How do you solve a problem like a Republican-controlled Congress? Here’s what you do. At your first press conference after the election, you very politely congratulate the Republicans and state that come January, you look forward to working with them on their legislative agenda. Why concede that? One, it recognizes reality, and two, and most importantly, it puts the Republicans in the hot seat. Remember this is a party that has spent the last six years having no agenda but saying no, and spending the eight years before that funding bridges to nowhere and slavishly following the agenda of a Republican president. The Congressional Republicans have not had to develop or implement their own agenda since the mid-1990s. (They were still in power in the late 1990s, but any legislative agenda took a back seat to The Impeachment of Bill Clinton Agenda.) After twenty years of behaving like a spoiled toddler, they don’t know how to do anything anymore.
For example, suppose a reporter asks if Obama would accept the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or if the Republicans actually pass legislation to do that? All Obama has to say to the press or to the Republicans is that they promised “repeal and replace” and that he’ll consider repeal once they provide him and the American people with a valid replacement. The sound of crickets will be deafening. Or, if they pass the “Ryan Budget,” which is basically a napkin with the words, “and then we cut a bunch of stuff and the budget is balanced” all Obama has to say is that he’ll gladly sign that, seeing as how it’s so vague it, in effect, cedes the control of the entire budget process to him. Rut-roh.
Then Obama sits back and watches the corporate toadies, the Christofascists and the batshit crazy Tea Partiers battle in out in public on the floor of the US Congress for the next two years. Do we lose that time we could have been addressing real problems like climate change? Sure, but since we weren’t going to take the House, those years would have been lost to gridlock, anyway.
Is this an ideal situation? Far from it. But if our long game is to demonstrate the Republican Party in its current form simply can’t govern, this is the way to do it. They are no longer the opposition party. They now control the legislative agenda. They can’t just say no to themselves.
Pass the popcorn.