Americans Deserve Better Than Wile E. Coyote-Style Politicians
Also known as "Trumpicanus vulgaris"
Outside of a tax cut for wealthy Americans, the one piece of legislation Donald Trump was likely to get passed into law back when he was president was an infrastructure bill. Building things was part of the Trump brand, so infrastructure was, if not exactly up his alley, the sort of thing the owner of a lot of skyscrapers and casinos would do if he became president. Infrastructure is also the sort of big government program pro-business/small government parties like the GOP have historically supported since producers need roads, canals, ports, tunnels, interstates, airports and what-not to get their goods to market.
It turns out, though, that a guy who knows a little something about rebar does not necessarily know how to get legislation through Congress even with majority control of both chambers and an opposition at least open to the idea. (Democrats have historically supported infrastructure bills because they provide government-funded jobs to their working-class base.) The problem was as much a matter of self-sabotage as it was political acumen: It seemed every time the Trump administration would announce an “infrastructure week” to begin a push for legislation, something would burst forth from the id of TrumpWorld to blow it all up. It also didn’t help when he met to discuss infrastructure with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer after Democrats took control of the House in 2019 that he called his own proposal “stupid.” So no Trump infrastructure bill.
With the Senate passing an infrastructure bill this week, Joe Biden (barring a Democratic implosion) is likely to accomplish in 8-10 months time what Donald Trump couldn’t get done in four years. So maybe it was a fit of jealousy that led Trump last month to warn his fellow Republicans
[Passage of the infrastructure bill] will be a victory for the Biden Administration and Democrats, and will be heavily used in the 2022 election. It is a loser for the USA, a terrible deal, and makes the Republicans look weak, foolish, and dumb….Don’t do it Republicans — Patriots will never forget! If this deal happens, lots of primaries will be coming your way!
He basically issued the same threat again during the bill’s consideration this past week (“Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill will be used against the Republican Party in the upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. It will be very hard for me to endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal.”) Nineteen Republican senators voted for the bill anyway, including Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who was asked by Maria Bartiromo of FOX News to react to Trump’s statement. Said Cramer, “Well [Trump] didn’t give one reason why it’s a bad deal, other than it’s Joe Biden’s [bill].” Which sums it up pretty well.
Trump’s behavior here is an example of two political phenomena: Strategic disagreement and negative partisanship. Both parties do it, and it’s not new. Strategic disagreement is pretty much what it sounds like: Disagreement between the parties that occurs not because of ideological differences but for strategic political reasons. In this case, Trump is encouraging Republicans to defeat the infrastructure bill not because he disagrees with its provisions but to deny majority Democrats the opportunity to claim credit with voters for a legislative victory. In a closely divided country where congressional control is seemingly at stake in every election, there are greater incentives to strategically disagree with the opposition so they cannot tout their legislative achievements on the campaign trail than there are to cooperate.
Parties have long practiced strategic disagreement, but it gets supercharged today by negative partisanship, which occurs when partisans are less motivated to support a party for what it stands for than for who it is opposed to. In some cases, partisans dislike the opposing party more than they like their own party. It becomes much easier for someone like Trump to convince his supporters to oppose a bill they might otherwise support if he tells him their dreaded enemies are for it. Today’s identity-driven politics enhance negative partisanship by encouraging partisans to think of themselves as the cultural opposites of their opponents.
All this creates a political environment in which politicians are incentivized not to cooperate with the opposition even when there is nothing ideologically at stake and to distinguish themselves from their opponents by defining their identity as the opposite of their opponents. Over time, these conditions encourage partisans to adopt a reflexive response to every political question: If my opponents are for it, them I’m against it, and vice versa.
Trump wanted Republican senators to follow this political strategy on the infrastructure bill, but a number of factors—including the general popularity of infrastructure projects with the voting public and the likelihood the bill would pass anyway as part of a reconciliation bill—led some Republican lawmakers to work with Democrats to shape the legislation. When it comes to the reconciliation bill, Republicans will oppose that legislation on ideological grounds, so strategic disagreement and negative partisanship won’t factor in there.
But strategic disagreement and negative partisanship define the politics of the pandemic, specifically when it comes to GOP opposition to vaccines and health mandates. And there is a growing sense this strategy is going to backfire spectacularly on Republicans.
In the early days of the pandemic, opposition to masks and shutdowns was driven by libertarian right-wingers who objected to federal, state, and local governments’ massive efforts to control the spread of the virus. Soon enough, however, President Trump came to regard the pandemic as a political inconvenience that imperiled his re-election, so he began pushing back against mask guidelines and restrictions on public gatherings. While Biden urged people to follow scientific and medical guidance, Trump tacked in the opposite direction and rallied his party against the public health experts, blue state governors, and Democratic mayors who urged and enforced the tightest restrictions. Trump’s own personal recklessness led him to contract COVID-19 himself.
Trump may no longer be in public office but Republicans still follow his playbook when it comes to the politics of the pandemic. Many Republicans have made it a virtue to scoff at if not downright oppose any sort of pandemic regulation or recommendation. For the most part, their opposition isn’t really based on a scientific assessment of the situation (when it is, it’s like the broken clock that’s right twice a day) but is used instead as a way to stick it to and distinguish themselves from the liberals, government bureaucrats, medical professionals, and (in an interesting twist) business elites who support those measures.
This has created a stark partisan divide when it comes to many matters concerning the pandemic. Just consider vaccines: A recent FOX News poll found that 86% of Biden voters have been vaccinated while only 3% say they do not plan on getting vaccinated. Yet while a majority of Trump voters (54%) say they have been vaccinated, 34% have no intention of doing so. Of course, many of those Biden voters may have gotten a shot as a way to stick it to Trump and his followers, but even if that was the reason, at least they could add that the vaccine helps protect them and others from the virus. By this point in the pandemic—when vaccines are clearly safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness—vaccine hold-outs don’t have much more to cling to than a sense of spite.
Unfortunately, the delta variant seems fueled by spite. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in an apparent race to out-Trump one another, have signed executive orders prohibiting local governments from issuing mask and vaccine mandates despite major outbreaks in their states. It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the state of conservative politics in this country when the Republican governors of the second and third most-populous states in the union have aligned themselves firmly against the principle of local control on the most pressing matter of public administration facing their states. That principle—long a hallmark of conservatism—just kind of goes to the wayside, though, when the local officials they can spite are Democrats governing urban areas full of Democratic voters.
Governor Abbott had issued a mask mandate at the outbreak of the pandemic last year, but with cases surging in Texas this summer, he actually forbade localities from re-imposing them. Although he encourages people to get vaccinated, he keeps insisting that only “personal responsibility, not government mandates” will deliver the state from the scourge of the pandemic. Unfortunately, Texans’ personal irresponsibility has filled the state’s hospitals with COVID patients, many of whom will now receive treatment in overflow tents. The surge in cases has led Abbott to ask other states to send medical professionals to help him care for his citizens, which suggests a pretty big failure of responsibility on Abbott’s part.
Governor DeSantis finds himself in a similar situation in Florida, which has just received a large shipment of ventilators from the federal government. DeSantis, however, was unaware of their arrival. He also seems unaware the state is going to need those ventilators: Florida is currently experiencing its worst spike in cases of the entire pandemic despite the widespread availability of vaccines. Meanwhile, like Abbott, DeSantis has forbidden local school officials from imposing mask mandates in schools at the start of the school year. Superintendents in Dallas, Gainesville, and other metro areas across the two states are openly defying the governors’ orders, though, determining that they have an ethical obligation to look out for their students’ health even when their governors have commanded them not to. Abbott and DeSantis may soon need to figure out if it is worth the political capital to enforce their orders despite the clear risk doing so would pose to students.
In Arkansas, Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson is at least encouraging his citizens to get vaccines and now supports allowing schools to require mask mandates. In a revealing interview on Face the Nation this past Sunday, however, Hutchinson had to own up to just how ill-advised it was for him to stick it to the libs and health care professionals by signing a law banning schools from imposing mask mandates last April:
That smirk on his face at about 1:08 in the clip when he admits “it was an error to sign that law” says it all. (Yeah, yeah, it’s all fun and games until…) And yes, you heard that right, he asked the Arkansas legislature to repeal the law but the Republican-led body was too stubborn to comply, which left Hutchinson in the preposterous position of hoping the Arkansas Supreme Court would step in to declare a bill he signed into law unconstitutional and feeling grateful when they did.
Some Republicans, like Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, know better. Appearing on CNN this past Sunday, Cassidy said, “Whenever politicians mess with public health, usually it doesn’t work out for public health, and ultimately it doesn’t work out for the politician, because public health suffers and the American people want public health. When it comes to local conditions, if my hospital’s full, vaccination rate is low and infection rate is going crazy, we should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their communities.” Others, like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whom Nancy Pelosi called a “moron” a few weeks ago for griping about new House masking mandates, remain focused on stoking a base that signals its opposition to Democrats through its opposition to masks, vaccines, public health mandates, and the recommendations of figures like Anthony Fauci. Hence this piece of merchandise, which (no joke) McCarthy is selling on his campaign website (and BTW, note the scam McCarthy is running on his own supporters in the top yellow box in the graphic below):
That’s a self-own worthy of one Wile E. Coyote, and there’s a growing sense Republicans are about to commit an even greater self-own if they don’t begin taking the delta surge more seriously. Ron Brownstein recently looked at numerous polls surveying public attitudes regarding vaccine mandates. Those surveys found that “the vaccinated, across party lines, have had it with the unvaccinated.” Ninety percent of vaccinated Democrats and two out of three Republicans blame the unvaccinated for the rise in cases. While support among vaccinated Republicans for vaccine mandates of any kind—from minimal work-related mandates to a broader vaccine requirement for everyone—lags behind vaccinated Democrats, substantial percentages of vaccinated Republicans are open to mandates. Additionally, while support for vaccine mandates currently divides the country fairly evenly there are signs support is growing, driven in part by the delta surge but also by a sense among the vaccinated that the unvaccinated threaten to prolong if not indefinitely sustain the pandemic.
If Republican leaders out to prove their stylistic debt to Donald Trump keep siding with the unvaccinated rather than with those who have taken the responsibility to get vaccinated, they will become the face of the pandemic, the reason schools struggle to safely re-open, hospitals are overburdened, and public events keep turning into super-spreader events. They will become the reason life can’t return to normal. A year ago, they could bask in Trump’s glow while the president took most of the heat for the nation’s poor response to the pandemic. Now they are collectively in the spotlight, and it doesn’t reflect well on the party.
Americans deserve better than these Wile E. Coyote-style politicians whose rivalry with their opponent comes to define their actions and leads them to concoct ridiculous ill-advised schemes that keep backfiring on them. The problem today, of course, is that when our Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff, blows himself up with dynamite, or drops a boulder onto his head, he’s not the only one getting hurt.
Thanks for reading.
Photo credit: DeviantArt
Exit music: “Bluebird Wine” by Emmylou Harris (1975, Pieces of the Sky)