Boehner and Dayton: A Tale of Two Politicians and Parties

In addition to the Pope’s visit, two end-of-week stories made headlines.  One was the resignation of Speaker Boehner, the other the miserable roll out of the medical marijuana program in Minnesota.  Both stories deserve comment because they illuminate broader problems for the Republicans at the national level and the DFL in Minnesota.

“The Crazies Have Taken Over The Party.”
Speaker Boehner’s resignation really should have shocked no one.  His entire tenure as speaker has been tense.  Made speaker when the Tea Party arose and which  lead to the Republicans capturing majority control of the US House during the 2010 elections, Boehner has always been pulled in several directions.  One is being leader of the House of Representatives, seeking to broker deals with the Senate and President Obama.  This is the pragmatic and institutional aspect of his role as speaker.  But many in the GOP (as was true with Nancy Pelosi when she led the Democrats and the House as Speaker) view the speaker as both their party and ideological leader, expecting that person to push their agenda.
While all speakers face this pull as institutional, party, and ideological leaders, some are better able than others to bridge the three.  Boehner did his best, but seldom pleased his most conservative members.  On several occasions he negotiated deals to keep the government open or avert a debt crisis, but he also failed on occasion too.  For the ideological purists in his party, he too failed.  He failed on abortion, failed to cut taxes enough, failed to challenge Obama and the Democrats enough.  There were constant rumors and signs of ideological battles and tests of his leadership, but finally it became too much.  Boehner said that he was stepping down to protect the House and not let the constant leadership battles threaten the institution.
The issue that finally seemed to do it is the one now linking the defunding of Planned Parenthood to funding to keep the government open.  The purists are willing to shut the government down to defund PP and expected Boehner to be both their ideological and party leader to help them here.  But Boehner as part leader knew that past government shutdowns have hurt the Republicans in the past and would probably again do so this year, risking electoral problems in 2016.  Finally, as an institutionalist he knew shutting the government down was not good.  Thus, his tri-lemma–represent the ideologists who have taken control of the party, protect the GOP from self-destruction in the house, and protect the House and the government as an institution.
In the end, the ideologies have won.  They have won not simply in knocking off Boehner (a person they did not ever really trust), but they have taken control of the institution and of the party.  Peter King, Republican from NY, describes what just happened as “the crazies have taken over the party.”   Mainstream media says this move makes it less likely that there will be a government shutdown soon.  Maybe.  Or maybe a weakened Boehner or future speaker will be able to control the ideologies even less, perhaps increasing the chances of a shutdown or more confrontations as we getting closer to the 2016 elections.  Stay tuned.
But there is also something else the mainstream media is missing.  One has to view the resignation of Boehner in conjunction with the Republican presidential polls showing that the three outsides–Trump, Carson, and Fiorina–are leading over the institutionalists or more mainstream GOP.  Consider also polls showing a Republican base entrenched on issues over hostility to immigration  reform, proposals to address climate change, abortion, taxes, and just about everything else, and it  is easy to see why Trump, Carson, and Fiorina are leading.  It is looking to be the year that the Tea Party revolution started in 2009 has finally won.  The Republican party has been made over–if not by Tea Party followers, definitely by the ideologists.    The Party is being pulled ideologically further and further to the right at the congressional and presidential level, representing a demographics and ideology perhaps far from the ideological center of American politics.  Whether this means in the short or long term their demise is a matter of debate.  How Democrats respond will be interesting to see.

Dayton’s Dilemma
The roll out of medical marijuana is effectively a disaster on all fronts.  Yes the legislation was terrible and misconceived from the start.  Instead of just legalizing marijuana or allowing for a deregulated medical use, Minnesota chose to over-regulate its medical use.  Few people would be allowed to use to, but only in an expensive processed form that would not be covered by insurance.  Doctors would be expected to write prescriptions for its use even though they had no financial incentive to do so and risked their medical license to do so because marijuana is still illegal federally and doctors could potentially be sued or prosecuted for suggesting its use.  There was a costly process to select vendors to sell medical marijuana and they would have start up and operating costs  that far exceeded our friendly neighborhood dope dealer.  Bad policy design leads to bad implementation and that is what we are finding out now.
In the last week stories have emerged that the rollout of the medical marijuana is going poorly.  The prices are too high, too few people qualify, stories to buy the product are few, and the vendors are losing money.  There is talk now of qualifying more people for medical marijuana, perhaps giving the program financial solvency.  This will ultimately fail.  The basic policy design  is flawed and tinkering around the edges probably will not fix it.  In too many ways the policy was  captured by too many special interests who all wanted a piece of the pie, and by flawed assumptions about who wanted medical marijuana and why.
On one level one cannot fully blame the Dayton administration for the faulty policy design.  Dayton originally did not want medical marijuana.  But there is a troubling pattern here.   Consider perhaps the three most significant initiatives of the Dayton administration–the Vikings Stadium, MNSure, and now medical marijuana.  All three have had major policy design failures and all three have had terrible roll outs.  With the Vikings stadium MN has one of the worst stadium deals in the country.  MNSure’s rollout was so bad even Dayton was willing to put on the table this last session killing the Minnesota health care exchange and opting into the federal one.  Now medical marijuana and the concession it needs a major fix.  This is not a good implementation history for Dayton and the Democrats, and it is a certainty that such a pattern will be an issue in the 2016 state legislative elections.

A Republican Kübler-Ross Moment

Note:  This essay appeared in the November 30, edition of  Politics in Minnesota.  Please consider subscribing to that publication.  Also, for comparison, the December 3, 2012 "Talk of the Town" section of the New Yorker references a Kübler-Ross feeling among House of Representatives Republicans.  I wrote this piece before seeing the New Yorker essay.

Republicans and conservatives in Minnesota and across the United States are having their  Kübler-Ross moment with the 2012 election results and their aftermath.  As they confront their political mortality, their reaction to their failures parallels that of the psychological state of individuals facing their own deaths.
    Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss doctor whose book Death and Dying outlined a seven stage process that patients often go through when confronting death.  Her book became famous in the 1979 Bob Fosse movie All that Jazz, featuring Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon.  The stages–shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance–represent the psychological states that individuals go through as they confront their demise.  Individuals move through these seven stages to acceptance, but often get s truck at a stage and never move on. Politically, Republicans and conservatives across the country are similarly facing their own mortality, psychologically traversing the same path, or worse, getting stuck in one stage and unable to move on.
    Shock.  Many Republicans have yet to accept the fact that they lost the 2012 elections fair and square.  They were out-hustled, out-organized, and most importantly, out-voted.  Obama received more votes than Romney, Democrats have more US Senate seats than Republicans, and for only the fourth time in American history, the minority party in the House received more votes than the majority.  Democrats also made big gains in the state houses, including Minnesota, and here the two Republican-prized constitutional amendments failed.  Romney, as it is now known, was so assured of victory that he did not write a concession speech.  Karl Rove, similarly convinced of victory, had a meltdown on Fox news when that state was called Ohio for Obama on his beloved network.
    Denial.  We could not have loss had it been a fair election.  But for the voter fraud we would have won.  But for Obama giving gifts to minority voters we would have won.  For Kurt Zellers, it was not the two amendments and the social issues, the government shutdown, or bad politics that cost them the control of the legislature.  For Mary Kiffmeyer and Jason Lewis, were it not for the lies and distortions by their opponents, the Elections Amendment would have passed.  For Dan McGrath of the Minnesota Majority, expect him to yell fraud, contending that were it not for the voter fraud that the Elections Amendment was meant to prevent, it would have passed.  Of course, Romney did not lose because he was a bad candidate, with a bad message, appealing to an aging, white, party and demographic that is dying off and which is to the right of mainstream America.  Of course Republicans did not lose Senate races in Missouri and Indiana because candidate remarks about rape and abortion turned off female voters.  No, the problem is not the candidate, the message, or the messenger, it is simply we did not move far enough to the right or that we need to repackage the same ideas in a new way.
    Anger.  We just cannot live a country with Obama as president so we need to succeed from the union, so says those folks deep in the heart of Texas.  Similarly conservatives and Republicans are lashing out against the biased media, lying liberals, and thuggish unions, all to blame for their losses. But as if anger and blame were not spread around far enough, turn inward.  Blame moderates such as Romney, Christ Christie for doing his job in New Jersey, or Clint Eastwood for talking to an empty chair for squandering the chance to win.
    Bargaining.  The president wins, we lose. Democrats gain seats in Senate and House and Minnesota turns true blue in the legislature.  What shall we do?  Stand our ground and force Obama and the Democrats to bargain.  John Boehner claims a mandate and says maybe we shall compromise, but we refuse to raise income taxes, we refuse to make the wealthy carry their fair share, we refuse to give to avoid the fiscal cliff.  Best of all, Mary Kiffmeyer, after refusing to negotiate with the governor and the DFL on voter ID, now generously tells both that she willing to compromise on it.
    Depression.  Oh to have the Prozac concession for Fox News, AM talk radio, and in most of the south.  Depression rings across the red parts of the United States now.  The despondence of having lost a presidential race that should have been won, a US Senate ripe for the picking, or realization  that Obama gets probably to pick several Supreme Court Justices or that same-sex marriage as a legal reality is near is enough to make any Conservative Republican depressed.  How can one live four more years with a president whose middle name is Hussein, who is probably not a US citizen, and no doubt Muslim.
    Testing.  But just maybe there is a way to go on.  Maybe there is a way to let taxes go up without raising taxes.  Perhaps it is by letting the Bush era tax cuts expire and then vote for a tax cut for the middle class.  That’s not raising taxes is it?  Or perhaps eliminate tax loopholes or raise the rates on capital gains.  That’s not raising taxes is it?
    Acceptance.  Ok, so Obama did win and the Democrats did take control of the Minnesota legislature.  But the midterm elections are less than two years away and the next presidential race barely four.  Maybe there is a way to survive, maybe we can obstruct some more, hold on to some old outdated ideas on gay rights and immigration, or maybe Obama and the Democrats will overreach.  Yes we lost, but perhaps there is a silver lining.  It will be purity of message and candidate in 2014 and 2016.