Forty-seven Republican Senators sending a letter to the Iranian leadership urging that they ignore President Obama provides another vivid example of the distance today’s Republican Party has traveled from conservatism to radicalism.
Proper conservatives understand how unpredictable and volatile human nature can be, which is why conservatives have been among the most enthusiastic architects throughout history in establishing institutions and the habit of respect for norms, traditions and the rule of law that place severe limits on arbitrary and impulsive human behavior.
Today’s Republicans, on the other hand, act as if there are no limits on them so long as they have persuaded themselves that their motives are right and pure and just and so the means they adopt to carry out their aims are automatically self-justifying.
Paul Waldman, in a marvelous op-ed in the Washington Post, lays all this out explicitly.
Never before in modern times, he says, has a president had his legitimacy questioned by the opposition party they way Barack Obama has. Because Obama represents a worldview with which these radical conservatives disagree, Republicans “have decided that as long as he holds the office of the presidency, it’s no longer necessary to respect the office itself.”
Last week, Americans were subjected to the humiliation of a foreign leader lecturing our President from the rostrum of the House of Representatives in a speech designed to look just like the President’s own State of the Union Address so as to demean our President by putting on the national stage the Republicans' own chosen leader when it comes to American policy in the Middle East.
And now we have a group of 47 mostly Republican Senators sending a letter to a foreign government urging them to ignore our President.
“It’s one thing to criticize the administration’s actions, or try to impede them through the legislative process,” said Waldman. “But to directly communicate with a foreign power in order to undermine ongoing negotiations? That is appalling.”
It seems almost superfluous to imagine, as Waldman does, how Republicans would react if the roles were reversed and a group of Democratic senators tried the same thing over American policy in Iraq or Afghanistan when George W. Bush was president.
The only direct precedent Waldman can think of for outside interference like this occurred in 1968 when then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon secretly communicated with South Vietnam in an attempt to scuttle peace negotiations the Johnson administration was engaged.
Many were convinced Nixon was guilty of treason at the time, says Waldman, or at the very least a clear violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits American citizens from communicating with foreign governments to conduct their own foreign policy.
But Dan Drezner concedes the actions of Republicans today does not quite qualify. An open letter from members of the legislative branch does not quite rises to the level of a violation of the Logan Act.
It may be in bad taste or even worse as policy, says Drezner, but at the very least it makes clear that Republicans believe that when they disagree with the administration over policy, “they can act as though Barack Obama isn’t even the President of the United States.”
And the Republican rebellion against our republican form of government extends beyond foreign affairs and into domestic matters, says Waldman. In and op-ed last week in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged states to refuse to comply with proposed rules on greenhouse gas emissions from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The message McConnell seems to be sending, says Waldman, is this: “Never mind that agency regulations like these have the force of law, and the Supreme Court has upheld the EPA’s responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions. If you don’t like the law, just act as though it doesn’t apply to you.”
In short, nullification in both word and deed.
We may have the oldest constitution in the world, but the American political system runs according to behavioral norms, says Waldman, echoing my own conservative beliefs. And many of these norms go unnoticed “until they’re violated,” he says.
Nothing in the Constitution or in the law says a Speaker of the House cannot invite a foreign leader to address a Joint Session of Congress for the sole purpose of criticizing an American President, says Waldman, or that a Speaker can’t do it without the basic courtesy of giving the White House a heads up.
These are just habits of behavior that our nation’s leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, have internalized over two centuries of self-government and in the interests of forming a more perfect union that promotes domestic tranquility and the general welfare .
But norms and traditions are fragile things that haven’t a chance in times like ours when one party, the Republican Party, that has concluded "there is one set of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set that applies when Barack Obama is the president,” says Waldman.
Ends justifying the means. This is the age-old recipe for radicalism that the “conservative” Republican Party once understood instinctively. Yet, with Tea Party radicalism now wielding the whip hand of a GOP convinced of its own self-righteousness, it is no longer necessary to show a President of the other party “even a modicum of respect,” says Waldman. Nor must states obey laws with which they disagree. Nor is it unacceptable, so long as you are advancing “conservative principles,” to sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating directly with that power.
Waldman is right: Behavior Republicans countenance now when it is directed against President Obama would be considered beyond the pale were a Republican sitting in the White House. Indeed, the idea that what’s good for Democrats is good for Republicans “wouldn’t even make sense” to Republicans, says Waldman, since all that matters is that a Republican would be in charge.
Respect for the legitimacy of opposing parties. Respect for the verdict of national elections. These are the two fundamental prerequisites of democracy, neither of which Republicans respect because Republicans are no longer fundamentally democratic.
