Amidst the finger-pointing, press conferencing, disillusionment and disbelief following the failure of the House to pass the bailout bill, something remarkable was being overlooked. The bill, an unpopular piece of legislation from the start, failed because the House Leadership couldn't get enough Republicans to vote for the measure. It was bitter enough medicine that both sides would have their share of holdouts, but to keep it from becoming a damning political issue for years to come, it required bipartisan support. It was believed, going into the vote, that the leadership had it's numbers; the unpopular but seemingly required measure would pass. The final breakdown came to about 60/40 yes to no for the Democrats, and 33/67 yes to no for the Republicans.
The striking thing is in the days leading up to this vote, the Republican leadership, the current flag bearers for the Republican name had urged their party members to vote for this bill. The President of the United States, George W. Bush had addressed the nation regarding what he saw as a crisis, and the need for urgent action by Congress. Their Presidential candidate, who had spectacularly pretended to suspend his campaign to work on the bill, urged the same thing. His surrogates had spent the days and hours before the vote proclaiming McCain as the savior of the deal. Prior to the vote actually occurring, McCain's campaign manager had told the press that McCain is the one who got the Republican house members on board. His former primary challenger, and one time VP hopeful, Mitt Romney, went so far as to proclaim "Thank God John McCain came back to Washington." Clearly, McCain was trying to spin the politics of the bailout in his favor. The campaign put a lot, if not the rest, of it's eggs in this basket. After a brutal two weeks in the polls and the press, it badly needed something it could spin positively.
That's what makes the vote so absolutely fascinating. In spite of the urging of their President, and despite the political capital invested by their party's candidate, the House Republicans voted down this bill; a hugely unpopular bill with an election coming up in 40 days is not something you usually have a hard time passing on. But three powerful forces were working to persuade them to sacrifice their votes for party, and for country: A two-term President grasping desperately for some redeeming legacy, or at least trying just as desperately to avoid the culmination of his ignominious Administration with the death of Wall St; a Republican Presidential hopeful laying his campaign and public image at the feet of his party, giving to them the power to redeem or damn his quest for the White House; and a party leadership asking them to swallow hard and vote yes for the sake of their country, which they were assured desperately needed saving. In light of all these influences, the bill fell shy of passing by about 20 votes. A political party, who for eight years drew untold amounts of strength and influence from it's ability to fall in line, lockstep with their leadership, had broken ranks. They voted against their President, and their candidate. Whether they voted against their country is a question less easily answered, and beyond the scope of this writing. And while they initially cast the blame in the hands of the Democratic leadership's partisan ribbing just prior to the vote, what they really did was signal the end of the Neoconservative agenda.
The popular quote attributed to the House Republicans during the negotiations goes "For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?" The ideology of the strict free market is a cornerstone of Conservative thinking: a fair market, left to it's own devices and free of corrupting agents, is far more efficient, and effective at both growth and self-regulation than a market intervened upon by government agencies. The belief among House GOP members was that this bill would introduce too much oversight, too much regulation, and too much government control into a system viewed reverently as the true model of capitalism at work. This is not a new idea to Conservatives. It is certainly older than some of the Bush Administration's contributions to the party: Preemptive Defense; Cheney's Fourth Branch of Government; Executive Privilege superseding congressional subpoenas. These ideas are more commonly attributed to the Neoconservative agenda, as currently on display in the White House.
With today's vote in mind, with the House Republicans choosing to not let this bill pass, when so much of their party was riding on it's passage, perhaps the above quote should be changed to "for the sake of the altar of Conservatism, do you accept Barack Obama as President of the United States?" For with this single act, they both rejected the doctrines and beliefs of the last eight years of the Bush Administration, and rejected the next four years of a possible McCain administration. The bill -- both it's oversight and it's use of taxpayer money injected into the free market -- was the last, final act by their Neoconservative President. It was also the greatest signal for assistance from their party candidate; a plea to them to pass an unpopular bill for the benefit of not just their country, but John McCain, and his Presidential aspirations. The dismissal of a lame duck President's requests is understandable, they are no longer beholden to him, and have to appeal to their own constituents for re-election. But for a party, who takes it's strength from it's very ability to rally to any major cause on their side, to break ranks against their Presidential candidate; to leave him as exposed and damaged as they did, is an indictment on what he represents, which is four more years like the last eight. In rejecting the plea of help from John McCain, they reject the beliefs and policies of the past eight years under George W. Bush, and seek to take back Conservatism from the Neoconservative nightmare it had been thrust into.
There was a time when Conservative meant smaller government; less intrusive government. The Conservative idea was to lower government spending, and reduce government interaction in life. Over the past eight to twelve years, it had morphed into a different definition of conservative. Powered by an evangelical base, and a Neoconservative foreign policy, the Republicans didn't seek to limit governess interaction in daily life, but seek to deploy it's ideology both at home and abroad. Gay Marriage -- a states right issue itself -- became the emblem of the distortion of this party. Instead of the classical conservative position of leaving it to be a states right issue, the evangelical base pushed for a national outlawing of gay marriage. The conservative ideology now hijacked by evangelicals had overridden one of the core beliefs of the party in order to enact it's own warped dogma on all of America. Issues like assisted suicide, and abortion took on the same, if not more importance. Not content to make these state issues, their goal was to make this nation uniform to their ideals. McCain's pick of Palin, her views heavily influenced by her Christian faith, was an endorsement by McCain of these policies, if not a desire by McCain to at least increase support among this evangelical base.
Internationally, the Republican party has shifted to a hyper-aggressive world view that condones striking a country preemptively, if the effect of this attack is to result in a safer America, evidence be damned. The party saw the specter of mushroom clouds and anthrax attacks used to achieve it's goals, and it saw the results in an incredibly expensive war in Iraq, and a long engagement in Afghanistan that is getting worse, not better. McCain's own foreign policy statements in this campaign can be considered extensions of the current Administration's policies. Iran would appear to be the next target on the list, a war that would commit more men and money to a nation that had not previously attacked us or deemed to even have the capability to significantly attack us.
Make no mistake, John McCain's campaign has stated that it's seeking to extend the policies that George w. Bush introduced to his party and his nation in the eight years he was in office. His statements on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, combined with his pick of Palin as an evangelical rallying cry is not a significant break from the Neoconservative viewpoint of the past eight years. And in one vote, the Republican Legislation in the House said "no more." The damage it did to McCain's candidacy is profound, and it is not lost on those who voted no. It was in light of this candidacy that these people voted no. And not only did they vote no, they turned away from a John McCain who gambled on their support, who put his chips in on this one bill, and stood to potentially gain a surge of much needed political capital.
With today's actions, the House GOP sought to regain some semblance of the classic pillars of Conservatism: small government; free markets; states rights. It willingly gave benefit to the Democratic Candidate for President, Barack Obama. For the first time in a long time, the House GOP did not hold rank and vote for their party. It broke rank, and voted for the party it wanted back. It said "I will sacrifice the next four years of the Presidency to get what we stood for back." It agreed that, for it's own sake, this country needs a change. It said that, not because the ideas of their opponent are better, but the ideas of their candidate are so flawed, that they would accept the opposing candidate over their own, if it means reclaiming some legitimacy for their party. Those ideas will be clearly represented in the 2010 mid term elections. Those candidates with a clear idea of what conservatism was before these past eight years will find a public ready to accept it, even hungry to accept it. These past eight years have so damaged their image to the point of being unrecognizable. There is a true conservative base in this country, and the Bush/McCain administration has stopped serving it's best interests. This vote was a call for someone to fill that void.
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This is a cross-post from my blog, The Daily Shocker. We don't get much readership there yet, but I wanted this piece critiqued, because it's an idea I have, but I've imperfectly expressed it, and I wanted some critical analysis. Please feel free to lay it on thick, I can definitely take it.