Carpe Diem:
You describe the frightening prospect of an uncompromising Democratic Party imposing its will on a less imperious Republican Party.
I wonder if you could provide some examples of this? When I look a recent history, I keep coming up with examples of the opposite.
When President Obama sought a stimulus package to counter the 2008/Bush market crash, he accepted Republican proposals and switched one third of the stimulus from expenditures to tax cuts. (The Republicans voted against the stimulus anyway, but that an example of Mitch McConnell’s “Let’s make Obama a one term President strategy.)
During the House debate on the Affordable Care Act, again in the Obama years, over 100 Republican amendments to the act were put to a vote and more than 80 (I think it was 82) were adopted. In contrast, when the Republican House worked on its bill to repeal the ACA, no Democratic amendments were allowed to come to a vote.
Since Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert’s term, the Republicans have followed the “Hastert Rule” when they had a House majority. The Hastert Rule states that no bill may be brought to a vote in the House unless it has the support of a majority of Republicans. Subsequent Repbulican speakers have refused to allow a vote on numerous bills that would have passed in a bi-partisan fashion because of the Hastert Rule. – especially in the area of immigration When Nancy Pelosi was Speaker (the one Democratic Speaker since Hastert, she applied no such rule.
By long standing tradition, subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee have always required signoff from the Committee’s Chair and Minority Leader. Under Republican Chairman Dennis Issa, the committee rules were changed so that subpoenas only require the approval of the Chairman, thus making the subpoena power one party rather than bi-partisan.
After recent gubernatorial wins by Democrats in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, the Republican majorities in the state legistlatures have moved to substantially reduce the power of the governor, powers that did not seem to worry them when Republicans held the governorship. In contrast, when the Democratic majority in the New Jersey legislature, reacting the actions taken after Scott Walker’s defeat in Wisconsin, began to draft a bill to substantially disadvantage the state Republican Party, there was a national outcry among Democrats that this is not how Democrats do things and the bill was dropped. I cannot recall a single Republican speaking out against the Wisconsin legislature – a legislature that is so gerrymandered that in the 2018 election, when 1.3 million votes were cast for Democrats and 1.1. million cast for Republicans, the Republicans claimed 63 seats while the Democrats got 36.
So respectfully, I suggest that while you fear anti-Democratic actions by the Democratic Party you have it backwards, and it is the Republicans who have been inflexible.
Please provide your counter examples.
