Gingrich, Clinton, China, and the Tea Party: Two Thoughts on the New Political Landscape

The Gingrich-Clinton Paradox:

Do you remember the good old days...I don't but they tell me they were really good. Every family could have an avocado on their table and every child a cell-phone under their desk. Credit cards were more numerous then dollar bills and China's 40 plus 4 million people cities were not swiftly replacing the memory of a towerless ground zero.

Yet what I wish to remember most is the time when the staunchly conservative speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, and a Democratic stalwart, Bill Clinton worked together, and succeeded.
Yes Clinton was fulfilling the fantasy of many an aspiring politician. Yes the Republican controlled house, it turns out, had much of its own corrupt political figures. But the country was succeeding and our political class was not getting in the way.

Why?

I am sure some political theorist will pontificate about how I reversed the cause and the effect -it was a booming economy despite the government not because of the government.

However one can just as easily make the argument that the political class had an incentive to work together, and that their work facilitated the nations growth.

The Democrats recent control of both the house and the executive exemplifies this paradox:

As the Executive and the legislative branch were politically homogenous, the republican minority did all it could to obstruct and undermine the majority. They then blamed the majority for their failures despite claiming that "the majority had a real chance, they controlled it all, and blew it". True a minority that is focused on obstruction can be a serious impediment to the majorities success, but the public doesn’t see it that way, and that’s what counts.

On the other hand if there is a legislative-executive split, every party has a real and, even more importantly, obvious stake in success. Obvious, because the public is aware of their control/responsibility. It is one thing for politicians (in this case the republicans) to argue that they were "kept out of the process" as the minority, it is another thing, entirely, to fail when in control.

Now that the the GOP controls the house, can Obama get things done?

I think yes.

Why?

Because now both parties are in power and have a stake in the success of the political class they control. Think Clinton and Newt Gingrich's' "contract with America". In this case it is Obama and the "Take back America"/Tea party.

In short the recent political developments are conducive to plentiful avocados and credit, (I hope this time it will be debit cards) cards. Yes it may be as simple as restoring the the check on the balance. Or, if you will, the reemergence of the Newt Gingrich-Clinton paradox.

Tea-party Ideology May be Good for China Too:

Obama's visit to Americas four major Democratic allies in the region -Indonesia, India, Japan, and South Korea- all of which serve, in part, to hedge in China's spreading power, converts wide-spread public condemnation of China in congress into action.
This makes sense.

Besides China's abysmal human rights record, its menacing attitude to many of Americas Asian allies, and its implicit support for nuclear proliferation/bad actors, in Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran, China is also an aggressive if not unscrupulous global competitor. Of course America is not free of its own foibles and out-right blunders, but I believe in America not China.

Still, despite the rhetoric surrounding currency manipulation and the PLC's increasingly anti-American indoctrination -both issues that the tea-party targeted in their campaign- the tea-parties ascendancy can be interpreted as beneficial to China.

Yes I know that Republicans are perceived as strong on defense-spending and war (please see post on http://factoru.blogspot.com/2010/04/republicans-and-democrates-herd.html) issues that are inherently threatening to China.

But republicans are also against protectionism, cap-on-trade, and pro free-markets.
Even more China gains from an austerity prone House, after all cuts in spending will strengthen the dollar; a dollar that China is invested in to the tune of 1 trillion dollars.

The Tea Party, Austerity, and the End of Western Hegemony

A series of mishaps has struck a resurgent, albeit tea-infused, Republican Party. Rich Lott (R-Ohio) was exposed by the press for dressing as a Nazi... for a war reenactment... that didn't include any genocidal references, bad taste, bad politics, but not necessarily anti-Semetic. Before that Delaware Republican Senate candidate, Christine O'Donnell was exposed as a "witch" who on a decades old video clip says "I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven.”
Interestingly the clip hit the Internet just days after she stunned longtime congressman Mike Castle in the GOP primary in her third bid for Senate.
It would seem the Democrats were party to a bona fide, that's right, witch hunt!

Most recently a politically significant, however underreported nationally, story came out of Arizona, "The office of Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has been locked down due to the presence of a suspicious package covered with swastikas. KVOA reports that an "envelope containing white powder" was mailed to Grijalva's Tucson office. Bomb technicians are reportedly on hand" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/21/raul-grijalva-suspicious-package_n_772166.html).

This episode will likely galvanize the Hispanic voting public both in Arizona and nationally because it serves as a non-verbal reminder to a major minority population that "hey vote for us or get THAT".

Could all of these recent disclosures be more than politics as usual? Could it be part of a larger effort to destroy the Tea party?

We may never know. However there is another unique development surrounding the Tea parties success and subsequent national media developments- the GOP (Grand Old Party i.e. the Republican establishment) is working against the Tea party.

To illustrate how keen the Republican establishment is on trying to crush the tea party, notice that the party is under attack from the likes of former Republican speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich and Michael Steel, Chairman of the National Republican Committee. Indeed the Republican establishment has funneled millions of dollars to boost main stream candidates in Republican primaries (http://thinkprogress.org/teaparty-primaries/). True conservative stalwarts like Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee are defending the Tea Party but all in all the Democratic and Republican establishment are on an all-out offensive against the incipient "tea-baggers".

So why is there is so much bipartisanship effort directed as halting the Tea parties advance?


We should begin by asking: if the tea party takes over the Republican party and thus congress, does that mean we can expect real austerity measures, like those inching their way through parliaments in Western Europe?

Athens burned, Sarkozy is facing a fierce street-fight over his efforts to raise France's retirement age from 60 to 62, and the UK has passed a measure to reduce overall government expenditures by 18 %, a measure that includes the layoff of over 500,000 public sector employees -one third of its public workforce.

Will we go that route with the Tea party in power?

If so do we realize that austerity measures for America would be Ron Paul-like. They would probably include disbanding our ubiquitous military bases and pulling our forces out of places like, South Korea, Germany, Japan, Taiwan (Yes it costs a million dollars a day to fund an aircraft carrier we have 10)?

But it also means that the sprawling military-industrial complex, that Eisenhower forewarned will dissolve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower), and the subsidized-induced R&D innovations, like the internet, will no longer emerge with expected frequency. We will lose our technological edge -if we haven't already.

Yet our austerity measures will have far-reaching implications. Unlike Europe's localized measures the dissolution of global American power leaves the West with no shield from a variety of economic and political threats. Not that China wants to destroy us, but if we pull out of Asia, we, and the West, will loss our preferential access/relationships to the fastest growing region in the world. It could even result in the de-democratization of much of the developing world.

That’s right, at end of WWII America supplanted the British military as the protector of the global Western enterprise. Britain was happy to transfer the its strategic military position to a kindred-western spirit, after all it allowed them to maintain their economic power. Who will take our place, who will be the West’s America? India -the most populous democracy in the world- is not yet mature enough to take on that daunting challenge. Europe has its own debt crises, and has already exchanged its armies for universal health care and the likes. America like Europe has a massive debt crisis, but we borrowed more to supplement our military than we did to create a welfare-state.
European austerity affects Europeans; austerity for America could change the entire geopolitical landscape.

Tea party austerity may very well mean the end of a Western-Democratic streak dating back a little over 500 years to the reunification of the Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella.
This may explain the almost conspiratorial nature of recent revelations concerning Tea party candidates. It may also be one of the few developments significant enough to stimulate bipartisanship.

In any case this generation of Americans may be witnessing another watershed development in our world’s cyclical evolution.