Since the sainted Ronald Reagan left town, the national Republican Party has overpromised and under-delivered. Conservatives have come to feel that GOP leaders fail because they don’t really try. The argument can also be made that they never had the tools to succeed. Republicans only had unified control of the federal government from 2005-07, they haven’t had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Democrats have held the White House since 2009. Add to that a hostile mainstream media and an electorate that is not always on board with major parts of the conservative agenda, and it can be hard to keep those big promises to the base.
Dating back to the mid-1990s confrontations with President Clinton, a pattern emerged. Republicans would take some strong stand that enraged the left. When they didn’t have the votes or the power to win that fight by normal means, they would precipitate some crisis — government shutdowns, failure to extend the debt ceiling, looming sequesters and fiscal cliffs — that terrified and outraged the center. Finally, faced with no good political options, the Republicans would cave, infuriating their remaining supporters on the right.
George W. Bush’s presidency was the exception that proved the rule. Bush didn’t really overpromise. With the not insignificant exception of Social Security reform, the 43rd president mostly limited his aims to the immediately politically achievable. A lot of small-ball conservative initiatives, the right-wing equivalent of school uniforms, passed or were advanced. But the end result was a federal government that was bigger, more powerful, and less solvent, with larger conservative goals unrealized.
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