As Usual: Boehner Attempts to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

I vividly remember when I finally and forever gave up on the notion that the Republican Party could ever be a reliable force for "smaller government."

The year was 1996 and I had already begun self-identifying as a libertarian ... but in the face of evidence that ran completely to the contrary, I still embraced the notion that the GOP was something like "half right" on economic issues and could occasionally be counted on to oppose the growth of government.

Then came the 28-day "shutdown," beginning in December of 1995 and ending in January of 1996.

I really dug it. The Republicans were standing up to out-of-control spending! They were shutting the government down rather than acquiescing to runaway debt! Huzzah!

Then "my" Congressman (Mel Hancock, R-MO) came home for a meet and greet and in response to an audience question (it may have even come from me) explained that Republicans weren't really trying to cut Medicare spending ... they were just trying to slow its growth.

And when I looked at the situation more closely, I realized he was right. The fight was over whether Medicare spending would be increased by X% or by X+.000X%, with the difference being represented by a small increase in user premiums. Actually cutting government spending wasn't even on the table, and neither side wanted it there.

And after that, Newt Gingrich threw a public whine-fest about being treated shabbily during a trip on Air Force One. And it just went downhill from there.

The whole "shutdown" thing quickly became a matter of each side trying to set itself up as the "victim," with the other side as "bully."

At the time, I wrote -- I don't remember where, it may have been a local independent paper I was doing a column for around that time -- that if the Republicans wanted to win this thing, what they needed to do was OWN the "shutdown." Instead of trying to  transfer blame, they should claim credit. "You're damn right we shut the government down, and shut down it shall stay until we get what we want."

Because frankly, playing the victim is a game that always works to the advantage of the Democrats. They are built on "identity politics," constituencies --  the identification and recruitment of "victim" classes which can be put in political harness (and, not coincidentally, kept perpetually in their alleged victimhood for continued political exploitation).

John Boehner just stepped in that smelly pile of stuff once again.

The only difference this time is that I'm not surprised.

A Brief Note on the Varieties of Government Activity

The state only really does two kinds of things:

• Things that nobody should ever do (and which are rightly considered crimes when anyone else does them); and
• Things that get done badly because government is doing them instead of leaving them to be done by the "voluntary sector."

The state's defenders are the equivalent of those who say that al Qaeda isn't all bad because it builds some of the hospitals that it then fills up with bombing victims.

Criminal  gangs are criminal gangs -- no matter how big they get, no matter what side charities they engage in, and no matter whether they are called "the Bloods," "the Crips" and "MS13" or "the Legislature," "the Executive" and "the Judiciary."

Katrina vanden Heuvel is a Coupk

Over at The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel is trying to resurrect a 1996 theme: "Government Shutdown as Coup d'Etat."

It was stupid when Sheldon Wolin pulled it out of his hat back then, and it's stupid now.

But my inbox says it's starting to catch on: I've got significant quantities of political spam rolling in -- "Stop the 1% GOP CRUZ COUP" and such-like.

It is not a "coup d'etat."

What it is is bad dinner theater. Or a commercial break during an interminable soap opera. Or the trash talk interval in "professional wrestling."

To the extent that it is a real issue at all, that issue is the continuing expansion of executive power.

It's supposed to be "Congress legislates, the president executes."

It's supposed to be "Congress appropriates the money, the president spends the money per Congress's instructions."

The exceptions to that were clearly intended by the framers of the Constitution to be rare and non-catastrophic. A veto now and again, and it either gets over-ridden or it doesn't, and life goes on.

But over the last hundred years or so it has more and more become "the president tells Congress what he wants them to legislate and how much money he wants to spend on stuff (that actually became a legal requirement in 1920), and either they rubber-stamp his demands or he throws himself on the floor and beats it with his fists and feet while they stand in the corner and hold their breath until they turn blue while both of them scream 'MOOOOOOO-OM! It's HIS fault!'"

And of course as I have already pointed out, it's not a "shutdown" either.