The Debate and the Shutdown

Dangerous dysfunction

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla)

The Republican presidential debate last night and the looming government shutdown are manifestations of the same calamitous political phenomenon — one that has the United States ship of state plunging toward the rocky shoals of democratic decline, if not outright disintegration. 

The Republican Party is one of two major political entities in a country that is roughly evenly divided. It is being dominated by a would-be autocrat who is hostile to our constitutional order and fueled by a nihilistic wrecking crew in the House of Representatives eager to do his bidding and wreak havoc upon the nation. 

You often hear that Trump and his faction have hijacked the Republican Party, but that is a mistelling of history. Maybe party elites from a different era tut-tutted his rise, but they mostly did nothing to try to stop it. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the party embraced him, because he appealed to the legions of voters they — assisted by right-wing media — had cultivated for years. If you preach that the government is inherently evil, if you scapegoat people who don’t look like you, if you conjure up fictions of Democrats as haters of American values, if you stoke conspiracy theories and denigrate expertise, this is what you get. 

Trump won the 2016 nomination and has controlled the party ever since, not because he snuck in and fooled the party’s base, but because he realized that the Republican Party had long since ceased being the party of Reagan, Bush, Romney, McCain, or Dole, let alone Eisenhower. Trump was who the vast majority of Republicans wanted as their savior. His shocking deficits, so apparent to others, are many of the same qualities his supporters lionize — his combativeness, attacks on knowledge, disdain for governance, and appeals to divisiness. All the wreckage he has left in his wake has done little to shake the hold he has over the party. 

The sniping of the also-rans on a “debate” stage cloaked in the shadow of the candidate who wasn’t there, and the sober-minded quotes from party elders in Congress about the madness of a government shutdown, are — until something radically changes — just sideshows. Sideshows to Trump and his acolytes gleefully careening us toward chaos. It would be one thing if the danger of disintegration was limited to the Republican Party, but it threatens to engulf the union. 

We put “debate” in quotes because the event last night was, as most of these things are these days, more of a staged “camera opportunity” than a real debate. Whatever it was, there is a certain irony that it took place at the Reagan Presidential Library in Ventura County, California. In a very different time, this used to be a Republican enclave in a state the party had a solid chance of winning. Prior to Bill Clinton’s carrying California in 1992, Republicans had won the state in nine out of the previous 10 presidential elections. Reagan, the hero to what was then the modern Republican Party, had been California’s governor. Now Democrats carry Ventura County by wide margins, and the Republican Party has become an endangered species in the state. 

That’s because California has become more diverse, and the Republican Party has become more extreme. The former is a beacon for the country’s future, and the latter is the reactionary force trying to hold on to privileges of the past. 

Unfortunately, the nature of our government means that even if most Americans don’t want chaos or authoritarianism, we nonetheless risk both. A handful of extremists in the House can hold the country hostage. And a president can win an election even if he loses a majority of the vote. The vast majority of Americans don’t want a government shutdown — heck, a majority of Republicans in Congress don’t want it. But here we are anyway. And Republican Party leaders know that the country would be a lot better off if someone other than Trump were the party’s nominee for president. But they can’t help that, either. 

Just last week, Trump essentially called for the execution of General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a social media post, Trump said of Milley’s conduct, “in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Let that sink in. How deranged and dangerous is this rhetoric? Especially after what we saw in the violent insurrection on January 6. This is the leader of the party. 

Meanwhile, the Senate passed a continuing resolution to fund the government with bipartisan support. But it is dead on arrival in the House, because the feckless Speaker Kevin McCarthy has no control over his party, and it is consumed by people who came to Washington to break things when we need to be building and protecting. 

It is essential that the press cover these destructive dynamics. This is the biggest story in American politics, and it puts everything else into context. A healthy democracy depends on real debate, different opinions, and new ideas. But there has to be a commitment to governance and good faith. A nation where one of the two parties is in the sway of demagogues and destroyers is one that is in peril. 

Americans showed in 2020 that this is not what they wanted. They echoed it again in 2022 and many recent special elections. The 2024 presidential election now looms as one of the most important in our nation’s history. Another defeat for Trump and the Republicans could remake the politics and policy of our country in meaningful and hopeful ways. A different election result, and who knows what would lie in store for the republic. 

We can’t remind ourselves too often about what’s at stake.

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