How little does New York magazine blogger Jonathan Chait think of the idea that congressional Republicans might shut down the federal government over President Obama’s executive action on immigration? So little that mere invective (“obviously stupid”; “insanely bad”) wasn’t enough. In a Thursday post, Chait also mocked GOPers by likening a shutdown to a scheme dreamed up by the Austin Powers character Dr. Evil: “It [would be] the sharks-with-laser-beams of political maneuvers.”
Chait wasn’t done with the showbiz references. Regarding the argument that last year’s shutdown didn’t hurt the GOP in this year’s midterm elections, Chait acknowledged that was “conceivably true,” but that “does not mean [Republicans] can survive any number of subsequent events. While Charlie Sheen’s career survived his first drug-fueled meltdown perfectly intact, it does not follow that an endless succession of drug binges would have no impact on his future earnings. Continuing to brand the GOP as the party of reckless antics at the very least runs the risk of contributing to a hardening impression.”
From Chait’s post (emphasis added):
The Republican Party has had some bad ideas, but it has never come up with a political tactic as obviously stupid as shutting down the federal government to protest President Obama’s immigration policies. It is almost a masterpiece of self-sabotage…It is the sharks-with-laser-beams of political maneuvers.
Incredibly, in the short time since the midterms, the prospect of a shutdown has progressed from unthinkable to probable enough…
The trouble is that there is no reason to believe a shutdown will do anything to advance their protest. There are many reasons to believe it will do just the opposite…
Shutdown advocates have always tried to make various complex arguments to the effect that the president, not them, is the one shutting down the government…Regardless of the merits of this argument, which are tendentious at best, the practical fact is that Republicans have never managed to gull the news media or the public into accepting it…
A somewhat more sophisticated rationale…goes like this: Yes, the public blamed Republicans for the shutdown last year. But then they forgot about it and gave them a huge win the next year. So what’s the harm?
This is conceivably true. On the other hand, it’s extraordinarily reckless. The shutdown had a massive negative effect on the party. The fact that the party survived it does not mean it can survive any number of subsequent events. While Charlie Sheen’s career survived his first drug-fueled meltdown perfectly intact, it does not follow that an endless succession of drug binges would have no impact on his future earnings. Continuing to brand the GOP as the party of reckless antics at the very least runs the risk of contributing to a hardening impression...
…[A] shutdown would highlight an issue on which Obama will back the GOP into a corner…He will be sparing several million illegal immigrants from the threat of deportation and allowing them to work legally. This will force Republican presidential candidates to promise to overturn Obama’s order and, thus, deport them.
The Latino vote was anomalously small during the midterm elections but will resume its upward trajectory during the presidential election…
The prospective shutdown is such an insanely bad idea that it is worth diagnosing what mental breakdown led the party to a place where this course of action has received serious consideration. One possible answer is that it stems from a congenital aggressiveness. Tom Edsall, a Washington reporter and longtime denizen of bipartisan poker games, once observed that the two parties display notably different approaches toward risk. “Conservative poker players are more willing to go for the kill,” while liberals “will simply check and turn over their cards to collect a more modest amount.”
