WHY THE RIGHT’S OPPOSITION IS IN FOR SOME TOUGH TIMES
The American right is a machine built for not governing but opposition. You can see the results when Republicans take power: After cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting environmental regulations and making life harder for workers and immigrants, they’re pretty much out of ideas. When a genuine crisis hits, they can barely be bothered to deal with it, which is why 400,000 Americans and counting have died of COVID-19.
But when they’re out of power? That’s when they really shine. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, for instance, is not a particularly good legislator, but he’s a wizard at grinding government to a halt.
Likewise, the extraordinary propaganda apparatus of the conservative media is made for anger and outrage, which isn’t about getting things done but about ginning up indignation at what Democrats are doing.
So with a new Democratic president and Congress coming in, Republicans should be back in their happy place, ready to make his life miserable, undermine the country’s faith in its government and whip their followers into a frenzy, the glorious holy war renewed once again.
But this time, it might be harder than usual.
The first and biggest problem they face is President Joe Biden himself. During the primaries, many liberals — I’ll include myself here — were lukewarm toward him. But the party’s voters decided to go with the familiar old white guy with a reputation as a moderate, on the theory that he’d be most palatable to the general electorate.
The GOP did not try to portray the Democratic nominee as a sinister villain with secret plans to destroy America and kill your family. Why not? My guess is that they polled and focus-grouped it, and it didn’t work.
So the best substitute for the usual attacks was to say not that Biden was a monster who sought to plunge America into an unceasing nightmare, but that he was too weak to resist others on the left who had their own plans to do just that. That didn’t work either. To be clear, that doesn’t mean Republicans and conservative media can’t turn mild dislike into burning hatred. It’s what they’re good at, and they’ll give it their best shot.
And beyond Biden himself as a personality, something else is different now.
That outrage machine works not only by getting conservatives worked up so that, for instance, they’ll turn out to vote in the midterm elections, but also by creating fear in Democrats, fear that alters those Democrats’ behavior. But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a time when Democrats were less afraid of Republicans.
All indications are that the Biden team will start from the assumption that Republican opposition will be total; they’re willing to take a shot at getting some Republican support for, say, a COVID-19 relief package, but they won’t waste too much time chasing it.
Just as important, they aren’t assuming that if Republicans scream and shout about Democratic legislation, the screaming and shouting will persuade the public and drain support for whatever it is the administration is trying to do. That loud opposition can be treated as background noise, something unavoidable.
Every day of this presidency, people in conservative media will be saying that Biden is terrible, his policy ideas are disastrous, and they’re hurtling us toward a hellish socialist dystopia. That will be the case no matter what Biden does or doesn’t do — and Democrats finally get it. What matters is whether their initiatives get passed, and then deliver tangible benefits to people.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that Republican opposition will fail; political outcomes are always uncertain, and things will happen that today we can’t foresee. But the right is facing some new challenges, and Republicans might have to give their machine of opposition and outrage an overhaul.