Jonathan Chait calls out Ross Douthat on his recent column, Debt-Ceiling Extortion Isn’t So Bad, Really. Douthat is arguing that forcing a Debt Ceiling crisis isn’t that bad. According to him, the problem with the Republicans is that they are asking for something that is unreasonable, the defunding of Obamacare. If they were just demanding a Grand Bargain, everything would be fine. Chait rightly notes that this is a theme with Douthat: assuming that the Republican Party was the “reasonable” party Douthat wants it to be. But I have a different issue with the man.
The second half of Chait’s article is about Douthat’s admonishment of President Obama to push for the Grand Bargain that Douthat thinks is so important. Chait goes point by point and notes that Obama has done exactly what Douthat thinks he should. This reminds me of Thomas Friedman who is now and forever claiming that we need a new centrist party that just so happens to be the Democratic Party under Obama and Clinton. But at least Friendman is (probably) a Democrat. At least he thinks that after looking at the two parties, Obama is closer to his ideal than, say, Mitt Romney.
But what are we to make of Douthat? He is a Republican. Yet apparently what he wants is what Obama is offering. He isn’t a Republican politician who pretty much has to disagree with whatever the Democrats say. So why all the posturing and pretending? Why can’t he just come out and admit that Obama is exactly what he’s looking for in a president? The answer is simple: Obama is not what he’s looking for in a president.
If you look at Douthat’s writing over time, a pattern emerges. He is for exactly the same policies as the rest of the Republican Party. But he’s not a politician, so he can be more nuanced. He doesn’t have to answer to a constituency that is calling for blood. But he wants to defund Obamacare. He wants to “reform” entitlements. He wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Does he really want a Grand Bargain? I figure it is a deal he thinks is worth doing but he’d much rather just have the spending cuts. So urging Obama to do what Obama has been doing almost from the moment he got into office is a kind of false equivalence: the Republicans refuse to consider a Grand Bargain but so does Obama!
This is the thing about the so called reasonable Republicans: they are for exactly what the extremists are for. But it is particularly bad coming from people like Douthat. I don’t doubt that if he were a politician facing re-election in Texas, he would sound every bit as extreme as Louie Gohmert. One of the reasons our country’s politics are so screwed up is that people like Douthat cheer lead for one side while not admitting to agreeing with it. If we are to believe his writing, Douthat (and Barro and Frum…) ought to be Democrats—conservative ones, sure, but Democrats nonetheless. But such people don’t really fit in the Democratic Party. They are very much in the mainstream of the Republican Party. But their posturing provides a patina of reasonableness to the Republican party. That’s their entire reason for existence.
