Blue State Republicans as a path towards compromise
Last night, the tossup senate races broke sharply toward the Republican party, which Republicans winning in two states where President Obama won in 2008 and 2012: Iowa and Colorado. Research shows that one way that conflict can be ameliorated is when the boundaries between competing groups are blurred. Indeed, if you look at some of the rhetoric from the victors, you can see that there may indeed be the seeds of compromise.
From this Denver station article:
Gardner, who represented a conservative fourth U.S. House district on the state’s eastern plains, courted the political center to win. He highlighted that strategy in his acceptance speech.
“The people of Colorado, voters around this state had their voices heard. They are not red. They are not blue. But they are crystal clear. Crystal clear in their message to Washington, D.C.,: Get your job done and get the heck of out of the way,” he said.
On the other side of the aisle, Red State Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia have led some of the most significant compromises, again by blurring the familiar political lines. In contrast, those senators who are least eager to compromise often seek to reinforce the differences between groups, exacerbating the partisan divides by seeking a clear contrast.
Mitch McConnell, the new Senate Majority Leader, specifically went out of his way to strike a tone of compromise in his victory speech and talked about the “obligation to work together” with the opposite side toward solutions to our common problems. Let’s hope that, as research would suggest, a less homogenous Republican Senate caucus (and eventually a less homogenous Democratic Senate caucus) leads to that vision becoming a reality.
– Ravi Iyer
David J Gill 9 years ago
Taking the path toward compromise requires that both parties accept the virtue and necessity of compromise and go down that path. Respect for the legitimacy of opponents viewpoints is fundamental to compromise. In a healthy democracy the sanctity of the right to vote and belief in fair elections is greater than the ideological convictions of political parties.
But the circumstance in America today is the unprecedented repudiation of these values by the Republican Party. Mitch McConnell is not an honest broker. How can you take note of his cynical, new found “obligation to work together” with Democrats after six years of refusing to do just that. McConnell’s game is a purely political effort to position his party for the next election. This is well known. When you take a seemingly objective posture toward both parties that seeks to bring both to compromise as if both parties are equally responsible for the current dysfunction, you betray either a naive neutrality or support for the Republican clause. What will it take for you to understand that the intentions of Republicans is to undermine democracy itself? This is the crisis you should respond to rather than attempting to forge compromise on Republican terms.
If academics, think tanks and non-partisan political players are so afraid of appearing partisan that they can’t diagnose the real problem and call a spade a spade then they are whitewashing the Republican Party’s cynical plan to dominate this country by changing the rules to their benefit.