Are Republicans opposing Obama-care out of deep principle or pure partisanship?

Megapundit Norm Ornstein told a U of Minnesota audience Friday that it was mostly partisanship and that the level of pure  determination to deny the other party any accomplishments has rendered our system dysfunctional over recent years.

I’m not at all sure that Ornstein proved his case, although the example that he gave was an interesting one (Republicans posing as the guarantors of Medicare) and the alternative path-not-taken that he described was appealing (what if the Republicans had been willing to make a deal to make the package more Republican in principle?).

Minnesota’s own top pundit, Larry Jacobs of the Humphrey Institute, pushed back a little. I’ll describe their exchange for you in some detail just below (and, at the bottom of this post I’ll shoehorn in Ornstein’s description of the Washington perception of Minnesota’s two most famous Republicans - Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, and it’s newest Democrat - Al Franken. But first a little scene setting.

A little scene-setting

Ornstein, the Minnesota-born, Washington-based political scientist and among the most quoted political pundits of the generation, was in town on Friday and reviewed the Washington political scene for an audience of about 75 at the Humphrey Institute.

In his opening, Ornstein described the situation in Washington as “frightening.” Essentially, we face very real crises (especially the economy) and are fighting two unpopular wars. During the 2006 and especially 2008 elections the American people chose the Democrats to address these problems, put them in charge of the White House and gave them substantial supermajorities in both houses of Congress.

And yet, the Dems seems to be struggling mightily to deliver the legislation they promised, most notably the health care bill. (An aside: Ornstein does predict that a big health care bill will pass, which seems to run somewhat contrary to the particular frightening problem he describes.)

He nonetheless asserts that the current political norms, essentially hyper-partisanship and the use of all the many blocking techniques available in the U.S. system, make it hard for the country to unite, even in a serious crisis. Ornstein worries, for example, that if the recession takes a serious second dip, the Repubs would block any action -- presumably more federal stimulus spending -- that the administration might attempt.

This session, he said, Congress will set another new record for filibusters. The filibuster tactic is now applied by the Republicans to everything. Even when they end up voting for the underlying legislation, they will first filibuster to try to block the matter from coming to a vote.

Republicans have succeeded in stirring up populist anger against what the Dems are trying to do, Ornstein said, but it’s a dangerous tactic, because the angry populists don’t really trust the Republicans either and will turn on them if they don’t deliver exactly what the angry folks think they have coming. Said Ornstein:

“It’s a little bit like, you’re feeling bad in your neighborhood, so you bring on a bunch of Rottweilers and you don’t feed them so they get particularly vicious. And that works great at intimidating everyone around you until you have to go outside.”

After Ornstein’s prepared remarks, Jacobs took him through a Q & A session, starting off with a challenge against Ornstein’s implication that Republican blocking tactics amounted to dysfunction.

James Madison, chief architect and explainer (in the Federalist Papers) of the U.S. Constitution believed that America needed a government that doesn’t do too much, which is why it’s hard to pass sweeping legislation. The two major parties have become more philosophically coherent than in the past and the opposition party naturally uses the available tactics to block the majority. Said Jacobs:

“I think back to four or five years ago when Democrats were very eager to stand up and vote against Pres. Bush’s tax cuts and the Iraq war. So now we’ve got Republicans who feel in a very principled way that the health care legislation and the stimulus are very bad policy, is taking the country in the wrong direction. Isn’t that functional, in a Madisonian sense, to have responsible parties that are fairly coherent opposing things that they see as against their party’s principles?”

Although I would note that the filibuster is not in the Constitution, I thought Jacobs' challenge was a good one. It’s dangerous and a little too comforting to question the sincerity of those that disagree with us. (Although I would also note that the Bush tax cuts did pass, with Democratic votes, and the Iraq War was authorized, with many Democratic votes.)

But Ornstein wouldn’t have it. Here’s his long, complicated answer

“This is not simply a matter of principle, of differences in worldview that’s driving this.

Why do I say that? Take a look at the Republican opposition to the health care plan, where... their national chairman is now endorsing and their leadership is endorsing what they call a Medicare Bill of Rights. In other words, they are behind every penny of spending for Medicare, now and off into the foreseeable and unforeseeable future -- which is completely the opposite of the position that they’ve taken before. Because the objective is simply to kill the bill [not to bring it into line with Republican principles].

I find it frustrating for many reasons, not the least of which is that I actually think that if you had had a party willing to play, if six months ago a group of Republican leaders... had gone to President Obama and to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and said, ‘tell you what: we’ll get you 70 votes in the Senate -- 75 votes. Here are the three things we want in the bill. The top two are real malpractice reform and real efforts to do something to reduce defensive medicine, and keep in some of the competitive elements. Expand health savings accounts and some of the things that we actually built into the Medicare Part D program...’  You would have had a deal in a nanosecond.

Some of these things would have been a significant improvement in the overall legislative package. But, as a consequence of deciding that you’re not just going to oppose on principle, you’re going to bludgeon everyone into opposing so you can get unanimity -- to take a stand because all you can do is vote no and block -- you get a worse legislative product. If Madison were here today, I don’t think he would view that in a very positive way.”

Ornstein went on to say that Democrats did similar things during the Bush years and all the blame is not entirely upon one party, etc. etc.

I’ll confess that I had missed the Medicare Bill of Rights, so I looked it up. Turns out that what RNC Chair called for was a “Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors.”  But it is true that Steele positioned the Republicans as the defenders of Medicare against the intended ravages of the Democrats, notwithstanding that Republicans have generally been the party that was more skeptical of Medicare, concerned that it was costing too much, and convinced that government-run health care (which Medicare undeniably is) is a recipe for disaster.

So did Ornstein make his case? I agree that the Repubs are demagoguing Medicare to scare seniors. But this is rhetoric and sadly, this is done routinely and often successfully by both parties.

My problem with Ornstein’s conclusion is that even with the Repub amendments that he suggests Obama, Reid and Pelosi would have been embraced in exchange for Repub votes, the bill would still have been, at its core, offensive to Republican less-government principles.

So how is the minority to decide when to go along with a bill that it fundamentally opposes (I don’t buy this stuff about how everyone agrees on 75 percent of the features in the bill) in exchange for some concessions to their principles, as opposed to trying to defeat the bill entirely and hoping for a day when their party will be in the driver’s seat instead of just having access to the emergency brake?

What think?

Oh yeah, I promised a quick review of Ornstein’s version of Washington’s take on Pawlenty, Bachmann and Franken.

On Pawlenty: Ornstein said TPaw is making a good early impression on Washington’s political talent scouts. He’s made a couple of gaffes, such as the day he couldn’t bring himself to say that Sen. Olympia Snowe should have a place in the Republican tent. But he’s generally viewed as a rising contender for the 2012 nomination and “a guy to watch.”

On Bachmann: Ornstein said that without a doubt she has turned into a major political celebrity. (He did not say she was having any influence, only celebrity.) Bachmann has kind of displaced Ann Coulter for the role of conservative woman willing to go on the talk shows and say “outlandish” things. Ornstein believes that a name-recognition poll would show Bachmann to be better-known than top-ranking members of the congressional leadership, including House Repub leader John Boehner, the leader of her own caucus.

Ornstein used the Bachmann question to take a shot at the trashiness of cable news. It used to be, he said, that if a junior member got a shot at the national TV audience and said outlandish things, the networks would simply not have the person on again. Now, the cable channels “love it” because controversy is good for them.

On Franken: You should know in advance that Ornstein and Franken are very close personal friends. He said Franken is doing well substantively as a senator and is taking pains to work with Republicans. Franken’s approval ratings are rising, Ornstein said, and he believes his friend has the potential to get them up to the very high levels enjoyed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar.