Why the GOP has ‘given up on the idea of policy proposals’

April 30, 2008

Once in a while, I’ll hear some of Barack Obama’s detractors — from both sides — argue that he’s been lax in offering detailing policy proposals. I’ve never entirely understood the line of attack — both the Obama and Clinton campaigns have been extremely forthcoming when it comes to presenting a detailed platform, filled with all kinds of specifics, especially compared to Mr. Vague Generalities.

The real problem, of course, is that it’s the McCain campaign that avoids substance like the plague. We saw this just yesterday when McCain unveiled his healthcare proposal. Asked about those who either can’t afford or can’t qualify for private insurance, McCain proposed that the federal government “work with” states to cover those who would get left behind. What does “work with” mean? No one knows.

This is part of a conspicuous trend. Tyler Cowen, hardly a partisan Dem, noted today:

Trade aside, so far I’ve yet to see many actual policy proposals from the McCain camp. Mostly I’ve seen attempts to signal that they won’t do anything too offensive to the party’s right wing. Very few of these trial balloons seem to be ideas that McCain had expressed much previous loyalty to. I don’t even think we should be analyzing these statements as policy proposals. We should be wondering why the Republican Party has given up on the idea of policy proposals.

Actually, I’ve been wondering about that for quite a while.

Yglesias noted, “[T]he GOP seems to have decided to blow a not-very-appealing idiosyncratic element of George W. Bush’s personality into some kind of principled objection to policy proposals.”

True, but how did we get to this point?

First, it seems McCain, like most of the Republican Party, doesn’t have much of a policy agenda to speak of, so detailed white papers are out of the question. When your platform is more or less limited to “Keep Doing What Bush Has Been Doing,” there’s no real need for 35-page briefing books. Clinton and Obama, in contrast, want to institute rather sweeping changes, so it’s more incumbent on them to talk about how their ideas would work.

Second, McCain is probably convinced that he can get away with a total lack of policy specifics. The media assumes he’s a credible, knowledgeable candidate, by virtue of having served in Congress for more than a quarter-century. (Obama, with less experience, isn’t given the benefit of the doubt, so he faces more pressure to be more specific.) Besides, reporters don’t want to read a bunch of white papers anyway, so they aren’t about to start asking McCain why he doesn’t produce any.

Third, details are risky. The more specifics a candidate offers, the greater the likelihood that the proposal will draw scrutiny. If McCain isn’t getting pressed for details (see Point #2), why bother? To fulfill some obligations as a responsible, 21st-century presidential candidate, ready to deal with complex issues in a serious way? Please.

And fourth, I get the sense that there’s a gap in expectations. Democrats care about how policies work; Republicans care about how policies feel. It’s like Republicans are the Stephen Colbert Party, quite certain there are more nerve endings in their gut than in their brain. If you’ll forgive an obvious over-simplification, rank-and-file Dems demand that their candidates demonstrate a degree of expertise and policy fluency; while rank-and-file Republicans think egg-heads are elitists.

It’s why, as Josh Patashnik noted, if “you listened to the Republican presidential debates, with the partial exception of taxation, there were almost no in-depth discussions of policy initiatives. If there were votes to be won by being detailed, presumably some opportunistic candidate with an air of competence would have hammered the other candidates repeatedly for their lack of specifics. But that didn’t happen.”

Any other thoughts on why there’s a white-paper gap?

I think you’ve missed the obvious explanation. Republicans do have policies. Their problem is that their policies are deeply unpopular with the American people, for the very good reason that their policies are specifically designed to privilege a small group of very rich people at the expense of everyone else. Consequently, it’s crucial for any Republican candidate to avoid any lengthy discussion of policies, and focus instead on fear- and anger-arousing campaigns that can motivate people to vote their emotions rather than their interests. Otherwise Republicans would never win an election, since their base of extremely rich people is quite small (remember Bush’ comment about how the have-mores were his base?), and their policies are actively hostile to the interests of everybody else.

  • Your previous post on McCain’s opposition to improved GI Bill benefits for soldiers makes my point very well. This is a proposal that would help a large number of not-well-off, politically uninfluential people. So naturally McCain is against it.

  • It’s especially surprising since the Reps are such a closely united party. Most of their post-Gingrich Congressmen are little more than employees. They receive most of their money from well organized special interests. Their ideas come from well funded think tanks (AEI, Heritage Foundation, Cato Inst., etc.) and much of their success over the last 15 years has come from tight message control (pollsters, writers, media embeds). Their real problem is that their ideas are fundamentally flawed. Or depending on your point of view, those they care about have reached Nirvana, while those they need to have vote for them are satisfied with rhetorical pabulum and a binary we vs they association.

  • …are specifically designed to privilege a small group of very rich people at the expense of everyone else.

    This isn’t policy, it’s theft and plunder. We got this point when the Republican Party was overtaken by authoritarian thugs.

    They steal elections. They smash and loot the federal treasury with utter abandon. They start wars because they want to.

    Hello? Thugs don’t make policy. The modern Republican is nothing like the creature of 1995. Jesus, when will people wake the fuck up? They’re criminals. Public Policy means nothing to them.

  • My money is on #3: better to keep your trap shut than open it and provide the enemy with ammunition. Just look at what you and others have done — you keep compiling the lists of his flip-flops every time he contradicts himself. As if you didn’t know that, changing one’s position on every subject depending on political expediency, is the only kind of evolution that Repubs believe in…

  • I think we have to distinguish between real Republican policies, and what they feed to the voters to augment their base. The modern Republican Party stands for unfettered global capitalism. Period. Everything they do, including their bullying, warmongering foreign policy, follows from that. The people be damned, long live big business and the aristocracy.

    But to gain, and sustain their power, they’ve created a facade, the appearance of a party that purports to answer the public’s needs, but in actual fact is carefully crafted to dupe a majority of the electorate. They add to their base of religious, social and warmongering fanatics whatever demographic groups they can swing over to their side with pseudo policies that appeal to them.

    They truly are a party out of Orwell’s 1984. They are nothing but a propaganda machine on the outside, and a greedy, ruthless power at the core.

    I know that sounds paranoid and simplistic, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be true.

  • Great post #1.

    Krugman made the same point in his book, how the actual policies of the Repubs are not supported by voters once they are laid out.

  • “I think we have to distinguish between real Republican policies, and what they feed to the voters to augment their base. The modern Republican Party stands for unfettered global capitalism. Period. Everything they do, including their bullying, warmongering foreign policy, follows from that. The people be damned, long live big business and the aristocracy.”

    Agreed, but I would not even call it unfettered capitalism, but rather crony capitalism, in which the government subsidizes favored business interests and bends or breaks laws to support them.

  • So for me, the questions become –

    How can this be exposed for what it is to the general public (i.e turn this into major problem for the GOP)?

    How can the Democratic party use this to put forth its own policy proposals to the public?

  • This is why the next dpbate should be Obama vs Mccain, Mr. McCain’s waffling will be exposed. Unless of course he has a mic attached as did “W”to provide the correct answers.

  • “Any other thoughts on why there’s a white-paper gap?”

    Like Dick Cheney said to Lincoln Chaffee after winning in 2000, “We’ve won the election, we don’t have to care about our campaign policies.”

    A Policy Wonk not only knows what their policy proscriptions are, they know WHY it’s not something else. A Republican’t can get to the point of knowing what they are for (Abstinence Training?) but they don’t have the knowledge to know why it should not be (Abstinence Training has a 50% failure rate?).

  • Any other thoughts on why there’s a white-paper gap?

    You don’t need policy when you can use gays and brown people to scare voters into voting for you.

  • Ronald Reagan ran on “Morning in America” which was nothing but a sound bite. And he won because people FELT they were better off than they were when he became President. I think it’s a form of mass induced hysteria!

  • How can you expect anything serious from someone who says. “I would just sit the Sunnis and Shiites down and say stop the bullshit” and mean it as a foreign policy plan.

    They don’t offer policy as anything more than a response to democratic policies. Their plans are always about increasing their profits and holdings and really don’t qualify as “public” policy. Whatever stands in the way of that or promotes that determines policy.

    That’s why I say that the response to McCain should be laughter at the mere idea of his becoming president. To reference McCain, Clinton or Obama should just start off with a hearty chuckle and say, ” What, are you kidding me? More wars McCain, who doesn’t have a clue about our economy, whose been consistently wrong about Iraq for years, has no Health care plan besides ‘we oughta’ get this fixed’. Permanent tax cuts for the very wealthy, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran McCain who’s two steps away from senility and can barely remember where he left his car keys much less the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs unless he’s told by Lieberman or Graham. We might as well rename him McBush and nobody wants Bush for another 4yrs. What a joke.”

    I don’t expect any policy papers…how can you when everything these guys have done for the past 12yrs has turned into a disaster. They are obstructionists to efficient government who get elected to make sure government doesn’t work so they can privatize it’s functions and ensure profits at the expense of it’s citizens. The whole republican legacy is an example of what not to do in a democracy. Check by the toilet for their “white policy papers” because that is where they get their most frequent use.

  • Steve Benen claims the GOP has no policy proposals — but fails to cite any policy proposals he’s criticizing.

    It’s hard to criticize something that doesn’t actually exist.

    Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?

    Any other thoughts on why there’s a white-paper gap?

    It’s easy: The media.

    Point 1: The media portrays anyone willing to discuss policy as an egghead, academic elitist out of touch with Real Americans® and with no love of America. Just look what they did to Al Gore in 2000.

    Point 2: Policy proposals don’t sell. They’re not sexy, they don’t blow up, they don’t create rich emotions in people, and they don’t stir up controversy. Thus, they’re no good to a media more worried about profit than truth.

    Point 3: The GOP doesn’t need actual policies because they’re good at the sound bite. It’s hard to get a 15-second clip summing up a 40-page white paper, and the media loves them some sound bites. Thus, that’s what they focus upon.

    Point 4: Let’s be honest — while there are plenty of smart, hard-working, research-obsessed journalists, most are lazy dim bulbs who would rather not have to fact check anything. Besides, the past 7 years have proven a journalist doesn’t need to be correct to get noticed; just stir up some crap and break a story (true or not).

    I know I keep pounding the media as of late, but dear lord … they are supposed to be government watch dogs. Instead, they’ve turned into Republican attack dogs. It really does it old after a while.

    All I want is for them to do their jobs well. Is that too much to ask?

    • Comments are closed.