By Dave Anderson:
In the conflict and war blogging and theorist circles that I dip my toes in to, there is the concept of generational warfare paradigms. The first generation is epitomized by the American Civil War, the second was World War 1, the third was demonstrated in World War II blitzkreig, and brought to its logical conclusions by both NATO and the Soviets by the mid-80s, and the 4th generation is an emerging response to the state's overreach.
One of the key tenets of this organizing structure is that each generation supersedes the previous generation. The best second generation force will have its ass kicked by a mediocre third generation force, and traditional heavy units sweeps are pointless against fourth generation guerrillas who are embedded with their population. It is an adapt or go extinct dynamic prediction.
The same applies to political parties in different party systems. When there is a transition of tacit anf formal norms, the older political system becomes increasingly ineffective. The Republican Party has been transitioning to a quasi-parliamentary system of governance where a small majority is sufficient for large scale changes without regard to the overall dynamic. This has been an ongoing evolution since 1994 and it produced structural changes in American governance with the new norm of a 60 vote supermajority requirement for Democratic priorities, and massive structural deficits from tax cuts. This has been accomplished by the use of effective party discipline tools.
Publius at Obsidian Wings looks at the collective action problem of party discipline and produces an interesting piece:
On closely divided issues, the Dems would be better off collectively if they all stuck together. However, any individual Senator would be privately better off by defecting from the group. Indeed, there's a premium on being the first one to defect....
GOP penalties add costs to these otherwise immense benefits. These sanctions alter the calculus of people like Snowe and Graham. That's why, I predict, that Graham will ultimately fold on climate change. He's less structurally free from GOP pressure than Snowe. Unlike her, he's in a Southern Red state where a primary challenge is a real threat ...
All of these same structural dynamics apply to Democratic defections as well. It's not always that Democrats are chickens, or even that they're more ideologically diverse, it's also that defection (on the Senate side) is all benefits and no costs. Defection gets you power -- which is probably why Bayh wanted to start his little club earlier this year.
The strongest weapon for party discipline is the incumbent challenge primary. That significantly raises political, financial, personal and hassle costs for the incumbent and usually provides a significant incentive to change behavior to be more in line with the preferred policy outcomes of both the entire Democratic Senate Caucus and the local base. Successfull primary challenges serve as a bright line and deterrance trip-wire; other incumbents, being office retaining creatures, knonw where they can and can not go without a challenge, and most prefer to not be challenged.
That is standard political science right there, and that is basically how the Republican Party behaves. However the Democrats have not wanted to evolve into the new rule set. So when a prominent Democratic Senator goes seriously off reservation on the defining high salient issues of the day, and receives a primary challenge, the Democratic establishment rallied around Sen. Lieberman. They continued to rally around him even after he lost the Democratic Primary to Ned Lamont. "He is with us on everything but the war..." was the logic as well as a fear of the dirty fucking hippies being right again.
So there is no discipline nor even the threat of Senate discipline as Senators in Blue states know that if they oppose signature issues such as healthcare in an attempt for personal political arbitage, the party leadership will defend them instead of sanctioning them.
How the hell did we win?
You should also remember that there is a significant downside to the Republicans approach, which can be seen by the defection of Arlen Spector. Enforcing strict party discipline in the manner the Republicans are doing, particularly when your party priorities are being decided by a small minority, means that those party members in less-nutty regions become far easier targets for the opposition. Snowe�s vote may cost her personally, but if she were to toe the party line in all things, she would also find herself in difficult straights in her riding, which is far more liberal than the deep south that has become the stronghold for the Republicans. A primary challenger more acceptable to that base would either be no threat, or would result in the seat going Democrat.
ReplyDeleteForcing discipline to such an ideological degree is one of the main causes behind what you have called the Republican death spiral. Granted, I can understand why it is as annoying as hell when the rump of the party can still block legislation because of their ideological �purity�, and the Blue Dogs are hardly helpful in many cases, but do you really think that such lockstep adherence to the party line will help keep those borderline seats in the blue column or assist in flipping the wavering red ones?
There is another point of war doctrine that notes that the higher level of warfare always trumps the lower. The Republicans� tactics are quite impressive, but their increasingly ideological positions are alienating them from larger and larger swaths of the voting public, which doesn�t seem to be the best strategy for long-term survival.