Note to the GOP -- Having a Clear Strategic Plan Is Far More Important Than Short-Term Tactical WinsBob Barr
Jul 27, 2023
There remains but two months before the current federal fiscal year ends September 30th. Half of that remaining period will be spent by lawmakers in their home states and districts during the traditional August recess.
When the Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, the Republican Party will be in a position to either strengthen its currently slim majority in the House, or risk losing it.
Much depends on whether the GOP can discipline itself to stick to a strategy that is laser-focused on the 2024 election, rather than on passing bits of legislation playing largely, if not solely to its base for short-term gain.
A key factor in this equation is whether the appropriations process -- which even in the most nonpartisan of times presents a messy picture to the American electorate – can be managed by Speaker McCarthy in such a way as to avoid a government “shutdown,” which already is being whispered in the corridors under the Capitol dome.
Some Republican budget hardliners claim to not “fear a government shutdown,” and others look to “stare down” Democrats. The fact of the matter is that in recent decades, so-called “shutdowns” rarely benefit the Party orchestrating them.
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The best example of this is in the late 1995-early 1996 budget showdown between the then-new GOP House majority led by Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton, who at the time was still licking his wounds after a historic shellacking in the 1994 mid-terms.
At the time, that three-week long “shutdown” was a public relations nightmare for the House GOP majority (I know, I was there as a freshman Member from Georgia). But the long-term benefit was historic.
The goal of the stand-off was not simply to pass a fiscal year budget or to force Clinton to accept as part of that budget bill a particular appropriations rider. Rather, the plan was to draw a bright line in the sand that told Clinton and the American electorate that the new Republican majority was serious about balancing the budget and putting the nation’s fiscal house back in order.
The strategy worked wonderfully, and by the middle of the very next year (1997) both the House and the Senate had passed, and Clinton had signed legislation that in fact balanced the federal budget for the first time in nearly three decades.
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Source:
https://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2023/07/27/note-to-the-gop-having-a-clear-strategic-plan-is-far-more-important-than-short-term-tactical-wins-n2626259
