On January 20, 2017, the time came for the Republican Party to take its Obama-era campaign rhetoric — its non-stop, relentless, intemperate complaining, whingeing and freaking out about absolutely everything President Obama and the Democrats did, said, proposed or suggested and vehemently insisting that they had better ideas — and turn it into actual policy. Meaning, actual legislation and/or administrative action to bring about the conditions and outcomes they had advocated and insisted must be brought about, all through the Obama presidency.
Seven months later, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention not only that they haven’t, but that they can’t.
It’s no secret that Republicans can’t govern. It’s also no secret that their generalized aversion to “government” (as professed throughout the last three Democratic presidencies and conveniently set aside during Republican presidencies) is a masque to cover up and excuse their own abject inability to govern. And I think most people would agree that they can’t govern because they don’t really care about governing so much as wielding power over those they wish to oppress on behalf of their paymasters.
But there’s a simpler explanation as to why Republicans can’t govern, and it’s this: Because their campaign rhetoric doesn’t translate into actual policy. Again, by “actual policy” I mean specific things that can actually be accomplished legislatively or administratively, by Congress and/or the various Cabinet-level Departments and their subordinate federal agencies. And by “govern” I mean craft legislation and institute administrative procedures to actually bring about specific desired conditions and outcomes.
Now, there may be a chicken-and-egg problem here, viz., the disconnect between Republican campaign rhetoric and actual policy may be an effect instead of a cause of their inability to govern and/or disinterest in governing. But the bottom line to me is that Republican campaign rhetoric simply doesn’t lend itself to the development or execution of actual policy. Their failure to repeal every line of the Affordable Care Act by end of business on January 21 should have made that abundantly clear.
Of course, generalized grievances about “government,” whingeing about “government” this and “socialist” that, doesn’t translate into actual policy let alone provide a legislative or administrative framework for making it. Nor does verbally masturbating to the words “freedom” and “capitalism” and “America’s Job Creators™”. But even when the GOP’s rhetoric gets more specific than that, it still doesn’t translate into actual policy, for one or more of the following reasons:
- it’s not the sort of thing that can be accomplished legislatively and/or administratively;
- it’s unrealistic, viz., grounded in a false perception or understanding of what the law is or how government actually works, or dependent on implausible expectations;
- it’s nonsensical, meaningless and/or devoid of substance;
- it’s an outright lie; or
- it’s the sort of thing that, if anyone genuinely tried to make actual policy out of it, the result would be so catastrophically harmful and destructive to so many people and/or the nation as a whole that doing so would be unthinkable even to the most cynical politician.
The fact that Republican campaign rhetoric is so saturated with themes of self-congratulation and resentment makes it especially difficult for Republicans to make actual policy, since self-congratulation and resentment are such terrible starting points for policy, let alone sound or effective policy. But the self-congratulation and resentment that pervades Republican campaign rhetoric, embodied and personified perfectly by the party’s current standard-bearer, meets all five of the above criteria.
People who continue to support the President and his party aren’t doing so because the latter have successfully managed to translate their Obama-era campaign rhetoric into actual policy (i.e., “winning”). Nor does the latter’s failure (or inability) to do that seem to have any impact on the former’s support. Which is another reason why Republicans can’t govern: because they don’t have to. For a lot of American voters, the rhetoric is enough; they don’t care if it translates into actual policy or not. They’re happy as long as they feel like they’re “winning.”
Extravagant and unrealistic campaign promises have been a running joke about politics for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid in summer camp, we used to have an annual campaign for “mayor” wherein each candidate got up and gave a speech promising to abolish curfews and serve filet mignon in the cafeteria. Everyone understands that. But we now live in the era of the permanent campaign, when every public appearance and utterance is loaded with campaign rhetoric; everything a politician says is effectively a campaign promise. Go through the archives of Meet the Press from 2009 through 2016; Republicans made an awful lot of campaign promises that they knew, or had to know, they would never, and could never, keep. That’s why, in 2017, with full control of the federal government, they have no idea how to govern.