Not Helping: Analyzing the Republican Fear of Good Governance

The party of no. 

With the American Rescue Plan being passed by Democrats and Democrats only, the Republican Party has again said no to the American people. They said no to struggling families receiving survival checks. They said no to teachers and communities wanting to safely reopen schools. They said no to farmers receiving aid during these challenging times. They said no to small business owners struggling to keep afloat. They said no to veterans in dire need of support. And they said no to police and their ability to successfully enforce laws during a global pandemic.

Their hypocrisy has no bounds.

Yet we should not be surprised by any of this. After all, the Republican Party has been the party of no for quite some time. Having a Black president for 8 years simply made them much more comfortable in being vocal to their opposition to each and every proposal from the Democratic Party. Policies they had previously been vocally supportive of now became too hot to handle and had to be voted against, regardless of whether or not they helped their constituents. It was party over country but more than that, it was party over Democrats. Because while Democratic policies would help the majority of the electorate, they also would help Barack Obama and Republicans couldn't have that. A win for Obama may have been a win for the American people but it was a loss for the Republican Party. In their zero-sum view of governance, an Obama loss was more important than a win for the American people.

People will argue it wasn't always this way. That there once was a Republican Party willing to compromise. That there were great compromises in the Clinton years after the Gingrich Revolution that forced Democrats and Republicans to work together. But those days are long gone. The emergence of the Tea Party in 2010 buried the last semblance of bipartisanship in Washington. After all, Americans willing elected a group of Republicans to government who didn't believe in government. That's like electing a town sheriff who believes in anarchy or a dog catcher who doesn't believe in catching dogs. But the Tea Party had a purpose and that purpose was to gum up the gears of government. To say no to any and all legislation. To be a formidable voting bloc that could not be won over no matter what. Their message was clear: government is fundamentally broken and we exist solely to show just how broken it is.

Of course, it's easy to be the party of no while in the minority but it's a lot harder to be the party of no while in the majority. After all, Donald Trump was elected on a promise to "drain the swamp." His populist message was that he was an outsider and everyone in Washington was corrupt. That he alone could fix it. This authoritarian messaging served as a warning to the traditional power structure: one man could overcome the system. One man could save the day. One man could successfully govern. Donald Trump was elected because a generation of Americans was starting to buy the myth that good governing was not possible and that doing things the way they had historically been done wasn't working. As Donald Trump so famously asked, "What do you have to lose?"

And with that mindset, he installed the most anti-government government in American history. He installed a non-teacher to lead the Department of Education. He installed a neurosurgeon to lead the office of Housing and Urban Development. He installed an oil executive to be the Secretary of State. His first National Security Advisor was later determined to be a threat to national security himself. His Secretary of Health and Human Services resigned after globetrotting all over the world on private jets. His Energy Secretary had previously wanted to eliminate the department. Each Cabinet position and subsequent replacement were more and more unqualified than the last. What better way to prove that an authoritarian is needed than to surround him with the most incompetent buffoons in all the land?

But something funny happened on the way to the ball. Americans came to realize that there would be times when good governance was actually needed and necessary. We needed FEMA to be competent in working with post-Maria Puerto Rico. They were not. We needed the Post Office to be competent when it came to voting by mail. They were not. We needed the federal government to have a plan, a real plan, to deal with a global pandemic. They did not. Americans began to realize that the absence of sound governance was not tranquility but instead was severe trauma. Having a president mentally checked out while a global pandemic ravaged the country, killed 400,000 Americans, shut 1 in 6 businesses, forced schools to go remote, and crashed the American economy was less than ideal. Americans still didn't know much about government, but they saw that without real leadership, nothing good got done. They learned that some government, even bad government, was better than no government at all. 

And that right there was the fatal flaw in the Republicans' plan. Because eventually during times of crisis, sound government is needed. Whether it's a recession or a terrorist attack or a global pandemic, Americans look to the president for guidance and for leadership. All our great presidents have risen to the times that were presented to them. Donald Trump shrank like a pair of overdried underwear. People died and suffered because of his inaction. While other countries met the pandemic head-on, Donald Trump ignored it because at the start it was only impacting blue states. When it started affecting red states, Trump began falsely claiming that these deaths were simply a part of reaching herd immunity, which, as we all know, isn't even possible without first having a vaccine. By the end of his term, he was more concerned with trying to overturn the election than address the pandemic, failing to see that it was his response to the pandemic that essentially cost him the second term he so greatly desired.

Now Republicans are faced with a new threat: a competent president. Having failed with Trump trying to destroy government from the inside, they now must go back to their obstructionist ways. But Joe Biden is no fool. He is already going big with his first 50 days in office and rightfully so. He has learned the lessons serving as Barack Obama's right-hand man that Republicans will not do anything to support his agenda. So he's doing what he was elected to do: he's governing. He's undoing Trump's spiteful policies via executive orders. He's keeping his rogue Senate Democrats in line. He's about to embark on a two-week tour touting the benefits of the American Recovery Act, the type of public relations blitz that many felt were missing in the wake of the passage of the Affordable Care Act in late 2009. Joe Biden is showing that government can both listen and respond to the needs of the American people, a stance that Republicans have been committed to fighting with all their might. It is a fight they will continue to make because without it, they have to admit that government isn't the problem, Republicans in government are the problem. 

And that's a message that Democrats are more than happy to take into 2022 and beyond.