It would seem logical that tea party advocates, responsible for some of the success that Republicans exploited to retake the House in the November elections, would be anxious to prove that they can do more than Democrats to revive sluggish economic and job growth. That is, after all, the chief concern of most of the independents who paved Republicans’ way back to power.
Unfortunately, too many of the tea party and Republicans leaders seem focused mainly on vengeance against President Obama and Democrats for, well, not being extremely conservative Republicans. That’s bad enough. It’s even worse that so many seem virtually void of concern or real knowledge about what it will take to reverse the unemployment dilemma and restore a robust economy.
As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the incorrigibly cranky Kentucky Republican asserted a few days ago, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
California Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican set to take the chairmanship of the House government oversight committee, laid out his agenda this way: “I want seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks,” he declared, promising to focus on the Obama administration’s alleged “corruption” in political “paybacks” for members’ votes.
Closer to home, some state tea party leaders said they would be closely monitoring Sen. Bob Corker, who has rapidly become a key Republican leader in the Senate, for any sign of “compromising” with Democrats in pursuit of legislation to actually get anything done.
Mark Skoda, Memphis’ tea party chairman, said tea party members were upset that Corker supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program and served as the Republicans’ main negotiator on the financial reform bill and the bailout of the auto industry (which he ended up voting against).
“Should he not evidence his conservative bona fides in the new year,” said Skoda, “it is highly likely that the tea party movement in Tennessee will look for a candidate who will contend for his job in 2012. It’s that simple.”
Such threatening comments seem to leave reason and pursuit of productive action in Congress behind. Indeed, it could well be that Republicans will shoot themselves in the foot by being extremely uncooperative and unproductive.
In fact, they can’t get anything done alone. They will control just one of the two chambers of Congress. Democrats still control the Senate, and Obama remains president. Without a willingness to engage in bipartisan action, the extremists’ belligerence and unvarnished hostility will only produce more gridlock. What’s the point? American voters want Washington to work, not sink further in the argumentative morass.
What seems to be the point is that Republican and tea party extremists want mainly just to flout their intransigence on their immovable goals, which depending on the goal (a balanced budget, full employment, sealed borders, a stripped-down government, ungoverned health care and financial markets, and freedom from consumer safety standards and environmental regulation) are either undoable in the near term, or unthinkable in a complex society where unvarnished power would grind the average American worker into the dust.
The nation needs much more than that. Employment trends already indicate that the country is in the midst of a long-term hollowing out of the middle class due to the increasing loss of the sort of white-collar professional jobs and technically oriented manufacturing jobs. Simply put, the outsourcing of jobs is inexorably moving up the food chain. This trend began reaching critical mass a few years ago, and will remain unstoppable without full-scale pursuit of a remedy. That’s the core problem and challenge behind public angst about the economy.
Conservatives can’t shine in Washington, any more than Democrats, until they address this fast-moving fundamental issue with a deep focus on a competitive job strategy. Arguing, wrongly, that Washington should have let the banks, the auto industry and state governments crumble the past two years for lack of Washington aid when the global financial implosion occurred is not going to be a salable campaign argument two years from now if the job market hasn’t sharply improved, no matter how many hearings the tea party provokes.