Our Discipline Is Rigid

Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock said the committee may issue a statement or withdraw its support for Murkowski. In the case of the latter, the committee would encourage officials to find a replacement and ask Murkowski not to run as a Republican for reelection.

Of course, it’s nothing new for Party officials to discipline legislators who break ranks on important votes. After all, getting legislation through Congress is an important goal of the Party, no matter what their name.

But this is something a little different. After all, this isn’t legislation, but a confirmation to SCOTUS. Because the legislative process should permit the contributions and corrections from all members of Congress, it’s somewhat reasonable to expect a legislator to vote for their Party’s legislation; the violation of this dynamic during the creation of the failed AHCA (the ACA replacement) and the successfully passed Tax Change bill of 2017, which were both written in secret and then went through a frantic rewrite in a very short review process, was the very reasonable basis for the outrage of Democratic Congress folks during the first year of Trump’s term.

The confirmation of a nomination to SCOTUS, however, is a different animal. First, SCOTUS has been non-partisan, and if that’s been an empty phrase of late, it’s still an ideal to which we should stubbornly strive. Part of the process, then, should be for Senators to discern whether or not a given nominee meets the standards they have formulated as to legal expertise and non-partisan status. Not that a nominee cannot belong to a political party, but they should exhibit the proper judicial disinterest.

If Murkowski felt that Kavanaugh didn’t meet the standards, then it was not her indisputable right to vote against the nomination – it was her absolute responsibility to do so. To do otherwise would be an abdication of her duties, and reason for her own impeachment. While I did advocate that Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch be denied confirmation, that was purely as a punishment of the Republicans for their anti-American strategy of refusing to even consider Garland, Obama’s nomination for Scalia’s seat; it had little enough to do with Gorsuch’s qualifications. In the Kavanaugh context, every Senator who voted for, or against, him on partisan grounds had abandoned their responsibilities, those who found him unqualified, or honestly found him qualified (a position I don’t understand, but I’ll grant its possibility), and voted in accordance with their judgment, did their duties.

But I find the implications of Trump and the Alaska GOP’s activities for the national GOP to be far more interesting. Absolute discipline is a tactic often used by groups that feel threatened by outside forces. Through the strength that comes from discipline, they hope to survive and conquer. On the surface, it seems to make sense.

But this isn’t a war. American politics is about persuasion. The GOP, while only shrinking a little over the years, has been indisputably experiencing a high level of churn, or turnover, as moderate Republicans leave or are run out of the Party, and more extreme people join up. As those non-mainstream viewpoints continue to be exhibited, mainstream Americans will reject the party more and more. The Republicans are losing the battle of persuasion. (This is a problem for the Democrats as well, although in their case it’s often a problem of poor communications and strategies.)

Another problem for the GOP’s interactions with the mainstream of America has been the ideals of their party. For example:

1. Free market medicine. While it’s resulted in great strides in the creation of new therapies and cures, for everyday medicine it’s been distressingly mediocre, if that.
2. The Taxation Fixation. Within the Party it remains Holy Writ that taxes are too high and are holding back the economy. Unfortunately, the Holy Laffer Curve has turned out to be a flop that remains unrecognized by the Party, but, for those citizens who keep an eye on the Federal deficit and debt, the fallaciousness of that economic concept has been proven through experience.
3. Our Military Budget Is Too Small. And, yet, we spend the most in the world, more than the next 7 countries put together. How much of this is wise expenditures and how much of this is keeping legislators happy with defense-related industries in their districts? But the great refrain of the GOP: we’re unsafe. But spending will fix it!
4. Etc. Here we can put excessive sympathy to sectarian concerns, also known as the Goldwater prediction, the Gingrich rule of no compromise nor even friendliness with the enemy, aka the Democrats, rejection of science in the form of anthropomorphic climate change, and a variety of other positions that are leading more and more independents to distrust the Republican Party as a paranoid pack of second-raters who’d rather hold their ideals as unquestionably sacred rather than subject them to rational critique. Not that the latter is easy, but it’s one of the marks of adulthood that such self-criticism takes place.

The GOP may be achieving victories in isolated battles such as the judiciary, but I suspect that each victory is costing them in the long run. The inflexibility that comes with strong discipline leaves them with little chance to cover up mistakes; indeed, Leader Trump refuses to admit to them, and believes anyone that does is weak. His motley assemblage of positions have disgusted a lot of folks both inside and outside the Party, and his smug prediction that Murkowski won’t survive her re-election campaign in 2022 is his attempt to distract everyone from the observation that most of the electorate didn’t believe Kavanaugh met the high qualifications of SCOTUS, and to inflame his base a bit more.

This is not the sign of a party that deserves to govern.