Blaming Republicans — for everything

Those in the "tea party" movement frequently assert that the country's "establishment elites" are out of touch with mainstream voters.

This is, in part, a delusion common in American politics. Political activists of all stripes tend to believe that they stand at the center point of the political spectrum and measure others accordingly. In reality, the American political mainstream is very broad and includes most of those accused, by one side or the other, of standing outside of it.

However, to the extent tea partyers have a point, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have volunteered to serve as Exhibit A.

If there is an establishment elite, Mann of the Brookings Institution and Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute serve as senior theorists. They have a new book which they synopsized in a recent essay in the Washington Post.

Mann and Ornstein have concluded that the reason for misgovernance in the United States can be summarized in one word: Republicans.

According to them, the Republican Party has become "an insurgent outlier in American politics." It is "ideologically extreme" and "far from the mainstream."

Mann and Ornstein's own delusion about the center point of American politics is revealed by their description of the Democrats under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as being "a status-quo party."

That's a fair description of Clinton's presidency after the spanking of the 1994 congressional elections. But how can any sentient political scientist describe Obama's presidency as status quo?

Like it or loathe it, "Obamacare" shook the health-care status quo, a sixth of the U.S. economy, from rafters to basement. Under Obama, federal spending hit 25 percent of GDP. Under Clinton, it never got much above 21 percent. In today's economy, that's $600 billion in additional spending. Under Obama, the federal deficit exceeded 10 percent of GDP. The previous post-World War II high was 6 percent.

Astonishingly, Mann and Ornstein cite Republican opposition to the unprecedented spending and deficits under Obama as part of what makes the party far from the mainstream. "In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression," they intone, "the party's leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth ?"

As a matter of economics, it is inaccurate to describe either enthusiasm for or skepticism about Keynesian stimulus spending as outside the mainstream. There are a large number of highly credentialed economists on either side.

As a matter of politics, describing opposition to Keynesian stimulus spending as outside the mainstream is palpable rubbish. When Obama's stimulus was passed, a CNN poll showed a narrow majority approving, 54 percent. A year later, public sentiment had reversed and the stimulus was opposed by 56 percent of the electorate. Public opinion remains net negative today.

In the 2010 election, Republicans were transparent about intentions. They didn't say they were going to work with Obama to solve the country's problems. They said they were going to put an end to his big-spending ways and his big-government proposals.

They got a majority of the votes cast for the House of Representatives nationally. They captured 56 percent of the independent vote.

How can a party that gets a majority of the votes and then does what it said it would do be described as a political outlier?

Mann and Ornstein believe that Republican intransigence on taxes is irresponsible. Fair enough. But even if all of Obama's tax increases were enacted, the country would still have accumulated debt in excess of 100 percent of GDP. House Republicans are passing budgets to do something about that. Senate Democrats are not.

Mitt Romney has given some specifics on what he would do to lower the trajectory of entitlement spending. Obama has not.

If blame for failing to address the country's problems is being apportioned, how can virtually all of it fall on the party that's trying and almost none on the party that isn't?

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.

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