The Real Reason for the Chaos in the House

[applegrove]

The Real Reason for the Chaos in the House

By Reihan Salam at Slate

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/house_speaker_fight_the_real_reason_the_republican_caucus_is_in_chaos.html

"SNIP..............



But there is more to the behavior of the House Freedom Caucus than ideological zeal. Today’s GOP rebels aren’t the first lawmakers who’ve wanted to rock the boat. What separates them from the rebels of earlier years is that there is almost nothing that party leaders can do to keep them in check. Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has argued that in the bad old days, when pork-barrel spending and earmarks reigned, leadership could bring rebellious backbenchers to heel by threatening to withhold sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars from this or that public project in a member’s district. Such tactics are now frowned upon, and Republicans have gone so far as to impose an outright ban on earmarks—one that at least some Republicans would like to reverse.


There’s another factor, which Rauch also references. Successive waves of campaign finance regulation have been designed to limit the influence of money in politics. What these regulations have actually done is quite different. In Better Parties, Better Government, Joel Gora and Peter Wallison observe that today’s campaign finance regulations limit the extent to which candidates can coordinate their fundraising and campaigning efforts with central party organizations, so candidates have to build their own fundraising networks. Building such a network is fairly easy for those who’ve spent their lives around the very wealthy or who are very wealthy themselves. But it is much harder for less wealthy individuals who have dedicated their lives to public service or who for whatever reason aren’t skilled in the art of wheedling money out of strangers.


What does any of this have to do with the House Freedom Caucus? Because central party organizations can’t freely coordinate with candidates, and because candidates have to raise the bulk of their campaign cash independently, the parties have very little leverage over candidates. Members are far less afraid of alienating their leaders and far more afraid of alienating their donors. Who cares if John Boehner is mad at me? What counts is that by declaring war on the GOP leadership, and by declaring that all those who want to avoid a government shutdown are sellouts, I can raise money off of apocalyptic Boehner-bashing emails and Facebook posts.


Imagine a world in which virtually all fundraising for House races was done by an official organ of the GOP, like the National Republican Congressional Committee, as Gora and Wallison recommend. Promising candidates would receive money directly from GOP HQ, so they wouldn’t have to devote all of their time, or indeed any of their time, to fundraising. This would free up candidates to spend more time in their districts or on doing the nitty-gritty work of legislating. Candidates could still raise their own money or spend their own money. The First Amendment protects their right to do so. But candidates backed by the party would have an advantage over those who don’t enjoy official party support, as building one national fundraising machine is so much more efficient than building hundreds of fundraising machines for individual candidates. The appeal of this party-provided campaign cash would be such that candidates would be very reluctant to lose it—so they’d be far more inclined to play ball with the party leaders who control the purse strings.



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[Warpy]

1. Short version: the GOP made too many deals with too many devils

and now the devils are taking over, as they always do, sooner or later. Since each of those devils has his own favorite Bogeyman to attack and will support attacking no others, the party is fractured into warring pieces.

[gratuitous]

2. "Nothing party leaders can do"

Actually, that should be "nothing party leaders are willing to do." Yes, many of the persuaders of bygone days are gone by. But enforcing some party discipline can still be done, it's just that nobody in the leadership positions is willing to do anything about it. They're too scared of their back-benchers and their bankrollers. Yes, the Republicans have set up a situation that has come back around to bite them on their pasty white rump-ahs. Too bad, so sad.

But pretending that nothing "can" be done is just nonsense.

[meow2u3]

3. The GOP created this monster known as the Fascism Caucus, aka Tea Party

The monster has gotten out of control and is out to destroy the repuke establishment--and the whole idea of the United States of America--from within.

You created this monster, GOP. Now it's up to you to destroy it.