trump. And he was thoroughly trounced in the primary.

Barbara Boxer made the point that all politics is local and that Democrats can not and should not just run on impeaching the President. The electorate understands that Trump is always there in the background but Democrats will win by talking about issues like health care, inequality, wages, etc. that are specific to their districts. In addition, a message about the culture of corruption includes the possibility of impeachment without overtly stating it.

It was Jolly’s point of view, however, that was most revealing. If I can paraphrase, it went something like this: “Trump has now admitted to participating in a felonious crime while in office. My Republican colleagues are spineless and won’t do anything to restrain him. Trump is clearly unfit and needs to be removed. Democrats need to start explicitly talking about impeachment and preparing and explaining to the American public why it needs to happen”.

Essentially, Jolly’s argument is that the Republican party is totally irresponsible but Democrats must use their political capital to clean up the mess that Republicans have made. For the last forty years, at least, I have heard one version or another of this argument from supposed “centrists” and moderates.

Jimmy Carter was a good and decent man but perhaps a poor politician. Despite, or because of, the fact that Ford had already pardoned Nixon, Carter was elected to show the country and the world that America had moved beyond Watergate. His focus on human rights has much more to do with the fall of the Soviet Union than the myth of Reagan will currently allow. And what did this get Carter and Democrats? Just attacks from Reagan that they didn’t understand realpolitik and were soft on communism.

Bill Clinton was elected to pull America out the G.H.W. Bush recession and deal with the debt crisis created by Reagan. Again, Democratic political capital, such as raising taxes, was used not so much to advance Democratic interests but to deal with the mess Republicans left behind.

Similarly, after G.W. Bush turned Clinton’s surpluses into the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression, along with two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a legacy of war crimes including torture, it was up to Obama to “leave the past behind and move the country forward”. That meant not pursuing prosecutions of the war criminals and the bankers. Again, despite clear majorities, a large chunk of political capital had to be used just to create an inadequate stimulus package and what capital was left went toward a kluge to expand healthcare, probably Obama’s greatest legacy. The result? Obama was pilloried by the GOP for the exploding debt and “socializing” medicine.

We will rinse and repeat this story when Trump leaves office. It will be “time to move on for the sake of the country” and, again, the exploding debt will have to be dealt with, despite the fact that Republicans, for the third time in forty years, promised that their massive tax cuts would pay for themselves when they won’t.

It is no wonder that many Democrats don’t really care about how Medicare for All or other single-payer plans will be paid for. Republicans have gotten away with not paying for their tax cuts for two generations now, yet Democrats are always required to be fiscally responsible. And it is a testament to the power of these elite centrist and moderates who refuse to ever hold the GOP accountable for their actions that Republicans are still considered the most fiscally responsible party.

If Jolly or other supposed centrists like the insufferable David Brooks really cared about these issues, they would not only leave the Republican party but actively work to defeat Republican candidates. But they never will. They’ll just keep demanding that Democrats clean up the mess their party created.