Pity Allen West: He has a Palestinian political problem.
West is a freshman Republican House member from Florida, and he is in “all-out campaign mode,” according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “doing damage control with the tea party.” His crime? Voting for the recent compromise that raised the national debt limit. There’s already talk of a primary challenge.
West is colliding with a brand of politics we have seen before. Republicans are well along toward importing what is arguably the world’s most dysfunctional political model: that of the Palestinians, the gang who can’t say yes.
The Palestinians, it has been said, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The GOP is on its way there.
Congressional Republicans could have gotten a much better deal on the debt limit, one that would have reduced spending by something like $3.2 trillion over 10 years and put the Democrats’ imprimatur on cuts to Medicare and other entitlements, a great accomplishment. But the price would have been a comparative sliver of new revenues, perhaps $800 billion. When the Republicans’ leader, House Speaker John Boehner, tried to snare the prize, he, like Allen West, collided with political Palestinianism, whose hallmarks are these:
Tenet No. 1: You can never be pure enough. Palestinian moderates who want a peace deal worry about the flak they would take from hard-liners in Fatah, who in turn worry about the flak they would take from spoilers like Hamas, and even Hamas worries about spoilers still more extreme among groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Anyone who looks soft gets denounced as a traitor and paints a target on his back.
Boehner might have been able to find enough Republican moderates to join with Democrats and pass the big bargain, but they, and he, would have become shooting practice for tea partiers — and pragmatic tea partiers are themselves at risk of being judged sellouts. It is hard to say yes when you know you’ll get hammered for it.
Tenet No. 2: Compromise is the enemy. Many Palestinians believe that compromises with Israel have gotten them nowhere. The conclusion they draw is that compromising will never get them anywhere. Tea partiers share something of the same attitude. Compared not only with Democrats but with non-tea party Republicans, their view of compromise stands out: They hate it.
On the debt limit bill, the Pew Research Center recently found that large majorities of Democrats, independents and non-tea party Republicans said they were “willing to compromise.” Not the tea partiers. Last October, when Pew asked respondents if they admire leaders who stick to a position or who make compromises, tea partiers condemned compromisers by a scathing margin of 71-22.
Tenet No. 3: Negotiating and delivering are different things. Pragmatic Palestinian leaders lack the ability to restrain spoilers who can wreck a deal by lobbing missiles into southern Israel, and they lack the legitimacy and clout to be confident of selling a deal to the Palestinian rank and file. Pragmatic Republican leaders lack the ability to restrain tea party activists who will challenge “RINOs” (“Republicans in name only”) in primaries, and they lack the legitimacy and clout to be confident of selling a deal to the Republican rank and file.
Neither group even knows its own bottom line, because neither group can admit it has one. Just saying you might agree to raise taxes (or might agree to forgo the unconditional right of return to Israel) brands you as unreliable. That was why every one of the Republican presidential candidates in the Aug. 11 debate in Iowa disavowed a fiscal compromise that would cut spending $10 for every dollar of revenues, a spectacular bargain.
Most of them — the sane ones — would love that deal, but they repudiated it to signal their trustworthiness. Result: They incite their base against the best deal they could ever hope to get.
Tenet No. 4: Think wishfully. Palestinian hardliners think the eventual payoff of hanging tough will be to get what they want, because eventually Israel will cave. The actual payoff is nothing. Republicans seem to hope that eventually the Democrats will cave. The trouble is that the country is on the Democrats’ side: According to Gallup, only a fifth of Americans, and only a quarter of Republicans, want to reduce the deficit without raising any revenues. That, like Israel, is reality.
In a few months, Republicans’ wavering grip on reality will be tested again. A special congressional committee, six Democrats and six Republicans, is charged with finding another $1.2 trillion in 10-year deficit reductions, and President Obama reportedly will ask for more. In effect, Obama is proposing another swing at the grand bargain.
If Republicans succumb to the illusion that they can eventually get to yes by always saying no, they and the country will get what the Palestinians and the Middle East now have: a long stalemate and an intractable problem.
West is a freshman Republican House member from Florida, and he is in “all-out campaign mode,” according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “doing damage control with the tea party.” His crime? Voting for the recent compromise that raised the national debt limit. There’s already talk of a primary challenge.
West is colliding with a brand of politics we have seen before. Republicans are well along toward importing what is arguably the world’s most dysfunctional political model: that of the Palestinians, the gang who can’t say yes.
The Palestinians, it has been said, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The GOP is on its way there.
Congressional Republicans could have gotten a much better deal on the debt limit, one that would have reduced spending by something like $3.2 trillion over 10 years and put the Democrats’ imprimatur on cuts to Medicare and other entitlements, a great accomplishment. But the price would have been a comparative sliver of new revenues, perhaps $800 billion. When the Republicans’ leader, House Speaker John Boehner, tried to snare the prize, he, like Allen West, collided with political Palestinianism, whose hallmarks are these:
Tenet No. 1: You can never be pure enough. Palestinian moderates who want a peace deal worry about the flak they would take from hard-liners in Fatah, who in turn worry about the flak they would take from spoilers like Hamas, and even Hamas worries about spoilers still more extreme among groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Anyone who looks soft gets denounced as a traitor and paints a target on his back.
Boehner might have been able to find enough Republican moderates to join with Democrats and pass the big bargain, but they, and he, would have become shooting practice for tea partiers — and pragmatic tea partiers are themselves at risk of being judged sellouts. It is hard to say yes when you know you’ll get hammered for it.
Tenet No. 2: Compromise is the enemy. Many Palestinians believe that compromises with Israel have gotten them nowhere. The conclusion they draw is that compromising will never get them anywhere. Tea partiers share something of the same attitude. Compared not only with Democrats but with non-tea party Republicans, their view of compromise stands out: They hate it.
On the debt limit bill, the Pew Research Center recently found that large majorities of Democrats, independents and non-tea party Republicans said they were “willing to compromise.” Not the tea partiers. Last October, when Pew asked respondents if they admire leaders who stick to a position or who make compromises, tea partiers condemned compromisers by a scathing margin of 71-22.
Tenet No. 3: Negotiating and delivering are different things. Pragmatic Palestinian leaders lack the ability to restrain spoilers who can wreck a deal by lobbing missiles into southern Israel, and they lack the legitimacy and clout to be confident of selling a deal to the Palestinian rank and file. Pragmatic Republican leaders lack the ability to restrain tea party activists who will challenge “RINOs” (“Republicans in name only”) in primaries, and they lack the legitimacy and clout to be confident of selling a deal to the Republican rank and file.
Neither group even knows its own bottom line, because neither group can admit it has one. Just saying you might agree to raise taxes (or might agree to forgo the unconditional right of return to Israel) brands you as unreliable. That was why every one of the Republican presidential candidates in the Aug. 11 debate in Iowa disavowed a fiscal compromise that would cut spending $10 for every dollar of revenues, a spectacular bargain.
Most of them — the sane ones — would love that deal, but they repudiated it to signal their trustworthiness. Result: They incite their base against the best deal they could ever hope to get.
Tenet No. 4: Think wishfully. Palestinian hardliners think the eventual payoff of hanging tough will be to get what they want, because eventually Israel will cave. The actual payoff is nothing. Republicans seem to hope that eventually the Democrats will cave. The trouble is that the country is on the Democrats’ side: According to Gallup, only a fifth of Americans, and only a quarter of Republicans, want to reduce the deficit without raising any revenues. That, like Israel, is reality.
In a few months, Republicans’ wavering grip on reality will be tested again. A special congressional committee, six Democrats and six Republicans, is charged with finding another $1.2 trillion in 10-year deficit reductions, and President Obama reportedly will ask for more. In effect, Obama is proposing another swing at the grand bargain.
If Republicans succumb to the illusion that they can eventually get to yes by always saying no, they and the country will get what the Palestinians and the Middle East now have: a long stalemate and an intractable problem.