Will Republicans, heirs to, and in many cases participants in the Clinton impeachment effort, act to slow economic growth over the next two years?
The last Republican Congress serving under a Democratic President impeached that President for receiving oral favors from a White House intern, so trivial did those impeaching Congressmen hold their obligations to the country, so overwhelming was their desire to destroy a twice elected popular President from the other party.
Obama is Immune
The new Republican House cannot successfully destroy Barack Obama with crude personal attacks. The public backlash against the pettiness of the Clinton impeachment helped to bury the Gingrich revolution, and Obama himself appears immune to such attacks. To the extent that the right has already tried smearing Obama—birther nuttiness, wide-ranging charges that Obama is a socialist Kenyan Muslim anti-colonialist racist—they have failed. Public opinion polls consistently show that Obama is more popular than any member of the US Congress, Democrat or Republican.
The Economic Outlook
McConnell, Boehner and the Republican leadership know that Obama wins or loses in 2012 based on the strength of the economy. And they know that the US economy is slowly, frustratingly, but nevertheless steadily improving. This is their problem. They will go after ObamaCare as promised, first to repeal, which will fail, and then to attack in portions, try to defund and discredit. If we suffer a terrorist attack they will blame the President, but the American people understand that the government cannot protect us one hundred percent. Congressional Republicans will investigate every conceivable act of the Obama administration, just as Democrats have investigated Republican administrations in the past. But Congressional investigations are yawn-fests. Hearings will “uncover” depredations that will appall those on the right already appalled by everything Obama while boring and irking everybody else.
As things stand now, and taking a reasonable view of current trends, this time next year we may have an improving economy with unemployment in the high eights and trending downward, no troops in Iraq, and significant numbers of American soldiers leaving Afghanistan. Americans will start to see real benefits from ObamaCare with the elimination of the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole, lifetime maximums and preexisting conditions. None of this is good for Republicans and their prospects for ousting Obama in 2012.
What Action Will the Right Take?
And so it is back to the economy. Will Republicans, heirs to, and in many cases participants in the Clinton impeachment effort, act to slow economic growth over the next two years? Their small government mantra comes ready-made with policies that can hurt the economy in the short term: large scale federal spending cuts, denying federal assistance to struggling states, curtailing unemployment benefits, attacking the independence of the Fed, and threatening and/or carrying out a government shut down being among the most obvious. Republicans can claim that these policies are good for the country in the long term—who really knows?—but it is clear that their short-term impact will be a slower economy and improved Republican prospects in 2012.
Guest Post by Jeffrey Goldberg