I think Steve Benen is being too kind to the GOP:
If given a choice between protections for Dreamers or an opportunity to use Dreamers’ plight for political gain, Democratic leaders en masse prefer the former to the latter. This might give Trump a “win” – if the deal comes to fruition, he’ll take credit for doing something popular and bipartisan – but most Dems don’t care, so long as the young immigrants get the protections they need and deserve.
For Republicans, this dynamic is flipped. The party’s policy goals have largely been replaced with slogans and soundbites, and few in the party care about working on substantive outcomes. For much of today’s GOP, an ideological crusade and a constant search electoral advantage is the driving motivation behind every decision.
Given a choice between working with Dems to achieve a goal and blaming Dems for standing in the way of the goal, most Republican leaders choose the latter, not the former.
It’s the difference between a governing party and a post-policy party. The more Donald Trump is willing to make concessions, the more Pelosi and Schumer will work to advance their agenda.
“Post-policy”? No. We don’t need a new name for an old game. This is what you get when you have a bunch of power-hungry politicians people who care for nothing but power. The Democrats are driving for solutions, in contrast.
Weirdly enough, this reminds of the Lehman Brothers example I ran across a few years ago. The example goes that just days before they collapsed during the Great Recession, the CEO was giving a presentation where it was all about maximizing return on investment – for the shareholders.
Not for the clients.
They put their customers second and concentrated on making money, taking on larger and larger risks while ignoring the global environment, and when it all went to pot, they were the ones who burned up. Now they only exist because unwinding them is exceedingly complicated.
Similarly, all the GOP politicians seem to know is the drive for power and the implementation of some ideological goals not shared by the general public – even their own public. There’s no concept of solving problems and actual governing – and they’ve admitted as much.
And without that realization that it’s about the problem solving and the governing, they’re just left with the marketing and the one innovation, the one really new thing that’s driven them to this: the “Persuaders” approach to campaigning. And it’s turned out to be awful as it lets the incompetent to hide their failures in a cloak of darkness and win elections.
Post-policy FAH! It’s all about incompetency.
