The problem with democracy is that sometimes your opponents will get into power. Crazy, I know, and blatantly unfair considering the brilliance of your policy ideas, but the electorate can be fickle that way. When this happens, it generally slows down the pace of your reforms and, in some extreme cases, might even reverse some of the carefully crafted elements of your agenda.
In the past, this was considered an unfortunate but necessary aspect of the will of the people being expressed through periodic general elections. However, Republicans appear to have developed a method to circumvent this defect in the system, to, in fact, advance their goals and destroy Democratic presidencies while appearing to be engaged in the process of creating legislation of benefit to all Americans.
Their method goes something like this:
| 1. | Is a Democrat still President? | |
| 2. | NO | Mission accomplished! |
| 3. | YES | Is the government currently facing a critical deadline for legislation necessary to avert a crisis? |
| 4. | NO | Create a crisis with a specific deadline for its resolution. * |
| 5. | YES | Announce that you will not agree to legislation to end the crisis unless your policy demands are met. |
| 6. | Does the Democratic administration agree to your policy demands? | |
| 7. | NO | Stand firm and insist that you will let the deadline pass, precipitating very bad things, very bad things, indeed, unless your demands are met. GO TO STEP 6. |
| 8. | YES | Add new, even more outrageous policy demands to the negotiations. |
| 9. | Are your new demands being met? | |
| 10. | NO | Argue that the Democratic administration is unwilling to negotiate, has taken a hard line against your very, very reasonable policy suggestions and insist that Democrats will be responsible for whatever bad consequences happen if the deadline is missed. GO TO STEP 9. |
| 11. | YES | Add new, completely insane conditions to the negotiations. ** |
| 12. | With the deadline fast approaching, is your latest round of demands being met? | |
| 13. | NO | Point out that a significant number of Republicans would be quite happy to allow the deadline to pass without an agreement. They argue that either the consequences of missing the deadline would not be as bad as the Democrats claim, or their principles of small government are more important than the apparent Democratic principle of good government. Or, they could just be batshit crazy. Whatever works. GO TO STEP 12. *** |
| 14. | YES | Begrudgingly allow the resulting legislation to come to a vote in Congress. Although you have gotten more in concessions than you could possibly have dreamed of, make sure that a substantial number of members of your caucus vote against the bill. Oh, and make sure that your members make it clear to the press (not only journalists friendly to you, but the lamestream media that you otherwise deride) that the Democrats are responsible for the poisonous, rancour-filled atmosphere in Washington. GO TO STEP 1. |
Notes
* The problem with crises is that they are, by their nature, unpredictable. You may be waiting a long time for something nasty to rear its head so that you may take political advantage of it. Wait too long, and the Democrats may pass their own legislation that has nothing to do with your political agenda! It’s true! It’s happened before!
In some ways, manufacturing a crisis by insisting upon an unnecessary deadline is better than waiting for one to happen naturally. For one thing, you can dictate the terms of a crisis better if you’re the one responsible for creating it. For another thing, a carefully crafted artificial crisis can not only move your agenda forward, but, if it lasts long enough, it can take time and energy away from the Democrats, making it harder for them to pursue their agenda. It’s win-win…and one more win. At least.
** Ideally, these new conditions should have nothing to do with the current negotiations and/or be next to impossible to achieve. Examples: demand legislation that would mandate the EPA to turn the sun red.
*** It happens in the best political parties, doesn’t it? You sidle up to crazy fringe elements in order to get elected, then those fringe elements demand that you pursue their agenda when their candidates do get elected. Clearly, the Republican Party has found a way to make this work in their favour. For now.
As always, the Republican Democratic President Killing Algorithm is descriptive, not normative, which, in normal English, means that we are merely describing a phenomenon, not taking an ethical stance on it. Although, given the stakes for the country and the world, we are considering reconsidering this approach…