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Acting Like The Majority Party (Robert Coon On Politics)

4 min read

(Editor’s Note: This is an opinion column.)

Now that the August recess is over and members of Congress are back at work in Washington, GOP leaders in the House of Representatives find themselves in a familiar situation.

It was only about a year ago that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, — the Tea Party firebrand beloved by conservatives and hated by the Left — led a crusade to defund Obamacare that failed in its primary mission while dividing Congressional Republicans and shuttering the federal government for 16 days.  

With the full slate of appropriation bills for 2015 yet to be completed [1], and the 2015 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, Congress is again in the position of needing to pass what’s known as a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operational and avoid a repeat of last year’s shutdown.  

Unsurprisingly, disagreement has surfaced between House leadership and the Cruz-led faction over the size and scope of the must-pass CR, with the leadership looking to fund the government through early-December, and Cruz aiming to fund the government through March in order to prevent substantive post-election Congressional activity.

Failure to take action before the deadline, of course, would result in a monumental political catastrophe for Republicans at a time when voters have the opportunity to give them control of the U.S. Senate, and thus full control of the legislative branch — an outcome that would drastically improve the GOP’s ability to serve as a check on the Obama administration.

While no one expects the current disagreement to lead to another shutdown, it goes without saying that GOP leaders in the House and Senate would prefer to avoid even a whiff of the possibility to take hold with voters just weeks before the November general elections. 

And there’s a good reason why.

Fallout From Fighting

National polling has consistently shown that Americans disapprove of President Obama’s health care law. And even though Republicans fighting against Obamacare is what led to the government shutdown last year, the GOP still bore the largest share of the public’s blame for putting government operations on ice.

According to a USA Today/Princeton University poll last October, “By 2-to-1, 39 percent-19 percent, those surveyed say Republicans deserve more blame, not Democrats. Thirty-six percent say the two parties share the blame equally.” Several other polls found the margin to be closer.

The idea that the shutdown was a major political liability was not lost on House GOP leadership, particularly Speaker of the House John Boehner, who in an interview with comedian Jay Leno earlier this year rightly referred to the shutdown as “a very predictable disaster” and said “the sooner we got it over with, the better.” Of course, Boehner’s comments weren’t a great surprise, given that he and many of his House GOP colleagues were strong-armed into going along with the plan in the first place.

Divide And Be Conquered

It’s ironic that in an increasing number of Congressional conflicts — the 2013 shutdown, the current disagreement over the CR and whether to conduct Congressional business after the November elections — GOP members find themselves battling each other nearly as often as Obama and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. From closed door strategy meetings on immigration to stir opposition to leadership, to squabbles between Cruz and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the aforementioned government shutdown, many of the GOP’s intra-party conflicts have been public, personal and messy.   

And while intra-party fights can cause animosity, division and be generally unproductive, some level of conflict among Republicans is expected given that they are the minority party in Washington [2] and their ability to set, manage and accomplish their agenda is limited. But come November, that scenario could change. The current forecasting model from FiveThirtyEight [3] gives Republicans a 53.3 percent chance of winning a majority of the U.S. Senate, with the Washington Post’s Election Lab giving the GOP a 50.1 percent chance. [4]

The ultimate question will be that if Republicans do win a majority in the Senate this November, will they be able to put the untidiness of being the minority party behind them and come together to effectively govern and set a unified course for the country? I would argue they can. 

But to do so will likely demand a stronger, shared commitment to pursuing an achievable conservative agenda through incremental, measurable progress rather than radical, poorly managed efforts like the government shutdown, which make voters feel uneasy and regretful for having given them the keys to the chamber.  

It will also require less fighting, backbiting and public undercutting among members of the same party [5]  — after all, it’s harder to make positive steps forward if you spend most of your time looking over your shoulder.


[1] A completely common occurrence, yet not one that should be acceptable to the American public.
[2] Controlling only one half of one branch of the federal government.
[3] At the time of writing.
[4] Worth noting, it’s hard to see a path for the GOP to gain a majority in the Senate without a win by Rep. Tom Cotton over Sen. Mark Pryor in the Arkansas Senate race.
[5] Oh, and maybe a little less reliance on a certain Senator that might be eyeing the White House.

(Robert Coon is a partner at Impact Management Group, a public relations, public opinion and public affairs firm in Little Rock and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You can follow him on Twitter at RobertWCoon. His opinion column appears every other Wednesday in the weekly Government & Politics e-newsletter. You can subscribe for free here.)

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